(Note: Transcript is AI-Generated! Mistakes included!)
Speaker 1 (00:00:00) - Welcome to UN Copyable women in Sales. If you're looking for actionable insights in real world tools to turbocharge your sales starting tomorrow, well, you're in the right place. Your host, Kay Miller, earned the affectionate nickname Muffler Mama when she sold more automotive mufflers than anyone else in the world. In this podcast, Kay will talk to another superstar women in sales, as they reveal un copyable strategies you can use to rack up more leads, snag dream clients, and take your sales numbers through the roof. Stay tuned and get ready to make more sales. And how about this more money?
Speaker 2 (00:00:41) - Today I have the pleasure of talking once again with Kindsey Haynes. Yes, Kinsey is a repeat guest. For good reason. Kinsey is the chief marketing officer of Kirkham Iron Tech, a managed IT and cybersecurity service company. Kindsey oversees the marketing and sales departments, developing marketing and sales strategies that have led the company to phenomenal growth. Kinsey, welcome back to the podcast.
Speaker 3 (00:01:09) - Thanks for having me. Happy to be here.
Speaker 2 (00:01:12) - So, Kindsey, you've been on twice. The first time was in September of 2023. And were you listening? That was a great episode. It's number seven. Recent college grad skyrockets sales growth. And that goes back to 2020, when you started as an intern. We covered a lot of the things that you've done that have really led to, like I said, phenomenal growth for the company. And then you were on, again in February, episode number 29, and we called that one the latest mind blowing AI tools. So again, I'm happy to have you back, Kinsey.
Speaker 3 (00:01:52) - Yeah, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (00:01:54) - In the first episode, you talked about Steve's book, which is called unstoppable, and it refers mostly to marketing, but the framework that he uses, of course, I've applied to sales. One of the things that we talk about all the time is the moose. Do you want to just touch on how you morphed your moose?
Speaker 3 (00:02:15) - Yeah. So when I first started, which was back in January 2020 with this company, Tom, our CEO and founder, he was really the main one, kind of taking care of the marketing initiatives and what was happening and who the moose was.
Speaker 3 (00:02:34) - And he was focusing on, excuse me, rural water utilities. And, it was interesting because coming in from college, I mean, I understood that like, you had to have your prospect like that ideal prospect or the moose, as you guys call it. And, so that was his the real water utility is just walking into it. And, you know, we worked with them for maybe it's a good like six months to a year just educating, educating, educating, doing a lot of webinars, events, sending off ebooks. You know, we were working with different associations and they were helping out their members and no one was buying. And we were struggling like, what are we doing wrong? You know, these guys need our stuff. They need our stuff. We know that, they need cybersecurity. a lot of our critical infrastructure, they're super vulnerable when it comes to cyber attacks. And, it's more so it comes down to the fact that there's no teeth in it. No one's making them use cybersecurity services or put cybersecurity in place to prevent those cyber attacks.
Speaker 3 (00:03:45) - So that's why we're we're focusing on these guys because again, we know they need it. But they weren't buying. And so we had to sit back and look and be like okay what. You know, not necessarily what are we doing wrong? But like why aren't they buying. What what what's happening here? And when you look at the rural water utility industry, it tends to be people that are close to retirement age that are working in that industry. I don't remember the statistics. Back then. It was like 50 or 60% of the people working in that industry are due to retire in the next, however many years. and so with that age group, a lot of them have a hard time comprehending technology in general and how it works and why they need certain things, and even comprehending cyber attacks, you know, so it just wasn't really clicking for these guys. And another thing is they really don't have the funding. These guys don't have a lot of money. And when they do have money, it has it's like a process they have to go through.
Speaker 3 (00:04:51) - They have to go and meet with them forward, present it to the board. The board has to approve it. And it's just a big process. There isn't really one decision maker that can be like, yeah, let's do it and move on. It's it was just not working out. They were not a good moose for us. And so we I know we don't like the word pivot, but we didn't.
Speaker 2 (00:05:12) - Steve doesn't like the word pivot.
Speaker 3 (00:05:14) - Steve doesn't like the word pivot. So we switch things up. And we have had some law clients in the past and we like working with them. They're smart, they understand they need our stuff and that their data is valuable and they have data worth protecting. you know, lawyers work with clients and they have a lot of information that confidential and doesn't need to be, you know, out there. So it's important that they have that trust built. so right then we kind of took the same approach that we were doing with the water utilities, but for lawyers and law firms, and we did that by working with associations.
Speaker 3 (00:05:52) - So like their, law association, bar associations. And we started doing continuing education for the bar associations, and we started to get some bites. Finally, with our content and our webinars and just putting our attention, I mean, just doing the same thing that we were doing for the rural water utilities. Exact same thing doing that for the different industry. We were getting results. so we were just looking at the wrong people. It may, you know, I don't want to say it wasn't the it could have just been the the wrong time to, you know, maybe the government's going to finally put some teeth in the regulations and say, you have to have this cybersecurity stuff in place so we don't go through a data breach or a cyber attack. You know, maybe then they'll be ready to buy, or maybe once some of the younger generation kind of starts coming into play and they start using the newer technology and their systems, they'll be ready. it just wasn't working. we we had to find our moose, and we kind of had to hunt.
Speaker 3 (00:06:55) - I guess you could tell me a little bit.
Speaker 2 (00:06:58) - So I like the point that your moose can change, because we like to say the last thing you want is a market that doesn't have an acknowledged. Need. As you said, these people do need that your. They need your cybersecurity services. It is so critical they didn't want to deal with it, especially as they move closer to retirement. But the point is, for all of us as salespeople and of course marketers, we have to do our best to choose the right moves. And in my book, I have a whole chapter on moose strategy and things that you can consider, but you might, you know, not nail it on the first the first try. I have a very simple analogy in the book, and that's back in the days when I was selling retail. I was at the the bond actually. Sorry, Macy's. It used to be called the bond in my day, but now it's Macy's. And I was in the Women's War Department.
Speaker 2 (00:07:51) - And whenever anyone would come in, I'd. Can I help you? Can I help you? And I remember you've been in clothing retail too, right?
Speaker 4 (00:07:58) - Yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:07:58) - So you try to help everyone and then it was competitive. And I think you said where you worked, it was also competitive. Right?
Speaker 4 (00:08:07) - Yeah.
Speaker 3 (00:08:07) - We had commission based off of credit card signups.
Speaker 2 (00:08:11) - Right. Oh yeah, I can see. Yeah. Those people that are selling credit cards, I'm like, oh, I know you have to do this. But in that time for me in the retail sales, it was just a real easy visual then to see people find people that already had an armful of clothes. So it was very easy to say, okay, they're probably going to buy, whereas someone else is just maybe looking. So that's a really simple analogy, but it applies to so many, you know, any type of sales. And since Steve and I have had our business together, I have been marketing and selling his services.
Speaker 2 (00:08:47) - And one of the things I've done to find our moose through the years is go through association books like you mentioned, see what size they are, their budget, how many people that they have working for them, and have they hired speakers. I'm sure you've done this with Tom, right? Yeah. Have they hired speakers? Are those speakers like you or like Tom or like Steve? So moose is huge and, being open to changing, right. That's been very lucrative for you. Yeah. And then you can also get to know them better and, and speak to what they really need. So we were also talking about, I the last time we talked, we really covered a lot of AI tools. And man, they're just coming fast and furious.
Speaker 3 (00:09:36) - Right, left and right.
Speaker 2 (00:09:38) - Yes. And so those tools are things that you can use as a marketer or a sales person. So you said you had a few new tools. Do you want to talk about those?
Speaker 3 (00:09:49) - Yeah. I'll start with slide broadcast.
Speaker 2 (00:09:53) - And what does that say that again.
Speaker 3 (00:09:55) - I broadcast SL y and then the word broadcast.
Speaker 2 (00:09:59) - Slide on broadcast.
Speaker 3 (00:10:00) - Yes it is. I don't know what I guess they, they call it like what it is, but it's an automatic dialer I guess. Kind of, it sends voicemails to a list that you input that you give it. And so we have been sending targeted messages via voice mail to our prospects. And, we have gotten some traction with it and not a ton. I was hoping to be a little bit more successful than it was, but it's also brand new to us. We're just, you know, still trying to figure it out. And, we've had some fun playing with the messaging and like, sending it at different times of different days. and it's dirt cheap. It's so cheap. I want to say we're paying $100 a month for like 1800 credits, and that's a voicemail. And it only counts as a credit if it goes through successfully. and so it just automatically sends a voicemail to their cell phone, like, it doesn't ring their phone or anything like that.
Speaker 3 (00:11:03) - It's just a voicemail coming from your number that you give it. And, you can make the message however long you want and give a callback number. And, yeah, it's it's just something that we've been trying. a friend of Tom's had recommended it, and, he does marketing. I think he owns a marketing firm. And so that's something he's been doing for his clients. and then another one is I had a pulled up earlier. Haley. I'll spell it out. S a l e e I. So, Sally, I the websites. Sally. Sally pro.
Speaker 2 (00:11:43) - Pro. Okay.
Speaker 3 (00:11:44) - It's the website. And I just came across this one last week and I just met with them and did a demo. their pricing is awesome. It's free, for 100 credits a month and then only 25 a month if you want to do the paid plan. So it's not bad. And it is something that has a Google. Extension. So it's good to use with Google Chrome. And when you have LinkedIn pulled up and you're using Google Chrome and their browser extension, you can go to any profile on LinkedIn or even just your LinkedIn connection list.
Speaker 3 (00:12:23) - And you'll see on the side it gives you the option to pull out Sally. And or you could just like click that. You want to message the person, and then you can click the little button that says message with AI. And it creates personalized messages using AI based off of the information from their LinkedIn profile right then and there, super fast. So for example, one for mine, like for my LinkedIn profile could be something like hey, can see, I saw you live in Honolulu, you know, have you tried Sky? I saw it's a super popular dinner spot with beautiful views. I saw your ID, you do marketing for a managed IT company. Would you be interested in having a quick chat about our, you know, co-managed marketing service? I don't know, something like that, you know, does it all for you, but you have to give it. When you set it up, you give it your unique selling propositions, your company name, your company website, and you give it your, most pain points.
Speaker 3 (00:13:25) - And so you throw on your pain points and then it gives you like an option to add extra information if you want. the system I had heard that they said sometimes less is better to give the AI less rather than too much information. Give it too much. It's going to be too much. so I didn't do a ton in there. And then when you're on the profile, it gives you the option if you want to send like a message to try and set a meeting, like what's the goal of the message? Is it to one set a meeting or to educate them on your services, or is it to just get to know them and make it production? and you can click which one you want and it just automatically generates it and pops it up. So I highly recommend giving it a try because it is free for 100 credits. So we've also done, like a local list because we work nationally, service nationally, but we love to work with our guys in Arkansas or Oklahoma. They're drivable.
Speaker 3 (00:14:19) - You know, it's always cool being able to see them in person. So we did a, a campaign just for local like Arkansas, Oklahoma. And in the messaging we make sure to mention, you know, hey, it's Jason from Fort or Jason and Fort Smith. You know, we mentioned where we're at. You know, we we targeted, in my emails that I've been sending out to. That's one thing I've really like noticed lately that the more personal you can get it, the better. You know, if you can mention in the email their city, you know, hey, you know, we love working with companies like yours and Fayetteville. you know, just mention their city. If you can somehow use, like, a spin tax or something. it's always super great even in the subject line. Just try and personalize it as much as you can. I think that's really big right now. Makes you stand out. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:15:09) - To stand out. And especially because I think a lot of people are using AI and not editing it, which we've talked about before.
Speaker 2 (00:15:18) - you can't just use AI as is. And yes, if you can put something that, is personal to them that relates to them, then they know it's at least not 100% AI. So, and you, you know, you record different messages for them. So I like that because, that's definitely going to pique their interest. So interesting. And that was the sly, right? Sly.
Speaker 3 (00:15:40) - Yeah. Sly broadcast is the voicemails. And then the say they'll be in the LinkedIn messages. Something else we've been doing you just said, you know, stick out, do something different. You know, that no one's doing. we've been sending out Christmas cards.
Speaker 5 (00:15:59) - Oh. That's right.
Speaker 2 (00:16:00) - Oh, I'm so glad you reminded me of that. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (00:16:03) - I just.
Speaker 3 (00:16:04) - Remembered. so we started, I guess, last month, sending out Christmas cards to some of our hot prospects. And, inside the card, it says something along the lines of, like, hey, I want to be the first person to tell you Christmas or Merry Christmas in 2024.
Speaker 3 (00:16:22) - so it's like a Christmas in May or Christmas in June kind of thing. and we do that more so just to kind of catch their attention. And, let me see if I have the messaging easy to access real quick. It it's so cute the way we've got it. yeah. It's right here, the way we have, it messaged me say, but we've been sending out quite a few. I've got an intern that has good handwriting, and so she's been writing them from our sales guy and sending them out as him. and so we've got a list that Jason, our sales guy, he just kind of keeps updated, and she goes in and sends them out as she needs to. so the card, it says, I want to be the first person to wish you a merry Christmas in 2024. Have I succeeded? This early greeting is a fun nudge to start preparing your IT infrastructure for next year, and schedule a time to review your systems and ensure your set up for success in 2025.
Speaker 3 (00:17:17) - Jason. And then have a shorter one. It's just I just wanted to be the first person to wish you a merry Christmas in 2024. Have I succeeded in having like asking that? Have I succeeded is trying to get a response and we throw a couple of business cards in there. So they have like, we're not writing email on his phone number or just throwing the business cards inside of the Christmas card.
Speaker 2 (00:17:39) - So definitely unique. And we always say, look at what everyone else is doing and don't do it. So I think that's really a great strategy. And so do you. Have you had anybody actually respond or is it something that you follow up with.
Speaker 4 (00:17:54) - We just started yeah, we just started this a couple weeks ago.
Speaker 3 (00:18:00) - Jason is following up. I haven't heard anything on the Christmas cards just yet. but hopefully, you know, it's one of those things we love direct mail. We had someone call us in our client. Now, we had someone call us about a year ago saying, hey, I got a letter from you a couple of years ago, and I have it here and I need your help with it a year.
Speaker 3 (00:18:22) - Like, I mean, it had been years that had passed and that direct mail piece had sat in his desk for who knows how long, you know, because he knew we'd be there when he needed us. And I think it's kind of the same thing with, like, cute cards and things like that. It's a friendly reminder if they don't want to throw it away, it's, you know, Christmas card. I can see it hanging up, maybe on their their fridge in the office, you know, for everyone to see and kind of get a kick out of it. So.
Speaker 4 (00:18:49) - Right.
Speaker 2 (00:18:50) - And and that's so true. Direct mail. That's another thing I talk about in the book a lot because again, now everyone's into email and even, you know, the automated voice mails. That's a great step. But to get something in the mail anymore really stands out. It's funny, as you know, when I have a podcast guest on, I ask for their mailing address so I can send a thank you.
Speaker 2 (00:19:13) - And, I know you loved your thank you and your brownies. No, I didn't send you brownies. Right. I sent you something.
Speaker 4 (00:19:20) - Yeah, I.
Speaker 2 (00:19:21) - I normally send brownies, but what did I send you?
Speaker 4 (00:19:24) - I think it was essential oil. Oh, it was essential oil.
Speaker 3 (00:19:27) - Yes, it was, because I've been using I have a yeah. Salt lamp that it goes in.
Speaker 4 (00:19:33) - Yeah. You for.
Speaker 3 (00:19:34) - That.
Speaker 2 (00:19:34) - Yeah. And so I mean I knew I had to send gluten free because I know you. And so yes I made a point of doing that. But to your point, you know, we send so many things via email and everything's orange and same thing. I've talked to people even five years later and they say, oh, I always kept this pair of shoelaces in my desk or whatever. And so direct mail it. You keep that right instead of it's just in your inbox. And I think that's huge. We we do that a lot if we have the right target.
Speaker 2 (00:20:09) - And of course, that is very important when you're talking about direct mail.
Speaker 3 (00:20:13) - When I moved out to the island, the reason I go to the dentist I go to is because I had received a direct mail, like just marketing card from the dental office. It's the only reason I use my dentist, and it's just because the. I had received a direct mail piece from him, and I happened to be looking for a dentist at that time, and I had just recently moved here. so yeah, it's it works. I have all the cards I think, that you've ever sent me, honestly.
Speaker 4 (00:20:42) - And.
Speaker 2 (00:20:43) - Yeah. So we use a company called Send Out Cards.
Speaker 4 (00:20:45) - Yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:20:46) - It's awesome. And the best thing, the best part of it is that you can put a customized picture and same thing. If I have sent anybody a card with their picture on it, they save it. In fact, I went to visit a local client and I sent him a card probably five years ago, and it's on what he calls his credenza.
Speaker 2 (00:21:08) - he has a shelf above his desk and there's a potted plant. Probably fake, actually. I'll have to ask Rob and the card that I sent him all those years ago. So send out cards. Something I also talk about in the book. Huge. Very memorable. And I believe and copyable.
Speaker 4 (00:21:25) - So yeah, these send out.
Speaker 3 (00:21:27) - Cards as well. We use that for the onboarding of new clients. So whenever we sign on a new client, we send a card and some brownies. Just say thank you for trusting us and we look forward to working with you. We've been happy with them.
Speaker 2 (00:21:39) - So yeah, it's it's a great service. And I will put all these links in the show notes, because we're talking about a lot of different, websites and services, and I think we only have a few minutes. So let's end with what you mentioned about Apollo. Io is your last, super cool tool that you just recently discovered.
Speaker 3 (00:22:01) - so I am currently doing a free trial with apollo.io. And if you listen to the last episode I was on, I talked a little bit about lead Onion and Apollo does that and more.
Speaker 3 (00:22:16) - It also tracks who's coming to your website. It's a CRM. so it I guess I could say what it does. It's in doubt. emails or email sequences, automations, whatever you want to call it based off of buyer intent. So it sees what people are searching on the internet and it tells you and you can send emails to them based off of, the, the intent they were showing. So you get 12 intent topics. And so for me, I put in my as my intent topics, managed IT services, co-managed IT services, MSP services, IT management, things like that. IT infrastructure management, things that people would be searching into Google for our services if they needed our services. And so inside of Apollo, you can go in and filter out like by industry, by company.
Speaker 4 (00:23:22) - Size, by.
Speaker 3 (00:23:22) - Job title, and then you throw in your buyer intent and you can create a list of your moose, your ideal moose with, the intent applied. So you're only seeing people in this list that have searched topics related to what you've put in based off of your intent, and you can email them right then and there.
Speaker 3 (00:23:46) - You can call them inside of this platform. Inside of this platform. It also has its own like calendar thing, like Calendly. so if we move forward with it, we'll get rid of Calendly. There's no point in having it when we've got Apollo. it's got the CRM inside of it. So you can work, do everything you need to inside of Apollo. it also has a meeting note taker. We use fathom AI right now to take notes during our zoom meetings, and, it's got that built inside of it, too. It's got the phone dialer built inside of it. So you don't even need a cell phone. Technically. it does it all. And yeah, it's it's pretty cool. It's based off of credits. So I'm assuming I haven't gotten completely through the demo yet, but the credits I'm pretty sure are the, like, people. So once you reveal an email or the contact information, that's a credit and, then you can email them however many times you want and you can have however many sequences, automation setup and, yeah, it's pretty cool.
Speaker 3 (00:24:51) - I'm excited. I'm actually gonna throw my first list. I'm gonna throw a list into it that I have today just for my first test. And, yeah, it's gonna do everything lead onion does, lead forensics does, and more. And it's cheaper. I think for for users, it's like 600 a month for four users. And that's more than we need. We don't even need for right now. but, yeah, it's there's a lot to it, and it just, it's.
Speaker 4 (00:25:19) - Automated emails.
Speaker 3 (00:25:21) - Based off of a I o. And my favorite part about it, it has an AI like personalized inside of the emails. So it does exactly what Sally was doing inside of the emails.
Speaker 2 (00:25:37) - And so it does it automatically.
Speaker 4 (00:25:39) - Oh, with with.
Speaker 3 (00:25:40) - Apollo you have to manually add people into a sequence.
Speaker 4 (00:25:45) - Okay.
Speaker 3 (00:25:45) - then once they're in the sequence, they're in the sequence. And you can set up automation. So if they're thrown into a sequence and they finished it in 30 days, they're thrown into like another one, like just a drip campaign.
Speaker 3 (00:25:57) - So you can like save your contacts and still market to them, until you get a response, whether that's yes or no if they want to work with you. So I'm still playing with it. I just started it last week, but so far, I mean, I'm having nothing but a great things to say. It's doing everything I wanted to do and more. it's pretty cool. And their training videos have been awesome. Like, if you just type in Apollo IO into YouTube, they have some really good, webinars on, just writing cold sales emails. I watched the whole hour long one that they posted on sales emails, and it was so good. I took so much from it and took so many notes. And I highly recommend checking that out just for some good content ideas and email flow ideas. And yeah, I'm excited to keep working with it. So.
Speaker 4 (00:26:48) - Right.
Speaker 2 (00:26:48) - So are those, webinars something that you can watch, I assume, even if you're not in Apollo?
Speaker 3 (00:26:53) - Yeah. They got so much stuff on their YouTube page, a lot of good content on their YouTube page.
Speaker 4 (00:26:58) - That sounds.
Speaker 2 (00:26:59) - Great. Like you said, helping with sales, email ideas, things like that. And I mean, retargeting has been around for a long time. I still remember years ago I was looking up a printer cartridge for my dad, and then of course, all of a sudden you get all these ads, so now you can do that, you know, if you're a sales person, if you're a business now, $600 a month is a chunk of money. but you're saying that you can replace a lot of other services note taking CRM.
Speaker 4 (00:27:28) - Exactly.
Speaker 2 (00:27:29) - Exactly. So it could be a huge value. Kinsey I can't believe even since we talked a few months ago, you've got new AI tools, and last time you were raving about Lead Onion and now there's something even better. So that means I have to have you back again in a few months.
Speaker 4 (00:27:46) - I'm here for rant on Stuart. Give a good.
Speaker 3 (00:27:48) - Update for everyone.
Speaker 2 (00:27:50) - Thank you so much for being on the podcast.
Speaker 4 (00:27:53) - Thanks, K.
Speaker 1 (00:27:55) - Thanks for listening to this episode of Unstoppable Women in Sales, your source for secrets you can use to make more sales. Check the show notes for links and contact information. And if you enjoyed the podcast, please spread the word by subscribing, sharing and leaving a five star review. You can always learn more by going to Unstoppable Sales Compost cast. Until next time, go out and supercharge your sales like a true unstoppable rockstar.
