Sales Hero Podcast
Sales Hero Podcast
EP 21: Marketing and Sales Together at Last with Marc Stoiber, Brand Strategist
Have you wondered how to get marketing and sales to play nice together? Well, Marc brought his A-game on this one and we talk about his experience working with sales from the branding side as well as his recent transition into the business development world for his own business. Some powerful ideas here you can apply to your own marketing and sales worlds.
About Marc Stoiber:
For over 30 years, I’ve helped everyone from global packaged goods giants to local upstarts create brands that are simple, and outperform. I started as a writer in Hong Kong, became a creative director in Germany, was part of the Palmer Jarvis team that won Agency of The Year 4 years straight, ran the creative output of DDB Toronto, and was National Creative Director at Grey as we went from #40 to #9 on the national creative scorecard in under 3 years. An entrepreneur at heart, I then started Change, an agency that made sustainability sexy. I successfully sold Change after 5 years, and became a consultant. Frankly, I liked working directly with CEO’s of SME’s – something that wasn’t easy to do in a conventional agency setting.
Learn more at https://marcstoiber.com/brand-diy
Hey, it's Joe Girard with the sales hero podcast we're gonna learn some cool stuff about psychology influence neuroscience, how to create repeatable best practices and systems and building your bulletproof mindset. Today, we're excited to talk to mark Stover who is a brand strategist with global companies around the world. And he has recently just come over to the dark side of sales. And so he's gonna be talking about how he's been connecting marketing, branding and sales together at last, this is going to be an awesome one for it. Now remember, it's all about keeping things simple, having fun and getting back to just helping more people buy from you. So let's get started. Oh man, what's going on everybody? I'm excited to introduce you to mark Stover Mark Stover is a global brand strategist. We've done some projects together. I think the biggest thing and I just came up with this intro because you know what, he's a classy guy. I dressed up for this, you know, and there's a big thing. I'm a sales guy. He's a brand guy. And you know, when you only have one piece of the puzzle, you don't have a complete outfit, so we are quarantined right now and we are talking to mark and we're gonna be talking about brand and sales together at last marketing and sales together at last and man mark is an awesome guys good friend and he has shown me the dark side, the light side, the gray side, all the sides, the eight sides, the B sides, and I'm excited to have you here. What's up, brother?
Marc Stoiber :I don't even know what to say after that. You sound like you sound like a DJ man. I can't I can't keep up with this. All right.
Joe Girard :Welcome to the show. Mark Stoiber. Oh yeah,
Marc Stoiber :I'm about to giveaways Johnny Yeah,
Joe Girard :Mark Stover in the weirdo
Marc Stoiber :we're gonna be we're gonna be giving away two tickets to the monster truck jam later on a Monday Sunday
Unknown Speaker :Sunday.
Marc Stoiber :of your seat. I'm I'm doing good man. I social isolation is or social distancing. Or quarantine or whatever they call it fairly easy here. It's a, you know, a little block from the beach and yeah, not so bad.
Joe Girard :Well, you know what I've been telling people like we don't live too far away from each other probably 20 minute drive. And we, you know, I've been you know, we both been on zoom and doing like video calls for a long time. And so even when we started working on projects together, I've told everybody I'm like, me and Mark, we don't really go visit each other that much. We want to solve a problem. We jump on zoom, we get to work so yeah, so we've we've been kind of experts on that for a while and I thought
Marc Stoiber :I'd dress up for you today. No doubt, it looks fantastic. It's a bit of a shock. I wonder where the real Joe is. He's
Joe Girard :under all this makeup. Okay, so we're gonna be talking, I want to talk today. I want to really dive into your brain. I want to hear your story, your journey about sort of what you were doing before. What your like recent experiences have been over the last while especially right now. I don't want to get too much into this whole world of pivoting. I'm more concerned about you know what The kind of projects you have been working on and sort of where you think things are going. Let's let's talk a bit about your journey. And why the heck we're here. Right?
Marc Stoiber :Yeah. Well, I mean,
Unknown Speaker :the the global thing is actually true. I mean, I got my start in Hong Kong, I was a writer in advertising. And from there, I went to Europe, and I spent some time there. Then I went back to Canada, originally from Calgary, but I went to Vancouver, and then Toronto at a time in New York. And I rose to the height of my incompetence, which was the national creative director of a big ad agency, agency. And, and I became the turnaround guy, which if anybody has ever contemplated the idea of being a turnaround guy, don't. It's the worst job you can have in the world because you basically walk into a place that's a disaster, you fire everyone and you build it up. by which time normally you have a nervous breakdown, and then they replace you with a peacetime army and they get all the rewards. Yeah. So if I did that three times, and I decided to get out, I started I'm in Vancouver, I started a green ad agency five years before it became cool and or profitable. And we managed to hang on to that for five years, did some great work, didn't make a lot of money, sold that to an innovation company out of Chicago went to work for them for a while, put a green platform for innovation together for them then on my own as a consultant. And today, basically, I'm a CEO whisperer. I work where I love to work, which is I work with CEOs of startups, most of them in a healthy position some of them which I love. I make an exception once in a while some of them still in the garage, but most of them are in a good healthy growth position. And because I've got enough gray hair now I I can talk to them. I say I bet you your marketing is about 50% there and they go what 50% isn't working, and then we figure out how to make it all work and make it make money for them. So it's it's a great job to have. There's no none of that. big corporate bs that I used to deal with. And I get to see results real quick. So that's that's my story.
Joe Girard :Yeah. And I'm sure that you know, because you're so legit on the branding side, you know, when you're doing more of the agency and those kind of larger projects, there's a lot of opinions that float around and there's a lot of just like entropy in those conversations. So now you get to really drive like meaningful work. That's what you've been telling me. Well, let me let me
Unknown Speaker :tell you let me tell you a good story. When I love stories when I when I started working in, in Europe, I worked in Germany, and I did a my first gig was creating a commercial for Wrigley's out of Chicago. Wrigley's chewing gum, and my art director and I, we cranked out a good commercial really quick that is to the stage of being storyboarded and then we hand it over to one of the German teams. And when I left the agency Two years later, they had just finished the commercial it took them two years wow millions of dollars to create Real Sokka ship commercial. Like it takes a long time to make something that that that's great, including the intervention of Bill Wrigley, the guy who actually owns the company in his red suspenders, he came and decided that everything good about the commercial should die. And he basically rewrote the commercial title of it. And that's, that's that's how a lot of guys are having a lot of times all right. Oh, yeah, a lot. And that's, that's why you go, this is my life. My life is moving a bottle of shampoo half an inch to the left. You know that? It's an awful life. It's a terrible loving man. No, I wanna lots and lots of fun. Lots of fun parties, though. Right?
Joe Girard :Just a lot of money going to places that doesn't matter. Right? Yeah, um, you know, I want to kind of share with with everybody how we met and sort of how we became lovers from another mother. Is that what it is? I don't know. I think brothers What is it? I think it's from a dangerous time. So we I you read we spoken a couple events and we been involved in universities here. And then mark reached out to me I was we were on an email thread somehow and he said hey, let's let's get together want to talk to you we go for breakfast went for breakfast. And I remember very clearly you said, Hey, I was really excited to to talk to you today because I just wanted to get I want to get smarter. knows we laughed about us. What do you mean, and you had a set you had a company are working with you did a ton of awesome branding work and marketing work, brought in a bunch of leads, and then said, you know, what am I doing wrong? And I just said it's fucked salespeople hate you, because your marketing guy, because you've done a bunch of really good work, but it's not necessarily what they want as salespeople and more leads doesn't mean better leads. And so in the moment that they say, hey, we'll take ownership of this, then they have to take accountability for the results, but it's easier to blame marketing, and vice versa. And so we got involved on the sales and the marketing side to help drive that to help build better systems. To help with the CRM with their business development reps. We looked at They're their account managers, all the people in the team so that all of your awesome kick ass meaningful work was then being echoed in the sales process. And we built metrics. And that's how we got started on doing a bunch of projects together. Because you were excited. That was the first time ever, you could see numbers and you could see the work that you were doing was going somewhere. And I was excited because we had a feedback loop to go back upstream to marketing and say, Hey, can we try this? Can we set people up in this way? Can we do this? So we went, you know, cradle to grave marketing and sales. And it was really exciting, a lot of fun to do that kind of stuff. Can you come in and tell me sort of that experience your maybe your experience working with salespeople before kind of how we are and sort of your new journey into the dark side of selling now? Well, let me let me go back just to the beginning of the project that you and I got involved in.
Marc Stoiber :For one thing. You weren't the first salesperson that I brought to the party and you know that I brought some other guys the party and it's is it was a disaster. Sales is like everything else, except that you've got salespeople involved who are very good at selling themselves. And so I think anybody who's looking for a sale solution better do their vetting and better make sure they get recommendations. Because
Joe Girard :deep recommendations like regulations, don't just say, would you do that? Would you hire them? You got to say why? How is the
Unknown Speaker :sales pros are good at selling themselves? So we're the first watch. So I First off, I brought I brought these other this other party to the table with the client, all enthusiastic and it just started to tank my reputation because they were a disaster. Now, going back even further, I thought long and hard. I thought, Why is this not working? And I went to the client and I said, You know, I think what's not working? Doing brand is only half the equation it leaves you at, we're really great. See ya. And what you need is the now come and buy stuff and I say I have never heard of a brand agency going out and selling stuff before. And I said, That's what I'd like to offer you. And for all the listeners, that is the easiest sales pitch in the world to make if you're a brand person, if you go, I'll create your brand, but I'll make sure it turns into ROI. Clients go Where do I sign? It's a wonderful proposition.
Joe Girard :Like when when we first started chatting, that was your biggest issue is how do you create long term client work? Because you know, once you do branded like, great, it's project based. And now you're done. But it's it's you're trying to help these of you say CEO, it's much better to help these guys long term. There's always a new project after a new project, but it's the whole the whole loop
Unknown Speaker :people they never get they never get tired of making money. And I think what was magic about working with you is, you know, I thought I thought I'd had a lot of experience but it always stopped at that gate, which was going from brand to sales. And when we crossed over that gate, I understood I started to see things about metrics. I start to see things about that. Different types of selling. You remember on this project we worked on, they were all about relationship sales. And they didn't need relationship sales, any challenger sales they need people who would go out there grab people say you have a problem, you don't even know I'm going to educate you about this. They needed an entirely different sales tactic they needed inside sales, they had they had leads coming in and then just being dropped flat.
Joe Girard :And they're just, it's just like a lot of organizations, their order takers. Like as long if this person's ready to buy and they're qualified, I don't want them to ask any questions. If they ask questions about how does it work? Or what's the price or give me this semi this? They're not really a good buyer. So they're disqualifying everybody, because they were weak at selling. Well, you know, I think that was my big thing with you is I want to make sure that you knew your stuff was awesome. And we needed to do something with it.
Unknown Speaker :Yeah. Yeah. It's like It's like having good brand with no sales is like letting your engine idle at high speed without engaging, it's pointless. And so I was super impressed by that. About and, you know, I, I started to take it to heart too because as a brand person I went through a rough time too, you know, in 2019 I had I had a down period. And I started to realize myself that I'm only doing half of what I should be doing. I am putting pretty messages out there lots of content content, the new king, and content is absolutely useless. If you don't harness it to some way to tell people Hey, I found a problem about you. I can solve it if we solve it. Here's the upside. Yeah. Do you want some? And I started implementing some of the stuff that you taught me and and it just it was like Dan night. It was crazy. Yeah,
Joe Girard :we had a lot of fun with them. Now what's so now because I brought you over to the dark side. what's what's your sort of thinking on sales now because you've been applying a lot of this stuff for your own business and going out and becoming more sales focused and what tell us about some of the most takes you made with that. And then just a couple switches that you made.
Unknown Speaker :Oh, I remember one of the first things that you taught me was you do the three step sort of introduction process where you start out with a with a video call. And these are all just tactics right? You start with a video call then you go to an email then you finish with a phone call in short order. And I did I did the worst thing ever. I started with these video calls that just trumpeted Hi I'm Mark and this is what I have to offer and here's why you should buy this Ba ba ba ba ba ba ba. And they were disaster and then I also did a series of videos that made that where I tried to sound like an expert but I sound like a real douche. Yeah, you sound so boring and it's really funny because you you have to come across as excited because if you're not excited by finding out cool new mysteries about where the clients going wrong, what's what's wrong with you?
Joe Girard :Well, you know, you know what's funny is like, you could totally be a douche because you know A ton of shit. And and so you but working with you unleashed, right? Very fun, very open. You're always very like self aware socially were able to like ask questions help people come to their own wins. And so then if you create a video that like you were creating videos that weren't like you at all you become what we say salesy weirdo. Like that's, that's what was happening and so you were just trying to you're trying to sell that's what the problem is people try to sell, you don't need to try to sell you need to sell, you know and there's there's also the,
Unknown Speaker :the, you know it's the oldest it's the oldest cliche in the book don't sell stuff give people something to buy and and and this stuff that you dialed me into and I dial my own clients into this right now you know, I tell them in every single one I tell because nobody knows us. You know this is back to the validity of what you're selling. Yeah, no, Id knows this stuff. Even though it's been around for about you know, since Jesus was in short pants And just like you in short pants, it's been around since forever that you, you approach someone and say, you know, I found out something about your company, first of all they go What? Because you're not talking about yourself, you're talking about them. And you say I found out a complication. And then I also did the math on this complication and found out where it's going to go if you don't address it, they're going what what can you imagine the CEO every CEO in the world will go What? And then essentially what you've done you've done a little bit of homework on them and you've got them coming to you and they're asking you for stuff so you're not selling it all you don't that's why that's why marketing guys hate sales because they think they got to get out there in you know, and and sell. And that's nothing could be further.
Joe Girard :I think so and you're talking about like going out and doing cold, cold marketing, cold cold dial dial for dollars, and you're getting responses right away. You're getting hired just like that is because you're not approaching it. As a numbers game, you're approaching it as a people game. So you're saying, You're taking the time. So I've seen I've seen the work you put into it, you take the time you put your personality into it, and just that power of reciprocity, they're going Holy shit. This guy's done his homework, I have to, at the very least respond to this thing. Versus we're amazing. We're fortune 100 this and this and this, nobody gives a shit about you until you give a shit about them. So that's what like I'm seeing what you've been doing. Now what how is that translating some I'm really curious now because you mean your your whole backgrounds branding and marketing side? How is this kind of translating to what you're applying in the branding the marketing side?
Unknown Speaker :Well, you and I talked about this, when we first got to know each other. But I think one of the most amazing things when when Brandon sales get together, sales is on the ground floor and they're talking to consumers and if folks read my book, brand DIY, the first thing that anybody has to do is talk to consider tumors because what you think your superpower is 99% of the time isn't what people think your superpower they're not buying what you think you're selling great anecdote from my own life I remember I went out when I when I went on my own I said you know I'm going to sell this thing called future proof brands because I thought I've got all these different things and I know how to future proof and you know doing SEO after for after a few years of running future proof brands and not having anybody ever approached me saying I want a future proof brand I realized that I exactly zero people want a future proof brand. We realize that nobody ever nobody sits in their pajamas ladies doing that right? Yeah, nobody's googling future proof brands.
Joe Girard :Nobody works out even
Unknown Speaker :right now with everything that's going on the world knows if I google if I google future proof brands, I can guarantee you it's gonna be Yeah, insignificant
Joe Girard :there might be we'll get into that later.
Unknown Speaker :However, every time I talked to my old former boss, looking at stuff Yeah, and I said john, why That clients used to spend millions of dollars to work with me. So that's super simple because you're simple. And I thought, well, that's great. So I'm Forrest Gump. I'm Billy Bob Thornton and slingblade. Right? And he said, No, that's not it. Gas doesn't have any gas. And he said, No, what you do you take complicated things and you simplify them. That's how I go. That's the thing. I The thing about about finding your superpower is if you're good at something, usually you don't think it's a superpower. Because it's so easy. It seems so stupid.
Joe Girard :Like it doesn't. That doesn't seem complex enough to make it important. No, you do simplify things. You're like it's this and you tell us you're able to, to concisely tell a story be like, this is what you're talking about.
Unknown Speaker :And if you can, if it just if it just falls out of you, you go well, why would anybody give me money? And so that's the basic problem with a lot of companies is that the thing they do the best. I remember a friend of ours, Chris Burch. I did it for him. And he's a digital dual agency guy. Yeah. And I went to his clients, he and he's, he's, you know, he's not 20 years old. He's like my age and you know, digital guys. And yeah, 27 and a half and, and he thought, you know, his superpower was like real cutting edge and connectivity and all that horseshit. And his client said, they like, they like, they like him because he's a grown up. And when I told him that he's like, what? He said, No, really, because they deal with 20 year olds, and and none of them can deal with humans. And none of them can see outside their headphones. And, and so they like you because you're a grown up. So what I see that sales brings to the party to bring us all the way back again, is that sales is on the ground floor going No, this is what people are actually buying. And not what you're thinking up there in your ivory tower. Yeah. And so that is where it starts and what I like about working with sales and working with you in particular If this works, you craft a message based on what people have told you. You put the message together with a bit of sparkle and shine and pop it out. And you can test it not not using some sort of a digital metric but using real people totally. They think that's a real stupid message or they think that's only a halfway stupid or they think it's a great message. Yeah. And then you can adapt and to somebody who loves brands, he loves people like sparking on an idea because you all you deal in ideas,
Joe Girard :and the ideas come out of like weird places. They are not not from a bubble in.
Unknown Speaker :ideas don't come from like research and data. They come from weird places. Yeah. And the closer you can get to sales people are on the ground floor, selling stuff and hearing from people that they think the ad message is stupid or they don't use the brochures or the collateral or the website doesn't work. The more you hear that stuff, the better and the cooler your work is going to be and the more money the clients gonna give you so I think that there's a benign loop a virtuous cycle there that a lot of people just don't do.
Joe Girard :Well, I think, you know, like, because I love that I remember you, we talked last year about flywheel stuff. And you know, big thing that we we focused on was the feedback loops. And the two feedback loops was the one with marketing and sales into all of it around the customer, right? So product development, marketing, sales, all centered around the customer, and that you're never done iterating your brand and your message. And so, you know, like, marketing shouldn't inform sales and vice versa. And I think, you know, one of the things we connected on in that first breakfast we had was just the stories that we had, were shoved in a boardroom, you know, marketing. I mean, I used to go in boardrooms, we had we had Tuesday binder meetings, everybody brought their report, they brought their shitty little binders, with all their stuff. And you were you were pitted against like cockfighting. You were pitted against them, you'd say, well, what's happening with those numbers? And I'd say well, these numbers, these numbers, I'm working on this with the team. Well, what are the leads great, and they would just be Testing you to say, Well, I think it's marketing's fault. And that would always be like, Great now and then that was the that was the easiest way to get off the hook to say it's marketing's fault, because then they turn it. Well, what do you guys do about this? You're like, ah, and it was just it was a weird, kind of like Stockholm Syndrome, like prisoner type vibe, because you're like, ah, I, if I just say it's marketing's fault. I've done my report. And so then Margaret would be like, well, it's this and this and this. And then they would say, well, because sales isn't converting and we don't know if they're doing that they they said this, and they're not using this stuff we created. So there's this natural cats and dogs relationship that's built in marketing sales. And you and I, we laughed about that, because we had this same story from the different sides. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker :yeah. And I can tell you from working with I've worked with the biggest companies. I've worked with Procter and Unilever and I worked with McDonald's and Budweiser, all the way down to achieve like crazy. I work with Joe. Yeah, exactly the biggest all the way to working with certain little snappy startups. I can tell you that as soon as you put a salesperson on a marketing person in a building, there's going to be miscommunication. And you're like, I can't believe that there's only two of you. There's only four employees and two of your marketing and sales. And you still don't.
Joe Girard :Even on the same team, you're not
Unknown Speaker :even on the same team. And there's only two people in the building. Yeah.
Joe Girard :And then if, I mean, we've found that if we and it's like, it's like when the kid pits mom and dad against each other to so the CEOs, the employees, all of the people on the teams, they say, well, it's this wallets. That's all Yeah, stupid marketing and stupid sales. Yeah, that's how they are. And so it's kind of like everybody's always bad guy. But when you start to create, like an organizational selling model, marketing and sales is working together. They're not, we don't but you and I still don't understand each other. We still don't see things the same way. We don't see eye to eye a lot of stuff. We disagree on a lot of things. The way we write things are night and day, but we respect each other. We understand what's happening on the other side. But when we when we work on projects, and we come together In a unified way, it not only it it squashes all the backtalk and the talk around stuff, but it also empowers the clients that we've worked with and people to say, Ah, there's a bigger thing that we're not considering because people get mired in the, in the depths in the in the swamp of bad ideas. And then if it's just like, well, could we make what let's try messenger bots. Let's try this. We need this. We need that. And then all of a sudden marketing has to jump around because sales like well, marketing is not do that. So I think that's where marketing and sales can was it coalesce? That's the word maybe I'm looking for. If they can, if they can work together, there's a lot more potential than it's not one plus one is two is one plus one is 100.
Unknown Speaker :You know, it's back to your very original point where you said we still don't understand each other. I I don't agree with that. But I think the one thing that that personally my thing is when I hear you talk and I see the stuff you write and I see the thought patterns you have you I'm like, I'm amazed because I go How the hell did you even think of that, you know, because You think that you're kind of all in the same business of pushing a product and grabbing somebody to buy it, that you all should kind of think the same way. And you do not think the same way. And I'm, like, always amazed when I go, Wow, how did you even think of that stuff? That's so cool. And I was completely blind. I don't know if it's a left brain, right thing. But, you know, you feel completely blind to that. And you go, I can't believe I don't know that stuff. And that's exciting because
Joe Girard :it goes both ways, too. Because there's ways that you know, from my stupid sales brain, I go, this is the way I write this is the way I speak. We, you and I in meetings, totally two different people find just a different style altogether. Like style. Yeah. Right. No, I'm just an idiot. But when we're when we're doing this stuff, I speak differently. You speak differently. But I see when you're building something from the marketing side, like some of the projects like the storyboards, you've created the story The the marketing materials, it's like holy cow, it's a you know, there's a lot of flowery interesting ways, but it has a purpose. And that sets people up to be in a heightened state of emotion and, and like they're now like connected to the brand so that all it takes from the salesperson of branding is done right is the salesperson to take that and echo that relationship not be different. We have to continue that story, continue that relationship, you know, continue, you know, maybe give them the next step. Remember those like what is it Nescafe with Nestle? Remember they had the they had a whole story of that. That's essentially what sales should be doing is taking what marketing is doing, and say, Wow, isn't that awesome? what they've said, let's talk about this. Let's go further with that instead of being like a complete disconnect. And that's how salespeople can make their lives so much easier. If they're having the wrong conversations. They go back up to marketing and say, Hey, could you help me set people up to feel like this? Think like this, act like this talk later. Give them language set them up to be our best customer ever so we can knock it out of the park marketing and sales did that game over babe I
Unknown Speaker :think it's a it's a it's a relationship of love and need when you do a brand people fall in love with it if you do a good job and that's a really fuzzy flaky thing if you just say oh everybody loves us I remember working on Mr. Clean when they're about to go bankrupt remembered was everybody in the world loved Mr. Clean they Mr. Clean Mr. Clean and the ball guy women went crazy for him. It's kind of creepy. That's what I'm working on. I know that nobody was nobody bought Mr. Clean. And that was a classic case. So we had to figure out a way to make people need Mr. Clean. And that is that's where the other 50% of the brain kicks in that the marketing guys a lot of times don't have or the brand guys don't have and and i think Yeah, like you said it's very, very different objectives. But you know, I don't need something if I don't love it or if I do need it. And I don't love it I'll only buy at once and kind of as a commodity, I'll get the cheapest place I can. But if I love something like an apple computer or an iPhone or something like that I go, I gotta have that I gotta have that then make it easy for me to express my love by giving you money and taking the phone. You know, I, that I think it's love and need either of them on their own. It's pretty satisfactory, but you put them together, man, and it's
Joe Girard :deadly. Mm hmm. Can you now think about that? Can you tell me like let's say, you know, people that are watching this, let's say they're small, medium business. And they're trying to figure out how to get their brand, right? Because here's what like we just launched a couple new projects, or so is online ballet training company. We've done that. And so we're getting the brand pretty dialed in. But the goal is to convert people to customers. So we're doing like we're doing everything from start to finish. But there's a lot of companies they're hearing like, Oh, I gotta I gotta spend six months a year, build the brand, do all this stuff. And it's like, Yeah, but then if it's done, then you know, and then other people say no, no, you just need these tactics and just do this stuff. Can you give me the advice that you would give a small business? Let's say they've got some kind of stuff that they're already doing? Where should they focus their attention? What are some things they can do right now? That would help them just nail their brand and help make sure that they're spending their money in their time the right place?
Unknown Speaker :I, I have one thing, I'll keep it real simple. Um, you have to ask the people who have given you money in the past. Okay. Because I you know, Ursula, she just started her company, her ballet. Yeah, okay. People who have given her money people have signed up, people. Well, hold on, because obviously, it's the same thing because she taught also before so for people who's already got she's already got an audience. That's right. So we talked to the people who have given her money before and better than just people who have given her money people who have given her money again and again because obviously they think Something that they love about her that they want more of. And what we do we talk to those people. And, and, and it's a real simple question we go So why do you give her money? And they go well, because she's a ballet teacher. I go, No, no, no. Then you get into the who, what, where? When? Why, yeah, down the rabbit hole of why'd you give her money? There's a million ballet teachers. Well, because I know I know you're not going to give her money because you know her only happens a few times only happens a few days. She sucks, but you kept giving her money. And you go, go, go go deeper, deeper, deeper, until in an ideal state, they'll be very uncomfortable. And they'll go What the hell do you want from me? What do you want? Why what am I supposed to want more money? Because she's a I don't know, because she reminds me of my mother in Paris or something like that. She has this classical style. They go there you go right there. And people will give up the brand to you every single time without knowing that they did it. You just harass them you just harass, uncomfortable. Yeah. Because people will always, you know, they say, well, we did research, we did research and you go you do? Well, we asked them why you love us because there are service. There's customer service. Yeah. And then that's their whole brand is customer service. Not bad. Not stupid. But that's what happens when you have stupid research. How can you told me this before now? Because I'm it's my secret. Why you don't tell anybody got it put you on the spot. I won't tell anybody. Good. This
Joe Girard :is just this whole conversation is between me exactly.
Marc Stoiber :I know the only person listening is my mom right now. Like, I can break it very. That's great. Yeah. And then essentially, if you're smart about talking to a few different people, what you're going to start to see is like in a beautiful mind, all the numbers on the wall start to light up and you start to see patterns.
Joe Girard :So you'll see like the different segments of your customers and there'll be like a very clear, segmented reason for the different sizes. That's great.
Unknown Speaker :You know, like with hairstylist business, what I'll start to see is that everybody comes to her, for example, because they all think that she represents some sort of classical School of ballet or ultra modern ballet or she challenges them or she's unrelenting, or she's super empathetic. But they all start to say the same to feel bad about her relationship. She feels bad that she says she needs some money because she's a tough spot. Joe, right. We need to get her out of there. Exactly. Give her some money. And then what you do after that, it's only a short step because people have said what they expect from you. It's only a short step to create your unique selling proposition which is, I'm absolutely the best at being the classical Paris School of ballet. That's super important to this type of person who wants you know, like discipline an old school because they think that it's somehow better. And you can build an entire campaign just around that and then the salespeople can go out and they go Well, yeah, she's ballet, but um, if she classical ballet, like
Joe Girard :classical school, we're right in the middle of building on our welcome series, all of our emails. And we've got some of the stuff that we're tying in there about the vision, the mission behind it. The reason but we're going to go back in and we've got, you know, we've had a ton of clients that come through so far in interviews, some of them say, really, I mean, there's, we have a whole bunch of people who are really loyal to her, and some new people that are coming that are keep coming back. So that's, that's a great, great piece of advice. And that doesn't just apply to small business, but everybody says any business. So I mean, you just need two people to go. Like, that's something that you and I both stumbled on is that people just don't go talk to their customers.
Unknown Speaker :Zero times. And I've never seen an exception.
Joe Girard :Yeah. And we, I mean, that's something that you and I did a bunch we would go interview customers, and they would tell us everything they loved about them. Mm hmm. Crazy.
Unknown Speaker :Yeah. And they don't even know they're doing it. So the funny thing was, I remember when I did this when aim and try Mar two big mutual fund company. Thing merged. And they hated each other's guts. And the big guys and the companies were the fund managers. So the managers hated the trademark managers and vice versa. And so we pulled them into a room each of them individually, because they're the big dogs. And we said, So what makes you so damn special? And they would look around to make sure the door was shut and they go out and about those other assholes out there. But I do my homework way better than anybody and they thought they were giving us something like the inside. Yeah, it was funny. Because every one of them nine of them all and every single one of them did the same thing. They said, I don't know what those other assholes but I do my homework and they're like, they think that they're giving you something tonight,
Joe Girard :people that's the that's the douche, the do school, right. But it's also
Unknown Speaker :really big. They're so smart. They think they're so smart and so special, and they think they're giving you the insight. And so then we turned it into a campaign and the campaign was knowing pays. And that's all about doing our homework better. We do our homework better. And each of the fund managers came up and go, how did you come up with that go? Well, you, you told us, they had no idea. Because you put a bit of a creative spark to it, and feed it back to them. And they think it's it's genius, when in fact, they just told you and that's the beauty, the relationship of sales, and and brand. If a salesperson goes up there go, you know what all the clients think that we do our homework better than marketing goes, hmm, how can we give that a twist or brand? Yeah. And you give it a creative twist, feed it back and people think, oh, how do they know me?
Joe Girard :You know, so you're saying that, you know, in companies where you got marketing and sales teams, those people should get together, Martin, you know, sales Should I mean, we've talked about this you sale should bring in? What are the top bunch of conversations we have? And what does marketing think that sales needs and so sales could say if we had more of these things, you know, helping us set these conversations up for success. That'd be a win. What does marketing need from sales? is more of the stories to go upstream? What would you say?
Unknown Speaker :What marketing needs from says I'll tell you what marketing needs from sales. I did this with a with a new client down in California. They sell performance car parts. And they they one of the calls we had was all we got to put swag in all the dealerships, you know, where they sell all these high performance racing wheels and stuff. And I said, Are you sure? What kind of swag Oh, well, I don't know, brochures and collateral and go, really? So we got on the phone with a few dealers. And the dealers go well, no, we don't really need anything. You go there's been a ton of money on it too, but I know they would have spent a ton of money on it and the dealers are just fine because most of them are in cramped little locations. They would love to have some videos of experts talking about this stuff and and more education on what makes the wheels special. But they don't need t shirts and and floor mats and pens with a little naked ladies and they don't need that stuff. Yeah, you know. So marketing what they what we need from sales is, Hey, what did the actual guy say that he was doing with the collateral that we created? Well, he's using it to prop up his table as well. Maybe we can save ourselves a fortune, but nobody ever asked. Yeah, nobody else. Nobody else.
Joe Girard :I remember years ago, the college I worked at, they came out with the program brochures because they got a deal that was the owner went through marketing and everybody kind of was yes man. But they got our program calendars to play the jingle when you opened it. So it played our jingle. You open the book, the pamphlet the magazine, and we were like no, and sales said like it it was such a way as soon as because I was the top sales guy. So as soon as we got our first box Have all those calendars, the whole front desk, I said rip out those sound cards. I had them rip like mean they spent, I think each one was a box or something. I was like, there is no way. Because here's what would happen. I would go in I don't think I've ever told you this right? I go in and I would go into my meeting with a potential client. We're talking about education. These are people like single moms, people going into healthcare. This is their last effort. Maybe they didn't pass High School, and we'd be crying. I'm like, Well, how are we going to take care of your kid, you know, get off social assistance. Let's do this. We can do it. They're crying. We're great. And, you know, let's talk about what program we're going to take. We opened up dinner.
Unknown Speaker :It was such a
Joe Girard :switch from what we did as salespeople, it was so out of touch. It was it was hilarious. And so I was like, there is no way and I was like, I don't care. They could fire me. But there's not gonna be one meeting I have this year where I play a jingle inside of a sales call. We can you can mail them out to everybody all you want, but there's no way
Unknown Speaker :It's ridiculous. It's such a weird thing. It's so ridiculous. And, you know, it's so easy to avoid. And and you know what you don't, you don't need to be a tech genius. To avoid it. You just need to you need to actually talk to somebody, you need to be human. And you know, I used to one of the things I used to do when I worked on McDonald's. I just go hang out at McDonald's. And on a Saturday morning, and I went down to the one.
Joe Girard :We work with McDonald's. I love.
Unknown Speaker :I just love hanging out with me. I do Friday night. Good time. Yeah. But I go down on a Saturday morning to Maine and terminal in Vancouver, which was the busiest McDonald's around. Yeah. And I just sit there. And you watch the people, and you just hang out and you talk to them. Like what you know, I used to love just talking to the people because you get a real fun sense and people are weird, and then they will give up ideas. Without even knowing they're giving up ideas. So I mean, you can make your life so much easier by just taking everybody else's ideas and you using them why try to invent something like a jingle
Joe Girard :calendar? Yeah, you know, life hard, as I'm thinking about that, because that's one of the things that I've seen you do is to do testimonials as video interviews. That's something that we spent a lot of time doing. And I call them like we do now zoom testes, right? Get somebody on zoom, and you do a test with them. And when you start interviewing people, and just having them talk, just in general, all of the gold comes out. But when you put them on the spot, you do a focus group. You do all these things where now you're trying to force them to come up with an idea. So if we were to describe us in one word, what would it be? It doesn't help like all these weird marketing things that people do or sales things. If you just have conversations with your ideal clients. They'll give you the gold,
Unknown Speaker :right? Oh, yeah, it's hilarious. You know, what are the three attributes of this Swiss have this cheddar cheese, orange smell, or texture? And you're like, what is cheese? It's quite cheesy. What are you actly
Unknown Speaker :cheesy now I want to give you a second here.
Unknown Speaker :Let's uh i'm gonna go all day
Joe Girard :right? Well we can go all day but I have one last question for you after this but what are you currently working on and promoting? Where should we send people to what's the first thing they should do? You know to get a little bit more deeper understand with you I know you've got some ebooks and things what's the primary thing you're focused on primary thing I want them all to go to brand diy.com brand DIY,
Unknown Speaker :brand DIY calm and if they go to brand DIY, you and I set this up together. they'll, they'll get the book and it's it's a it's a learning book or textbook. Very easy. I always call it it's like a four. It's like a three trip to the toilet read so it's not going to be a burden. And, and it's also got a workbook so you can actually fill in this stuff and it goes through a lot of this stuff that we're going through right now. And it's the combination basically of 30 years of doing this stuff and cutting out all the BS and you can reduce all my life's knowledge down to three trips to the toilet. Everybody's got toilet paper and so it's golden time Bingo. Yeah, so they can spend all the time they want, but brand DIY calm. And when they go there, they also get dropped into my newsletter list because what's happening now I'm putting a course together that is going to basically be real short lessons one after the other with workshops so they can actively work through brand DIY because you all know what happens with a book people download the book, they don't look at it for a week and then it's done. So I want to force people to do it because you and I talked about this earlier about momentum. You know, we I want to get people having momentum, so they feel like they're doing something and and tasting the reward and getting a little bit of a little dopamine hit, you know, from that. Okay,
Joe Girard :I love it. Brandy, I wanna come you've got a bunch of other stuff once again. They'll see other stuff
Unknown Speaker :Yeah, I got I got a bunch of other books and stuff like that. But they can go to my website and go to Mark storybird calm ma RC Oh, I br just put in the show notes. And they are see and they don't you know go to that weird guys. Me UE Yeah, mark a mark.
Unknown Speaker :One more question.
Joe Girard :Yeah. So speaking of like, just go and do that one thing. We kind of touched on this as well. But what would you say the the takeaway right now, somebody should do, too. align their marketing and sales efforts once one thing somebody should do right now.
Unknown Speaker :The one thing is I think we touched on it, it's you have to break down the wall and actually ask what the folks on the outside think of you. Too many people in marketing think that people love us because we are how
Joe Girard :should they do that? Say how she did it because that's
Unknown Speaker :what's the other somebody steps to take. If you have somebody in your organization who does sales, you got to pick up the phone and just go Why do people keep giving us money? And then don't let them off the hook treat them like they're a customer and just keep going and going and going until they go Ah, because if we sell clothes classical ballet and nobody else does push the salesperson and if the salesperson doesn't know because they might be getting fat and lazy just like you're getting fat and lazy. So not you know the brand, the brand guy gets that. No, you're right as a new super salesperson might be exactly the sales guy might be getting fat and lazy to, then both of you should jump downtown and go to McDonald's or whoever your client is and just ask people why the hell do you buy these burgers anyway?
Joe Girard :And when you get that stuff, what's the thing we should do with it?
Unknown Speaker :The first thing you should do is come back and go. Alright, we understand that people buy our burgers because they buy them when they're hung over. Alright, so let's take a look at the customer journey. Journey goes from awareness to decision making to from awareness to comparison to decision making, to purchase to repeat to loyalty to advocacy. Where along here does our message line up with they buy burgers because they're hung over? And where does it totally go off? Because I can tell you, if it goes off message, we're wasting money. So it might be advertising it might be when people are comparing their burger versus our burger, it might be right at the checkout till that we're only open at lunchtime and nobody's hungover at lunchtime. They're all hungover at nine in the morning. You know, all these things basically,
Joe Girard :depends how you drink depends on
Unknown Speaker :you, what you want to do is you want to take a look at all this stuff that doesn't line up with what you discovered, that people love about to get rid of that stuff. Because today, it's way too easy to chase shiny things and take new tactics on because you think they're going to give you a little hit of endorphins, right and make you go look at that sales. And it doesn't work. And suddenly you've got this huge garbage pile of stuff that isn't working. You don't know where half of it is the best. The best thing is if you go to a company and you go, what social media platforms are you on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook and LinkedIn, and you go let's take a look. And you see they haven't posted anything since Nothing you're going there you go stop collecting shiny things figure out one thing to do where your people are and what they want from you.
Joe Girard :I love that and you know that's that's that's cool man.
Unknown Speaker :Yeah and you know what's so nice about it? Is that so bloody simple that nobody does it
Joe Girard :yeah and just you know getting I think the biggest thing right especially right now is everybody's reading reviews. Everybody's saying you know who else like me is looking at what they're doing so if we can say hey, if you're like this person, they said this Do you also feel this? Would you like to get involved that's what we're working on on the brands that we're doing right now no sales side. And I just you know, I gotta thank you man because I just really love the this how humble and open and just rad you are when it comes to like going and diving into the dark side of sales and I think it's been a really fun ride. Learning the both sides and how they're connected how they're so similar yet so different.
Unknown Speaker :I want to get some more projects together. Yeah, that's what snacks man well, pitch pitch, put it out there. See if some people want to, you know, help. With
Joe Girard :this online ballet thing, man, I dropped everything that's right now.
Unknown Speaker :Okay, well, online. Yeah, you know what?
Joe Girard :Let's finish up the progress. We'll talk. I gotta thank my guest. Mark, the marketing genius, Stoiber for joining me today give me a fist bump, baby. Um, thank you so much for coming and and being a part of this and dressing up with me and it's it's been fun man. Thanks again. I love doing this.
Marc Stoiber :I love talking to you. But yeah.
Joe Girard :Thanks for checking out today's podcast. You know whether you're just starting out or you have decades of experience, it's conversations exactly like these that can help you get an edge today and in the long term. You can also find me on my blog at Joe girard.ca and sales hero Academy comm make sure you share this with your friends and colleagues as well. You know, selling is heroic, because nothing happens in a business unless people buy from you. This is why I want to help you just simply Buy, have fun and grow. It's not only talk about these ideas but take action and do our best work together. When you invest in yourself and just continuously learn how to sell the right way, you are a hero, for your customers and for yourself. So join me next time for another episode of the sales hero podcast. Transcribed by https://otter.ai