Creating Brand Champions

Val: Welcome to the first ever insightly live you’ve got a great hour ahead of you. We’ll be talking with business adviser and author Jay Baer we’ll learn all about filling the top of our funnel from the Bottom of our funnel, and we’ll top it off with a fun cocktail creation and a giveaway.

I’m Val Riley from insightly CRM and I’ll be your host for the next hour I’ll be monitoring the chat and sending your questions and comments to our panelists and speaking of the panelists let’s meet them now.

First say hi to Jay Baer. Jay Baer is a business growth and customer experience strategist researcher and author he is a seventh yes Seventh Generation entrepreneur the author of seven bestselling in books and founder of five multi-million dollar companies. He’s also the second most popular Tequila influencer in the world (non celebrity).

Jay has advised hundreds of major brands worldwide on how to acquire more customers and how to maintain the customer relationships they’ve already earned.

Also please welcome Chip House. CMO of insightly CRM. Chip is responsible for insightly’s marketing strategy messaging content digital marketing and lead generation Chip has more than 25 years of experience in senior marketing roles at fast growing SaaS companies. He’s led marketing at insightly CRM for 2 and a half years.

We’re getting a lively discussion going in that chat already Chip. Maybe some folks have an ice cold beer?

Chip: It’s exciting to see we’re going to be drinking tequila today but drink whatever you want. I’ve got a LaCroix here in my coffee mug and maybe I’ll drink some tequila later we’ll see. Beer is just fine absolutely for now.

Welcome everyone to Insightly live and thank you for joining us. Val I know is as she mentioned is gonna keep track of all the chat and so we’re going to respond to you as the chat comes in Val will feed those questions to Jay and myself.

Jay you have a giveaway to announce don’t you?

Jay: I do and I am also not drinking lroy I’m drinking tequila because for me it’s for work. We are doing a giveaway one lucky winner in today’s program will receive a bottle of eight year TC craft extra anejo craft great tequila brand owned by two brothers out of Nashville, Tennessee. You’re also going to get one of these very cool TC craft trucker hats. Not this one, this one’s mine! You’ll get one just like this. And we’ve got two Second Place prizes as well we’re going to get some Insightly swag as you can see by the set and where Val is insightly has got great Vibes so it’s it’s nice swag you’re going to like that as

Chip: This is going to be a heck of a show today I’m super excited let’s dig in Jay so people showed up today to to learn more about a lot of different things to kind of pick your brain from a marketing standpoint and Jay I know that you’ve been speaking on the circuit at the sales kickoffs since it’s March which is kind of sales kickoff time of year and what are you hearing out there?

Jay: I mean I know that the the theme for a big piece of last year was efficient growth and did you hear that quite often when you’re talking to teams yeah it’s definitely the same as it was the year before there’s not app for growth sake right now the capital markets don’t really support that it’s still an uncertain economy even though the economy looks like a soft Landing for now it’s an election year there’s just a lot of of about what’s to 2024 and so consequently what we’re seeing Executives focus upon is yes we want to grow but we’ve got to grow in a way that is economically sustainable and and to me Chip and I think probably to you as well what that really emphasizes is first and foremost let’s try to retain and grow our existence I think we all know we’ve all learned since the first day in business that it’s easier to keep a customer a customer and and consequently let can’t do some of that product L growth and customer marketing and and make sure that we’re not churning our customer base and so we’ll talk about that a little bit today I think

Chip: Very cool Jay so in the marketing world we love our funnels and one of my favorite funnels if we can bring it up Studio crew is the one by John Janch who wrote Duct Tape Marketing and I I love it because it contemplates certainly the top of the funnel where you’re trying to focus on getting people to know and like your brand. But also move into the trust phase because that’s so important in any sort of B2B relationship before you they’re ever going to try or buy your product. But today we’re we’re focusing a lot on the bottom of the funnel the repeat and the refer sections of the funnel where you’d be engaging your existing customer base trying to build advocacy among your customers and encourage ing them to share and refer your brand to others and you do that by creating memorable experiences for your customers and I’m very excited to talk to Jay about that because he’s written so much on this topic and the the word of mouthpiece is very very important in marketing and it helps if you do it well it helps you build both the top of the funnel and the recurring portion of sort of the bow tie funnel if you will. So Jay if you if you’re ready here so let’s get started talking about how word of mouth has you it’s been pretty much dominated by B to C marketers but it’s per perhaps even more of a powerful tactic in B2B don’t you think?

Jay: Absolutely because people don’t typically make B2B buying decisions without input without feedback from from existing customers or previous customers. In fact the data show that some 80-90% of B2B purchases are influenced by Word of Mouth in in some way. You think about some of the B2B portals and platforms out there – G2 crowd and Trust Radius and things like that, that actually are built around sort of capturing and harnessing word of mouth about B2B providers. So your note earlier Chip about Word of Mouth actually benefiting both ends of the funnel is so true because at the bottom of the funnel you get a very happy customer who then tells somebody else who then comes into at the top and then and then the cycle rep repats.

I mean this has been true since the first caveman Arrowhead to a previous caveman that that word of mouth is the the best way to grow any business like the way to grow. In fact I would argue the most efficient way to grow is for your customers to do that growing for you but the challenge is that you’ve got to actually give people a story to tell and and that’s where it sometimes gets gets a little bit lost – especially in B2B. Because I don’t I don’t want to make too much of a of an indictment here but but I would argue that many B2B companies aren’t as good at storytelling as as B2C companies.

We’ll probably get into that here a little bit Jay I I have to tell you I I love the the caveman analogies and and so one one of the ones you’d used before is hey if you want to put a hole in a woolly mammoth what should you use and you might ask another caveman he’d give you his recommendation right absolutely because I don’t know that there was any YouTube videos or any other kind of how-to guides on on Wooly Mammoth hunting back then. I think you kind of had to you had to ask the guy in the next cave because otherwise like how how are you gonna know?

And yet here we are I don’t know how long it’s been since caveman I’m not a paleontologist obviously but it’s been a bit and and yet we still aren’t very good at Word of Mouth in business.

Jay: Which why I had to write a whole whole book about it!

Chip: Yeah so let let’s bring that up too so Jay you the book you wrote is called Talk Triggers which essentially are are way examples to share so let’s talk about those.

Jay: Yeah so I wrote the book with my good friend Daniel Lemon and a Talk Trigger just aren curious talk trigger is an operational choice that you make in your business that is designed on purpose to create conversations. So it’s not really marketing it’s actually more operations and customer experience, but it yields marketing advantages because customers who experience this operational differentiator.

The talk trigger if you will are are are mystified impressed confused excited emotions occur that then cause them to tell stories about your business to their friends and colleagues and peers which then gets the next cycle of customer. You’re essentially turning your customers into volunteer marketers on behalf of your business but in order for this to work, Chip you have to give people a story. And the story is almost never your actual product or service, because that’s what the money is for, right? You have to give people something different something they don’t expect and because they don’t expect it that’s what makes them want to tell this story.

If they expect it it’s not really worthy of a story. This is why just incidentally this is why you almost never see three star reviews because what’s the story baked into a three star review? If you look at actual review Distribution on on any kind of scoring platform conser or B2B you get a lot of five-star reviews and you get a lot of one star reviews. And those are kind of the the the polls right because a review is typically a warning or a side of enthusiasm and what’s a review a review is just word of mouth with shelf life that’s all it is right? So you don’t get a lot of three star reviews because there’s no story there. So you got to give people a story to tell one of the most famous examples that people might be familiar with Chip – you probably are because you travel a lot – is Double Tree hotels by Hilton.

Every single Double Tree Hotel has an oven in it behind the front desk and when you check into the Double Tree Hotel they give you a warm chocolate Chip cookie that they bake right there in the hotel. So it triggers all the senses you can smell it like when you’re parking your car right it’s it smells like a bakery. And then the cookie is warm and then you can see it and you can it really is a a sensory experience. And because of that the stories are told.

I did a case study with Hilton for the book and they distribute proc 75,000 cookies which is it’s a lot of chocolate chips man and of those 75,000 cookies approximately one third of their guests have told a story to somebody else about that cookie. A third. So that’s a lot of stories and it’s probably not a coincidence that Double Tree spends Less on Advertising than any other hotel at that price point because the cookie kind of is the an and the guests kind of are the sales and marketing department.

And that’s what you can achieve with an effective talk trigger and and a Word of Mouth strategy have you ever. You’ve had one of those cookies Chip?

Chip: I have had one of those cookies and there was a period of time where I was traveling and going to Double Trees all the time and I think it was like Pavlov’s dogs my my mouth would water when I would just walk in the lobby. So yeah definitely have had those and you can smell them and baking Etc so yeah it’s very distinct

Jay: Yeah exactly.

Chip: Val do you have a question for Jay?

Val: We do guys! So Jay the question is is there something like within the cookie the packaging that is telling people to share it, or are the shares happing organically?

Jay: Ih good question no not really it’s not like on the sleeve that the paper sleeve that they put it in it doesn’t say like tell your friends about this cookie it’s not near nearly that overt . They Don’t Really the cook in the small amount of advertising they do what they do however is they kind of Nod to it which I think is cool.

So for example any Double Tree hotel that has a hotel shuttle that goes to the airport that van is always vinyl wrapped with Graphics that have a giant chocolate Chip cookie on it right just to be like oh yeah yeah they’re the cookie guys!

That kind of thing they also do stuff like in each Hotel the the chef of that particular has a special dish on the menu that features the cookies in fact they have a cookbook that’s only cookie recipes and stuff that you can get so they they incorporate it into other elements of the brand persona. But it’s not nearly like hey and you’re gonna write a review about this cookie right? It’s it’s not nearly in your face like that which I actually like better. You should nod to it to make sure you don’t get confused with some other brand but if the talk trigger is effective you don’t need to beat people over the head with it .

Chip: It is fascinating how there’s a trough for reviews everywhere you go and I was just looking at hotels for a vacation and so if you go to Hawaii and you you stay somewhere and and it’s like a three you’re not going to go tell everybody about it right and so that’s the fascinating thing about how this works if you create something that’s unexpected you’re more likely to tell your friends

Jay: yeah it’s it’s just human psychology like all of our brains are wired the same way all of us in this regard we are wired to talk about things that are different that lie outside recognized patterns and we ignore things that are inside the recognized patterns it’s it’s just like in digital indital advertising Banner blindness right we’ve all we’re all familiar with that term the idea that that eventually consers don’t even see banner ads on websites because they it just it just like evaporates into the pixels and the same thing happens operationally right if if if you’re just used to it then then it no longer is special which is why not coincidentally you’re much more likely to tell the cookie Story the first second or third time you experienced the cookie once you’ve experienced the cookie nine times it too becomes common place for you you expect it it like when you pull into the parking lot there’s a cookie there you might still tell the story from time to time but it doesn’t have the same element of shock and awe that it did when you experienced it initially yeah totally so Jay I know you have some other stories and these are great too yeah I mean Double Tree obviously is a is a global company so they have a ton of resources but you don’t have to have a ton of resources in fact many of the best word of mouth generators the best ways to turn customers into volunteer marketers are executed by smaller businesses who who just decide to to make an operational shift and do something pretty cool and and some of the great talk triggers kind of appeared by accident gorditos is an amazing one it is a Mexican food restaurant in Seattle and their deal is they always make really big burritos like like gigantic burritos that’s that’s their thing right that’s what they’re known for and this was created organically and then they decided to run with it as their talk trigger one of their customers just took a picture of their newborn baby and put it next to a burrito and was like hey it’s kind of hilarious that their burritos are as big as my baby and the the restaurant like printed it out and put it on the wall in the restaurant and then people would come in be like that’s hilarious I’m going to do that and now it’s their whole differentiator like they’ve got a whole a whole Instagram account baby burrito Hall of Fame in the restaurant it’s Fon with with baby pictures and and burrito comparison charts it’s hilarious like it’s their thing now and everybody talks about it so I love it when it comes from the customers themselves instead of from a brand idea those are sometimes the best yeah Jay I know you wrote just another book recently called I think it’s called the time to win it’s like a small little book and yeah I have heard you say as hans especially in the B2B realm maybe B Toc also right we we interpret responsiveness from a brand as caring and respect and this applies to both new and existing customers doesn’t it and isn’t speed then a talk trick it certainly can be there are five types of talk triggers that we talk about in the book but speed is one of those five for sure and and I would argue speed is one of the best ways to generate Word of Mouth in B2B companies only because people don’t expect it like nobody’s like boy B2B is known for being so nimbi and and and quick and Rapid just not it’s not really the narrative but you can totally make this work so there is an accounting firm in Indianapolis not too far from me called bognet and Dodges and and no offense to to them but they are unremarkable in terms of what they offer they do small business accounting bookkeeping they do some personal tax returns some small business tax returns some tax advice there’s 40,000 small accounting firms in the United States so they’re not really any different but they do have a speed-based word of mouth differentiator five minute response time calls and emails every client they respond to every everybody within five minutes they’ve built an operational system to be able to do this so if one person’s on the phone the other one takes it if they’re both on the phone a third person takes it like they they kind of have like a like a call Triage program to make sure they can get back to people and they’ve got instantaneous email responses and and we’re talking about reviews a second ago Chip they have like I don’t know 75 or something reviews for an accounting firm which that blows me away I’ve had I think 11 accountants in my long business career because I’ve moved moved a lot and I’ve never written a review for an accountant like what what would that review say hey I got my tax return back and check it out all the nbers added up five stars like nobody writes a review for your accountant they have tons of reviews and and like almost every single review that they’ve acred specifically mentions how fast they are it literally is their their their differentiator and to me that’s amazing that’s a super great story it’s it’s good proof that being fast as a bus business is just something you would comment about and tell your friends about so so as Val mentioned I’m in the realm of B2B SAS and have been for 25 years basically and so which proves I’m old Jay and especially in B2B SAS but really across the board there’s a lot of sameness we’re in the CRM space and I think there’s over a thousand companies that claim to have a CRM of sorts right and so there’s you from The Outsiders look in it looks like parody right U but it really isn’t so when when you find that are brands that are in similar industry to mine where there’s a lot of sameness or at least from the outside sameness how do you advise businesses to break that mold yeah I mean I I contend with this every day in my tequila work there are more than 2,000 brands of tequila now and 300 new ones introduced last year alone it’s it’s nonsensical right it’s it’s absurd the conser walks into a a store or even a restaurant and and has no idea what to do about this which is why I make 25 videos a month to try and educate people to make better buying decisions but it’s a really really complex and confusing category and so what you’ve got to do to break out of that kind of mold is is to understand your ideal customer profile you really need to lock in your ICP and say okay who are we trying to sell to and what do those people want and and then stick to some kind of brand positioning and marketing execution in Word of Mouth program that that supports that overall brand ID you ask the question like how can people stand out this sounds oversimplified but it’s not the first step is believing that you should stand out I think CRM companies are a great example there are lots and lots and lots of CRM companies I’m proud to be an insightly customer myself but there are many many many many and most of them seem to have no interest in differentiating other than now they say CRM with AI and so unless you’re will willing to take a stand on something why would your customers tell any kind of story about you even TC craft the tequila That We’re giv away here today has done a nice job with this in the crowded tequila category most new tequila brands have directed conser so you can go to their website and purchase bottles tcraft does that as well they are one of the only ones in the entire category who actually offer free shipping because shipping tequila is expensive it’s heavy you got to put in a ton of bubble wrap or Styrofoam peanuts or whatever so it’s it’s not an easy thing to ship around the country but they’re like well look we want people to try the tequila because we figure if you buy the first bottle you’ll buy a second bottle eventually etc etc so why are we making it hard for people to buy this and they just really really smart like I think I think they’re the only ones that offer free shipping all the time and I think it’s really smart I love what you first shared about TC craft J and and their focus on not necessarily making money on the first bottle of tequila but making a lifelong customer right do you have any more to say about that well I mean that’s kind of what we’re talking about today in general this this idea of of efficient growth for a business is predicated on that entire principle right it’s predicated on not losing customers right what’s what’s the Medical Oath first first Do no harm is that where it goes that that should be in business first lose no hypocritic oath right yeah yeah yeah the hypocritic o first Do no harm and and so in in marketing it should be first lose no customers right if you never lost a customer or lost very few customers your job would be much much easier and and I think we all know that but but yet we don’t actually run our businesses as if that were the case which is such a puzzle to me yeah entirely but I I just love that perspective Jay so we’re many of us on the phone are from the technology realm and so in your mind how does technology enable B2B Word of Mouth well I mean certainly we talked a little bit about about Double Tree when you think about all the different ways to reach customers and different places that customers can talk about your brand today if you’ve got a differentiator either a product differentiator or a talk Trigger or a Services differentiator even a pricing differentiator all of that will eventually surface right and technology is a big part of that not only the technology that allows consers to make those messages but the technology allows you to find them and sift them and sort them I mean look Chip when you and I first started out it was a lot easier if if consers wanted to talk about you there’s only a few places they could do that and and not very many and even if you wanted to reach consers like when I first started out you you could buy a billboard you could send a piece of direct mail you could buy a television ad you could buy a radio ad you could buy a newspaper ad or a magazine ad like that was kind of the whole list right like the idea of media mix in media planning was no offense pretty simple and now of course it is infinity ways to to send a message to somebody and technology has has made that much more possible and and so when we think about how this works especially in B2B technology around understanding your ideal customers understanding where they are in the purchase funnel even post-p purchase technology used to Drive customers toward advocacy towards collecting customer feedback to making sure that they’re happy and delighted in telling your story there is an awful lot of of tech out there that companies should be using to to track measure analyze and and Delight their fans obviously usually the CRM is kind of the nerve center of all of that with with different kind of ornaments hung on that Christmas tree yeah you’re entirely right back in the age of Don Draper they were essentially creatives right they would just have to buy the ad on mat lock or Gunsmoke and their jobs were done you know they have to worry about Channel mix at all hey I know we have a question Val let’s let’s go to the question yeah guys more of a comment I think it’s it’s asking is Word of Mouth the domain of the marketing team or does it come across all teams Jay I feel like you answered that a little bit but maybe you could elaborate it’s not an easy answer actually because if you think about a talk trigger as an operational differentiator free cookies giant burritos Etc five minute response time while marketing will probably lead that initiative and it’s certainly responsible for measuring its impact on the business both Top Line and bottom line because it is operations everybody’s got to be a part of it right the the the person who’s ordering chocolate Chip cookie supplies has got to be in on this gag right so that’s one of the things about word of mouth is this is probably a topic for another session but one of the things I love it I love about it as a as a strategist and as a consultant is that good word of mouth programs can can really do a lot of bridge building and a lot of cross- departmental bonding inside an organization because to launch and sustain Word of Mouth programs almost requires that kind of of widespread cooperation within the organization and that can it can be a real Catalyst for for that kind of cooperation as well yeah that’s great Jay let’s get back to B2B here so in practice many B2B marketing teams are focused maybe too much solely on net new logo acquisition I’ve certainly experienced that in my career but it’s really the upsell the retention the lifetime value that are the dri ultimate drivers of growth and so in kind of B2B software as a service language that that’s net revenue retention or nrr so I mean how do you think about this and what what do businesses need to do now to kind of change how they think about go market it it we mentioned it a minute ago it is astonishing to me how every business person understands the math of this yet they do the opposite it’s like I don’t get it Adobe did a study a while back which is amazing that 80% 80% of B2B marketing budget are applied towards net new acquisition eight and every $10 are spent to get new customers two out of every 10 are spent to keep the customers you already have I’m not sure that makes sense in in most cases I understand why this happens because usually the CEO coo CMO are are are incentivized either directly or indirectly by re Revenue growth more so than bottom line growth more so than CH reduction more so than than than lifetime value Etc especially in in earlier stage B2B Brands but I’m not sure that’s the best way to run the business right because when you’re losing customers not only do you lose Revenue but you lose Goodwill when you’re losing customers it negates any of those new customers you brought in it’s the it’s the Leaky bucket scenario that we all know all all too well and so one of the things I I wrote about in some of the books that I’ve put together in the past is this notion of like well what if a thought exercise what if you what if you flipped that like what if you said we’re going to spend 80% of our revenue on making sure that all of our current customers are happy and then we’re going to spend 20% of our marketing budget I should say to to make sure that we can maybe get some new folks as well like does that sound I mean Chip you’re a CMO does that sound crazy to you it doesn’t sound crazy at all I mean just the the driver of customer satisfaction is so huge and so I I know from our data we get about 10% of our customers come from repeat customers right so they they used it in slightly at at a different brand and now they brought it to their new brand and then another 20% come from referrals so the experience that our customers have is absolutely tantamount to both our brand and our new business yeah yeah I I think that’s a really illinated view that that customer satisfaction has a direct correlation to revenue and often entirely related yeah and a lot of people think they’re not that that they’re sort of like two two trains passing on Parallel tracks but I think it’s trains like intersecting on tracks right that that one really you can’t have one without without the without the other I think those nbers are fascinating too that 10% of of your customers were were already there through a different business and and they yield 20% more that’s a remarkable case study just there in the power of word of mouth and in customer satisfaction yeah I think that’s why the the popular marketing funnels are also looked at like a flywheel now because it’s a if you do it well it’s a never-ending cycle it just keeps repeating itself so yep and we do a whole lot for with our customer marketing team to understand who our Advocates are within our customer base and they’re super super important to us so but but Jay like picking up on that how do when you have a brand champion and how do you best engage and reward that person or that organization it’s similar to how we recommend you measure Word of Mouth talked about this in the book talk triggers that that you can observe customer advocacy and that’s typically through feedback to their customer success manager or to a salesperson or just an email they send in to support what have you if somebody leaves a review on on a platform any kind of of proactive messaging regarding happiness is is one way and that sounds very obvious but you would be shocked how rare it is that businesses actually spend the appropriate amount of time to analyze and gather those kind of customer support messages and customer satisfaction messages from from platforms that maybe they don’t own so for example I mean how often are are you going to redit and looking up the name of your company to see if people there are saying nice things about you and if so are you keeping track of who is saying those nice things right most brands aren’t doing that and they probably should so that’s the first way to do it is observed advocacy the second way is ascertained advocacy and this gets into the entire realm of customer feedback collection surveys focus groups all those kind of things we can do an entire an entire insightly live on how to collect better feedback and part of it is to make sure you’re asking for feedback at Key inflection points in your customer journey and then also making sure that you request feedback as close as possible to the actual interaction so one of the worst things you can do is is say okay we’re going to send out monthly or quarterly or whatever Le surveys and customer satisfaction requests on sort of a scheduled basis because it could have been three four six months or whatever since they talked to you and then you’re like what do you think like I don’t really even remember so you want to try and gather feedback as close as possible to the actual interaction the studies show that you get 40% as much as 40% more accurate feedback when you collect it closer to the interaction so that’s a great way to do it so that’s one way you’re going to find your Advocates of course is to is to actually ask people and and see who gives you the highest score Etc and then once you’ve once you’ve determined who your who your friendlies are yes I mean I think rewards are nice but but most of the time recognition is sufficient right like just saying to people hey we really appreciate that you appreciate us and then you do something like in the monthly newsletter that goes to every customer you recognize five customers who have said nice things right you put them on the customer Advisory Board things like that you don’t have to you don’t have to give them a Starbucks card or a car most people will be happy that you just noticed because the reality is most customer feedback goes unnoticed and that’s why it’s becoming more and more rare for customers to actually Prov provide feedback unless they’re unhappy because most people think that all these surveys they’re being asked to fill out are not being read and the reason they think that is because often they’re correct but what I appreciate Jay and who I value are the people that are asking questions and it sounds like we have a phenomenal question and Val I appreciate you for taking this one yeah she’s doing great we do guys a mark is in the YouTube chat and I think Jay you hit on his question a little bit but he was saying idea is forgetting his customers to talk about satisfaction because he finds that they easily verbalize their issues but seldom verbalize their happiness yeah and and this kind of strikes of the entire idea of a talk trigger in in how Word of Mouth happens we don’t talk about good because there’s not really a story there hey Val let me tell you about this experience I had last night it was perfectly adequate nobody says that right because it’s not a story and so when customers are satisfied they’re not going to say anything about it because again they they they paid you for something you gave them that thing everybody’s happy but that’s not really a story that you’re compelled to write yeah or talk about so you’re not going to usually get satisfaction stories unless you’re doing something different unless you’ve got a giant burrito or a cookie or a five minute response time or something that is designed to be the story engine however you can try to pull some of those stories out of people by asking the questions in a better way so you can ask very specific questions like please in 25 words or less tell me about a time that our product or service surprised you you see what I mean that’s different than are you happy or not 0 to9 net promoter score any comments for us like people are just going to say none but if you ask the question in a different way that requires them to think about their own history with you you can sometimes get more gold in the river super insightful Jay Val you have another question too we do and I love this because I feel like Mark’s question was more on the customer side and Francis is asking more internally how do I change colleague Behavior to be more open to adopting advocacy strategies I’ve run a lot of those programs for Brands and it’s a really good question because if you don’t already believe that customer advocacy creates Revenue someone’s GNA have to either convince you or prove it to you and the convincing side is much more difficult because you’re asking somebody to change their beliefs about what drives Company Success and that’s often hard to do so the way to make this happen is to just start with one or two just find one or two Advocates customers that love you disproportionately activate them in some way whether it’s having them speak at a conference or having them having the customer write an email to other customers or or whatever just some sort of small assignment and then doesn’t cost a bunch of money or anything and then Dem straight to the recalc people on your team like look at what happened when we just had one customer participate imagine if we had a hundred and there are some things that you can use to butress that point there’s plenty of data I’ve got a whole book about it but but I think everybody knows this to be true but again they don’t run their business as if it were true we trust people more than we trust logos period so the more you can get people telling your story instead of your logo telling your story the better off you’ll be and I think we all know that but because it’s sometimes a little bit more amorphous than just buying an ad or hiring a salesperson sometimes when we try to build these programs people on our teams like ah it’s too confusing it’s too hard right and and it’s not confusing or hard it’s it’s just not it’s just not TurnKey in the in the way that other sales and marketing programs can be thank you I love that question and and Jay well done so it’s essentially start small see some success and scale from there that sounds like great advice yeah don’t risk it don’t don’t risk it by spending a bunch of money and and then what if it doesn’t work or or you run it wrong and now you now you are dead in the water right so so yeah don’t don’t make it scary is the the best advice entirely so like I know that the clock is ticking here so I want to get to a few more questions so a lot of conser Brands leverage celebrities for differentiation in B2B we see see this with Brands aligning themselves with influencers or even creating the chief evangelist role are these proven strategies are you seeing that H work in businesses Jay in the B2B sense well certainly working in the tequila business I can tell you that some of you may be familiar with George Clooney who famously is the co-founder of KAS Amigos tequila which went from nothing went from literally a startup to now the third most popular Tequila in the world so can celebrity Power success it can and and and and you can’t swing a cat which I don’t recommend in any case but you can’t metaphorically swing a cat without hitting a celebrity power tequila brand now because it solves a lot of problems right it solves a marketing problem it solves a distribution problem solves a sales problem solves an awareness problem so yes you you absolutely can can be successful and and I think in B to be many many brands have been really effective more so with the evangelist quote unquote thought leader expert program which is maybe a little spin on on true celebrity but but even exact target where you and I first first met Chip was was really good at activating thought leaders in the email marketing Community back in the day many many businesses Can can use that technique I think the problem is that companies who haven’t done it before even if they can find the right expert or customer or influencer or they don’t know what to ask them to do what I mean Chip it’s like I feel like I feel like the problem is okay we’ve got these people how do we actually put them into the game that often becomes the the the the missing ingredient in the program and and you and I have worked on a lot of programs like this together in our shared past it’s it’s not that hard it’s just once you kind of get into the idea of okay well we can have them make content we can have them amplify content we can have them talk to specific customers once you understand the roles that somebody like that can play the whole process gets a lot easier and maybe you need somebody like Sammy Hagar right who who started a tequila brand and he’s a rockar and so he’s certainly not shy but he probably makes more off of his tequila than he does from Van Halen’s recordings but anyway so I know eventually yeah probably not today not today but if they sell that brand yes if they sell that brand absolutely for sure yeah so I think we got another question Val is that right yeah guys if you are in the position to have a chief evangelist this question is is that somebody that is hired from outside or is it someone that maybe comes through the ranks of your organization I think it can be either it’s usually somebody who is hired because their credibility in whatever category you’re operating in is often developed outside of the opes of your specific company right so I have been not the chief evangelist but I have been an evangelist for a nber of Brands including insightly but but that is based on expertise and reputation that was built over a nber of years across a nber of specific subcategories of of B2B so usually it’s somebody who who gets known and and then you sort of lasso them into your organization but it can be true val that it works the opposite so for example my good friend Scott Monty many years ago was the chief evangelist for Ford Motorcars he was the head of social media and the chief evangelist for Ford and he was just a Ford employee that that was really really good at Social media and understood how evangelism works in the Modern Age and so he just became that person so it is possible I have to tell you that’s that’s why recently we wanted to get Anthony Smith our CEO and founder on camera because he is a natural evangelist for our brand and I’m really excited to see more and more of Anthony in front of the camera because it just pours out of him his his love for insightly so we may to that exactly maybe the next in slightly live so we’re running with his scissors here folks so thanks for sticking with us and

Val are we to that point in the show where we’re gonna make a cocktail?

Val: yeah I know everyone’s excited to see who our giveaway winner is and to make a cocktail but let’s do a quick commercial for insightly first Chip will you do the honors?

Chip: insightly is the modern scalable CRM that teams love it’s easy to adopt very customizable and integrates easily with every other application you use to run your business we hear from customers that they are fully up and running in just weeks and growing Revenue up to 300% in less than a year customers also tell us that they are able to significantly improve key sales metrics using insightly increasing pipeline sales velocity deal size and deal predictability they also love how customizable the dashboards and Reporting are as you can see on the screen here they can easily share company performance with leadership and with the rest of the company in a way that’s consistent and easy to understand they’ve also found that they can improve their team’s efficiency and reduce errors with Advanced workflow automation insightly is extremely flexible customizable and grows as your business grows if you’re considering a CRM think you might be overpaying or just want to learn more type demo now and our team will contact you about setting up a personalized demo with insightly as we mentioned you’ll all be getting an email in a few days with this event recording. Now Val back to you!

Val: All right Jay I’ve got my ingredients here what are we making?

Jay: Okay we’re going to make quick cocktail easy anybody can make this which is why we selected this one it is called the Batanga also some sometimes known as the Charro Negro.

It is essentially tequila and Coke like a rum and coke but with tequila which I know some of you like gross tequila and Coke? Trust me on this this is a marvelous drink okay and so easy to make.

So what you do grab a glass put some ice in it do that perfect. Use some tequila we’re use TC craft Blanco for this Blanco which is the unaged one couple ounces 5 ounces all the ounces do you.

Val: I pour with my heart

Chip: Exactly you’ve been working hard I feel like you should.

Val: Yeah well Chip’s my boss so whatever Chip says I can do!

Jay: Chip’s not even there! yeah exactly so then you top it off ideally with the with the Mexican Coca-Cola and there is a difference the Mexican Coca-Cola is made with cane sugar as opposed to high fru corn syrup so it is a little different flavor so if you can find it you might have go to a Latino Market the Mexican Coca-Cola.

Val: Jay I’m an overachiever and I did go to my local Tienda and get the Mexican Coke so I’m on brand.

Jay: Kudos – yeah nicely done I appreciate that. And then like squeeze like maybe half a lime lime okay some folks like a little more lime than a little less but yeah I go half a lime in my Batangas and you do ideally want to serve it in a tall glass like that.

Val: Okay I got my lime in there.

Jay: I would I would go one more lime one more lime.

Val: okay hang on I got to do some cutting.

Jay: or one more half lime

Val: Yeah okay hang on when top of when the top of it I mean I’m not a bartender I I freely admit that .

Jay: Oh you’re doing great maybe I’ll just squeeze it hang on yeah that’s fine.

Val: We’ll go old school.

Jay: Yeah that’s perfect okay and and then and then you stir it with a with the knife okay that’s the tradition you stir it with a knife you cut the limes with and then throw in a pinch of salt Just A Pinch Just A Pinch.

Val: Okay I got rock salt I hope that’s okay. I feel like I need a little more ice hang on do a little more ice and then I have an orange straw because I’m nothing if not on brand.

Jay: oh love it okay yeah the the the winner of the gway is gonna get orange straws nice okay and then I’m just going to garnish with the lime how’s that go for it Batanga perfect.

Val: am I allowed to sip it Chip?

Jay: have a sip I’ve got one I’ve been drinking tequila this whole time

Val: oh actually it’s really quite nice it’s very good it’s it’s like a Rum Coke but it’s just it’s just a little different

Jay: it’s got just a little more pop to it because the Tequila’s just got more flavor and it’s less sweet than a ram and Coke because theila is less sweet as a beverage than r so I find r and coke to be very cloying and very sweet Batanga not nearly as much.

So the one the one ratio you want to figure out your own personal preference is how much lime but other than that you nailed it now perfect

Val: Well I think my lime is perfect this is definitely going to be on my on my list things to order well let’s give oh let’s talk about some other tequila tips you have Jay because I know you said something about different glasses for sipping tequila is that correct?

Jay: yeah I mean we could obviously do like five hours of just tequila stuff on this show but we won’t today at least a couple of things one when you’re smelling tequila if you’re just gonna sip tequila like this is a a tequila it’s the TC craf here this is going to blow your mind B it’s probably going to gross you out so when you’re when you’re trying to smell it right you should actually open your mouth because 80% of what we perceive as flavor is actually Aroma your olfactory receptors are much much stronger than your taste buds in terms of how it wires to your brain so of course there’s olfactory receptors in your nose that’s kind of what a nose is for but fun fact there are also olfactory receptors in the back of your throat that are wired a little differently so when you smell something if you actually open your mouth you will get much more sense of the aroma and it actually really opens it up and so when you’re trying to to do a wine tasting a a bourbon tasting a tequila tasting anything of that nature if you open your mouth which does look a little weird you will actually get a much better sense of of what it actually smells like so there’s there’s one little tip there

Val: Jay that really works I got to tell you it’s like much much more full smell when I open my mouth and sniff so that’s crazy that’s crazy.

Chip: I I knew this was coming Jay and so I actually sampled a I sampled a Batanga last week at our sales kickoff but I I I do love it again who created this Jay who was the who was the creator of the Batanga?

Jay: The the Batanga was actually created by this gentleman right here Don Javier Delgado who unfortunately passed away three years ago. He invented this cocktail at his bar which is called ‘La Capia’ which means ‘the chapel.’ It’s a very far in the town of tequila. The reason tequila is called made the town tequila Guadalahara in Jalisco, Mexico.So that the beverage is named for the town so you know in a parallel universe, tequila could have been called or something but but it’s not it’s it’s called it’s called tequila and Javier made this. You can see him Val he’s actually stirring the Batangas with the knife as I said.

Chip: Hey Val let’s give away some prizes!

Val: All right let’s do it. So we’re going to bring up our wheel of names. If you registered for our event today and you your you will see your first name and initial on the wheel of names. We’re going to spin the wheel and we’re going to give away that first Prize Package which is the eight-year aged anejo and the trucker hat let’s see who who comes up. This is so exciting. I feel like Vanna White. And the winner of the prize pack is Luis R. Luis congratulations. That’s so exciting. We’re going to spin two more times because we have two lucky winners that going are going to win an Insightly prize pack. You’re going to get a water bottle like the one I have here and a nice insightly t-shirt to take home. If your name is called by the way, we’ll reach out to you. Don’t put any personal information in the on the chat. We’ll find you. Our first Insightly prize pack winner is Dan C. Congratulations Dan. And one more spin. Again, I know it’s not a tequila prize pack you guys but an Insightly t-shirt and a water bottle…pretty darn great! So and let’s see who this third winner is it is Jamie T! Congratulations to all of our winners. Guys we’ve run out of time and I am ready to enjoy this drink. If your qu question wasn’t answered someone from our team will reach out to you directly this week. I would like to thank Jay and Chip and all of you for joining us. Cheers! Thanks so much.

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