Nigel Maine: Well, here we are. We're live welcome to the third live stream, and we've got quite an interesting show today. I think I say it's interesting. And the reason being is we've got three guests on today's show and the point and the, the continuing, um, drive of what we're doing is to look to ween businesses, B2B businesses, off cold calling and move it and move them to a far more effective way of generating new business. And to do that, it requires some, you could say a bit of an engineer T a bit of, um, technical know-how, but the results from it are breath-taking. Unlike anything that any B2B organization has ever experienced before. And one of the fundamental problems is that within B2B, within BT, within businesses selling, when it's business to consumer, it's measured in millions of people that you have access to B2B it's thousands. And so it's a numbers game. We know that this is a numbers game, but we're, we're here to talk about what the numbers are. And so what I'm going to do, I'll play our brief intro and I'll introduce you to everyone else.
Okay. Well, here's the team. I think that the easiest thing to do first is it's just to explain, we're going to have a four way conversation about how marketing has been done, how, how B2B marketing has been done, how tele sales is, has affected everybody and how it's being used. And ultimately looking at how businesses acquire the data in order to call people and the experiences that people have had, and that people have in general, when it comes to businesses, trying to generate new business. So I'm not gonna, there's, there's, there's more than enough information on our website about everything that we do. So we're going to get straight into it. And I think if we kick off with, I would say introductions, so Liz, why don't you just share briefly who you are and what you do?
Liz Maine: Okay. I'm Liz Maine. Um, I currently work for a pretty large software international software company. Um, previously I spent about 15 years in telecom sales selling phone systems was recording solutions, um, and have done the cold calling on the phone. Um, not so much going out and knocking on doors, but certainly, um, doing telesales. Um, and now I am on the receiving end, predominantly of people making phone calls, um, um, cause I'm the business support manager, so that's me.
Nigel Maine: Okay.
Dean Grimshawe: Yes. So I've been in the sales well over 10 years of experience in, in direct sales, predominantly in B2B, I did start off door to door. So I do have the hustle culture as part of my DNA. And I've done the jobs where I've been full-time tele prospecting, you know, from eight in the morning, till six in the evening, some days. So, so I've done the apprenticeship, if you will. And currently, um, B2B in the enterprise e-commerce space selling online retailers.
Nigel Maine: Right. Okay, cool at Alex.
Alex Hilditch: Hi. So I'm Alex. Um, so I look for, from MarketScan we are a B2B data provider. Um, so we've been around since 1982, so we're quite long in the tooth. And what we'd like to do is help people and talk people through how they can use their lists to, to, to, to the best benefit. So with an extra of different marketing channels. Um, so we have lots of customers that are doing the, the 10 marketing alone, but then there's others that are doing multichannel, which where I think today's conversation has got to fit quite nicely into.
Nigel Maine: Yeah. Cool. Well, I mean, we we've, uh, between all the F all four of us, we've talked about, um, about marketing, about the, the, the, the methods that are adopted and the, that exist, but there's, there's never been any change and we we've kind of analyzed it almost to death, but, but to understand why, why it is what it is and where it stemmed from. And I, and I've kind of written about it in the past about, you know, I started 50, uh, in the 1950s when people were doing door to door, cold calling, and then it moved into telesales and so on. And really that model hasn't changed a great deal, even when people want to, um, they, they want email to work. They want it to work to the best of their advantage. And I think it's all because of B to C, B to C have a, uh, kind of success ratios that B2B want to have for themselves as well, but they self-sabotage in the way that they do it by using marketing automation and hiding all their content behind email forms, which people would end up either not getting access to, or not even being able to find them on Google because they're all hidden.
So it's kind of like the, the Brown beating processor, uh, of, of tele sales. I mean, you, I mean, Liz, you, you, you get a few calls a day.
Liz Maine: Yeah, yeah. I do. I think, um, I mean, obviously more so now than ever before, because all of our team are working from home, so that's one obstacle to overcome, but I have heard every tactic in the book. I mean, I am astonished at the way, people will try to get past the gatekeeper. Um, and so, I mean, some of the, some of the people that I speak to sometimes they get very upset with me, very angry with me and moved in with me, like a teenager as if that's going to persuade transfer. They've never, never even years, but I also get, I mean, some of the most memorable ones we were chatting about this yesterday, some of the most memorable ones I've had, um, I had the guy that told me I could never, it couldn't possibly send me any information because I just simply wouldn't understand. And it would take him too long to put an email together and explain it to me and 14 and a half minutes later, because now that became sport and everybody's sitting in the office, we all think this is hilarious, 14 and a half minutes later, he's still talking to me. And I have basically stopped listening until the point. I've just had to put the phone down because he just wouldn't stop. Okay.
Just for you. But tonight was to the point of just being ridiculous. Um, I get the pinnacle that pretend to be somebody else. I had the guy phoned me up and said he was one of our sales guys. Who's actually based in the us. And, and he needed the number for one of our VP of sales in the UK. And, and he really needed to speak to them, speak to him. He was getting on a plane and hadn't got his number. And could I? And I was like, no. And actually the person you're pretending to be as American and you are not American. So we know yes, the few, um, people try, try to contact me. And I think, you know, you come to the conclusion that actually you can try every tactic in the book, but you are always, always going to come across somebody like me, somebody who, and sometimes to people, you know, I am because I've done the job.
I know how hard it is. And sometimes I will talk to people and maybe I load them into a false sense of security. I don't know. But, um, I do, I am nice to people, but there were certain tactics that frankly, you know, Oh, can you give me the mobile number? No, it's not, no, you're not having a mobile number and so more so now than ever before, because a lot of people are working from home. People are just not getting through. I, I, it's very, very difficult and, and I appreciate how hard it is, but I'm not falling for it. Did you get many calls? How many calls do you get? I mean, before we went into lockdown, I would probably get maybe half a dozen calls, date that links. Um, and, and prior to that, um, in different organizations, I would get more, I will get more than that, but I think that the tactics have now become a bit more aggressive, um, and ha became, have become more aggressive.
I would say in the last three to four years, you know, people have really, you know, I, in fact I had one phone then guy phone quite a long time ago. I said, well, could I speak to Andy please? And I said, Andy. And he was like, yeah. And the only long. And I'm like, um, okay, you said, I've spoken to him before spoken to him about pensions. And I was like, Oh, really? He said, Oh yeah, yeah, we're lucky. He was really good friends with him. And I said, well, first of all, if you had spoken to me, you wouldn't know nobody ever, ever, ever calls him and day fr. So I know you've not spoken to him before you put the phone down on me. I get a lot of hangups,
Nigel Maine: But just because it's
Liz Maine: Then never, they're not going to get through, but I did.
Nigel Maine: And what was the kind of the general consensus or the instructions from Mike Sinoma, senior management or other people what's their view on,
Liz Maine: I don't want to talk to that person. And I actually find that even when people, but even when I was on the one hand, it annoys me. But on the other hand, I see why they do it. They fill a form in the, download it a white paper or a document or whatever on somebodies website. They never put them over on them, but they always put them in an office. So that to me is just like, you don't want to speak to them because otherwise you'd give your Melbourne number. If you wanted to junk, if you genuinely wanted to call that you would give a mobile number. And because they don't, it's because they can't get the information that they want without giving a number. And so if the may not be his number, why not? And, um, but I don't know that the instruction is don't, don't give out any, you don't give out any confidential, which I consider to be confidential.
Now, mobile number, I give out my email address. I've got my people badgering me, but I didn't mind them of other, you know, of the members of staff that have got better things to do than feel calls and emails. So that's why I don't put them through it's, you know, you just don't. And I even found that when I was on the receiving it, when I was doing the telesales, you know, it was like, no, I can't put you through, or I can't give you any information. I can't confirm an email address. You know, we have a policy if we don't take cold calls, that's it. And Ugh, there's nothing you can do. Yeah. I'm sure finds that sometimes the, you know, the gatekeeper is like, you know, you, it doesn't matter how good you are. You won't past that gatekeeper
Nigel Maine: In many ways. Yeah. Especially on the core, I would say. I mean, Dean, what's your kind of your take on it. What's the, what kind of problems did you encounter pre 20, 20 lockdown. And has that changed over the past 12 months? 12, whatever month 10 we made it. Yeah. He's 12 bucks, isn't it?
Dean Grimshawe: Yeah, no fact it feels like longer than that. It's I can understand why you're trying to count them on. So I've got quite a different answer to, to a lot of people I find it's about the same. Now the first lockdown, there was initial shell shock period where everyone just ran for cover and everything was literally on, on, on the quiet. But right now I'm finding it's pretty much the same as it was pre pandemic, in my opinion, because I was struggling to get people on the phone then, you know, and the conversations I'm having, the meetings I'm having, the, the engagement I'm having in sales is pretty much at the same level. It was pre pandemic. So I know that there are ways for lead generation. And, you know, obviously like some of the ideas we were discussing on these sort of shows is Testament to the fact that, you know, business can still move forward in these times.
But in terms of the phone and cold calling, I was, I was definitely finding it wasn't productive. So if I go back to say 2013, 2014, I was full-time banging the phones nine til five, every single day. And it worked, it worked a treat. Uh, I was, I was filling up pipelines, filling up opportunities, things were moving. And I'm one of those people that I don't mind putting the work in, as long as I could see the fruits of the labor, so to speak. Yeah. But for a long time, um, for a long time, it's just not been viable. It's just not worked, you know, and the old sort of mentality of, well, just do more, just do more, just do more. Um, I know one of the topics we discuss a lot is how do you scale something, just doing more, isn't really that smarter way to scale something.
You know, there comes a point where, well, what more can you do? And to give some examples, and this was like going back to maybe 12, 18 months before the first lockdown I was calling up teams. And they were basically telling me that there's no, there's no desk phones in the office. If you want to speak to the relevant people, you need to have their mobiles. That was just a fact. And in some of the, some of the bigger brands that I was trying to get through to in the bigger companies, their reception team was changing quite regularly. Quite often their reception team was, was, um, uh, from a recruitment agency. And you might say it was Derek walked past you this morning. And they'd be like, well, I don't even know what their, it looks like. I've only got a list of names in front of me, and this is all I'm allowed to do.
And by default, if anyone had any decision-making, uh, potential or decision-making capabilities, then you know, they're not going to be on that list. You know, like to, to sort of coin a phrase of like recent comedy, you know, computer, no, like, can I speak to Mr. Jones? Computer says no, like that is it like, there, there was no way forward and you couldn't get any more information at the reception team. Like Liz, you know, she's quite professional. She's been around. She knows her company. So if you speak to Liz nicely, I think you can get a lot of information. But a lot of these reception teams, they deliberately don't know anything because they don't actually work for the company. Therefore doesn't that we'll give them a hundred percent and it doesn't matter how skilled you are at grilling people. If someone doesn't know something, you can't get out of them, you know, and I've got loads of opinions with speak into PAs and things, because I think, I think they're absolutely fantastic advocates if you speak to them nicely.
Um, and then you can get a lot of information, but that's a completely different story. Now you're dealing with people who actually understand the business. Quite often, the people who answer the switchboard numbers and it's not judging them because they're not, they're not, not smart people. It's just that they don't know the company and they never told me anything about the company. So how would they be able to, to share information? So to go a long story short, I think we've gone around the houses there. I'm finding the success of the telephone is exactly the same now as it was pre pandemic. But I think what's happened is now there's a light shown on it and everyone's suddenly go, Oh, it doesn't work. It didn't work before, but now all of a sudden people are a bit more accepted of the fact and started discussion around it.
Nigel Maine: Yeah. I mean, what I mean, in terms of, I mean, I have a preconceived idea. It's not pre, but the tools that people have got to use are pretty standard in many companies, you know, you've got Salesforce, you've got automation. Um, and so is it, um, is it commonplace to have dialing from the screen?
Dean Grimshawe: Um, not commonplace for me and, and the sort of places I've, I've worked in, but I'm aware of sort of industries where it is commonplace and I'm not aware of it really being any more successful. I think what I tend to find is in all of these sort of, um, roles like SDRs and BDRs, it's a real high turnover of individuals. It's individuals looking to cut their teeth in the sales environment and without being unfair, they're never going to find out if they're good at sales and these sort of environments, because it's just a case of keep calling, keep calling, keep calling three months later, get rid of him, get another one in. And you can tell by the high turnover. And I think we've had this discussion many, a time in sales and marketing people will look at the high turnover like that the individuals were wrong. Sometimes you have to look at the hotels and everything. Well, maybe it was just never going to work. And I do find from a prospecting point of view, they just burn people out. They just get another one.
Nigel Maine: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, one of the things I've, I've, I've written back to this before that just because the company exists and the managing director says, this is a great product. Doesn't mean it's a great product. And then he goes and throws all those financial resources at the company to get the company to, um, to, to make sales of those products. And they do everything they possibly can to begin with, sell to their friends and family, it peaks and troughs because then they have to go and set it properly and it might not happen. And they don't adopt, adopt any kind of strategy to it, but they keep saying, right, we'll just get on the phone. That's the basic thing that I understand is tele sales. So we keep everybody doing telesales and that's, and that's that's as far as it goes. I mean, Alex, you and I talked about kind of lent about the, kind of the CMO type role and what happens within, within that kind of environment. Um, and that they tend to do the same thing over and over. You know, the new person comes in, goes through the persona process and then repeat, you know,
Alex Hilditch: No, absolutely. Well on the cold calling front, I mean, we, when I, when I joined the business 18 months ago, did lots of research to see what was happening with the cold calling that everyone was doing. And it really, really wasn't effective. So, um, back end of 2019, early 2020, all cold calling stopped. Um, and it was just a real focus on different marketing channels, different ways of connecting with people. So sessions like this other seminars that we, we ran the team, run the seminars, the team go and networking, and it is getting your name out and being more personable and getting across the fact that we're not just data, we're here with other ideas, other solutions, other ways to, to help you get the results that you want need require. Um, and I wouldn't say necessarily that cold calling is dead, dead, but there are certain pockets where it's definitely not going to work.
Um, exactly what Liz is, talks about. You know, people going to go and call the bigger organizations. It's going to be more and more challenging to get through that gatekeeper. Um, and that is, that is a bind, but we we've seen our number of dials go down with not cold calling, but then the amount of time on the phone increase, um, because their best conversations, it's speaking to people that we've had conversations with in the past, it's, it's making sure that, um, our current customers are getting the results that they need from that, that data sets. Um, it's talk to people who've inquired at some point at any point or downloaded something and given us some, some direct communication. Um, and then we're having those conversations. We've got, um, not a filtered on automated, um, stack, but we've got a reasonable amount, um, set up enough that we can then be on the phone because yes, cold calling might be dead that people buy from people. You still need to have that human interaction skills, not just about, um, ensuring that you're getting the most amount of revenue, because it's not just about that, but it's about getting the most amount of value across to your, your prospects and making sure that they are getting value from your offering, which is from my perspective key. Yeah,
Nigel Maine: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that's why now this, this whole approach to live streaming and looking at how, how do you start the conversation? How do you even even get to a point where you can say, Hey, here, here we are coming out a look it's, it's really difficult. Why it's impossible to do that in any other, in any other way, except, you know, chucking loads of information, typically via email, um, to prospective customers, um, you know, you can do the manual stuff and go out and meet them and so on, but it's, you know, it's, we, I mean, we would talk Liz and I were talking the other day about the, the numbers involved in communicating it in the ability to communicate with someone. And if you've got someone that's doing any form of tele sales from cold, you know, with a company that's going to, since 1982, you're going to have lots of different people that you've spoken to over the past, you know, 30 years, but the, um, or more, um, if you're going to do cold calling, you know, if you could only phone, we did this the other week, we took away lunch and took away comfort breaks and took away that time between nine and 10 and the last hour of the day and said, well, that's what you got to play with.
And it worked out to about 60 calls a day. Someone was banging the phones, but if we've got this thing about a hundred to one shot to get through to someone, to find someone that's actually interested and looking at that, that process and being able to reach any number of people, of a hundred people, you might get through to 10 and of those ten one might be interested, but that's a hundred to one. But if you're only bringing in 60 people a day, it takes you five days to get through to however many people. If, if the, um, the ratio has changed in terms of how many your, your argument database has not really changed at all. And other people who said what it could be 200, 200, 300 to one because of, you know, Pitt because of lockdown and people not being around. So it was kind of looking at the, looking at the ratios of, um, uh, a company's ability to connect with outside or, or uncontacted people.
And I just, I just see it being nigh on impossible. And the only thing that directors seem to know, or most directors seem to know is cold court. And that's the only way we can do it. We could invest in it MarTech and have a MarTech stack, whether it's part or eloquent or, or, or markets or whatever, with it, with demand base and all the APM stuff and everything else kicked into it. And Nate nailed down and all the different peripherals you can add into it, but it's going through that same thing again for people. And like you said, people buy people is of about being personable. Um, I think we were talking to the other day. So, you know,
Dean Grimshawe: When you, when you found people, there were so many reasons why that person can't answer the phone and it might not just be because we don't put cop, we don't put calls through, you know, that person's in the meeting and he's talking to somebody is away from your office, he's off sick. You know, it's just, just walked away from his desk for a moment, you know, or the phone's engaged because he's on the phone to somebody else. So, so there's, there's a ton of different reasons why even if that person is willing to talk to you, that he might not be available to actually talk to you for lots and lots of different reasons. Um, you know, when I used to work a database, you know, we have like lots of week, you could put categories in for why people didn't talk to you. And it's like in a meeting on leave, you know, all of these sort of things so that you categorize them. So you could kind of go back and say, Oh yeah, the last time I called you, you were in the meeting or you were on leave or whatever it was. Yeah. But I think because
Nigel Maine: If you've got a hundred people or say it was a hundred people, you able to bring a hundred people. If you're only, you have those hundred people, you call 90 a ring banks. And so they go onto the following day. So getting through a larger number, it's just, yeah. Yeah.
Dean Grimshawe: Well, I think you will 200 to one. The short is generous. To be honest, if I go back to 2013, 2014, where it was, I literally did it day in, day out. I was looking at about a hundred dollars a day and I was whipping through them. But on a hundred dollars, I got through to, I wanted to speak to it about 10% of occasions. So on a hundred dollars, I had 10 chats with the right person of which about 10% of those were what I called good chats. You know, non chats were like, nice to know, thanks for calling me not interested, but at least I got through to the right person, uh, of those I'd say 10% of the test. So, so one good chat today. But if you're dealing with B2B and it's a decent sort of ticket item, one good chat, that is a result, you know, that's 20 sort of good leads a month. That's not 20 deals a half an hour.
But if I was to, if I were to do a hundred dollars today, I would be absolutely over the moon. If I actually got through to, I was trying to speak to on 10 occasions or, yeah, I think it's beyond just the whole numbers thing. I think the culture has changed. I think, you know, my experience being an office. Now, if a phone rings, it doesn't mean you need to pick it up. Whereas like, you know, 10, 10, 20 years ago, a phone rings or an office everyone's looking sideways. So I'm going to pick up a serious, like it was, it was a culture, like, you know, you don't leave a phone ringing. Like we got, we got, um, I remember like 15 years ago where people used to have, Oh, we've got a policy in the office, three rings, it's got to be answered and things like that.
We all remember these policies that used to be around now, a phone rings. It's like, I'm going to appointment. So it can't be, for me, the phones become a tool, which I find people expect an appointment they need to, they need to expect them to ring. You know? And I'm not just talking about business either. This is almost like the same, my family life. I can't just call me mom. You know, like if I do it, it's not that I don't just expect her to answer it. And nine times out of 10, I'll get this back sent. I couldn't answer just then what do you want? You know, and it's not, it's people are rude. It's not because people don't want to talk. And like you say, I do think business is personal and people do want to have these conversations, but they want to have them on their own timescales.
They don't want it to just suddenly pop up in their life. And, you know, I liked what Alex was alluding to like, um, I'm against the whole thing. It's a numbers game because I don't think it's a qualitative process anymore. I think it's, I think, well, I don't think it's about quantity. It's about quality now. And Alex made that point very clearly and very, very correctly. The phone will never die. You know, SEO is dead. We've had always Folsom folks horizons before, but the phone will always be there, but it's more about quality. Now, the idea that you can just bang it until it gives you a result is, is a fool's errand right now. You need to use it effectively and conversations will still happen. But the idea is that they've done the right way and, and you're focused on quality conversations, quality calls, which if you do it the right way, they're all diarized and people are expecting you to call.
Nigel Maine: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that's, you know, that it's not the elephant in the room, cause that's what we do in this, you know, the whole thing about live and, and, and this is whilst it's a conversation. Yes. It's tantamount, I suppose it's a live a live podcast in a way. Um, it's just a bit of a delay when you're talking, but, um, that, that the point of this is the, is the, the way in which that quality conversation can begin. Um, you know, the whole networking mantra, no like trust or that kind of stuff, how they're going to know about you. And they're going to find out about you if the, if you, if you're never around and if it's just a, uh, a once in a blue moon, hoping, you know, shot at speaking to that business, because if you don't get that first round first time round, forget it.
And I think, you know, even with, with the stuff that we do, you know, we w the emails that we send out people, self segment, they, they, they want to listen. They don't want to. That's fine. Um, and if we're looking at the, um, you know, looking at reaching people, you know, we, we, we kind of settled on this thing about going live and delivering something of quality that people can dip in and dip out off. And therefore the content has been created and the prospects can see whether or not they liked, or they would want to work with you at some stage now or in the future. I think that's something that's not really, really been available before. It's always been, it's got to be nailed down. It's got, gotta be a webinar. You've got to, you know, if you want to come in, if you wanna, if we, if you wanted to kind of look at us or engage with us, we'll take your take you on a webinar, but you won't see my face.
You'll just see the PowerPoint slides typically. Um, and you know, there's no option for anybody to be anonymous in order to start to get to know that company. So I think, you know, it's, it's kind of looking at the, um, looking at the, this process is overall process. And, and, and obviously with Alex's, um, as part of this jigsaw puzzle is being able to, um, identify exactly the types of people that you have dealt with in the past and why you would want to work with them and sell to them and getting that data. But then I would say understanding the history of Teles history of tele sales and new business development, which is this kind of a hundred to one or 200 to one, this, this thing about, um, trying to, to communicate with people and, and that, that numbers game, and also being aware that 1% of your market probably going to be looking at any one time, but if you're selling chocolate bars, your market is millions, but if you're selling high ticket e-commerce software, you talk in potentially hundreds or maybe thousands, but, um, it's much less.
And so therefore there's this, this, this requirement to try and reach those people. And I just think that there's, it might my 30 years in, in doing this, nothing's been available for B2B. There's been no, no methodology, no mechanism, no facility ability or tech that has enabled you to do it, unless you, unless you want to go on television. Um, and, and this just narrows it down by doing streaming, but being able to communicate with your, your ideal market on mass and, and literally doing this at scale. And that's obviously that's your bag in way, Alex, in terms data. Um, and it's, I suppose, to kind of not talk us through, but share with us, you know, what, what have you experienced in the past of people looking for staff? How do they, you know, do they, did he go for a shotgun of scatter gun approach or do they, are they more strategic in their, um, requirements for data?
Alex Hilditch: I'd say it's quite a healthy mix of the two to be fair. So there are a number of people that is scattergun and it very much comes down to, to their products. I know you mentioned about the, the personas earlier, um, and that's that's, that is, yeah, it's a big thing about the persona and, you know, tailoring your message to the right person, hitting them at the right time, all the, the old school stuff on, on that front. Um, but there are some products at the moment that we see, particularly with the current situation where they it's, you know, it is a scatter gun. Um, now in the past where they may have been solely focused on, on telephone, that's being more difficult. So we've seen a bit of a shift to more people buying, um, email. Um, however, again, in the last two months, we've seen the, the shift change against slightly that people are more interested in postal than they are in telephone numbers or email addresses.
So we are still seeing people doing different things. And, and my personal view on postal at the moment is a really, really good way of getting in front of people because the telephone goes, as Dean said, you know, it goes into, you can ignore it. Um, email marketing, most products are, you know, you you're in a saturated market. So therefore people are getting lots and lots of emails about the same thing. And then they might shut off to it to, to a certain extent, yes, they'll still be people that will, that will reply. And you can let your email marketing work for you, but postal, you don't get much posts these days. So if you've got a really nicely designed postcard or something, that's slightly quirky that you're putting on someone's desk, they're more likely to look at it and take note, not only that, if it's something that's really has taken their, caught their eye, they're unlikely to throw it in the bin and I'll stick it in their drawer.
And then that can have two, two things that come up back there, one they're going in and clearing out their drawer. They have looking at again for actually I could do with XYZ product. Um, alternatively, that person is then recycled with the replacement coming in, looking at destined King or what's that, that must've been important because they've kept it. And therefore they investigate what that product that service is. And you get another bite at the cherry with a new contact that, that can hopefully get in touch. So postal, I think, is something that people really need to consider as well. Um, because it's just, it's so few and far between in the payment. Um,
Nigel Maine: I like posts. I don't, I don't get a lot of posts not anymore. And so it becomes, it's almost like it's novel, um, to get something in the post is all, and then be, I suppose, relatively critical, but PO post can be quite expensive if you can, if you're looking at doing it at scale, um, because we're still, we've still got that, um, primary factor of 1% of your market or looking at any one time and it's kind of trying to hit them at the right time with the right message or, or, and, and it, I mean, I've, I've done, I've done thousands and thousands and thousands of direct mail stuff. Um, and yeah, sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't, you know, he's still got low percentages, which is standard for direct mail. Um, and that's, and this, and this is why, I mean, I think lots of businesses have tried lots of different things.
And I would say a lot of them are not, they're not very sophisticated in the, in their, uh, you know, what's available exhibitions, can't do them, um, uh, cold calling or direct mail, um, or email. There are very few things that, that, that businesses can do to reach out, to try and attract new prospects, even just to get their net their message out there. And that whilst, uh, you know, I like direct mail, but to do it repeatedly, or, or at scale would be where it would be expensive, especially if you've got a market that I'd know, like we're going to talk about in a minute, about 10,000, if you've got 10,000 names, um, you're not going to message. You're not going to do a direct mail to 10,000 people every week. And, and that's kind of where we are with this, um, this live streaming of being able to say, come on, watch our show this week.
And if, if, um, what we're going to be talking about is this, and here's our schedule for the next six weeks. Um, if we don't see you next week, we'll see you the week after. And that, you know, that, that goes out again and again, do doing this, doing something similar to this, um, you know, that, that type of thing. And I think because it's not been very specific, sophisticated, um, there's this, I think tendency for people to think that this is complicated because it is sophisticated. If you want to look at it that way. Um, but it's, it's the reach is beyond anything that they would ever get. You know, they'd send out 10,000 emails, a, a click of a button of a mouse, um,
Dean Grimshawe: Complicated things for people is the mindset, you know, because going back to the direct mail and all these things, I was brought up on the whole direct marketing sort of like way of lead generation, you know, it's 40% list, 40% proposition, 20% in the copy and how you package it. And that kind of covers your email, your direct mail, your, your, your prospecting it's like, right, is your proposition is your list is your, your script is, is your copy. And that kind of is that mentality. If that makes sense. I think what's complicated about this kind of thing for most people is they're like, well, this is all lovely and that, but where's the deals, you know, telling people what's interesting. If you're in a campaign mentality, I call it a campaign mentality. If you're a campaign mentality of similar propositions for this list, with this copy, I know that at the end of that, that's my leads.
But if I do alive, I think people struggle with, well, that doesn't make any sense. Like, where's the leads, where's the Legion. And I think that's the most good. Like you say, the technical gain is set up is actually relatively easy. Once they've got it in their head, that this is, this makes sense. And, and going back to like the way all the emails, I kind of got rid of the campaign mentality a long time ago, because I don't know if Liz could share any numbers of, of her specifics, but everyone I speak to was say they get 30, 40, 50 prospective emails a week. And they're all based on that. This is the list I sent it to. This is the proposition. Do you want to buy it? And there's some sort of a call to action on all of these emails, because it's what I call the direct marketing campaign mentality.
And the success I've had with email is by sort of like getting rid of all that campaign mentality and thinking, Oh, you work in this industry. Here's something interesting. Come and check it out, which is a bit more along the lines of what we're doing here is something interesting. You're in the industry, this is relevant to you. Come and check it out. Now, all of a sudden that one email in a sea of 50 or hundreds, which is all got, um, a call to action on it as part of the direct marketing methodology. It's like, well, that one email stands out. It's like, Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. I do want to know more about that. I am interested. I'll check it out, especially, and I, don't never really touched on it much in this episode, especially if it's a, a, a low level of, um, entry. They don't have to give you their email. They don't have to give you their phone number. They don't have to put their head above the power of it. They could just come and check it out. And the relationships I've built up that way, I think are fantastic. And I don't understand that more people aren't doing it. The only thing I can say in my head is cause people are stuck in campaign mentality of the old fashioned direct mail.
Nigel Maine: Yeah. I want to think that, you know, when you look at the, the sales process and how long it takes, um, you know, people want leads, but we know because of all the, the stats that are out there, you know, you, uh, I think it's like you got to get seven to 10 touches. They got to see what, you've, what you're putting forward seven to 10 times before it becomes something becomes familiar. You go, yeah. Okay, I'll get that. And you've got, but one in three gets through because it's been, didn't see it where, you know, wrong mode blah-blah-blah, which means if it's caught at 10, um, you've got to produce 30 pieces of information or content to get somebody's interest and accept that two thirds of them are going to just disappear or fall by the wayside because, and the reason being is that you don't know when they're going to be in the market for something themselves, because the, the driver to buy that B2B product is based upon, is it going to make me any money as a business owner, as opposed to B to C, which is, do I want a bar of chocolate or not, or those trainers are going to look good on me.
So there's different drivers for why they're going to buy something. And I think that, you know, looking at the, that, that overall logic it's, you know, I was told before, you know, years ago, it's a numbers game is numbers games number, please, sir, please teach me how to manipulate the numbers and make them work for me, or just get on the phone.
Liz Maine: But isn't the buying cycle in when B2B, typically the buying cycle has got to be like two to three years by which, I mean, you know, from the business's point of view, you know, if they're looking at things strategic level, they'll say, well, actually what we want to do, say for example, it's a phone system or upgrading the computer system. That's not something typically that is done within maybe a two month period. You go through a process. I mean, one of my biggest deals that I ever won, um, when I was selling phone systems,
Nigel Maine: Talk to me about racetrack, the restream is back up and away. Dana's don't know what's happened to him. What can I say? The wonders of the wonders of modern technology, and then it all just crashes, um,
Alex Hilditch: The live demo, as they say,
Nigel Maine: Oh yeah, but it's also in the recovery, isn't it?
Liz Maine: You didn't go. I don't think Dean's gone. Didn't I maybe didn't
Nigel Maine: Well,
Liz Maine: No, we're sending about 70% of people do their research online before they even reach out to you.
Nigel Maine: Yeah,
Alex Hilditch: I was literally before we, um, we had our, on the tea break, um, just about to say that, um, another, another really good reason to go down the routes of, um, the live streaming. The webinars is certainly on B2B, where it differs from B to C, B to C is always very much, um, price. Let, you know, as a consumer you'll buy anything as long as it's cheap, you, you, won't not many people really go to the entire effort of going, looking at all the reviews, but in B to B, it's very different, especially if your, your, your working with a technology of some description, um, Capterra G2 crowd and various other different reviews. So it comes down to, um, trust and value. Are you going to get enough value from the product? Um, again, neither you were talking about sophistication, that things aren't that sophisticated, but again, this, this is a, there's a time and a place for, for sophistication.
And today you've also talked about Eloqua, Marketo, um, um, and, and those types of products, which are very sophisticated, they can do a hell of a lot. The problem is most people I've ever spoken to that have used them, do not utilize them. They do not have the understanding and to turn it into something that where they do, isn't going to be your, you know, two and a half grams and George you're away. You know, you're talking to some serious, serious wedges as a business. It's a lot of your, your budget that, that takes from me. Um, most people I've spoken to use it use Mark Marquetto and eloquently, you know, then you start seeing 4,000 pounds a month. That's a significant investment when there are products out there, um, which can do actually everything that you are using it for a much more reasonable, um, investment points.
And then using the likes of the, the knife, um, the livestreams like this or webinars to, to really get your points across people can see you. People know who you are. I don't mean the death by PowerPoint webinars that you talked about, where you don't see their face. I mean, when you are seeing almost the whites of the eyes, as much as you can do whilst we're locked down and it's just as important, then when, if you do get support of having meetings, you know who to look out for, you know, what they look like, you've heard them speak, you may have had some other dialogues in between telephone call or something like that. So you can use that as your, your funnel from live stream through to, to meeting and hopefully from meeting through to the dirty word, which is sales. Um, and
Liz Maine: One second, let me just, um, I got, I got chucked out. You should use the same link and come back. I think there's enough. You know, people want to want to see who they're dealing with and you've got you don't see that on an, on an email. You just don't get the personality behind when there's an email going out. And I also think by investing heavily in that kind of, um, that kind of software, I think, you know, there isn't really the appetite to the so many bolt-ons with something like Marketo, it's just, it's difficult for a company to get them all under their belt. And because this is relatively high in Lockton, in a lot of things well across the whole, whether it's lower level or upper level does that, um, there's quite a churn of people that somebody that's learned all about how Marketo works or is it, they move on, they get the grass is greener somewhere else and they move up. And so that resources is lost. Um, and I think with live streaming, you give, someone would always pay you more money to do exactly the same course.
Nigel Maine: And it's also that kind of entrepreneurial thinking, isn't it? Because to get Marquetta to work well, you've got to have an entrepreneurial mindset and understand how to manipulate the structure of the, of the platform that you've got access to, to dovetail that with the different people that you want to connect with, you know, there's, there's always a place for it. I mean, even, even with the live stream, you still, you know, you've still got people looking at, um, getting S you know, a, a, an email series or that even if you do want it, I, I think the difference is if you, if you want somebody's information, if you want to track someone to, to be able to, um, KPI that whole sales process from the beginning, starting in marketing, then of course you can have to use that is there is, there are some brilliant, very, very clever packages, but if you say, well, well, how's it working for you?
You know, you look at the, the extra ordinary costs of all of the marketing stack. That's required all the technology that's required, plus the people and resources to make it work. And so, because the, the, the salespeople that brother, the marketing people wanted KPIs, and they were demanded of them because the company was chucking out so much money to pay for this stuff. It became well, we've tracked this person from Twitter. We put an advert out on Twitter, we've tracked them, they've done this. We know they're in cyclic measurement. We know what they've done. We know what they've, um,
Liz Maine: Capable of tracking everything. Therefore the, the people can be tracked. So, um, so, you know, I think there is a place for it, but I think in doing, in doing live streaming and this kind of thing, you know, people will watch video. People do watch video. We watch video, we watched films all the time. We watched stuff on YouTube all the time. And so it is, I think it's kind of understanding that you can put out a message to your prospect, to your prospective customers and share with them who you are, what you do, and, um, re welcomed them into your business in a way that an email just doesn't do that. You welcome people tubers. When you on the live stream, you welcome people into your office, into your space and say, this is my, you know, welcome come and have a look around and see what, see who we are. See what we do see whether this is something that would interest you see what they give. You could work with us in a way that should,
Alex Hilditch: So it's just wrong. It's just see, I was just going to say that at the moment with the, the working from home, it's the all, I think it's quite a nice thing, you know, the welcoming you into your office, but your office being your home. So it is, it is a much more about people that I think has ever been before. You know, for sure the clips that you've seen your kids coming in are now I've had the, I've been on a couple of cools. My kids have come in and you're homeschooling and you can't avoid it. And I actually think it's a positive. I'm not sure, I'd say, sorry, the kids two kids were asking me a quick question. Um, obviously being a parent is the best job in the world. Um, and you've got to support your children, but at the same time, they get to see you working, which is really valuable lesson for them to think. But actually I don't just leave the house and have a jolly for, for 10 hours a day on that. They're getting nice things because I'm out there working hard and they get to see that firsthand. Um, yeah, just, just, just agreeing with the points of letting people in there too. Um, obviously not your full personal life, but elements of who you are as a person. Um, yeah.
Liz Maine: Yeah. I think that, I think in a lot of, um, in a lot of B2B companies that there's very much the, you know, you've got your family life and your business life very separate. Um, and I think that the two have come together and now using use it, you know, welcoming people that, you know, whether it's a zoom call or whatever it is, but in this instance, you know, having, uh, having, uh, a live stream, it, I think it does. I think it just shows a far more human element than you than we've ever had before. And, um, maybe breaking down some of those barriers, there's obstacles that, you know, you know, in the B to C environment, we just, don't, it's just not the case. You know, we to see, you know, by making emotional purchases, you don't genuinely make an emotional purchase about a printer unless you print it to anybody tipped him off. And this one was Sean, you know, it's just amazing. And you don't make promotional purchases in the same way, um, as you did in, in B2C.
Alex Hilditch: Oh no. I always find it quite emotional buying printer cartridges, just purely for the cost of a new car is almost the price of a new printer. It gets me time. Oh yeah. That's emotional.
Nigel Maine: And I think this is, I mean, the thing about all of this is that, you know, we've all been doing this and everybody's had a, had a hand in whether it's tele sales, whether it's, um, you know, th th the whole new, get a new business process and that, you know, I've always, I've been searching for something and looking to, you know, kind of analyzing the markets and as what can we do that, that not takes the least amount of effort. It's not about that, but it's what gives us the maximum amount of reach consistently, um, with ease and, you know,
Liz Maine: The biggest thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was gonna say the biggest bang for your book, because, you know, yeah. We've bought a list. You know, we can't possibly phone 500 people, for example, you know, it's going to say cause days and days and months to get through to everybody. Whereas if we invite people to look at us, at least we might get, you know, we might get 1%, we might get 10%, but you, you don't know, but you, you certainly going to be putting it out there and welcoming people in and giving them the opportunities to look at you. And, you know, it just, you are going to get the biggest bang for your book. And if you're going to put, you know, if you're going to broadcast this to a large number of people, like 10,000 people or 10,000 businesses, then by the law of averages, you can get more people to, to join. Yeah, yeah.
Nigel Maine: Yeah. 1% of a hundred of it of 10,000 is, is only a hundred people, but to have the possibility of a hundred people watch your live stream is quite spectacular, especially if they stay on there for the, for the duration and you have a longer conversation with them, then make it the night than you ever could on a, on a phone call as a first phone call. But also if you've got any questions, all you have to do is just in the comments at the, you know, if you're on Facebook, do it there. If you're on YouTube, do it there. And just type the question or answer the question. I won't mention your name, but just, just, just ask Chuck a question at the center and we'll answer it. So you're able to do that and have that, um, and an intimacy that you couldn't before, but it's, it's real, it's real, you know, it's in real time.
And I think that's th th the most exciting thing about this, and it can be, you know, it could be a four way conversation like this or that you can have five people on there at the same time, or the, you know, one person with four, four people being taught, spoken to, but it's, it's looking at creative ways of using this technology and saying, well, how, how can it benefit a company right at the very beginning, you know? Right. That, that initial process of getting the ball rolling, and whether someone does direct mail or whatever, you know, we want to look at it, like you said, the biggest bang for their buck, what can we do? And I mean, we talked before Alex about, you know, um, a company buying 10,000 names, um, and just, uh, mailing them and saying, come and watch our live stream, because we, we only sell to you as you as a, as a group, as, as a sector.
And so, you know, it becomes that I would like to see the, the, the, the standard, the business process and business practice of saying, if you're in business, you've got to buy 10,000 names and communicate that to your market and do a live stream and do it every week. And that's it. That starts the standard new business practice. Forget the, forget, the cold calling for now. You don't need, you can, you will still do it because you will still talk to people, but in producing your content and your information, it it's, you know, I've walked into this when it's all working, but you walk into just, it all turns on and it all works. And you talk, and you explain your business, or you talk to a customer, or you talk to suppliers, or you show new products. And it does, you know, you're not writing a, um, uh, an enormous script. I just think this is a message from Dean.
I was run out. Okay, it's laptops. Um, and so it's, it's looking at this becoming a defacto standard for generating new business, because it doesn't, it, it doesn't need to be completely prescriptive. You can have, obviously you can have an idea of what you're going to do, but, um, it's, it's the low, you know, the fact that you can, you can have one of these, you can start off with, uh, a mobile phone and then say, right, well, I can go live using my mobile phone. Indeed, you can. But as a business, if you're an X million turnover business, and you've got, you know, a brand and you want, you have, you have a presence, you probably wouldn't, wouldn't want to do it on a mobile phone, but, you know, buy some kit, it's all tax deductible or where you go. But the only thing that the primary thing that they need to understand is that they need you, Alex.
They need you, they need data from, from, you know, from a company like yours to say right now, now look at your, um, your target markets, your B2B markets. Now look at the people that you are communicating within those markets and segment that 10,000 down to the personas. If you can say, you're getting all the detail of the sales director, the managing director, the CFO, COO, whatever, whatever. So you're getting the most amount of data and the most amount of diversity, if that's the right word within that data, to be able to produce live streams that are targeted to those types of individuals. So you, your persona segmentation becomes quite special. You know, I'm talking to the chief finance officer of whatever company, and we're talking about the pros and cons of doing X, Y, and Z. The other CFOs are going to listen to that, but the sales director isn't. And so it's, it's just changing that ability to be focused and targeted on who you want to sell to at any given time, even, you know, looking at ABM, applying this as an ABM strategy, but not checking out and banging out loads of emails you say, come and watch us. You know, you could die. You could do streams every, every, every day, if you wanted to, if it was re relevant to different people, because if you only
Alex Hilditch: Do you see as well, it's not like you're the, the old school content marketing where you need to put together now hundreds of pieces of content. So you can drip feed them. So I've seen, we were having this conversation, which is a four way conversation, people within different industries with different experiences, but you could also have, as you say, with a different sector, going with customers that join you, you can have it. So you're showcasing what your, your offering is. So you have a nice mix of different types of content, which what we've been on the, on the call for just over an hour, an hour, and you're doing, as it comes, rather than sitting down, writing a blog, taking half day to do that, send it around to four or five different stakeholders. They need to then decide whether they're okay with it, what changes they want.
They're spending another half a day rewrites in yet, or starting from scratch, depending on how Savage the, the feedback was. And each piece of content is, ends up taking you two or three days. Um, yeah, that's, that's not a good use of time, whereas doing a live stream like this, you know, there's realistically, once you're, you've got all the set up, the, the, the prep time is minimal. Um, when we did what we had a quick hello yesterday for 10 minutes or so. Um, and, and then today we did go through the conversation. So it's a really good time efficient way to get your message out to people.
Nigel Maine: And what, what I'll do, excuse me, what I'll do after this is whilst it's live stream, I'll do a video because we're going to post this anyway, aren't you I'll join the two together, but from that, I'll take a transcript and then I'll post the transcript up. And so that content of that transcript will equate to about 20 or 30 odd pages of content that goes onto our website that tells Google that we've had an expert conversation about live and prospecting. We are, we would be considered, or that caught that piece of content would be considered expert opinion. And it's, it's, it's the value invaluable. You've got, you know, nobody's going to sit down and write all this. Not ever.
Alex Hilditch: No, it's, um, no, it's, it's just makes life so much easier. Doesn't it? And it just gives you those ongoing pieces of content that you can use for, um, for me, let's just take it as an example that, um, three months down the line, you have a conversation with someone who's, you know, the finance director, as you, you mentioned earlier, and you actually go and have a look at this piece. We did this, um, it was a couple of months ago, but it's still completely road before you've looked at the trends. Yeah, there you go. You're your hour plus an hour yesterday, plus an hour tomorrow to do all the, there, the linking everything together. You've got some really strong piece of content that you can use across the board. It just makes your life a bit easier, a bit quicker, more efficient. Yeah.
Nigel Maine: I mean, one thing I just, whilst I've, cause this is always, this is all live. What I want to do is I just want to assign Alex to guest number two, and then I want to go to here and that looks a bit better because Dave's not around. Yeah. So, you know, if you're calm and comfortable and you're not flushing from going out and getting all embarrassed because the technology is screwed up, it can, you know, it could be, it can look good. It can look interesting. And I, like you said, he doing this type of technology using this technology and, but using it afterwards and pointing people back to it constantly reinforces the personality of the business.
Alex Hilditch: I mean, not, I think, you know, I, I think there are so many positives and I think the, I don't know whether my laptop is because mine is not plugged into its power source. Unfortunately.
Nigel Maine: That was it. Yeah. Well, I mean, we're going to wrap it. We're going to wrap this up now. I think, I think that I, it has been really good talking. You're having everyone, it's something that needs to evolve. This is kind of cutting edge in terms of B2B delivery off the cuff, just having people come together and do and do this type of thing.
Alex Hilditch: And it's good. Fun as well.
Well, yeah. Yeah. And, and the main thing is, is that we've got, yeah. In, in terms of, uh, a call to action. One of course it is always a call to action. You contact us. And, and if you need that, you know, if you to talk about this in, in, in a fashion that makes it relevant to your business. And so know anybody that's watching, if you lasted this long and you came back at the end, then that's great. If not, you'll be watching this as a video. And the point is is that you can contact us. You know, our details are above and our telephone numbers on there. Any questions you've got, just ask us. I think Liz is Liz is laptop has died. We bought, we bought a new, a new adapter and you couldn't, you can't plug the power lead in with the HDMI adapter madness. Anyway, we won't have that next time. Or the troopers are left or the troopers are left at the end. Exactly. Lost. Lost. Yeah, absolutely. What is the thing, Alex? Thanks for, thanks for joining us again. And we'll catch up very soon. Yeah. All right, then. Bye for now. Thanks a lot.