Transcript
WEBVTT
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Welcome back to be tob growth.
I'm Logan lyles with sweet fish media.
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I'm joined today by Jason Van de
Boom. He's the founder and CEO over
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at active campaign. Jason, welcome
to the show, sir. Thanks for
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having me. Absolutely, Jason.
We like to get to know our guests
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a little bit, and one of
the things I think has been interesting in
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this you know, pandemic era.
Have you picked up any new hobbies or
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any new habits during this time of
quarantine and self isolation that have been kind
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of fun or interesting or surprising?
Yeah, so I've started to grow a
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lot of different vegetables and things like
that, with varying levels of success,
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but previous to the pandemic it was
not something I did at Allso enjoying that
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though. Yeah, okay, very
cool. I didn't know if you were
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going to say growing a beard.
I didn't know where you are going with
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growing and then vegetables. That's awesome, very cool. So, Jason,
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we're going to be talking about your
journey at active campaign and finding the right
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approach between self serve and a real
high touch sales model. Now some organizations
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just based on who they serve and
where their product or service fits. They
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might have a very clear path in
we need to go product led or we
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need to go very custom high touch
sales model. But for a lot of
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us there's usually this wrestling, there's
this debate and you have experience kind of
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swinging of the pendulum from one side
of the other and found something that has
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worked for you guys. Before we
get into the specifics of what that's looked
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like, why is this something that
you think a lot of organizations wrestle with
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and what were some of the components
of wrestling with that in your own journey?
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Yeah, I think it's a perception
of there's a right way of doing
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things, meaning sometimes there's this perception
of high touch, often accompanied by move
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up market, and that equal success
for an organization, when really you know
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that that does not equal to success, perhaps for your business. Also the
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idea of being product led. So
my background is very much it was engineering
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going into product and I really held
on to that as like there needs to
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be in product led. Is this
like pure way of thinking of things?
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Bringing in human touch or human components
to the sales process or something means that
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you failed and I think that's a
huge fallacy. And and when I talk
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internally with our team and whatnot,
I really try to focus on let's we're
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not a product first, product led
company where customers company and sounds kind of
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cheesy at first, but like,
when you start digging into that of like
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how you operate and how do you
find the right pieces and balance, it
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changes things a lot. Like when
we were only ten people or so back
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in the day, I always thought
like I'll never have a sale. Say
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we're going to figure this out.
Every business as a sales team, though,
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unless you literally don't talk to your
customers right, like so someone is
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playing the role of sales at some
point or you're just not answering questions,
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one of the two. So going
through this figuring out like what different way
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of building a sales team, and
maybe it doesn't end up all that different
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compared to what's out there, but
figuring out how do you blend that into
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like what you value? I think
you still get the elements and then portant
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pieces of being product led, but
you put the focus on what matters the
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most, your prospect your customer.
I love that. I know in previous
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conversation we talked a little bit about
the way you guys have have changed those
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human touches from your sales team.
I want to circle back to something you
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said. They're, maybe a little
bit later, a different way to build
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a sales team and I think some
of the things we changed about we'll hit
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on there. But you mentioned this
fallacy that getting away from product led means
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that you're not going to market in
the purest form and adding those sales touches
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means that you've somehow kind of given
up in some way. Why do you
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think that's such a commonly held belief? I think it's the idea of there's
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a way to improve, there's a
way to get efficiency. I think as
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we seek for efficiency is naturally we
look at any sort of human touch point
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as being less efficient. The problem
with that is that ends up being an
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experience at a prospector customer Dosnim and
like being a customer experience automation company.
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It's fascinating to watch both ourselves internally
on our customers, of the way of
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people are wanting to automatic as much
as possible ride for time savings, but
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that over automation that can occur could
really hold back a business and so finding
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that like, yes, how do
you make those touch points? How do
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you make your sales or ups,
your support, your customer success, more
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performant, more informed about how to
personalize when they talk to someone, to
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save them time? But you're really
enabling, using automation, enable both sides
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versus or a place. And and
then I think there's this goes beyond sales
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as well, like if if the
idea of like services is brought up in
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a lot of startups or something like
that, once again it feels like something
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has failed, like you don't need
services, a lot of people would say,
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if the product or platforms good enough. At the same time, services
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can actually help you improve the platform
or product over time in a rather unique
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way and it can give you quite
a bit of differentiation compared to the competition.
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So it's like it doesn't give you
that like nobody's going to congratulate you
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on building out a service as team
or a free services team or something like
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that, but if it's going to
better your business, better the customer experience
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for your prospects and customers, it
can be the right way of doing I
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love that. We just heard from
a CEO of a SASS company whose platform
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is all about automation, that automation
is not the key to everything. I
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just want to make sure that that
wasn't lost on everyone there. I think
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that's a really interesting point, not
just, you know, to be made.
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There's a lot of people saying,
Oh, we've over automated things,
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but from your perspective in to say
that with some definition and I think that
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comes from your experience. So,
before we get to how listeners can really
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think about taking a blended approach and
taking the best from product led and selfserve
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and high touch sales model, what
were some of the bumps in the road
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that you guys saw or some of
the things that caused alarm bells to go
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off for you and your team,
Jason, saying, man, we the
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pendulum swung too far here and it's
causing some negative effects that we didn't really
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foresee. Yeah, it's been interest. So we were starting entirely selfserve.
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Started realizing, through support and what
not, we were doing sales, we
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just were not necessarily doing it very
well. So we decide, okay,
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let's solve that, like this has
been solved before. So we start with
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a couple sales reps and whatnot,
start working in leads had a strong and
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bound volume that we're kind of picking
things off of over time. Makes Sense
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to add in sort of people to
qualify and things like that. Now we're
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starting to eat into that selfserve base. As a product person, that starts
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to make me feel a little uncomfortable, right, like I want to have
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that selfserve. I believe there's buyers
out there that want true self serve and
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that's definitely the case for some.
So for a while there we're looking at
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it and looking through data. Look
like, okay, we're actually touching a
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lot of leads, so we didn't
have to. What was that data?
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What were some of the the indicators
for you that we you were touching leads,
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the dead have to as you put
it. So we were looking at
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like of the of the leads that
are sent to our sales team. What
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leads do we actually not qualify,
do we not actually close or pass along?
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Right? So we're trying to make
our reps more performant. We're trying
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to push more onto self serve as
much as possible. So we identified pockets,
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so different different types of verticals,
company sizes, things like that.
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We thought, okay, like we
are geniuses. We figured it out,
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like there's a segment of customers and
whatnot. We're going to create some selfserve
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flows and whatnot. It'll be fine. So we make that transition. I'd
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say on the sales side it look
like it was working, like our sales
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team have more time for some other
leads and whatnot. Two months in we
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start to see an impact on selfserve
and an odd way, meaning all of
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that outreach, even if it wasn't
a resulting and like a qualified lead or
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even all the time you've been resulting
in the sale, started to create this
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compounding effect of not having that that
human outreach that we couldn't replicate just through
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automation and whatnot, meaning those times
where an SDR or or salesperson would go
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reach out, whether by email,
phone or whatnot. Those pieces, even
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if we didn't get engagement, actually
mattered a lot and started to build up,
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similar to what can occur with a
pound at times as well, where
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you don't see success immediately, it
seems like it's a failed effort for your
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odd building up some sort of brand
equity as part of it. And so
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we realize that and then so we
started to try to figure out like okay,
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take both of those together, find
a little bit of a metal ground.
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And then, while we did that, like what are those touch points
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that were influencing? What can we
automate in terms of from a messaging standpoint,
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the things we can't, like those
personal calls and whatnot, how do
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we just make that more efficient?
And so started building that out, making
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it easier for for reps to focus
on the touch points that they actually had
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to do as individuals and then keep
that that automated sort of nurturing outside of
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it. But it's an interesting wet
thing of you know, you can quickly
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come to conclusions and in that case
it took us a couple months to see.
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It took us a couple months to
correct and while it was fascinating,
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it was that equals four months of
less than what I would have liked in
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terms of sure nurturing those lads.
Yeah, I mean it seems like founders
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and CEOS of your mindset. I
literally just hopped off a call with our
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CEO bill and we were we were
joking about, you know, some plans
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we have and James, our founders, said, well, do you think
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we can get that done tomorrow?
And sometimes it's just like the rest of
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the team cannot quite move as quickly
enough as the vision of the CEO.
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So I like that little insight into
your team that I think replicates some of
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what we experience. What you said
there, though, Jason, that basically
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those those human touch points that were
happening along the selfserve journey that didn't that
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didn't result in a phone call connection, didn't result in an email reply or
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a meeting book to take them down
the sales route. Still having those touches
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led to more conversions on the self
serve and there's two aspects of that I
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think are interesting from our perspective.
One when when we cranked up an outbound
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campaign. You know, we're primarily
inbound generated here at sweet fish, but
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we do some some outbound and we
were prepping for a website overhaul and we
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noticed, okay, at this point, man, our volume really spid.
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Direct traffic and branded search seemed to
be contributing to that. We're like,
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wait, what did we start at
that time that outbound? So outbound can
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actually be you know, so often
outbound is seen as just what is the
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measure of success? Meetings, booked
opportunities, generated. But there is a
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component of outbound if you approach it
the right way, that can actually be
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brand awareness. From from what you
were saying, and I literally have a
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marketing team I'm working with right now
and they said someone on the marketing team
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found a lot of our content around
podcasting, presented that on why and how
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they should do a podcast and said, well, we should look at sweetish.
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So like the inbound content model working
to a tea right. Well,
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the VP of marketing said, Oh, yeah, I've heard of sweet fish
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and where had she heard of us? Not Our content, but she had
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seen an email campaign. She didn't
reply. I didn't book a meeting,
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but we've kind of seen some of
that in our in our own experiences too.
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I think it's a good way,
especially for people that are really product
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led, maybe less have less leaf
and the sales motion things like that.
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Are Probably the same type of people
that are less leaving and like doing a
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bunch of brand marketing or brand advertising
and what that. This is a perfect
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way of you're chipping away at the
brand side of things. You'll get something
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in return. You have to allow
it to maybe not be as much as
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you expect because you know you're getting
something on the brand side. Yeah,
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I love that. There's always that. There's always that tension in marketing worse.
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Right. So let's talk a little
bit about how you guys first change
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the way you looked at and SDRs
impact. And then what did that look
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like? From coaching incentive to to
kind of change the role into what you
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envisioned it to be. Yeah,
so it's it's been interesting, both in
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the way of trying to push on
self serve, but also how do we
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create the right amount of focus?
And so as we've started to dial more
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and more into what what should have
a human touch point, then comes the
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challenge of like what should someone be
focused on, right? And so I
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think instinctively we started thinking about it
as like let's create these limits, so
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leads that we think are of a
certain value will go to an SDR,
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they'll qualify them, it'll move on
to a closer. But then we're actually
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holding back a lot of leads that
are close to transactional but would value from
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a little bit of human touch,
right. And so we started bringing those
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at and then, but how do
you do that? You don't want to
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send it to a closer. So
we were thinking I will let the SDRs
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actually close as well, and so
we did that and then then we started
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steering towards it. While they're really
enjoying the closing part and there's such a
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bounty of leads. They're now they're
overclosing and not so much qualify and whether
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it's from like a more of an
engineering mindset or something. So then we're
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like, okay, let's create a
guard rail, and they they can only
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close up to certain amount and whatnot. Yeah, we do have to.
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We need an if then statement exactly, as if humans work like that.
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Perhaps more importantly, though, it's
like what are we trying to cater to?
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Like, we're trying to cater to
our own efficiencies, right, we're
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trying to cater to our own needs, not the needs of our prospects and
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and customers. And by all of
those different sort of like limits and whatnot,
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it creates tension within the customer experience, especially at that critical moment of
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they're like being introduced to brand and
whatnot. Nobody wants to feel like they've
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got to sell into a certain amount
or be sold into a certain amount or
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they're not good enough for wrapper or
get tossed around like that. So ultimately
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what we ended up doing is now
we allow our stairs to close deals,
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we allow them to qualify deals.
It's actually fairly equally weighted from a quote
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standpoint and whatnot. We scaled up
the team and instead of trying to create
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these like super scientific guard rails,
we're investing more in like how do we
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coach, how do we work with
them and whatnot, and spending more time
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there, while more work on our
side, versus saying like there's limits all
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over the place. From a customer
experience standpoint, it's the right thing to
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do. There's got to be some
art mixed in with the Scienti yeah,
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and then yeah, and I think
all of this, like, I don't
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think most of this would, would
shock a lot of people of like add
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the right amount of human element into
the sales process at the right times and
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whatnot. What's funny those like the
second a sale closes, I think the
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idea of adding a lot of human
touch becomes like a thought. Don't do
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that, like, and I think
that's a huge mess for a lot of
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businesses. Like this is an obvious
are where you can we can utilize sort
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of that personal touch and whatnot.
But after the sale it's just so critical
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to maintain that. I think there's
ways of taking that, those same exact
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concepts and applying it pote because,
like, you don't want to keep finding
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customers, you want to be finding
advocates over time, right, like is
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then that's your growth. MISSIE.
Yeah, I love that. It feels
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like probably three times this week I've
already quoted Joey Coleman's book. Never lose
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a customer again. But it is
just it is such a great framework for
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anyone, whether you're in customer success
or sales or marketing. Right now.
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And and one of the things that
he talks about is, you know,
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the moment that we're ringing the sales
gone, whether that's a you know,
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hand to hand combat deal closed by
an ae or we're looking at all right,
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we've got, you know, ten
selfserve deals that close today or whatever
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it is, the moment that we're
hitting that sales gonge, the customer is
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thinking, did I make the right
choice? I put my neck out here
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to make this decision, whether it's
a CEO of an SMB and they're thinking
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internally, or it's that marketing leader
who says, you know, I convinced
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our team that this was the right
way to go, and now we're going
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to have to go through a transition
and migration implementation. And so when we're
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super excited, our customer is really
at the lowest, most vulnerable point.
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So why wouldn't you put more human
touch right there? It seems to only
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make sense. But we forget about
that disconnect. But I think the human
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touch. People listening to this can't
see me talking with my hands here,
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but I'm pointing together from this high
in this low. How do we connect
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and bring them up? Otherwise,
man, we set ourselves up for churn
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down the road. That, I'll
never be attributed to how they felt during
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onboarding. They'll blame it on something
else, but that'll really be the crux.
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And I think part of that like
flood sort of mindset and over up
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session at times leads you to that
like onboarding has to be automate, automore
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even has to be the product on
boarding, and you should do that that,
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but like find that way to blend
it in, find that way to
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actually provide some free services that are
human assist services, because what I say,
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your compact competition probably won't be able
to even do that or it'll eat
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away at their own revenue if they
even try. So not only are you
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helping kind of build to what you're
talking about, but it gives you a
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competitive differentiation as well. Yeah,
absolutely. We do something very simple in
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onboarding customers here at sweet fish.
Now we are not a SASS company,
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we're a services company, but we
act a lot like SASS company because we
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have a scalable model and a recurring
revenue sort of business. But anyway,
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one of the things that we regularly
do is a new customer comes on board,
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we have five or six members of
the team that are going to be
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involved in their podcast launch film,
a quick twenty five second video. We
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have a process to get that to
our video team. Nothing super fancy,
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but just put some Polish on it
and they get a personalized message from about
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a half dozen people on the sweet
fish team. Probably takes us all told,
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you know, an hour and hour
to do for each new customer,
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and we've had people rave about that
on Linkedin. We've had people say we're
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going to implement something similar, and
so that's just an example. Maybe that's
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not what it looks like for your
organization, but something like that adding that
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human touch to the on boarding.
Now we've systemized that, we've made it
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as efficient as possible. It used
to be just kind of this hodgepodge of
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all right, let's let's do this, let's make it work. Now it
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is a systematic, step by step
process that that kicks off in a sauna
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when we have a new customer sign
up. So it doesn't mean that human
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touch means nothing's automated or nothing's efficient. It's where does the automation stop in
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the human touch begin? Right,
exactly. And if you were too over
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the automate that even further, it'd
be what like an animated version of you
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talk to here, something like.
You would lose that that that quality and
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that wow sort of a fact that
you should be trying to create at every
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touch point. Yeah, it would
be. Hey, Jason, welcome to
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the sweetish family. That's just not
going to work. Guest him do more
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harm than good. It's like,
yeah, that wasn't even worth the worth
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the time, Jason. As we
round it out today, I want to
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see if there's any advice that you
have for folks specifically in that coaching of
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the SDRs. We talked a little
bit about you know you don't want to,
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especially if you're going to a model
where your SDRs are closing and qualifying
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for as. There's a lot of
tension there and things to figure out in
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both the incentives the guard rails.
You don't want the customer to feel like
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well, unless you're over fifty employees, I can't really move you at this
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stage. That's that's the Platinum Club
right and you can't go in there.
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So any final advice for folks in
building that different sort of Sales Development Environment
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and coaching those reps well, even
if it's challenge and I think in some
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bad businesses would be much greater of
a challenge than others, it's worth doing
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for the customer experience. Also thinking
about it as how do you make the
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leads that maybe would have just disqualified
and pushed out or not even addressed?
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Is there a way to make that
like a single call close or something like
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that? Try to get some objectives
for your stars around that that you can
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coach to, but allow a little
bit of blurringess on everything, meaning avoiding
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clear things of like at a certain
contract value size you have to ask that
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is escalated and in that situation you
create discomfort because if the person is ready
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to buy that could actually be in
a hot situation, to force them to
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talk to another person and then you
ultimately turn your closers and to check out
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people, essentially. So allowing that
learning is and allowing it to sort of
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change over time. But just like
it's take whatever efficiencies you're trying to drive
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and just like balance that. And
that's not a very specific action, but
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it's the hardest part of doing that. Yeah, as I summarize it,
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I kind of think of it boils
down to these three things. If you
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are going for this blended approach,
it's going to be all about coaching and
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the qualitative feedback. Number two,
you have to allow for some great area.
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It's not something that you're just going
to you're going to set a formula
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too. And then three, as
much as you can align incentives so that
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the the action that you want is
aligned with the incentive so that you get
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the result that you want. So, I mean, is it fair to
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say that those are kind of the
three main things your advocate dating for Jason,
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and I think then soun up pieces
it go. It goes into like
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if you're growing as an UR,
like if you mash those three things and
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whatapp then you kind of grow through
your sales career and whatnot. So then
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it's all sort of backed up by
action on behalf the company as well.
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Absolutely what. Jason has been a
fantastic conversation man. If anybody listening to
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this wants to learn more about active
campaign, follow along with what you guys
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are doing, or reach out and
stay connected with you personally. What's the
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best way for them to go about
that? This factive CAMPAIGNCOM. Otherwise to
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reach out to me, Jason,
that active campaigncom have it shut. Awesome,
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Jason. Thank you so much for
being our guests on the show today.
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I'll let you get back to growing
those vegetables and and best of luck
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on the next crop, man.
I'll appreciate it. Thanks again. Gary
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v says it all the time and
we agree. Every company should think of
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themselves as a media company first,
then whatever it is they actually do.
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If you know this is true,
but your team is already maxed out and
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you can't produce any more content in
house, we can help. We produced
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podcasts for some of the most innovative
bed brands in the world and we also
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00:22:47.799 --> 00:22:52.119
help them turn the content from the
podcast and the blog posts micro videos and
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slide decks that work really well on
Linkedin. If you want to learn more,
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00:22:55.839 --> 00:23:00.230
go to sweet fish Mediacom launch or
email logan at sweet fish Mediacom