Unedited Transcript

Jim Rembach (00:00):

Okay. B2B damn dang, man. We, Oh, this is gonna be, this is going to be high energy, high three high passion. Now we’re not going to try to go off the rails, but we’re going to have a really, really good discussion and how to really enable yourself to make the sale from the digital marketing, the interactive marketing marketing in general, because that, that execution point and that bridge is something that become vital, uh, and the success of an organization. And I should actually just say survival as an organization today. I mean, this, this is no longer how do you thrive? This is how you survive. Right? So Joey Knecht is on the show today. Thank Joey. Thanks for being with us. I appreciate it, sir. Now, if you could just share a little bit about your background and your experience associated with digital marketing.

Joey Knecht (00:49):

Yeah. Well, I really appreciate the time and the group and yeah, it’s been a unique journey myself as a, as a disruptor and people kind, kinda like want to swim upstream. You know, I grew up on, on the East coast, uh, long Island area, uh, the city area, and then, uh, gracefully made my way to West Virginia, uh, for my undergraduate and then came out to here to, to Nebraska in the Midwest, uh, to receive my master’s degree. And it was the best, best shift ever. Um, I became an intern in this company Proteus about 23 years ago, which I liked saying. And don’t like saying because that number is getting pretty high there, but, uh, it’s, it’s, it’s been awesome. We’ve, we’ve had a lot of success here and I’ve always been involved in digital technologies, definitely in the marketing side, content management, sales, marketing sides of the world and have multiple products in this space. But, uh, yeah, just always been fun. Love it, uh, have clientele nationwide, but uh, always been involved kind of in that early adopter kind of products, basically always looking to push the envelope to new technologies and, and answer isn’t always in technology. I always think Jim, it’s a combination of technology approach coaching there’s kind of multiple approaches to it, to, to achieve success or that, that infinite goal of building that recipe and repeating that as is just a, a big passion of mine.

Jim Rembach (02:05):

Well, and even know, just to kind of make this clearer, um, you know, you even talked about how so while you’ve mentioned several things, everything from like lean, lean startup, and you talked about iteration, you talked about, you know, a lot of different things, but ultimately on what your driver is, is being customer centric and customer focused. You got it.

Joey Knecht (02:26):

I mean, I mean, from a marketer’s perspective, nowadays marketing and sales, I like to consider what we do in buyer enablement of bringing people together, developing those relationships. If that’s really the challenge at hand is how to be personalized, how to be centric to their needs, wants and desires, there’s general marketing, and then their specific solution marketing or challenge marketing where you’re helping them a dare. I say, as a consultant, you overly use sometimes in, in, in marketing and we’re we’re partners and all of that, but truly understanding the challenge of the target or the prospect. And then how do you navigate that as you know, Jim, and a lot of these transactions, especially now the sales cycles are just elongating, right? I mean, you have anywhere from three to five people on your side, a product marketer or a sales rep, a VP of sales, you name it three to five people on the selling side and the marketing side.

Joey Knecht (03:14):

And then on the buying side, especially if you get over 50 grand lifetime value, you’re going to have anywhere from five to 25, we have clients that have 40 different people or stakeholders on the opportunity. So it isn’t just can we market it’s how do we address the specific needs of each one of those stakeholders? Because as you know, in your space that the CIO looks at this challenge or opportunity differently than the compliance officer or the COO or the other people on the transaction side. So this is really from a marketer’s perspective and a sales again, bringing them together. One of the biggest challenges we have out there now, especially when purses are tight right now, right? I mean, that’s just a big challenge right now for Mark.

Jim Rembach (03:54):

Well, even as you’re talking, I started thinking about one of the big pitfalls curses threats, because when you start talking about more people being added to the decision making process, just take that 40 example. You threw out all come to the party at the same time. Nope.

Joey Knecht (04:12):

Nope. They don’t it. And that’s, that’s a big challenge. You, you hit it right on the head. So from a marketing perspective, let’s say you’re doing like a, you know, email marketing or some sort of digital placement marketing, you know, how do you get them? And when do you get to them? And one of the big shifts our clients are seeing, we have hundreds of clients around the U S one of the big shifts we’re seeing, and it shouldn’t be a surprise. Everybody’s going to be like, no joke, Joey, it’s on demand, right? The Mar your marketing needs to now be on demand, not on your schedule when you want to push it out and they should consume it. It’s actually switching to the buyers controlling when they want to consume your information. So how do you create an environment where they can consume your information on demand, which is a huge ship from a marketer’s perspective, right?

Joey Knecht (04:51):

We’ve always tried to game, what time should we send out emails? What time should we make calls? What time should we be doing all this stuff from a marketing perspective? When in reality, when you have so many people on both sides of the equation now in B to B is how do you provide an ecosystem that when they’re ready to transact, when they didn’t make that last five meetings or four meetings, how do they get caught up on that? And that’s really, you see this shift now of, of sales and marketing coming together to say, how do we combine our resources and our talent to basically target these folks at the different persona levels, but also make it available to them when they can consume it. It’s a big thing for marketers to understand, especially now, as you and I discussed is a lot of this is in capital preservation mode, right?

Joey Knecht (05:31):

A lot of our clients, and a lot of people around the country are trying to, they’re shifting a lot of their marketing activities towards their current clients to one, maintain them and justify their investment today, what they’re paying today. But then also looking, it’s probably going to be easier to get net new revenue out of current customers. As we all know, it’s 70% less cost to go get money from a current customer. And they already have you in their system and everything. They might be shifting some. So it creates great opportunities for the marketers to kind of go from heavy MBD mode, to maybe a blend of current account and still MBD like you and I talked about is if you’re a marketer, now, a lot of people are retracting. So I’m going to counter what I just said, but that’s where your guys and gals listening want to hear is you can retract.

Joey Knecht (06:14):

And a lot of people got scared, so they’re retracting, but that creates a seismic opportunity for you. If you go full into the new business development, that’s where you’re going to build relationships. Now in 20, I was talking to a VP of a multibillion dollar tech company, and basically the concept there he’s like, Joe, we’re probably not going to sell anything new BD, the rest of this year. He’s like, I’m good with it. He’s like we’re marketing and building relationship. We are going to blow 20, 21 out of the water. And he’s like, no one understands what I’m doing right now, but I’m excited because we’re going to have a record year in 2021. It’s crazy. Yeah.

Jim Rembach (06:46):

Well, and, and that’s hard to answer too. I mean, you know that, I know that because, you know, we’re all worried about, you know, today in this quarter and all of those projections and things like that are, that are just really just should be thrown away organizations. Weren’t in a position of strength, meaning, Hey, I didn’t have, you know, 30 clients to be able to lean upon, to sustain my business and maybe a net growth out of them. That’s, you know, just enough to be able to be okay with, um, not everybody’s in that spot. And so something that’s important in regards to the blend. That’s one. And then the alpha also is to me, it’s the counterintuitive, you and I even talked about one particular industry that you’re working in and that you created a product for which by looking at others would say, well, that’s a dog, man. Why do you want to try to sell them? And if for you, the net new revenue for that opportunity was quite significant. A lot of places.

Joey Knecht (07:43):

And, and that’s the thing, you know, as a marketer and sales, again, looking at this as we have the same problem ahead of us, right? It’s not marketing on its own and sales on its own. And you go fend for yourselves. It’s really bringing it back together and saying, how can we rethink our go to market strategy? How can we rethink how our product is being used? How can we rethink, you know, if you’re a zoom salesperson, you look like a genius now, right? Everybody’s buying zoom, not hard to be a rockstar salesperson or a marketer presume right now. Right. But for everyone else, how do they rethink the strategy? How do they identify sub markets? Maybe you’re what you considered in the past. Tier two, tier three clientele, or tier four clientele in your, in your archetype of clients. Maybe they’re really strong right now.

Joey Knecht (08:22):

Maybe your healthcare clients. Aren’t strong because hospitals are so busy. They’re not letting anybody on facilities. Nothing’s going on very hard to get in right now. But if you have other types of clientele that are more open to it and more open to, and they’re growing right now, which many segments are growing clearly there’s hits and hospitality and restaurants, and a lot of segments are down, but a lot of segments are also up. So from a marketer’s perspective, it’s reallocating those funds, maybe from some of the dog categories right now into those maybe growth or emerging categories that you weren’t really paying a ton attention to in the past, but are creating some seismic opportunities now because no one’s helping them. Right. So you’re able to come in and be able to market to them and create success for them. So that’s it, it’s fun because obviously COBIT, and a lot of what has happened is it’s very tragic, but it also has forced a lot of businesses to rethink a lot of things about their marketing and their sales and how to be successful around that, which I think will pay dividends for a lot of organizations moving forward.

Joey Knecht (09:18):

Hopefully when things get

Jim Rembach (09:20):

Well. But as you’re saying that I’m still, so for me, um, you know, unfortunately I get sideways and certain things. And so I became certified in emotional intelligence and I really studied human behavior and why we decide and how we decide and doing all that. And the, and the research shows for us is that our brain, when it’s confronted with a problem, it’s job is to try to solve it. Now, the problem is there’s only so much that we have in our own wealth. So when you have a new problem, like this one nobody’s had experience in it whatsoever. And so when we start talking about our decision making process and how we go about formulating a plan that we can execute upon, there’s a lot of risks associated with that. Like the one gentleman you had mentioned, said, nobody knows or can understand what I’m doing, but I’m pumped about 20, 21. How do you get, you know,

Joey Knecht (10:18):

Yeah, it it’s, I think your emotional intelligence is, is, is dead on. We talked about it a lot with our clients and, and having empathy in marketing and sales right now, too, right? Like understanding that people are struggling and no matter what, even if their company is doing well, they might be having things at home. Right. Their, their loved ones might be sick. They’re worried about their parents who are older. Right. Like it kind of definitely had a hard shift where people like, let’s slow it down here, let’s bring it down a notch and really be a little bit more empathetic and understand there are lots of other things going on there, right? So there’s still a way to be empathetic in your marketing and in your sales process. But then also focusing on at the end of the day, Jim it’s about relationships, right?

Joey Knecht (10:58):

So if you extend yourself, you’re empathetic, you care about the needs, wants, and challenges that they’re having. Right. It’s not a today thing. It might translate to a today thing. That’s awesome that may, you know, maybe that happens. That’s awesome. But it’s really about building meaningful relationships. So that over the next two years, three years, all of these efforts that the marketing team and the sales team are working against are fruitful for the organization. It is definitely a long scale kind of vision. Right. And I understand that’s hard to maybe go to the vice president or the CEO and be like, this is what we’re doing, but ultimately that’s the opportunity. The opportunity is to still make sure you’re providing value to your current clients and communicating and marketing to them, not hunkering down, being open and transparent. We, we hear a lot of the term transparency, empathy, be open to your clients.

Joey Knecht (11:43):

What’s the, how are they doing? Right. Um, w we, for a classic example is there are clients that may be, might want to stop one of your listeners services because they can’t pay for it right now. But if those marketing and sales teams have open conversations, they might be able to figure out ways to keep them on as a client and renegotiate and move contracts around. So just being open and honest, and the marketing and the transparency of the relationships is used, and then those typically can then transpire into future opportunities for the organization to grow in the future. And so I know it’s, we know it when, when times get tough, one of the first things to get cut marketing and sales budgets, right? This is the first one and two to go off the docket. And you as a sales leader and a marketing leader need to understand that you have to put together that plan to be able to go to the leadership and say, I know this is a little counterintuitive to maybe what you’re hearing all day long, but within the means of our organization, and I’m not talking about your Coke and you got 9 billion to spend on marketing, right?

Joey Knecht (12:39):

How are we going to get creative about looking at our current clients, looking at maybe those tiers that we’re talking about earlier, that might be where there are opportunities. How can we go do digital or virtual sales to them, virtual marketing to them on a one to one basis or some sort of model to start to build those relationships and create opportunities. Definitely for many groups, this is rethinking it and changing their approach. But that change, I think, can be very, very valuable in the longterm.

Jim Rembach (13:02):

Well, and I, and so for me, you hear a lot of people talking about account based marketing and taking their marketing type of corporating that in, and all, you know, all these types of, you know, different things that you could and should be good, right. Everybody has their own opinions and you start looking at well, that’s kind of, you know, I think that’s kind of hype, right? It’s full of hype. Cause there are some things that are out there right now that you just are just overloaded with too much hype.

Joey Knecht (13:27):

Well, yeah. You know, uh, some of, uh, definitely on some of the digital side, for sure. Uh, some of the geo fencing and targeting for certain industries, it might work really well. Uh, but we have a lot of clientele that, that just doesn’t really line up in a, in a B2B sale. And of course now with everybody working remote, a lot of those very targeted technologies are kind of struggling a little bit more, uh, than in the past because people are now not at their offices and you had all this kind of data and paths. And now you’re trying to restruct ways, I think ultimately too, it’s still about relationship, right? So, so when you’re marketing or digital marketing, any kind of marketing, ultimately what you’re trying to do is, is find an opportunity that somebody has a problem. You have a solution and how do we bring you together?

Joey Knecht (14:11):

And it, yes, it’s about impressions jets. It’s about getting them interested in what you’re doing, but ultimately it’s what do you do after they learn high level about you? As you know, Jim, in a, in a typical B2B transaction now, typical B2B transaction, the clients are now doing about 75% of their research online, looking at competitors, doing all sorts of things before they even reach out to you. Right? So from a marketer’s perspective, there are benefits of doing some of that targeted stuff, but a lot of them are going right back to basic one Oh one digital marketing, which is your website, your SEO, some of the building block, things of keeping you in front of the clients the right way. They are self administering a ton of the research before they’re even engaging with you. And, and, and still everybody’s, we’re going to pound them with that.

Joey Knecht (14:58):

We’re going to get them on their phone. We’re going to get them all this way, but fundamentally they are still going to basic approaches of looking at websites, understanding comparison sites, things of that nature, and many clients are that, that part of their house is not clean. And they’re spending a ton of money on all this kind of digital marketing elements, pieces that are ultimately driving those customers. We were looking at one yesterday where their demo of the product was atrocious. So they’re spending all of this money marketing and you get to the actual demo and the demo is completely off, like completely off the rails. Right. And so it’s kind of interesting that there’s, it’s exciting and it’s cool and it’s new and it’s tech, but ultimately what does that really look like? What is the conversion from that really adding to your bottom line? And I think that’s always been a challenge in marketing obviously, and in digital marketing, especially right. Is how do we connect the dots to the conversion and the opportunity around that?

Jim Rembach (15:49):

Well, I mean, even what you’re talking about right there, I started thinking about that. A lot of that is the curse of knowledge. Right? I know so much about my problems that, you know, therefore what I’ve put in, construct, all these things together. It’s exactly what you need. Isn’t it

Joey Knecht (16:03):

Exactly. Because I know it cause I’ve been with the firm 10 years, right. And you’re like, Hey, everybody knows this or what they’re searching for online. Right. And it’s funny, a lot of your partners and listeners too, I guarantee you what happens too, is they have a product and that product is probably maybe sold into a couple little different verticals, right. Or different use cases of their product or service. Right. But they write everything kind of in the marketing and how they’re promoting it in like one persona. And it almost is like a Swiss army knife of, we can do everything for you. And the problem is, is the consumer, now that they’re doing so much of the research on their own, they’re needing to understand, again, back to that empathetic approach of how do you know my problems? How do you, how do I build trust that, you know, what I’m struggling with? I don’t want a Swiss army knife. I want a specific Allen wrench to solve my problem. And I can’t comprehend how your Swiss army knife can be my Allen wrench, even though there’s an Allen wrench in this Swiss army knife. Right. And that’s where a lot of groups really, really struggle in digital marketing is because they put out everything that’s humanly possible, their feature centric, widgets, galore, everything, but really it’s, it’s the problem that you’re solving for them. How do you digitally market to them? That’s a huge, huge piece of the puzzle.

Jim Rembach (17:14):

Yeah. And that, um, so there actually are, uh, some, some pretty powerful tactics in regards to being able to accomplish that, that enable some of the fundamentals you’re referring to. Then also part of what, you know, you were promoting from a solution perspective, that Proteus is a fundamental activity,

Joey Knecht (17:35):

Correct? Yeah. I mean, so, like I said to you, Jim, you know, we have a buyer enablement product, which falls under the category of sales enabled, but, but really where it came from is we interviewed hundreds of sales leaders in hundreds of CMOs and marketing leaders. And they said, we an environment where we can come together to actively navigate that complex sales process from qualified to close, and then also wallet share, making more money off of current clients. And so how do you do that? It’s ultimately still about relationships, right? It’s understanding their problems, understanding their needs, and then sharing with them relevant information that helps guide them through that decision making. And ultimately Jim trust sales is still about trust. And still, even though the customer is doing 75% of their research on their own, ultimately when they select you as a vendor or a partner or whatever, they’re ultimately taking a leap of faith, it is impossible for any buyer now to truly understand what many companies are providing.

Joey Knecht (18:31):

They have inherently built a trust in the sales leadership, the marketing leadership of that company, and say, I’m going to now take a leap of faith, right? Like I think I’m to the point where I trust you enough that you know, me, you know, our client, you know what we do, um, I’m betting on that. We’re going to be successful together, impossible for all of that to be transpired in a hundred percent confidence for the buyer. So it’s still at the end of the day relationships and trust, and there’s an art and science to that, right? It’s again, being empathetic, sharing, meaningful information. When we earlier talked to him and he said, what do you think from a digital marketing perspective, what are your teams sending out? I said, ironically, a lot of our marketing materials for our own enterprise, our research papers from other companies from, uh, institutes, uh, other things we’re seeing because we listened to our clients where their challenges are and we’re sharing with them meaningful information to help them become more successful.

Joey Knecht (19:23):

You know, there’s the old joke that a company that hires IBM, the person who selected IBM never gets fired. Right. Because they’re like, look, I selected IBM, how could you fire me? Right. So anybody who isn’t IBM, you gotta be thinking that. So how do you, how can you get to the point that they trust you enough to pick you over? IBM, it’s just a fun way. As you’re thinking through your own company and your own materials and what you’re sending to folks, how do you get them to the level of, I trust these guys more than IBM, or pick your largest competitor within your ecosystem. That’s what you’re striving for, right? If you’re a smaller player in that ecosystem.

Jim Rembach (19:56):

Well, and without specifically getting the tool functions and they can look at listeners and Watchers can configure that out. And when we add it to your show notes, page and stuff, but there was a similar type of solution that I used in a previous life or the whole sales and marketing enablement, client onboarding, and that whole long sales cycle process, um, had some similar types of, you know, value propositions as which do you have with this solution, that company didn’t make it. So it was about 15 years ago. I’m not getting into the company as how they managed it and this, that, and the other. But what makes something like what you’re talking about now different than say that 15 years ago, when that, yeah,

Joey Knecht (20:35):

It’s a great question, Jim. And, you know, I like to say kind of the power has shifted. So, so in the past 15 years ago, much of the power was still in the sales reps hands or the consultant’s hands. And they controlled a lot more information, a lot of stuff wasn’t available for those customers to make 75% of their decision before that. So it was very much sales enablement, which is a popular term today, which is, is how do we equip sales reps with information to be able to push out? The problem is, is many of those systems are designed to just push PowerPoints out as fast as humanly possible or just marketing assets. Now, those marketing assets and PowerPoints, they’re very important. I’m not negative on that. What I’m saying is as though the power has completely shifted to the buyer side, so the buyers are now way more educated, right?

Joey Knecht (21:18):

And they, as you know, they want to consume information on demand. They’re very selective plus corporate governance. And a lot of the other factors around a sales process has dramatically changed where you and I, when we first got into business, you could do a transaction with two people and it could be a $500,000 transaction. Two people involved, done goes to purchasing. It’s done now, anything over 35 or 50,000 as the research says has minimum of eight people most of the time on the deal and anything, much larger. So COO compliance. So now as a marketer, the biggest challenge is, is how do we conversation and build trust with all of those decision makers? It’s not just about sharing marketing materials, it’s about building trust, communicating to them, sharing different elements of security documents or all the things within your industry as a marketer. It’s thinking from that perspective, it isn’t always a product brochure that marketing has to be thinking about to share with potential buyers. It’s all the things that could get a no. And basically, so why are our deals dying and making sure that marketing is supporting those elements to help drive those deals further. So there’s just been a gigantic shift of power and expectation on the buyer side too. As we mentioned earlier, it’s a complete on-demand world now

Jim Rembach (22:30):

Buyers. Well, so, okay. So there’s, you’re talking for me. It goes back to what you had mentioned in regards to the blending, right? So from a digital marketing perspective, my, I need to now be more blended to look at what am I doing from a couple of different things I think is my push. I still have to do some push also, how am I drawing in, but then also what are we doing in order to be able to support, you know, the sales activity? So there’s quite a few different things that are going on then.

Joey Knecht (22:59):

Yeah. You bet. There’s been a ton of effort and energy on that kind of inbound marketing, right? In top of the funnel marketing, digital marketing, that’s where a lot of your lead gen education, a lot of that stuff is happening. And what you saw was a tremendous push towards that, right? Like tremendous efforts and energies towards that and budgets. But when we started interviewing tons of marketing leaders and sales leaders, they said, you know, now we’re getting people to what we would call MQL or SQL sales qualified and marketing qualified. And then when they got to sales qualified, they were really struggling on how do we communicate and market to the now all of these different stakeholders in a transaction. And that’s where again, the big shift is happening for marketers is it’s not just the top of the funnel activities and not just getting the meeting for the rep or the demo or the consultant, right.

Joey Knecht (23:41):

It’s now all of a sudden we got one person at that company interested in us. I now, as a sales rep and a marketer have to convince nine other people to select our solution or service. And so that marketing takes on a whole nother level of trust, relationship, communication for that qualified to closed experience. And then it actually just keeps on going. We originally built the product just for new business development and we knocked it out of the park and then the clients were like, it went so well. Can we use this to cross sell our clients? Because that’s the other piece of everybody thinks from a marketing perspective is it’s frequently the glitz and the glam of new logos coming in when, in reality, for so many of these organizations, true rapid growth and longterm value of their organization come from cross selling and upselling their current customers and taking those same marketing pieces and converting them and elements of digital marketing for that upsell, equipping the reps to be more successful in converting new business, or just explaining how the service or product we’re providing to you is generating value for you.

Joey Knecht (24:39):

Right? Cause every year they’re looking at a, why are we spending X number of dollars with you guys? You need to be reinforcing that. And so many organizations have just relied on, well, they’re going to renew. And the sales rep will call two months out and they’ll just renew them. When, when in fact marketers now need to be justifying the expense year round many, many clients we work with do QPRs or monthly touchpoints to just justify the expense of what they’re providing to their customers to reinforce leadership. Because a lot of times leadership who decides the money is different than the daily users, which again, from a marketer’s perspective is a big shift too, right? There’s the decision makers pulling the trigger and then the daily users, how do we keep the original decision makers aware that they made the right choice in bringing your company in our product? Yeah,

Jim Rembach (25:23):

Well it, man, as you start talking about that, there’s a lot of things are running through my head in regards to just the overall line alignment and configured in the way, the way that I have my go to, in other words, this is my go to process. This is my coach and this is how it actually flows all that has to be reworked and revisited and changed. And I think that that’s what you were kind of alluding to before, uh, is, you know, how do I need to pivot? How do we iterate? Uh, and that’s that answer’s going to be different for everyone. So even when you were talking, I’m starting to thinking, well, if I’m one of those companies that happens to compete on the whole price platform, which to me is very scary. I can’t do some of the things that you’re talking about. It’s just not going to happen. Cause it’s not built into my pricing models. And then also I started getting into the situation where if I don’t play on that platform and you know, a purchaser or buyer or prospect is going to try to push me into that, where do I need to say, Nope, we’re not a right fit. Gotta go.

Joey Knecht (26:23):

Yeah. You know, that’s, that’s the magical window when to release and, and, and get out. Right. And, and a lot of times from a marketer’s perspective too, it’s it’s how do we generate an identify that we are providing more value? I agree with you prices. Uh, I never liked to compare on a price level. We’re always hoping that there are some other value sets that you’re able to provide from a marketing perspective, reinforce the wire using our product, uh, ultimately, um, but then there’s also maybe, maybe from a marketer’s perspective, looking at how they can leverage the product for other purposes within the organization, too. Right? So depending on the product or service, sometimes there’s portability to other lines of work or other opportunities within the organization. Obviously the listeners have all different types of products, but ultimately if it still is on a price level, we have, I know multiple marketers that are at that price level and they are proactively going out to clients, knowing that that might be something going on and saying, here’s the deal we have you contracted at a one year evergreen contract right now.

Joey Knecht (27:19):

What if we switched that to a two year or a three year evergreen, if we’re able to do that, we’ll reduce the price a little bit to help offset some of that risk. So marketing and knows that if you’re a marketer and you know, you’re a price sensitive market, somebody else is going to be doing that to your clientele. They’re going to come in and try to swoop in and say, if we can go multi-year deal, we’ll be able to drop that. And then ultimately they want that client because later on, they want to cross sell them, right? So you need to rethink from a marketing perspective, that tool, isn’t just marketing it’s how do we restructure the relationship? Maybe how can we do a referral program for consistent partners within that space that they can introduce us to where we can provide some funds or offset some of the costs to them.

Joey Knecht (27:59):

So there’s many different ways and this, this is really that opportunity for the marketers again, to come together with the sales team. And it’s not two separate worlds. It’s how do we together? Make our companies stay successful? Not, not have to lay people off, not hopefully nobody, right weather the storm. And then more importantly, this strategy actually can become part of the longterm recipe for how you guys build the book of business over a period of time, not just the current strategy or the strategy, you know, six months ago. So this is again, rethinking the model, rethinking your marketing, thinking how you’re talking to your clients about those opportunities is, is definitely we’re seeing a lot of,

Jim Rembach (28:35):

Well, and for me, I think you answered a lot of the questions that we knew a lot of times talk about on this podcast, as you know, where would I reallocate? You know, where would I invest if I had, you know, no constraints. I mean, you, you hit and answered a lot of these. And, um, but for me, one of the things that as far as a takeaway where you didn’t come right out and say it specifically, but for me, it’s definitely, you know, been in my head is that I have to be really careful whether I’m in sales or marketing to have somebody internally, self-educate somebody, one of their colleagues internally.

Joey Knecht (29:08):

Yep, yep. Yep. So this is, this is again, that shift when you now have multiple decision makers and stakeholders, I always like to say to a marketer, what are they saying about you when you, when end or the sales rep are not in the room, how are they selling your stuff? So that the idea, and again, that power shift is who really has the power. Now what you need to be thinking as a marketer is what can you provide the internal champion to be sharing internally to the people who are coming after him and her, right? So you can just role play for a minute, right? Let’s call the person, Tim. So is your internal champ. You know what goes down? Tim goes to a board meeting or a team meeting. It says, Hey, team, I made were interested in using this product. Tim’s going to get pounded.

Joey Knecht (29:50):

Right. Tim’s but what about it? Do they have security? And Tim’s like, I have no idea. Like you guys are intimidating me deal dead. And that’s how you get ghost deals. Right? Cause the deal just Tim got scared as all hell. Right? So from a marketer’s perspective, how do we equip Tim for success? And a lot of this comes back to centralized and on demand. So Tim can then say to folks, great questions. I love all your different perspectives because everybody has a different perspective on the deal. Let me invite you to this environment so that you can be educated about the product and the service and how it solves your problems and that all of us as marketing and sales reps, get that, get that internal champion, get that internal champion. And you’re like, are we giving them a tool to go to battle internally for us? Because basically they become you the 99.5, 5% of the time that you’re not around. And that’s where a ton of deals and tons of marketers are missing the ball. There is what are we providing them to share internally to keep shepherding that deal along until the marketer or the sales rep can get.

Jim Rembach (30:46):

And I think when you say that for me, there’s that I even just came across from the past couple of weeks where somebody was like, Hey, send me something. So I will have internal conversations. And my reply has been because I’ve been conditioned to now say, I’m not going to do that. Not going to do it, not going to do it.

Joey Knecht (31:03):

Not when you haven’t really qualified them yourself. And that’s, that’s always, and I always like to say, well, that’s great. I understand that who are the one or two people you really want to talk to first, before we loop in the other nine people, great. Let’s do a half hour call with that. Let me understand their needs a little bit more. And I always in our teams and many of the marketers we work with it’s to protect that person you’re on the phone with, right? So the, the switch of context, there can always be, let’s say that person was Sarah, who was on the phone. You’re like, Sarah, I would totally send you stuff, but I wouldn’t send anybody into war without me knowing what’s on the other side of that fence. So let me help you out here. Let’s do it just a quick, we can do a 15 minute call.

Joey Knecht (31:40):

That’s fine. Let’s just do a quick 15 minute call with them. Let me clear the deck, frame it a little bit. Then I’ll share all this stuff you guys need to do and we can keep shepherding along. So when you switch it from an empathetic standpoint of, I don’t want to put you at war here, Sarah, let me help you be more successful. You’re already putting up political capital for me. And I want to make sure I tee you up for success, not just sending you a brochure and a Calendly link and saying, let’s do this meeting, right? Like Sarah’s dead. Like there’s no way she’s coming back out of that meeting. She’s like, well, and I’ll never do that again. Right? And so then Sarah is burned for the rest of her life. She doesn’t want to bring anything to our internal team. So, so from a marketer’s perspective, that’s definitely stuff you gotta be thinking.

Jim Rembach (32:18):

It is. And so for me, what I do is I, and this is what I end up saying something along these lines. No, I’m not going to do that because I don’t want to set you up for failure a hundred percent. What happened?

Joey Knecht (32:30):

They love it because then they actually are realizing that you’re just not pushy selling and you’re not just pushy marketing. You’re you’re actually like, trust me. You’re going to probably need my help a little bit, because it’s a situation complex offering, right? Someone’s going to ask something that you clearly wouldn’t know the answer to. And so I want to make you look like a champion. Even if that 15 minute call yields nothing, you look good because I’m deferring the negativity from necessarily you, Sarah to me. And I’ll take that negativity all day long. Right? And that’s, that’s, that’s really the trust. And then, you know, what happens a year from now, Sarah’s calling you, right? Sarah’s calling you and saying, Hey, you guys continued to market to me. And you know, things changed in our organization. Now there’s an opportunity you might come back in and that’s that’s I always say, gotta forget about the one and done. You got to think the long game always got to think the long game. This is not about high frequency transactions. This is about relationship development, time and place, time and place.

Jim Rembach (33:24):

So I think you kind of summarize one of the questions that we’d like to wrap up with, and that is what does a digital, digital, what does a digital B2B DM marketer needs to be asking themselves? Yeah,

Joey Knecht (33:36):

Great question. And, and, you know, six months ago, probably a little bit different of an answer, right? And so, you know, one of the things like I said is, is you’re not on an Island. Don’t think you’re alone, um, blended strategy, uh, don’t retract completely. If you can, um, open up dialogue with sales, we talked about today already multiple ways of potentially driving new revenue streams, whether that’s from, you know, working with current customers and building some specific marketing approaches to niche clients, uh, the clients that actually are spending money or maybe opportunistic, um, also just nurturing and maintaining clients that you currently have. Right? Don’t forget about the people who are clients. You don’t want to lose a lot of those clients. So really that strategy there, and then whatever budget is still possible to, to wrassle up and work with. And again, partnering with sales, maybe there’s a little bit of money there and a little bit in marketing and kind of pull it together.

Joey Knecht (34:27):

And you know what, maybe there’s less travel costs. And some of the other things that have happened, maybe in your organization, you guys can pull a little war chest up. And then it’s like, okay, if we were going to MBD now, who do we want to go get? And then which ones would be the right ones for that short term opportunity? Maybe we could close them in a quarter or two, and then who are whales or other folks that we know aren’t going to be transactions today, but could be big for us for in 2021 and figure out a marketing and sales plan together, be a team, be a team weather, the storm, but also fight and, and really go after, you know, some of those opportunities, you’d be amazed where money can be found, right? Clients that we have that we’ve just recently gotten.

Joey Knecht (35:05):

I know nobody would be calling them because they think they’re not spending any money, but when they just cleared a million dollars off of their travel budget or $10 million off of this, and they’re like, we’re not going to go to any conferences this year. So we’re not going to get a lot of leads as a marketer. You gotta be thinking as that way, wait a minute. All of these companies, aren’t gonna be able to go to their $280,000 boosts and all these things, they’re reallocating money right now. There’s a pool there it’s already there. What can I do to get a slice of that, to help them be successful in, in any segment of that opportunity. So there, there is money out there it’s just being targeted and having the right approach. Most definitely. Joey I’ve brought with you today, get in touch with you.

Joey Knecht (35:45):

Sure. The easiest way is www dot [inaudible] dot co just.co and everything’s there. And, um, contact forms, stuff about our products and services, uh, tons of resources and white papers related to complex B2B sales and just the whole process on a ton of this stuff I’ve been saying here today is, is there. And we have so many different concepts that we’re researching related to the buyer experience, how that relates to, to marketers, how that relates to timing and on demand and all sorts of innovative ways that our clients are leveraging products for a game that has permanently changed moving forward as a marketer, our roles have completely changed moving forward. And so it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s interesting, but at the end of the day, when we keep saying it, Jim, it’s still though relationships. And so how do you still weave that into it? It’s not about 10,000 emails to one person. It’s how do you understand them? Develop a relationship and trust and, and take it to the next level. So I appreciate the time Jim, uh, Joey connect, thank you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom, and we wish you the very best.