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October 1, 2025 41 mins
Braedi DeLong (COO, The Sales Collective), on how understanding your B2B buyers can drive predictable growth. Braedi explained why the outdated “spray and pray” approach is no longer effective, and emphasized the need for targeted, intentional marketing. She expanded on the importance of clearly defining a realistic Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and understanding stakeholder dynamics.
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(00:00):
Many marketing and sales teamsout there miss the mark with
potential prospects because theyfocus on products and features
instead of the customer's painpoints and key challenges, both
teams need to be more aligned interms of how they can help
transform the customer'sbusiness by addressing their
pain points. So how canunderstanding your B2B buyers
drive true business growth.Welcome to this episode of the

(00:23):
B2B Marketers on a Missionpodcast, and I'm your host,
Christian Klepp. Today, I'll betalking to Braedi DeLong, who
will be answering this question.She's the CEO of The Sales
Collective who helps companiesbuild successful sales teams.
Tune in to find out more aboutwhat her mission is. Off we go.

(00:44):
I'm gonna say Braedi DeLong,welcome to the show.
Thank you for having me.
So great to have you on, Braedi.We had such an amazing pre
interview conversation in spiteof some hiccups, right? I'm just
gonna leave it at that. But I'mreally looking forward to this
conversation, because folks aregoing to ask me this, or they
usually do. They're like, Wait,hang on a second. Christian,

(01:06):
isn't your show about B2Bmarketers, so why do you have a
sales person on the show? Well,I think that for at least in my
opinion, and from my experience,it makes perfect sense to get
sales people involved in B2Bmarketing, but we're gonna dive
right in, and I'm really lookingforward to discussing this with

(01:27):
you.
Same and we both hold such abelief about the core value of
aligning sales and marketingbecause they are part of the
revenue team.
Absolutely, absolutely okay, soBraedi, you're on a mission, I'm
gonna say, to help B2B companiesto build scalable, winning sales
teams. So for this conversation,I'd like to focus on the

(01:48):
following topic, which I thinkis really important. It's how
understanding your B2B buyerscan drive true business growth.
So I'd like to kick off thisconversation with two questions,
and I'm happy to repeat them. Sothe first question is, why do
you think it's so important forB2B marketers to understand who
the organization's customers andbuyers are? And number two,

(02:09):
where do you see most marketingteams struggle regarding the
above?
Yeah, it's a great question. Sowhen it comes to understanding
your buyers, there's so manymarketers and sales
organizations alike that deploywhat is known as the spray and
pray strategy, where if we justget really high awareness, the

(02:32):
customers will kind of come andtrickle down out of that really
high awareness. And there's it'sa bit of a fallacy in both
organizations that if you justgain a considerable awareness
that the business will generate,that it creates an excessive
cost of customer acquisition,the amount of work and effort it

(02:54):
takes to get that awarenessmachine, and it doesn't help you
create a actual dialed in,scalable structure or system. So
a lot of times, we're reallywasting resources and efforts
across the full spectrum of therevenue machine, because we just
haven't dialed in. Who are ourbuyers, who are our ideal

(03:14):
customers? What do they looklike from a company perspective,
who are the actual buyingpersonas that can purchase our
our stuff. Where do they comefrom? From a campaign level? So
as we think about like creatingsustainable business growth,
understanding who your buyersare is really at the core of

(03:35):
creating a healthy businessmodel. And I know I said a lot
in that statement with very fewwords. But there, there's a this
is one of the biggest fallaciesin the revenue engine, is
understanding how that createssustainable business.
Absolutely, absolutely. And Icouldn't agree more. I mean
this, this spray and pray. It'sinteresting that you still see

(04:00):
day in, day out, whether it's onLinkedIn or in your inbox,
people that still subscribe tothis school of thought, and I
can't claim credit for this,because many people have
mentioned it on LinkedIn. Youdon't even see SDRs (Sales
Development Representative) orBDRs (Business Development
Representatives) like reachingout to you in a passive,
aggressive way. They reach outto you in an active, aggressive

(04:20):
way. And let me give you anexample. If they send you an
email saying, hey, Braedi, youknow, your profile caught my
attention. And love what you'redoing at the sales collective,
although they have no idea whatit is, you actually do, cue
sales pitch, then you ignorethat email. Then they send a
follow up, bumping this, bumpingthis to the top of your inbox.

(04:43):
And I think by the third or thefourth round, then they say
something like, are you actuallythe person that I should be
talking to, or could you directme to the person who's in
charge? I'm like, wow. And youknow, we can sit here and joke
about it, but the reality of itis, it's actually pretty

(05:04):
shocking that there are salespeople out there that think that
that will help them get in thedoor. So what are your thoughts
on that? Like, Why is this stillhappening in 2025?
So I think it's getting worse in2025 to be fair, like as more
and more people move to AI(Artificial Intelligence) and
leveraging AI. AI is reallylimited to just cloning what

(05:26):
it's been trained on. So it'sactually these ineffective
strategies are becoming biggervery the spray and pray is
actually growing because of theaccessibility of the tooling and
it, you know, it's, I had a,actually, it was my, yeah, last
night I got a LinkedInprospecting. And I gave the

(05:48):
person a shot. They sent me aconnection request with a very
thoughtful note in theconnection request. And I was
like, Okay, I'm going to acceptthis one. So I accept it, and I
thank him for his thoughtfulnote. I was like, I recognize
you as a BDR, I know I'm gettingto get some sort of pitch. I
know I'm being prospected. Buthe did the thoughtful work, and
I wanted to reward it. But thenhis next message to me was, what

(06:12):
are the business priorities foryou right now? And because he
sent me the thoughtful note, Idecided. I was like, Okay, I'm
gonna give him a moment of mytime, effort and energy. I'm not
just gonna go ahead and, like,move on with my life.
Sure.
And I was like, I want you tothink about what you just did,
and I want you to think about itin this different social

(06:34):
context. Imagine you met amarried couple at a social
event, and you just introducedyourself and learned their
names. I'm like, Are you withme? And he's like, yeah. It's
like, I want you to imagine yournext question to them after you
met Beth and Jeff, that you go,are there any problems in your

(06:56):
marriage?
Yeah.
And I'm like, how skeeved out?Do you feel right now. And he
was like, very uncomfortablewith that question. And I was
like, you just did that to me.You just did the business
version of that to me. And I'mlike, so let's rewind the tape.
How do you help organizationsand what domain do you play in?

(07:19):
And it was funny, and it'srelevant for here. He was like,
I sell marketing services. Like,okay.
Yeah.
You know, it's like, it's justso interesting. And I was like,
so you don't need to know aboutmy business priorities. You need
to understand my marketingpriorities, right? They're

(07:41):
different. Like, you're not hereto help me with product
development. You're not here tohelp me with accounting. You're
not here to help me with like,an ERP (Enterprise Resource
Planning) system. You sellmarketing services, so you don't
need to know my businesspriorities. You're here to ask
about my marketing prioritiesand whether or not I have enough
resources to achieve them. AndI'm like bringing the human back
into that area engagement. It'sjust fascinating to me, how few

(08:06):
people know how to do it, knowhow to do it well. And it's like
everybody is operating off ofthe same bad playbook, including
marketing.
100% 100% so on top of whatyou've just mentioned, and that
is a great example, by the way,on top of what you've just
mentioned, what are some otherpitfalls that B2B marketers need

(08:28):
to look out for, and what shouldthey be doing instead?
So one of my favorite phrasesfor marketers in particular is
reframing how they think aboutmarketing. So most marketers out
there think all marketing isgood marketing, all awareness is
good awareness. This has beenkind of a long term belief in

(08:50):
marketing and in publicrelations, right? Like all play
time, all exposure, it's allgood. I like to train marketers
that if it's not working foryou, it's working against you.
This is a very hard concept fora lot of marketers to accept,
and the way I like to thinkabout kind of litmus testing my
marketing is okay if I'm goingto invest $20,000 into this

(09:14):
particular campaign, would I geta stronger return on investment.
If I took $20,000 put it in atrash can, lit it on fire, and
posted it to YouTube. If theanswer is yes, it's not a good
campaign. And that's where I gointo if it's not working for

(09:36):
you, it's working against you.And you need to know what
actually is working for you, andthe only way to know that is to
work with your sales team,because you need to understand
what leads are generating yourhappy healthy customers. And I
say that on purpose, happyhealthy customers, not what
leads go into refund risk,right? What leads create? Your

(10:00):
happy healthy customers. Whatefforts generated those happy
healthy customers? Can you putyour finger on defining those
happy healthy customers, thepeople that you serve
extraordinarily well that keepcoming back to you, that keep
you as their vendor, happyhealthy long term customers.
That's how you have a happyhealthy business.
Absolutely, absolutely. And itwas another friend of mine who

(10:24):
was also a guest on this podcastwho said that bad clients are a
false economy.
that and then write that down.Bad clients are false economy.
It's true.
True when you think about it,right?
The success teams of the worldthink about that all the time
marketers and sales people thinkabout revenue, they very rarely

(10:46):
think about profit. They veryrarely think about refund risk,
right? They think about thefirst top line, but they don't
have the full cycle and businessacumen to understand the
Right, right. And going back tothis, bad clients are a false
downstream effect of, ooh, whathappens if you sell a customer

(11:06):
economy analogy. It's, I mean,if you think about it, right,
on a feature you don't actually have.
like, even if the money's good,they are going to drain your
Yeah, the I actually was justconsulting with a business last
team, right? They're going todrain your team. The team's
month and sitting down with theleadership team, and it was a
going to be demotivated. Andthen fast forward to contract
really interesting conversationwhere they had kind of
renewal. The chances of renewingmight be fairly slim, but at
expressed, or alluded to a bitof customer churn. And I was

(11:27):
that point, at that point, thecompany is going to be like, You
just kind of like time out,like, let's talk about the
know what?
customer churn. How significantis the customer churn? And as
they described the situationthey were in, it was very
apparent to me that they have aproduct problem. And their sales

(11:51):
team, they hit the gas onscaling revenue before they hit
the gas on the product. And thesales team sold the product
based on the product roadmap,not the reality. Well, guess
what? The customers werepromised something that they
never got delivered. None ofthem renewed. They were looking

(12:15):
at a 60 to 70% customer churn,and 100% of their enterprise
business was churning out. And,you know? And so it was
fascinating, because we weresitting there, and I don't
remember my exact words, but Ibasically was like, there's
three strategies in business.And I actually got this from a

(12:39):
movie years ago. And I was like,I'm going to remember that
right, be the first, be thesmartest, right? Or be the best,
is kind of category two orcheat. And I was like, and I
know, cognitively, nobody inthis room mentally wanted or or
perceived themselves asselecting the cheat box, but

(13:04):
it's what you did functionally,you know. And it was kind of
this moment where everybody'sjust kind of like hard, hard
news to absorb, but that's whatwe did when we hit the gas. Like
the marketing team went theylike, took the new go to market

(13:24):
out into the world. A Sales Teamsold on the new go to market,
but product didn't actually havethat as a reality yet. This is
the key of like it is. It isfalse economy. It's absolutely
false economy.
It's interesting. And nobody,nobody was clued in on that,

(13:45):
like nobody was aware that this,this, this solution didn't exist
yet when they took it out.
You know, I think that there issometimes some awareness. I
think we often convinceourselves like, Well, maybe it's
good enough that they won'tleave, but they'll maybe, if we
build enough of a relationship,the customers will tolerate it

(14:06):
longer. I think we it's reallyeasy to kind of tell ourselves
lies. You know, it's like weconvince ourselves of certain
things, and it's just notnecessarily true. And at the end
of the day, your buyers havebusinesses to run. We don't buy
products, right? We buysolutions to problems. That's
what we buy. Everything we buyin life is a solution to a

(14:28):
problem, or at least ourperceived solution to a problem.
If your solution doesn't solvethe problem, it was built like
intended to solve and the reasonit was purchased, your customers
have no loyalty to you. Theyhave a loyalty to solve that
problem.
That's a, that's a, absolutelyright, absolutely right. So for
the next question, and I knowthis could be a little bit

(14:51):
broad, or it depends on whichindustry or niche you're talking
about, but talk to us about how,from your experience, how have
B2B buyers changed, and howshould that change be reflected
in the company's overallapproach to buyers?
Buyers are gaining higher andhigher distrust, and I don't
think people fully think throughthe trust lens in their efforts.

(15:16):
So a great example is there havebeen a series of marketing
efforts out there that rememberthat those three categories,
right? Be the first, be thesmartest, or cheat, right? The
lie, cheat steal? Well, therehave been so many businesses
that have ticked the lie, cheatsteal box where they've created
false case studies. They've madeup testimonials. They have false

(15:40):
reviews that are highly curated,right? All of these consumer and
sales behaviors there that it'sbecoming harder and harder to
break through the noise becausethey just don't believe it's
true. And it's hard for themarketers as well as the sales
people, to convince people thatthe product is going to actually

(16:00):
be represented correctly,whether that's through your
brand, that's through yourwebsite, that's through your
social and if like, and theydon't necessarily believe the
information, and so they do moredue diligence. They do more deep
dives into it. They do muchlonger sales cycles, much more

(16:20):
internet sleuthing, right? Theyare chomping at the bit for
third party evaluation andtrustworthy third party
evaluation, and that can be veryhard if you're in like the small
and medium sized business space,because you might not have a
Wikipedia page yet. You mightnot have a G2 crowd. You know,

(16:41):
you're still, you're still inyoung, small business, and so it
that is becoming more and morechallenging in how we
communicate with buyers and gainthat trust and credibility in
the community, as well as in ouractual sales cycles.
Absolutely, absolutely. You mademe think about this report that

(17:02):
came out about maybe two years,two or three years ago, and it
was put together by Gartnerabout the B2B buyers journey.
It's probably changed sincethen, because, you know, a lot
of things just changed soquickly. But one thing that I
took away from looking at thatdiagram, and it's like, oh my
gosh, that's pretty much everyB2B buying engagement that I've

(17:24):
ever encountered. And we allknow that, right? Like, we all
know that the B2B buying journeyis not linear. It's at best,
haphazard, right? Because if youlook, if you, if you remember
this diagram, it's, it's a lotof like defining what the demand
is, so there's the demandtrigger, or what motivated the

(17:44):
need for you to find saidsolution and etc. And then
everybody goes and does theirown research. Then they go and
vet the vendors. And then thevendors, it's not even the
vendors, come in. They, as yousaid, they look at the vendors
website, online. They go and asktheir industry peers and forums
and chat groups, and so there'sa lot of this. There's a lot of

(18:05):
these different channels thatyou can or cannot track, right?
So there's a lot of thisactivity going on. And it really
hammers that point you just madehome in this era, in this time
of great distrust, how do youbridge that gap and re establish
that trust, earn that trust, Ithink might be even the right

(18:27):
phrase.
Well, you know, we see, and thismight, if this is like, kind of
like an unpopular opinion, Iactually see grassroots
marketing gaining traction moreand more right now over digital
marketing like the and that alsoextends into like referral.
People are kind of tired oftrying to go to Google and

(18:47):
getting reliable information,because they know that there's
just so many content, likeentities out there and SEO
experts, and it's just everybodyis paying to play, and so the
information is not reliable, andso you people are not going to
Google Search anymore forreliable information. They're
going to AI tools for reliablethey're deploying the deep dive,

(19:10):
but they're also just doing thevery human thing that we all did
before the wonderful years ofthe internet. They're just going
to trusted professionals andasking them what tools and
systems they like they are,straight up going into just
referral word of mouth. Word ofmouth is gaining excessive trust

(19:32):
because it's the moretrustworthy source than the
digital sources and sograssroots, just being a present
in community, like being live inevents that human referral,
human connection, that isgrowing in trust and
reliability, and the digitalfootprint is reducing trust and

(19:53):
reliability.
Yeah, I mean, I hate to say it,but you're absolutely right. I
mean, I'm seeing these. Patternsas well, right? There was a
period, and most probably partlyalso because of the pandemic and
covid that people went digital.They were trusting more and, or
I wouldn't say, trusting more.They were relying more on online
sources, but partly also becausethey had no other option, right?

(20:18):
But now fast forward three yearslater, to your point, right?
Because what we what I did seehappen, and I'm sure you've seen
some of this as well, that covidput a pause on some of the bad
habits that say that sales andmarketing people had, and then
when, and then when the pandemicwas over, some of these people

(20:38):
reverted to those same badhabits, right? It, there wasn't
a natural evolution, which, youknow, we're all hoping would be
the next logical conclusion,right? That you evolved from
what you did back then, and you,you learn, you relearn and
unlearn. I think unlearn beingthe toughest one of the three,

(20:58):
but you still see people like attrade shows, you know, we'll
give you this free swag. All youneed to do is give us your
details, right? And then,straight away, bam, cold call,
email, letter.
It goes into qualification. Andthis is like an area that I
always look at with sales andmarketing, is, do you have tight

(21:20):
qualification, and that's onboth sides, like, how does
marketing qualify the marketingleads? How are they nurturing
them? The the in that, you know,it obviously connects to, like,
understanding your buyers, butlike, when I look at so many
march marketing nurtures, theydon't understand segmentation.
I'll give you a good example. Soa few years back, we decided to

(21:43):
try doing like a viral highentertainment video, and the
glamor metrics looked amazing,right? It's like, it's being
engaged with, it's beingwatched, it's being shared. All
of the glamor metrics that welook at as marketers to be like,
is this content that'sresonating with people? But I'm
looking at, does it work, right?Because remember, I follow the

(22:03):
rule, if it's not working foryou, it's working against you.
And I'm looking at, is thisgenerating business, and it's
not. So I start putting pressureon my marketing team, and I'm
like, I need you to go deepdive. And they're like, it's
doing great. And I'm like, it'snot, it's not working. Well, it
turns out, when they reallylooked at the details, it was

(22:24):
being watched, engaged andshared with the segment of 18
year olds to around 22 yearolds. And I was like, there you
go. We have created high valueentertainment, right?
Entertainment for a age bracketthat is well outside of our ICP
(Ideal Customer Profile),because we sell to sales leaders

(22:47):
and executives, it doesn't meanit's impossible for sales
leaders to be in executives inthe age bracket. It's just
highly, highly unlikely, and itdoesn't resonate with our
audience. And it was really kindof funny, because, like, the
marketing team, they were like,You're impossible to please. And
I was like, we're not in thebusiness of entertaining college

(23:10):
students. That's not what we'rehere to do. Like and it's this
idea, and it's this piece ofunderstanding the puzzle is goes
loops back to our first part ofthis conversation, which you
need to understand your buyersintimately, like you really need
to have a very dialed in buyer.

(23:31):
Absolutely, absolutely. And Ilove that you ended with that,
because that was a great segueto the next question, right? So
the next question is regardingunderstanding of the B2B buyers,
how can marketing and sales worktogether to define who the
organization's ideal customerprofile is, and what role can

(23:52):
each of these functions play?
Well, this goes down to a lot oflike leadership, right? This is
definitely like a leadershiplike when we work with
customers, one of the firstthings we do is we build the
sales playbook, which involvesdoing the ICP work and really
helping them identify theirbuyer. And a lot of people make

(24:13):
a mistakes with buyers. Theydon't really go with an ideal
customer profile. They start tokind of outline an aspirational
customer profile, like, or theystart to just go broad stroke,
where they're like, Okay, acommon thing you'll see is,
like, all roads lead to the top,so I'm only going to go after

(24:33):
CEOs because they're theultimate decision maker. Well,
that's not a good plan rightthere. Like, they don't
understand foundations of like,discretionary spend and like,
your budget might actually justbe at a department level, and
you don't need to go to theexecutive if you're if your
product is actually not thatexpensive and it's within the
discretionary spend of adirector or manager, the CEO

(24:56):
doesn't really care about that.Like, so that's not that's a
misaligned assignment, becauseyou don't know who your buyer
is. So we teach people and wework with people on who actually
is the typical buyer here in anorganization where does that
discretionary spend reside? Whoare the key stakeholders that
would be part of it? Stakeholdermanagement is one of the top

(25:20):
skills for sales and marketingto learn, because the number of
buyers involved in a purchasehas increased exponentially.
Like years ago, it was, I wantto say, in about 2019 the
average was like 5.4 a few yearslater, it grew to like six or
seven, and then it grew againinto like, the realm of eight.

(25:42):
And remember, because buyersdon't trust it, they're doing
more due diligence, which meansyou now have more stakeholders
because they're doing more duediligence. So like they now do
have highly technical buyers whoare going to go through a
technical validation protocol.You've got your business buyers
that are going to look at thevalue selling and the ROI
(Return on Investment) and it'slike, okay, well, who actually

(26:04):
are your world, like yourstakeholders in this? Who are
the people it affects in theorganization? This is how you
start to understand you, Who'syour ideal customer profile, and
who are the adjacent buyers thatare going to enter the sales
cycle, you can market to all ofthem, like you can sell to all

(26:25):
of them. In fact, you actuallyhave to sell to all of them.
Like, decision by committee is areally, real motion.
Absolutely, absolutely. Andhere's a quick follow up
question, just based on yourexperience. And I know it
varies, right, but there aresome common patterns. Who's in
this buying committee generally?
Depends on the nature of yourbusiness. So think about

(26:48):
different things that you canbuy, like if you sell an ERP,
which is major businessdisruption. It is an invasive
technology. It changes how everyreporting structure, every tool,
right? It's your payroll, it'syour sales force, like
integration, it's everything. Ifyou sell ERP, you're gonna have

(27:12):
a massive stakeholder landscape,because you touch the
organization on anorganizational level. And so you
really are in a highorganizational buy in. You take
marketing services. You're noton an organizational buy in. So
you sell marketing services. Youare in the marketing lane with

(27:33):
some sales. Buy in sales isstill going to have buy in, but
you're really in the marketingso you're really in a department
level, with one adjacentdepartment that's going to have
buy in. They're not necessarilygoing to be your decision maker,
but they're going to have a rolein that decision. I sell sales
training.
I understand my buyer is thesales department, and I'm going

(27:53):
to have two other departmentsthat are going to have buy in. I
understand that marketing isgoing to want buy in because
they want to make sure thattheir leads are being managed
correctly the sales team so theywant to make sure we're training
on things that support that. Andbecause we're a training in
human development, HR is goingto have a stake in that game.
They have a dog in that fight.So I have three departments of

(28:15):
stakeholders that I'm highlyaware I need to manage. Does
finance completely care, right?Your accounting department, your
CFO, might care that you have astrong ROI, if they're, you
know, they might care a bitabout it, but your accounting
department has no, no stake,right? They're not a stakeholder

(28:38):
in this. They don't really careabout this, you know, does your
manufacturing team care aboutNo, it's like they they're not
going to be on that stakeholdermap. So it's understanding, what
does your product touch, whatdoes it influence? What who
might be impacted by that beingimplemented? And anybody that's

(29:00):
going to be impacted by that.They're going to have some level
of influence and vote it's, it'syour selling environment. Your
selling environment is going todictate what that looks like.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that's afair point. That's a fair point.
You brought some of these thingsup already, but like, based,
let's, let's put it into contexthere. Like, based on your
experience, how can, and alsobased on what you've just

(29:24):
explained, right, like you'vegone into very detailed steps on
talking about the differentstakeholders involved in the
buying committee? So how can abetter understanding of that
help marketing to develop salesassets in a toolkit that helps
salespeople overcome objections,address concerns, and gradually
win prospects over. And thesecond one is to your earlier

(29:46):
point, how can that help them togenerate more qualified leads?
So when marketing is equippedwith really understanding that
stakeholder roadmap, it informshow they go to market. So a
great example is I worked with acompany as a blanket company,
and they have, like, the coolestblanket product. It's called
voided, for anybody that likesblankets. And when I first was

(30:10):
working with their marketingteam, they were only marketing
to like the van life community.And so they had this idea that
like, because this blanket wasreally versatile, and it could,
like, it could stuff into apillow so it didn't require
storage. It just became, like asofa pillow that worked really
well for the minimalistcommunity of the van lifers. And

(30:33):
so they were really leaning inthat the van life community
would want this blanket. And Iwas like, I don't think so,
because they don't have a lot ofextra space, they are
minimalist. Like, how essentialis this blanket? And, like, does
it replace their actual bedding?No, it's an adventure blanket,
right? It's for the outdoors.And I was like, I don't think

(30:56):
you've got the right customerprofile that you're marketing
to, and I don't think you'remarketing to them in the correct
way. And so we started testingaudiences, and I like, we
started taking these blanketsout into community. And I'm
like, This blanket is anexcellent beach blanket because
it's insulated, and if you putit on hot sand, it doesn't have

(31:19):
the heat transfer. So it's aperfect beach blanket, and it's
ripstop, so the sand doesn'tstick to it. It's also
waterproof, so it stays dry. Andwe're like, great beach
campaign. Go right GEO(Generative Engine Optimization)
targeting beach campaign. Whatelse? I'm like, okay, it
actually works pretty well forsnow sports, anybody that's back

(31:41):
country snow sports, becauseagain, it's insulated, it's a
barrier, and it's packable, andit's light, right? And so we
just keep testing audience afteraudience. How does this get used
by the human and who's going touse it in what capacity? So we
can leverage that in marketing.What problem does this blanket
necessarily solve? We figuredout it was perfect for hammock

(32:05):
camping. Was the perfect hammockcamping blanket because it has
snaps and it creates, like abivvy. And I was like, All
right, oh, photo shoot, right,showing its utilization in a
camping environment. So it'sreally like every single
campaign was curated arounddifferent types of groups and
how they would use this and howthis would help them. That's

(32:28):
really the core of whatmarketing needs to be.
So we didn't show the beachcampaign to the Mountain Group.
They don't have beaches, right?So when you think about B2B,
right? That's a B2C example, butB2B is not that different. We
over complicate this stuff, likeI understand on my stakeholder

(32:51):
roadmap. HR cares about theeducational validity of my
training. So they're a technicalbuyer. They care about the
education they want, like whenwe do assessments, they want to
know that the data is reliable,right? So they're going to care
about also validity studies,that everything that they're

(33:12):
going to care about is validitystudies, and they're going to
care about culture. So Iunderstand HR when it comes to
sales training and salesdevelopment and all of our
efforts. They want to make surethat the assessment is lock
tight science. They're going towant to make sure that the
training is lock tight science,and they're going to make sure
that everything that we'retraining is perfectly aligned

(33:34):
with the culture, because thoseare the things that we affect in
their responsibility bucket Ican market to that.
Fantastic, fantastic. All right,Braedi, you've, um, you've given
us so many tips and so manyrecommendations. And if I'm just
going to put it this way, ifsomebody's out there that's
listening to this conversation,who's going through this

(33:57):
challenge right now, becausethey're maybe they need to
review their understanding ofthe B2B buyer, and if they're
listening to this conversation,then there are three to five
things you would advise them todo right now to deal with that
right not not in six months, notnext year, like right after
listening to this interview,what would that be?

(34:19):
Work on your ideal customerprofile, and really start to
look at, is this aspirational?Is this a guess? Is this real?
And how should you be segmentingit? So, like a great example of
working with a startup right nowthat their ICP was super
aspirational, they were likeanybody above 50 million we can
serve. That's way too broad.That is way too broad. That is

(34:43):
not like, you're a startup. Youdon't have the product maturity.
You are not ready, enterpriseready. Do not fool yourself into
thinking you're enterpriseready. I'm like, we're going to
shrink that. So if your ICP,like is billions of people or
millions of companies, you'retoo broad. It's not your ideal

(35:03):
customer profile, it's youraspirational profile.
So a great example of what's onour ideal customer profile, our
ideal customers care aboutsustainable revenue, right, and
sustainable business. Soremember, they're not in the
lie, cheat, steal category, andkind of a wild card. We know our

(35:29):
ideal customers are people whocare about a culture of
excellence, and that is part oftheir culture. When they have a
culture of excellence, they area perfect client fit, because we
only teach sales excellence, wedon't teach lies cheats, we
don't teach little tactics,right? So we understand that
people that value a culture ofexcellence that's on our ideal

(35:50):
customer profile, if you don'tvalue a culture of excellence,
nothing that we're doing isgoing to be reinforced or
enforced appropriately andeffectively. We know this. So
evaluate your ideal customerprofile, and don't confuse it
aspirational.
Right, right, right. Well,that's some fantastic advice.
And for those of you out therethat you, if you haven't done

(36:12):
this already, please, pleasework on your ideal customer
profile. And if you're not surewhether it's the correct one or
not, um, you can reach out toBraedi.
That's true. We do this. Our wehave a VP of process, and he's
he works wonderfully withclients, where he creates the
sales playbook and does theresearch and the investigation

(36:34):
to hand you a customer profile,as well as a whole bunch of
other documents to make surethat you you're equipping both
your sales and marketing teams effectively.
Fantastic, fantastic. All right,Braedi, get up on your soap box
here a status quo in your areaof expertise that you

(36:54):
passionately disagree with. Andwhy?
A status quo? Well, I think wekind of talked about it at
first, right? They spray andpray. I loathe the spray and
pray. I have seen businessesfail because their spray and
pray model bled them dryfinancially and led them to

(37:16):
bankruptcy. Because, guess what?You can't have like, a $10,000
cost of customer acquisition tosell a $5,000 tool. So that is
the status quo I really wish Icould get rid of in the market.
Is the spray and pay it is. It'staking down good businesses
every day, and it's just notnecessary.

(37:40):
100% agree with you there also,because I told a client two
years ago to please not do that,right? Because they were going
to hire a lead gen agency andthey were going to prospect like
this, many clients a week and Itold them, like, please don't do
that. You guys are you knowyou're selling complex web
solutions. That's not how you'regonna get clients. And he said,

(38:03):
he basically said, well, thanks.I'm just gonna go ahead and do
it my way. And a year, fastforward, a year later, let's
just say that, like, to yourpoint, the results were just
like, below satisfactory interms of closing, which, which
completely, which didn'tsurprise me at all, right, but
it's, it's to your point. It'scrazy. How many people are still

(38:26):
subscribing to this spray andpray approach and only believe
in it.
I probably get 100 prospectingemails per day. I think I get
maybe one per month. That's notspray and pray.
Yeah. I believe it. I believeit.
It's abysmal.
Yeah. Okay, Braedi, two morequestions before I let you go.

(38:47):
All right. So here comes thebonus question. So was having a
look around on your LinkedInprofile, and you mentioned that
you believe people should neverstop evolving so, and obviously
part of this evolution includeslearning. So what's one learning
goal you've set for yourselfthis year?
Ooh, I set a lot of learninggoals for myself, just one. So

(39:13):
one of my learning goals isalways to get at least one piece
of learning that is outside ofmy domain. I believe in
diversity of thought.
Yes.
And it's sometimes we can getvery into, like a silo. So like,
if you only learn and engagewith sales content, there's a

(39:35):
ton of learning and other areasthat relate to the profession.
So one of my learning goals isalways to make sure that I'm
learning something that isoutside of the sales and
marketing domain, and that I'msharpening those tools. So like
one of my favorite people and Iactually have it's my next book
that I'm reading about, ToddRose is one of my favorite

(39:58):
thought leaders, and. And he's,he runs the department for like,
brain science, wow, yeah, at aHarvard University. Brilliant,
brilliant. But his contentinspires me more than any other
content, any other thoughtleadership from like, sales and
marketing. So one of my goals isalways to make sure that I'm not

(40:19):
getting tunnel vision.
Yeah, yeah, no, that's, um,that's a really great way to
look at it, because I try to dothe same, like I try to read
things that are non marketingrelated, and try to think about
how that can apply in myprofessional life, or, you know,
in anything that I'm doingthat's work related. I even, I
think maybe was it last lastwinter, um, when we had that

(40:43):
really bad snowstorm up here inToronto, I was while I was, you
know, trying to dig ourselvesout of all that snow, I was
thinking about, like, how thiscould apply to B2B marketing,
somehow, right?
Yeah, I mean, it's, it does.It's a related field, right?
When you're in marketing andyou're in sales, you are in the
business of humans.

(41:04):
Absolutely, absolutely.Braedi,this is such a fantastic
conversation, and I reallyenjoyed it. Thanks so much for
coming on and for sharing yourexperience with the listeners.
Please. Quick intro to yourself,and folks out there can get in
touch with you.
Yeah. Well, thankfully, with aname like Braedi. I'm the only
person on the planet to havethis name with this spelling. So

(41:26):
I'm very easy to find. But youcan find me at The Sales
Collective, so that'shttps://thesalescollective.com/
you can also find me onLinkedIn, where I try to share
at least once a week someknowledge and tidbits to help
the revenue machine. So yeah,but I'm very easy to find.
Fantastic, fantastic. Braedi,once again, thanks for coming

(41:47):
on, take care, stay safe andtalk to you soon.
Likewise, thanks for having me.
All right. Bye for now.
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