The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – MEHscapology: How to turn your “carbon copy” B2B company into a growth machine with differentiation, positioning and un-turn-downable offers by Matt Hodkinson

Episode Date: November 25, 2024

MEHscapology: How to turn your "carbon copy" B2B company into a growth machine with differentiation, positioning and un-turn-downable offers by Matt Hodkinson Amazon.com Totalgrowthownership.com ... So many B2B companies strive to achieve their growth ambitions by investing headlong into the latest marketing strategy or sales tactic, in the fervent belief that more activity produces more deals. But without a rock-solid market position and a core message that runs through the very fibres of your business presence, no amount of content, publicity, outreach or advertising will bring you the levels of success you desire. In MEHscapology, positioning and differentiation virtuoso, Matt Hodkinson, brings you a step-by-step formula for transforming your market presence and core business language. You'll learn the extent to which poor positioning is costing your company, the vital importance of differentiation in making your proposition the only viable option to your buyers, and how language drives perception; the key driver to influencing and building trust with your target audience. Packed with practical advice and real world examples, MEHscapology shows you exactly how to ditch the dull, and earn the attention you deserve for your soon-to-be-thriving business. About the author Matt Hodkinson is Founder and Chief MEHscapologist at TGO (Total Growth Ownership). Matt has worked directly with more than 250 consultancies, managed service partners, and other B2B organisations over the past 13+ years, helping them to find their “unordinary” and realise their marketing potential, without the need to become a high-volume content production outfit. He lives in Surrey, UK, with his “out of his league” wife and two incredible daughters.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. Oh, my God. The shrillness of the Iron Lady just gets right in there in the morning, jabs me in the ears, wakes me up, and that's why I like it.
Starting point is 00:00:49 I almost should attach her voice to my coffee maker, you know what I mean? So that way I'll be standing there, the coffee maker, half dead. I'm like a bear in the morning, I've been told, where it takes me a couple hours to finally wake up and become a human being crawling out of my hibernation for the night. And I need one of those Iron Ladies right on my machine. So as I'm standing there trying to engage with a coffee maker, it's like the Christmas show. And then I'll just be like shocked into awakeness that or I'll have a heart attack and die either way. You know, I'm still here guys. We have an amazing author on the show. We're going to be talking about his amazing
Starting point is 00:01:24 insights and business and marketing and all that sort of good stuff. His newest book just came out in 2023. It's called Miscatology, How to Turn Your Carbon Copy B2B Company into a Growth Machine with Differentiation, Positioning, and Unturned Downable Offers. Matt Hodgkinson joins us on the show. We'll be talking to him about his amazing book and insights. And it'll come out April 18th, 2023. We always give the dates because people on YouTube 10 years later like to go, it's not new.
Starting point is 00:01:57 So you guys kill me every single time. Matt is the differential Don, a B2B marketing and growth agency owner of 14 plus years, turned coach and consultant, hell bent on elevating the language that companies use to communicate their value proposition to great fit clients. He even wrote a book on it, The Mescapology, which became a bestseller in 2023. He's a former IT consultant himself. Over the past 14 years, he's helped more than 200 consultancies and other B2B organizations to achieve full differentiation command attention with
Starting point is 00:02:32 great fit prospects and drive more consistent pipeline by making the competition irrelevant. Actually, that's the pickup line. I use a bars. Welcome to the show. How are you, Matt? I'm absolutely great. Thank you for having me, Chris. Great. pickup line i use at bars welcome to the show how are you matt i'm absolutely great thank you
Starting point is 00:02:45 for having me chris great when you tell girls that you can drive more consistent pipeline by making the competition irrelevant they're they just they just go they just give you their number at the bar they would if i wasn't if i wasn't happily married for several years they absolutely would i'll miss that boat i've tested it for you so there you go so Matt give us your comms where can people find you on the interwebs the best way to find us is find me on LinkedIn I'm very active on there so it's Matt Hodkinson and the other one is total growth ownership calm which is the consultancy that I run that helps consultancies to achieve everything you've just said and it's why do it why do they why do these
Starting point is 00:03:24 consultancies need so much help according to your analysis and study? I think they've played it too safe, essentially. It's a very competitive space. And I think when we're in business, we're trying to figure things out, we've got a thousand fires to fight. We take the path of least resistance sometimes. And that means looking over the fence, looking at those competitors who seem to be absolutely smashing it and maybe pick up some of what they're putting down and essentially copy them, you know, use the same language.
Starting point is 00:03:54 You know, if it's working for them, it's going to work for us. And of course the reality is you're just going to look the same. You're going to sound the same and you're not going to stand out. And you'll, you'll know this, Chris,
Starting point is 00:04:04 I mean, you've got to stand out and you'll know this chris i mean you've got to stand out you've got to be attention worthy first and foremost before you can have any chance of growing your business and that's really the problem that they have yeah definitely so give us a 30 000 overview what's inside the book some of the tips and tricks you have a lot of a lot of great word word word i don't know what the right word for what you do is, you know, the word isms that you have. Yeah So good and give us 30,000 over you the book if you would Yeah, really what I wanted to do is get the message out to a broader audience
Starting point is 00:04:37 We we're never going to be short of business There are plenty of companies that can come to us to get our help as a consultancy But I see a lot of solo consultancies a lot of others in b2b you know outside the consultancy space those in professional services legal for example a whole bunch of different sectors who suffer from the same issue so what i wanted to do is get my message out and what i've done essentially is share our entire process front to back and a lot of people would say why would you give away your intellectual property why would you give away your process to people they'll just
Starting point is 00:05:09 do it for themselves won't they but you know what i hope that some will and for the ones that need the help for the ones that have got a bigger scale business they're struggling to find the time they need the assistance the accountability that we can help to bring then they're going to come to us anyway so it was really important for me to not hold back, to share the whole picture, make it really a workbook for success when it comes to positioning a differentiation and put it in the hands of some great people out there. And thankfully that's been the case. Do you find that, I know that SAS runs a lot of SAS programs run in the B2B space. Do you find that SAS companies fall in that category?
Starting point is 00:05:48 Yeah, we do. I mean, increasingly, because I think a lot of the sub-niches, a lot of the specific needs of those SaaS companies have been accounted for, and there are variations of the technology now. For those that are true sort of category makers, then they don't need to differentiate they're really on a uh they're hiding to nothing if they try and look like somebody else you know what they're doing is creating something that hasn't been seen before so less of an issue with those truly innovators but yeah for some of them it really can be the case that they're in a
Starting point is 00:06:20 competitive area they're really trying to stand out. It's such a common problem. And here's the thing, Chris. What I see people doing is a lot of people shouting louder, doing more marketing, trying to be more visible without really sorting this underlying message. It's not how loud you say something. It's what you say. Ah, and maybe how you say it. I don't know. Yeah, that as well.
Starting point is 00:06:44 That too. That gets me in trouble with the girls who give me their phone number. It's how I say it and the way I say it. But anyway, dating jokes are just the callback for the show, I guess, today. One of the things you talk about is how to stand out and kind of dress up your business, if you will. Is dress up a good word or what word would you use in trying to ditch the dull as it were? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:07:09 I think really it's about getting a new vocabulary, you know? I mean, you're, you're a wordsmith. I know I've heard your shows and I also, I mean, let's face it. You've got a personality and that comes out in everything. That's your position. I got six of them. Oh, great. You can pick and choose. There's Bob, there's Jane, there's Margaret.
Starting point is 00:07:31 Yeah, I've got some on weekends as well. But no, it's about a new vocabulary because let's face it, what we say creates the perceptions about what we do, about who we are, about how we're different from all those others out there. So it's actually language is the most important thing for me. And I'll give you a tip right from the off. This is for anybody that's looking to really grab attention in what, let's face it, a really noisy world. We use a very limited amount of our vocabulary, especially those who speak the English language. And what I would encourage you to do is, look, when you're describing what you do, when you're describing yourself, when you're having conversations with prospects and clients and whoever it might be, try and steer clear of
Starting point is 00:08:14 the language you would hear on a daily basis. You know, there are certain words that we hear every single day. In my world, there are words like innovation and transformation and change. And disruption, exactly. And that's become common parlance. So when you say those words, it doesn't spark any sort of pattern interrupt to what we're doing. It doesn't stop the scroll. It doesn't get us paying attention to you. Find those words that you might encounter once a week or even once a month.
Starting point is 00:08:43 And make sure it's still relevant, of course. You can't be too left-field with this stuff. It's still going to make sense. But that's how you're going to command attention and really break through. And it sounds, I mean, even if you're not B2B, if you're just a regular entrepreneur or smaller company or something, using these ways to kind of pop your brand and make it more interesting. One of the things I always notice is there's a couple of these commercial makers.
Starting point is 00:09:12 I know there's one that kind of does them all. And they take a lot of boring products and they make these commercials that are jazzed up and sparked up. And, I mean, they take mattresses. I think they did an ad for purple mattresses. And they popped it up to where they made it this fun, goofy, you know. You enjoyed watching it. There was one that was, what was it? It was a poop sitter where when you sit down to poop, it's a platform that sits under your feet that's supposed to. Yes, I saw that. It's supposed to yes i saw that right place or something so everything comes out right and they have you know they have a unicorn pooping
Starting point is 00:09:50 out uh rainbow stuff and i mean you just gotta watch it you're like really we're we're doing pooping and commercials now but they made it funny and and you know that's sort of pop taking you know some of these brands that are kind of sleeper and kind of erosive in the book. Meh. It gives them that pop. Is that a good example of some of the things you can do? It really is.
Starting point is 00:10:13 Yeah. And you're talking about it years later with a lot of these instances. And that's really the marker of a great disruptor, true disruptor, to use that word again. But here's the thing is that yeah these brands and i've niched in the b2b world and and i've niched in the consultancy space even but the reality is this is human behavior we're talking about it's going to impact on b2c and brands as well as as well as the b2b world but it is about being remarkable it's about coming out with something that is different and what i've noticed ch, is that the best companies or the best positioned companies in the world, they either stand
Starting point is 00:10:48 strongly for or strongly against something. They've got a stance. And typically, that's quite a polarizing stance. A few people are going to have their noses put out of joint, but a lot of people are going to be nodding vehemently in agreement with you. The key is not to be vanilla. I mean, we think about the likes of, you know, Virgin over the years with Richard Branson, love him or hate him, Elon Musk, and, you know, you had the boring company, which was actually about boring holes rather than boring. And even had a business that was about a flamethrower. I think that might have actually been the boring company that brought out the flamethrower. But, you know, we don't need any sort of indicators that Elon Musk is thinking on a different plane standing out
Starting point is 00:11:28 grabbing attention but this is the thing it's about being remarkable we know those people we know those brands because they stood out because they were differentiated because they weren't afraid to put their head above the parapet and stand out well Wow. Tell us a little bit about yourself, your history. How did you grow up? What influenced you and got you in the fields that you're in today? Yeah, that's interesting. I say it's interesting. It's probably not.
Starting point is 00:11:54 But yeah, I started off as a consultant myself. So I spent about 17 years on the, working with clients in the IT space. And I'll be completely honest, it was a means to an end for me. I wasn't passionate about technology in any way. There was a lot of work around. It was very well paid. But all the time I was working out, you know, what's this side hustle I can create that really is aligned with what I'm about? And so I taught myself marketing, in fact.
Starting point is 00:12:24 Initially, I taught myself search engine optimization in the early days of Google. And it was very easy back then. You spun up a few articles, you put the right keywords in a certain number of times, you were number one all of a sudden within hours. And suddenly things changed. And I got into bed with HubSpot and became a partner of them,
Starting point is 00:12:42 got into this whole world of inbound marketing, created an inbound marketing agency, which I ran for 11 years. And it's during that time that I figured out that the reason marketing doesn't work for a lot of businesses is because of the underlying position and message that's being put out by this company. How are they describing the value that they bring? And we as an agency actually found that difficult. We weren't equipped at the time. I had to educate myself on this and dive deep into this problem. Anyway, that gave rise to an opportunity came along, an agency came along, tried to acquire us. In fact, three of them did. I chose one. We pressed ahead. I sold that agency back in 2021 towards the end of the pandemic and didn't look back the next day, I set up TGO,
Starting point is 00:13:25 we were all in on positioning, messaging, differentiation, being a version of that ourselves as well. You'll appreciate Chris, when you help people to stand out, you got to stand out yourself. So I like to think our branding, our messaging, we are the world's only growth positioning consultancy. And that's essentially what's brought me to today. How do you, you know, you talk about in the book, how you help people assess how much being meh is costing them. How do you kind of determine that? Or can you tease a little bit of that on how much you're, you know, a difference it can make on maybe the bottom line of your company? Absolutely. Yeah, it comes down to, I mean, you've got to be able to quantify these things because you'll appreciate to convince people
Starting point is 00:14:07 that they need to reposition, to change their language. You know, it's quite a hard sell, I'll be honest. You just walk up to them and go, you're boring as F. Do you know what? My job is to tell people that their baby is ugly and that always goes down well. Oh, yeah.
Starting point is 00:14:23 I also use that in dating and that didn't go well either. I'll get you some goes down well. Oh, yeah. I also use that in dating, and that didn't go well either. I'll get you some numbers as well. That baby sure is ugly. Do you want some DNA that isn't? Yeah, do you want some baby makeup? Everybody who's seen me on the show knows that's a lie. That's essentially what I'm doing. I'm selling baby makeup.
Starting point is 00:14:42 But, yeah. So what we do, how we quantify it is we look at what is the average size of a deal for these companies? What are they likely losing out on? And we look at the cadence of what they're doing and how much new business they're bringing on. And then we've had some great case studies from our own work with these clients. We've got some good baseline data. So things like, for example, we've had clients who have doubled their revenue in the space of a year by fixing their positioning. We've got some good baseline data. So things like, for example, we've had clients who have doubled their revenue in the space of a year by fixing their positioning. We've had those that have 6x their pipeline value within weeks. We've had others that have increased their pricing by 15% or more with no buyer resistance whilst doing it.
Starting point is 00:15:17 And we've had others just had a client recently who halved their sales cycle from six months to three. And, of course, that makes a huge difference you can quantify those things and add them up in the context of a client that might be selling a contract for let's say 100k and say you know if you sold twice the number of those in the coming year versus last year and that's the kind of impact that positioning can have and of course it's going to be different for everybody but i think it's important to show them there is commercial impact from this it's not just fluffy language and marketing kind of black magic. Yeah, it's, you know, so many people, they go into business and, you know, I'm one of those people that I have a problem with
Starting point is 00:15:58 that popping. So when I used to create a lot of my companies You know, I would just do we would just have you know, and your normal blah blah office basically white walls You know the original walls that came with the place and my my my employees would come in and be like hey We paint the walls in here. It's really dull in here and I'm like no it's a dead office experience You're getting I always love companies You know like restaurants and in other places where you would walk into them and they would have just that opulence of, you know, beauty and someone had that sort of artistic mindset that could take something and make it look, you know, really spectacular and feng shui and, you know, feel good and stuff.
Starting point is 00:16:43 And I just never had that skill. I don't. I'm really good at logic and reason in business. But when it comes to making something look emotionally appealing, it makes all the difference. And people buy with emotion. So that's kind of a clear factor that you need to think about if your business is meh.
Starting point is 00:16:59 Because people buy from emotion. They buy off of how they feel about a brand. and using language and different techniques that are visual for people can help them, you know, make a better determination. I mean, it's kind of, remember that old, what was that old IBM man thing that they used to have back in the day in the 50s? Everybody at IBM had to wear the black suit, the black tie, the black shoes, the black hat. No one could wear colors because, oh my God, the world might explode when you do colors. And that's kind of probably a good analogy maybe for what you're talking about with meh companies that are just blase. They're just common.
Starting point is 00:17:38 They just all look the same. And so the great thing about where most people look the same is if you can figure out a way to stand out you know it can make all the difference in the world and people follow you you know yeah yeah we see it we see every day you use or something yeah i mean it is that different i mean the reality is we we actually as human beings we crave difference we crave things that are different it's why there are so many marital affairs in the world, let's face it. And I'm still not going to that bar to get those numbers, by the way. But it is, we look for what's different. We are looking for the colorful walls in the office. We're looking for the restaurant that appeals to us and, you know,
Starting point is 00:18:16 appeals to our sensibilities. And you're absolutely right. We do, we make more decisions based on emotion. And then later on, we'll ratify it with some logic along the way as well. But first of all, we've got to fall in love with it first. Nobody bought a Ferrari because they first thought, oh, yeah, that's going to give me good gas mileage. You know what I mean? They fell in love with that red beast of a machine with that throaty V8 going down the road past them. And that's what they fell in love with. And then they thought, can I afford this thing?
Starting point is 00:18:49 And can I afford to keep it on the road and and then they went and bought it so yeah absolutely that's how we do things yeah i mean sometimes people don't pay attention if they can afford it or not on the back end the repos and cars right now are through the roof because most people bought these cars back when the prices went like there it was insane there was like i i saw a pickup truck for 200 000 a pickup truck like i i could pay 200 000 for a porsche but not for a pickup truck i don't know especially one that you might trash because you're you know if you're working the construction business you can scrape the hell out of it but you know it's it's it's about that pop you know people have to realize that you know people buy hype they buy they buy spin i mean emotion is the big seller you know
Starting point is 00:19:32 probably another version is is you know you you go on the lot and you know everyone's hey we got a whole collection of these white cars they're just flat white and basic interior do you want to buy one people like no i want something that pops. I want a red one. And they're like, you're going to get more tickets. And they're like, yeah, but I might get more girls. You know, there's also different aspects. And people have different personalities, too.
Starting point is 00:19:56 You have to appeal to as well. What are some things on the book we haven't touched on that we should talk about and tease out? I know you had some interesting isms, as it were had twinning not winning same ism tell us about winning and not winning yeah i mean that's that's really that concept of looking and sounding like others in your category i mean even occupying the same category as others i think there are you know there have been some category creating businesses along the way when airbnb and Uber came along, they're always held up as the examples of this. These really true disruptors are bringing a new proposition to market and really giving a massive alternative. And what they can't be compared with is others in their category.
Starting point is 00:20:39 There's nobody there. They really are in a blue ocean where everybody else scraps in the red ocean for, you know, for whatever business might still be swimming around in those shark infested waters. So I think there is an opportunity to stand out, not just from the language perspective, but by also identifying as a different category. Again, using language to do that as well, but describing yourself in ways that others wouldn't be able to do. The classic, Chris, is we've worked with a number of digital transformation consultancies. It's a very popular area. There are lots of businesses occupying that category right now. So if I come and meet you at a networking event, you say to me, what do you do? And I say, we're a digital transformation consultancy. Now, if you're in that space, you're going to say,
Starting point is 00:21:24 I know a thousand of those. And even if you Googled them, you would get tens of thousands of results. It's a big red ocean. Now, if I were to say to you that, I'll give a more sort of robust example that is about bringing some sort of value to the customer. It might be that I halve your production costs by completely revamping your technology and replacing your legacy tech within weeks. And then all of a sudden, I'm not lumping myself. I'm not mentioning digital transformation consultancy, not mentioning digital transformation. That's the meh. And this is really appealing to the person in front of me.
Starting point is 00:22:00 And if they're a candidate, they're going to say, oh, I need to know more. Tell me more about that. And that's what I'm really looking to spark is I effing love that. I need to hear some more about that. Tell me more. Ah, you got to make it pop. You got to make it stand out. You don't want to be, you don't want to be, I don't know, just like the everyman, you know, there's an example. I talk about my book where I went out to steal a client from a competitor. We were brand new. This was going to be our first client.
Starting point is 00:22:31 And we were just still building the company. And I went out and met with the client. And the biggest question they had in their mind was, you have this great vision. You seem like a really nice guy. You're officing a little bit cheaper price. But can you really do what you're going to build what you're going to build? Because we're doing it. And so I had to go sell with my personality.
Starting point is 00:22:57 And they bought us off of my personality. Without my ability to sell, without my ability to kind of be a guy that people like, that people like to follow, lead, all that sort of stuff. They bought off that. I mean, we didn't even have routes or anything. We were just brand new. And we told them that. We were just like, we're brand new. We're going to innovate. We're going to make a difference in the marketplace. And they bought off of me. They bought me. They didn't really buy the company or the idea, the B2B, if you will. They really bought the vision of what I had and what I laid out. They bought me as a human being.
Starting point is 00:23:33 They felt like they trusted me. And all that came down to my personal pop, if you will. I don't know if that fits the mold of what you describe in the book, but it came down to my personal pop. It really did. They bought me the flavor the you know i showed up and i bedazzled basically yeah that's exactly it bedazzled for your for yeah yeah no i could do that it's one of my favorite movies by the way but yes there is there are a couple of things that buyers need to see in here so first off you've got to grab their attention and the way to do that is to use language which describes their situation one of the best things you can do and what i would suggest is probably what you had done chris in that situation is first off you
Starting point is 00:24:14 understood the situation you were walking into you understood the buyer's needs you understood the situation they were in if you can make any potential buyer feel that you have bugged their office that you've got some fly on the wall that's listening into every conversation and you're playing that back to them they're just going to get that sense of first off they're going to say i need to pay attention to this because it's for me and then very quickly they're going to say also oh my god this guy gets me he understands me you created that resonance in that situation but shortly after that the other thing
Starting point is 00:24:45 they need to know is there's some novelty that this isn't something they've seen or heard before because that part of the brain the amygdala the part of the brain that keeps you safe that's listening out for stuff that it's seen or heard before it's the same part of the brain that's going to save you from any scammers that are out there and if it hears something if you had said you know we can do exactly the same as those other guys you're already working with while you're out the door before you've had an even chance to get the sentence out, you brought novelty, you brought enthusiasm, you brought some air of novelty to that situation that got them interested. They thought, okay, we need a new direction. This guy's the one for me. Yeah. I mean i mean it just it just makes all the difference in
Starting point is 00:25:25 personality and pop and sell and standing out and i think you know they were like you know we never had the company that we use ever come visit us ever come care they're just blase doing their thing you know there was a couple extra features that we had but we we ended up doing some amazing innovation i talk about my book and stuff. As we go out, tell people what you hope that they come away with from the book, what they hope they learn, et cetera, et cetera, so they do pick up the book. Well, first off, I hope that they realize the situation that they're in because a lot of the companies I speak to aren't really aware of this, what they feel they've got and what is symptomatic of anybody that's perfect
Starting point is 00:26:05 for the book are those that are struggling with pipeline with new business with lead generation with marketing in general and so they're thinking we need to do more marketing we need to nail linkedin we need to get our email list working for us we need to do some ads and the reality is that as i said earlier you know the message is probably the problem it's how they're describing the value that they bring that isn't there so i hope that people first realize they're able to diagnose the situation they're in identify as somebody that's suffering from samism and that tumbleweed outreach and everything that i talk about but then that by the end of the process that they're given a step-by-step and there really are only six steps to the process in the book by the time they get to the end of that they've followed a logical step-by-step
Starting point is 00:26:49 process to really stand out and let's face it you've got six chances to differentiate in that book you only need one real killer idea to really stand out and make a difference and and that's really what i want is for people to go away with at least one area where they can really improve and walk away and realize the commercial benefit of that for themselves and for their business as well. Most definitely. In fact, those companies that we acquired early on in that company with my personality and my drive and my chutzpah, whatever you want to call it, my bedazzling, those companies stayed with us for over 13 years. We still had the original core companies that I talked into my bedazzling to start the corporation.
Starting point is 00:27:34 They were with us for 13 years. And if I hadn't shut the company down, because we had other things we wanted to do, it would have been going for, I don't know, probably still be around today. Maybe, I don't know. But yeah, it actually might've been, I mean, they really trusted us. They were really interesting. In fact, I turned the company over to my business partner to run for several years, I think seven or eight years he ran it. And I was kind of, I disappeared into our other companies, but they all kind of knew I ran it. And then when my partner resigned from our company after 13 years, I called them all up, and they were like, oh, it's Chris Voss. Yeah, you, yeah, we, you know, and so that investment and that pop of me and bedazzling and stuff and not being, you know, just a, oh, we're another curry company.
Starting point is 00:28:22 You want a piece? Meh, right? you know just a oh we're another curry company you want a piece meh right that bedazzling lasted and and the imprint that it made in their brain you know i just i just quoted you some commercials that i still remember and i remember those brands that's how powerful those viral commercials were i still remember them and and i really don't want to first chris i mean into the cup was a little much but i gotta'm going to walk away with that image for sure. But listen, what you what you did first and foremost is you followed through on your initial promise. I mean, that that they don't stick around unless you're able to back up what you say in those initial meetings and conversations and how you position yourself.
Starting point is 00:29:01 But the other thing is, when you get your positioning right, you attract more of those organizations, more of those individuals, and people do business with people, whether it's B2B, whether it's B2C. You're going to get people who really buy into your values, your message, and just your way of working and the longevity that comes with the result of that. I mean, often we're talking about the initial wins, the size of contracts, the shorter sales cycles, bigger pipelines. The other thing that it really impacts is how long your clients stick around, that retention element, the lifetime value of those relationships that you're creating. And it even permeates into other areas as well, Chris. I mean, think about the world of talent attraction, the importance of having an employer brand where people want to swim oceans to come and work for you. That's what great positioning can do as well. It can attract the best talent. And there's a lot of competition for that as well, isn't there? I mean, especially as smaller organizations
Starting point is 00:29:53 competing with the big boys for the best people. That's what positioning can do for you as well. Definitely. Definitely. Thank you very much for coming on, Matt. We really appreciate it. Give us your dot coms as we go out so people can find you on the interwebs again. Yeah, come visit at TotalGrowthOwnership.com. It's a long one, I know. But otherwise, find me on LinkedIn, Matt Hodkinson. And I'm happy to talk to any one of you about this. Thank you very much, Matthew, for coming on the show.
Starting point is 00:30:18 We really appreciate it. It's been a blast. Thank you, Chris. And thanks for tuning in. Order of the book where refined books are sold. Mescapeology, how to turn your carbon copy B2B company into a growth machine with differentiation, positioning, and unturned downable offers. You got to love it. Thanks, Sarah, for being here.
Starting point is 00:30:39 As always, go to goodreads.com, 4chesschrisfoss, linkedin.com, 4chesschrisfoss. Chris Foss won the TikTok and he owns a crazy place on the internet. Be good to each Crispus, LinkedIn.com, Fortress Crispus. Crispus won the TikTok and all those crazy places on the Internet. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time.

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