November 21, 2024 • 59 mins
In the new episode of Fullfunnel Live we'll share with Vladimir Blagojevic a live, step-by-step case study of an ABM program for a niche market that you don't normally associate with ABM: real estate.
We invited our client, Amy Loesch, former CMO at CHARLESGATE, a Boston-based real estate company, helping developers and investors market and sell condos, as well market and lease apartment buildings.
Join us to learn and discuss:
- How to influence niche buyers from specific locations who are not active on social
- How to run ABM and nurture buyers in a market with very long cycles (more than 2 years)
- How to create account-specific content and leverage it in sales
- How to create 'solution awareness' with buyers who are used to do things in a certain way, and don't see why they should change
- How we structured the program, tests we did that worked and the lessons learned
RESOURCES
On-Demand B2B Marketing Courses: https://fullfunnel.io/b2b-marketing-courses/
Full-Funnel Insider - A Marketing Newsletter For B2B Marketers: https://fullfunnel.io/marketing-newsletter/
Join our community for B2B marketers - The Trenches: https://trenches.community/
Upcoming events: https://lu.ma/fullfunnel/events
Full-Funnel Marketing Content Hub: https://fullfunnel.io/blog
Vladimir on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladimirblagojevic/
Andrei on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/azinkevich/
Amy Leyh Loesch: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amyleyh/
We invited our client, Amy Loesch, former CMO at CHARLESGATE, a Boston-based real estate company, helping developers and investors market and sell condos, as well market and lease apartment buildings.
Join us to learn and discuss:
- How to influence niche buyers from specific locations who are not active on social
- How to run ABM and nurture buyers in a market with very long cycles (more than 2 years)
- How to create account-specific content and leverage it in sales
- How to create 'solution awareness' with buyers who are used to do things in a certain way, and don't see why they should change
- How we structured the program, tests we did that worked and the lessons learned
RESOURCES
On-Demand B2B Marketing Courses: https://fullfunnel.io/b2b-marketing-courses/
Full-Funnel Insider - A Marketing Newsletter For B2B Marketers: https://fullfunnel.io/marketing-newsletter/
Join our community for B2B marketers - The Trenches: https://trenches.community/
Upcoming events: https://lu.ma/fullfunnel/events
Full-Funnel Marketing Content Hub: https://fullfunnel.io/blog
Vladimir on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladimirblagojevic/
Andrei on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/azinkevich/
Amy Leyh Loesch: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amyleyh/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
This is the Full Funnel B t B marketing podcast,
brought to you by full Funnel dot io Let's Starve.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Live Today were co hosting it with Emmy Losh. Emmy
is a fractional CMO our client company called Charles Gate
and as promised today, we have pretty exciting and I
think one of the most underappreciated topics in account based
(00:37):
market and account based content. Uh. This is what our
team worked very closely with Amy's team and it helped
to contribute to pipeline generation and we would like to
show with you all the process. Feel free to ask
any questions in the chat as always, and Amy, thanks
(00:59):
a lot for jinuine.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Me absolutely, Andre, thank you so much for having me.
It's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Let us know, guys, why you all joining us from
Let us know in the chat. I saw Leslie from Nashville.
Good to see you. Any value based.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
In Austin, Texas.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
I'm broadcasting from Villareal, Valencia, which is not that signing
these days, so curious to survey all guys from Uh
your MONEYA from India, got to see your Natalia from Italy,
got to see you again. Cool. We have a pretty
international audience today, Kira Toronto, Good to see you, and
(01:43):
just to let you know, my Dia, co founder of what,
will join us in a second. So to give everybody
a little bit of background, Charles Gate is not a
tech company. And obviously whenever we talk about account based
market and everybody thinks about tech space, either service based
(02:05):
companies or software as a service, right, Charles Gate is
in real estate. This is definitely an industry that you want.
As I said, account based marketing. That being said, this
is why we worked on the deal sizes are really high,
the sales cycles are very long, and this is why
(02:26):
you need to take consultative approach. This is not the
space where you can just run a bunch of programmatic
display ads and send outbound emails and steroids. Right, So
this would be our entire genda for today. And first
of all, m maybe you can just start with a
quick interest share on what Charles Gates does and your
(02:48):
ideal customer profile, your role and also mentioning Chief Outsiders
where you.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
Also sure sure, so thanks again for having me. Great
to see you, lad.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
Yes, so I'm fractional CMO, so I work for Chief Outsiders.
We're a national consulting firm of over one hundred and
twenty former heads of marketing and heads of sales worked
over eighty different industries, you know, across our company, and
we work with CEOs and leadership teams to help them
drive growth strategies and you know, whatever their their business
(03:20):
problems are. So we actually sit on leadership teams and
but work.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
In a fractional capacity.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
So I've been doing that with Charlesgate now for two
and a half years.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Charlesgate is a full service real.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
Estate firm based in Boston and we serve i'd say
the greater Boston area plus southern New Hampshire. And we're
real comprehensive in that we offer services from we'll work
with investors and developers as.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Well as single property owners. But we service all.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
The way from consulting on when a new development building
is built, to marketing sales and leasing of the building,
depending if it's a multi family building or condo, to
property management of those buildings.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
And then we also have a traditional residential brokerage as well.
Speaker 4 (04:09):
So it's like, and you mentioned, it's a very different
kind of market and just for people to understand, can
you maybe share the different challenges of selling and marketing
into well to developers and investors as opposed to let's say,
and I know you had experience also in a more
of course you cannot say traditional, but it's so weird
(04:30):
that actually with this audience and in our world, we
think of salas as something traditional. So how is then
marketing and selling into the aerial state, specifically to the
developers and investors different?
Speaker 3 (04:46):
Yeah, So, as you mentioned, it's very long sales cycle.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
So really what we are.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
Mainly focused on, and particularly with the ABM program that
we work with you on, is working with investors and developers.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Of new development buildings so new construct projects.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
Right, So from the time that an investor developer identifies
a piece of land all the way up until they
get COEO or certificate of occupancy on that building.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
It could be two or three years, right.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
So working with a partner like us, we we actually
like to get in early at the beginning stages because
we do consult with you know, design of the building
and helping them to get funding. But oftentimes they don't
realize the value of bringing in a partner in early, right,
So that can be challenging as well as just thinking
about that long sales cycle. You know you're selling in
(05:34):
you know, to work with a partner on a consulting basis,
but the revenue doesn't come for a couple of years.
So it's really an interesting thing to be thinking about
as you're developing, you know, your revenue pipeline. You're really
thinking out, you know, two three years ahead of where
you need to be revenue wise as you're developing your
pipeline today.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
So it would be really interesting to dive deeper. But
I would love to ask you a question that we're
here quite often from people who are attending our live
sessions or our webinars. It's all about getting internal buy in.
A lot of teams want to launch account based marketing
for multiple reasons, either because of having a desire to
(06:14):
go up market or just because of the complexity of
their product right, but a lot of them failed to
get buy in from stakeholders and also from sales leadership.
So a question to you before we dive into the
specifics of marketing to developers, right, can you share ask
how did you get the internal buy in run and
(06:36):
account based marketing program, and maybe what the key conversations
that you handled at Charles Gate.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
Yeah, sure, so I'd say I'm really lucky.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
So Michael de Mala, who's our managing partner, is basically
the CEO of the business. He really believes in marketing
and that's something that you don't find with a lot
of CEOs who believe or understand marketing, and he does.
Uh And and you can actually follow him on LinkedIn
because he's been an amazing contributor to content on LinkedIn
(07:11):
and the idea of social selling, so it's something that
he's already bought into him, was already practicing.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Before we started this.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
So we had the basics of what I would call
sort of an ABM campaign before we came to you,
and that was but it was mainly you know, paid
paid LinkedIn ads.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
You know, we were doing some email.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
We obviously had you know, connections on our website, but
we didn't have that full integrated piece between sales and
marketing and how you actually put that all together and
how you think more strategically about the content you know,
based on the target accounts we're going after. We also
didn't have like a way to a process i'd say
for you know, daily prospecting or identifying target accounts and
(07:52):
prioritizing them. So you know, all that we knew was needed,
and we knew that that could actually help us moving forward,
So it wasn't too tough to get buying for Mike
to do this.
Speaker 4 (08:04):
You mentioned several things that I think it's definitely worth
the impack right now. First of all, you mentioned, you know, comparatization,
being more structured about your approach, and especially like when
you have such a full service offering you can be
selling into developers who are looking to lease out their apartments.
(08:29):
You could be selling to developers who are looking to
sell out the condos. You could be offering them different
services from planning all the way up to property management
if they're leasing. So I wonder like, first of all,
how did you select the focus Because you mentioned you
decided to focus on new developments of a partments CE,
(08:49):
So how did you decide on the one hand, where
to focus on And then also like, how did you
actually prioritize those accounts also knowing this complexity of Okay,
they are not all in the market right now, the
long sales cycles, et cetera. So I'm really curious to
hear more about that.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
Sure, well, we wanted to keep the program focused so
that we could really get the process down and then
we could later on use it to apply to other
areas of our business or even to expand.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
Outside of Boston geographically.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
So so what we decided to focus on was new development,
of course is you know, our main revenue driver, but
specifically on multifamily, which is apartment building, so construction of
apartment buildings.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
And we have a we have.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
An agency and in house agency called Authentic who does
amazing work on branding and go to market strategy for multifamily.
So I think the integration with them as well was
a nice way to you know, bring the us all
together as a team and think about how we put
this in place specifically, you know, for multifamily in Boston,
(09:55):
and then you know, Authentic actually works on a nationwide basis,
so then we could take it to other markets if
we could prove out the success in Boston.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
Love it And coming back to our main topic for
today's podcast, to count base specific content. A few things
that I would like to emphasize on the first one
is that you assigl them to developers, and they are
very different from B to B marketers or sales or
startup owners. Right. These are not people who are hanging
(10:24):
out on linked In all the day long, generally speaking,
on social media, consuming content you know, like and comment
and etc. Right. So the second challenge probably here is
that when we think about social media, let's say LinkedIn platform, right,
we always think about global audience as we can do
(10:45):
so leadership program, right, and the content will be distributed
across the globe or across our broader network. Right. But
your specific challenge is that your company operates in a
very specific region, right, mostly New England in the United States.
So these are the main constraints, right, two questions here,
(11:12):
looking back at pilot abon program, what would you say
were the key channels that worked out for you? And
the key channels and the key programs. And then I
will ask the second follow up question.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
Yeah, sure, So you know you mentioned you know, small
area and investors, developers not being on LinkedIn. So one
of the things is that Charles Gate has been around
for over twenty years, so we know a lot of
people within the real estate community and are well connected.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
Right. So the majority of our business in the past.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Has come from client referrals or you know, introductions and
networking events that type of thing.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
So when we actually take.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
That to LinkedIn, which you know, we were in part
doing but not really they're actually on LinkedIn, they may
not be active, but we were actually able to find
that we could connect to the target accounts and we
know the target accounts we want to go after, and
there's a lot of you know, real state industry research
ways that we can research different projects in the area.
(12:14):
You know, build up is one, and we can go
and we can actually find the target accounts that are
in our area a lot more easier than maybe you know,
a SAS account because we know that there's active projects
there or there isn't and then identify those people on
LinkedIn within those target accounts and then reach out to
them that way, and surprisingly it worked very well for us.
So it was it was definitely like, I think an
(12:36):
eye opener to our sales team on how well LinkedIn
could actually reach the targets that we were going after.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
I think this is one of the biggest lessons for
a lot of companies because when they try to post
something on LinkedIn and they don't see engagement, especially if
sales team is involved into it, right, they might be
frustrated or they say, okay, nobody is concerning that content.
I don't see any meaningful engagement, so why doing this? Right?
(13:04):
But the truth is that in many verticals, and especially
in these conservative verticals, right, these people could be just
lurking on LinkedIn. They are not engaging, they're not liking,
they are not comment and not something that we are
seeing in market tech space or sales tax space, right.
But it doesn't mean that they are not consuming the content.
(13:26):
And also, what I have noticed, and this is the
question that I wanted to ask you, that in this
conservative niches and this conservative markets, you don't often see
companies of vendors creating really good sought leadership content.
Speaker 5 (13:44):
Right.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
Quite often it's very generic. Maybe you know companies press releases,
why I happen to announce or whatever. You know, companies
pictures with everybody smile, And we attended the conference of
very generic news, right, but not the content that address
us the jobs to be done, or the strategic initiatives
and challenges of your target accounts. So coming back to
(14:08):
my question, they feel that it's indeed ARUs wait and
it can influence the sales process and influence the pipeline generations.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
The content, Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
So luckily, you know, we had Mike already paving the
way with his thought leadership content on LinkedIn, and so
he got us start in that direction. And we have
a really strong content marketing person on staff as well
who knows.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
The real estate industry.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
So we were in a good spot when we started
the program with content, and so it was really about
how do we think about our target audience and taking
the expertise, the case studies, you know, all the work
that we've done in the past, and turn that into
relevant content that that has to do maybe with the
(15:00):
specific project that our target account is working on.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
Right, so we could connect to them through LinkedIn and.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
Say, hey, you know, I saw your project X y Z,
and you know, we've done these five projects that are
very similar and really bring immediate value and credibility, you know,
to to the conversation and then back that up with
content that we're either you know, posting on LinkedIn, but
that we could send to them, you know, directly.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
That was a very nice remark from Hun Publom, a
neighbor from Barcelona. People forget that the content can and
must be used in triv a DMS. We see your
net for convinkent and like stuff on you.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
This so absolutely and that was something you know that
our sales team I think didn't realize, right. So once
we started reaching out and then you know, giving them,
sending them content through DMS or following up and with
email and content, they saw how well it worked. And
and to your point about you know, it's not about
(16:01):
necessarily engagement likes. You know, maybe people are lurking. We
started to hear anecdotally, Oh, I saw your post on.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
LinkedIn the other day.
Speaker 3 (16:08):
It was great, you know, and so we know that
our audience is there even if you don't necessarily see it.
Speaker 4 (16:15):
I really want to underline this. I think I've seen
it in other niches. We did a similar podcast episode
with a test trail that is a company that builds
these tools and sells them to Q and A engineers
call qual It engineers and software teams. And when you
look at their profiles on LinkedIn, very frequently I don't
(16:38):
even see a picture like a photo. You just see
like this half empty profile. They have never liked, never commented.
And when you observe that, you think, like LinkedIn is
absolutely not the place to market to them. We know,
maybe directing on some communities, but not so much on LinkedIn.
And I think actually this was proven wrong because like
(17:03):
exactly as we do, you saw this engagement, andthing like,
what's amazing for me, for you guys, is that you're
even seeing engagement when Michael posts about something very specific
like zoning policies in Boston, which is like so local,
and yet you might have like fifty or sixty people
engaging from your market. But back to my point about
(17:26):
the opportunity, I think there is a big opportunity if
you're in a niche market like that. Even though you
might consider these people not being active on LinkedIn because
they're not usually, but just because you start posting content
that is actually relevant to them, you're going to stand out.
It's much easier to stand out in a market like
(17:47):
that than it is to stand out in our market,
where there's so much noise, there's so much content already
being produced. So I just wanted to underlie this for everyone.
And it's not just about content and engagement, and also,
like jo Amparo said, it's also about the opportunity to
actually start conversation, drive those meetings, and end up obviously
(18:13):
with new business. So I just wanted to underline. I
think this is really important for people to understand, and
I wonder, like we spoke about content, I think you
mentioned as well that you were looking at the projects
because you wanted to go after developers who had a
(18:34):
new project coming up, working on a new development project. So,
if I understood you correctly, you were actually checking out
these developers, these target accounts as we call them, and
trying to understand, hey, they have a project, this is
you know, this many units in this location, They're likely
(18:56):
to have these kind of challenges. And then you were
selling or even creating content that was specific that you
could basically refer Okay, you did a similar project, et cetera,
et cetera. So in a way you were creating content
that was aligned with that specific account or at least
like sharing that is that what you did. Did I
(19:17):
understand that correctly?
Speaker 1 (19:19):
Yeah, that's absolutely correct.
Speaker 3 (19:20):
You know, as I mentioned before, CHARLDS Kids has over
twenty years of experience in the Boston market, right so,
and working from anything from single family homes up to
you know, two hundred unit buildings. We've worked on over
sixty least new development projects throughout the area, have over
three billion in assets under management, right, So we have
(19:43):
all this experience that we can take and then apply
you know, a specific lens to a project because likely
we've done something very very similar or in an area
of Boston that's very similar. So for example, we were
looking at a that was in the Awesome Right neighborhood,
and we've done probably ten different projects right around the area.
(20:05):
So it was easy for us to pull market data
show how you know, we were able to beat you know,
the market in terms of the rental market, in terms
of driving rents and help to accelerate revenue faster for
these different projects based on our approach to leasing and
(20:26):
marketing right, and so making that the connection of you know,
if you can go in and you can invest early
at the right time and help to build a brand
and start to generate interest in the building early, way
way before you're close to CEO, right, and start to
get that interest and demand generation comes early, you're going
(20:48):
to you're going to accelerate your leasing quicker, you're going
to reach absorb quicker, You're going to have a cash
flow come in sooner, right, and then you're going to
improve your overall investment on the project and we've done
that time and time again and in that often bright neighborhood, right,
So we were able to take all of that that
we've done in the stats and put it together in
a really great piece of content that resonated so well
(21:10):
with that investor.
Speaker 4 (21:14):
Sorry, I just wanted to deconstruct this for everybody. Maybe
they couldn't really follow that, and companies see immediately how
that that could apply for them. So I think like
the first thing that I heard here was that you
figured out what is the most important goal that these
developers have, and you were talking about absorptions just for
(21:35):
the folks out there, it is about how quickly you
can rent out, lease up your properties, so how quickly
you can start to make money out of the property,
because the longer it sits, the more money you're wasting.
And you knew that this was especially important to developers
right now this year because they were high margins. I'm sorry,
(21:58):
they were how high interest rates and low margins? I
wanted to say, so, basically, when you were deciding to
create that content, you were looking at a number of
things that were happening in the industry, knowing what their
top problem was, and then you basically were educating, Hey,
we know this is important for you, this quick absorption
(22:20):
and having basically the ROI increasing your margins, especially this year.
And if we look at similar projects we did there,
we can help you be the market, we can help
you get there, we can help you basically make more money. Right,
And I just just wanted to kind of deconstruct it
(22:42):
for people and they want to apply to themselves. Is
really like you selected a very specific account we call
it account cluster, or is a very specific use case
new development of apartment building multi families as you call them.
Then you said, what are the biggest challenges of these
(23:02):
accounts that have that use case? And you knew because
of the low margins and high interest rates, it's like,
how can I maximize my profit here? How can I
make sure that I'm actually not losing? And how can
I as quickly as possible rund those out? And then
you were creating content to show them exactly how they
can do that, which was like very valuable and useful
(23:25):
for them, but also it help you create that awareness
because if I understand correctly, there is no like not
all developers have that idea, Oh we should just start
marketing early. And you know, doing things like that, So
you had to like work a lot to generate the
awareness this kind of change their mind or change the
way that they think about marketing their their properties.
Speaker 3 (23:47):
Yeah, absolutely right, and you said it, you know, way
better than I did.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
But also I think there's value that we can add
early on.
Speaker 3 (23:55):
So like if they're even considering whether a project should
move forward, right and are looking on at trying to
get financing, so we can actually help them to evaluate
the market and you know, put together a sample pro
form of what it's going to look like to operate
the building in like the first couple of years, what
their cash flow will look like that they can actually
(24:16):
then take to potential lenners to secure debta equity.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
So we've done that you know many times. And when
when you can go in and add that.
Speaker 3 (24:24):
Type of value early so that I wouldn't necessarily consider
that content, but going you know, you get a meeting
and you can show them, you can take their data
and show them what you can do.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
It adds that value.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
Early and it builds that trust that we can actually
help them through every stage of their project. So when
it comes time to actually going out and you know,
leasing up the marketing and marketing the building and leasing
it up.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
You know, we have the operating know how to be
able to do that.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
Awesome. So one of the pactics that we used, we
call it internally account love letters and hopefully liked that concept. Right,
this is the tactic. Well, basically we create a super
specific account content right based on known strategic initiatives or
the challenges that we were able to just cover through
(25:15):
one on one conversations as different engagements. Right, So from
my experience, this was one of the let's say, most
available tactics right when it comes to account engagement. I
would love to ask you to share a little bit
(25:36):
how did you leverage account love letters in sales and
maybe the process around creating them, maybe just sharing specific example.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
Sure.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
I mean it's also very similar to what that had
just articulated.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
So nicely.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
You're really identifying what their problems are, what are their challenges,
and there might be things that they don't even know
that they have or that they can't see, right, and
then we can go and create a piece of content
that identifies what those are and then shows what are
solve is right, So it could be for example, their
(26:14):
project is you know, near stalled construction, and we've had
that experience working with other investors of developers before, so
we can actually create a piece of content on you know,
here's here's what you can do, uh to think about
how do you get out of this install? And that
could be for you know, whatever the reasons are. But
(26:34):
if it's you know, securing funding for example, as you
mentioned before, we can help them put together that you know,
operating plan and and do that through a piece of
content that shows them the similarity you know, with their
with their business. And so again that again that it
earns immediate trust when you're able to show results and
(26:55):
market data that directly applies to whatever their challenges are.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
Maybe one of the better specific questions that everybody might
have how to distribute that content, how to ensure that
your target accounts will actually see and consume it.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
Yeah, So we started, you know, by connecting through LinkedIn,
and then we would try to you know, we'd get
their email address or try to get a meeting. And
I think the best way is if you can get
a meeting and get in front of them, so then
you research their project beforehand so that you know the
right question to ask. Once you're in that introductory meeting,
(27:32):
and then you can get as much information for them
as possible on the project, and in many cases they
might be willing to share specific data. Right, So if
they're able to share like operating expenses and things that
allow us to help create a simple performa, we can
then walk away from that meeting with the right information
to then create a piece of content that is super relevant.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
That's the best way to do it, right.
Speaker 3 (27:55):
But if you can't get that meeting, then it's really
about you know, researching as best you can and what
their project is, and then putting together some case studies
around you know, what you think their challenges might be,
and sending it to them, you know, either DM through
LinkedIn or through email.
Speaker 4 (28:12):
I remember I think pt who was the main salesperson
during the pilot, one of the two founders but also
playing the role there, mentioned that how did he say,
I think that people were already kind of educated before
they already knew what you were all about when he
was able to share this piece of content with the
target accounts and then would go in a meeting afterwards
(28:35):
that they were already quite educated about what Charles Kate
did and how you might be able to help them.
That that was very useful as well for him during
the sales process.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
Yeah, And I mean that's part of the full funnel approach, right.
It's that making sure you've got that cadence of continuous
posting on social not just reaching out directly, but that
you're establishing that thought leadership, putting out the right cadence
of content that.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
So that that creates this awareness.
Speaker 4 (29:06):
Right.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
So just like you said, they're familiar with us by
the time he's reaching out to connect with them.
Speaker 4 (29:12):
One of those dimensions, one of the things is said
to get out again, help people connect the dots. I
think is said that you were all also able to
provide a lot of value to your buyers, even if
they're early on in their projects, by essentially creating a
business case for them the projections of the return and
(29:33):
investment of the project, which is something that you need
to have anyhow, right. But I think for you it
was really good as well because we know that, for example,
in sales, we just know that when you're able to
create a business case for a client, which kind of communicates, okay,
this is what you can make if you don't do
anything and this is what you can make if you
(29:53):
basically deploy our approach or work with us. Essentially, you
will like, there is no better way to communicate the value,
especially to business people and developers at the end are
very number oriented at the end. They do this to
of course get the ROI. So I thought that was
so clever of you that you did it like that,
(30:14):
And so on the one hand, it provides a value,
so you can't really sell them your product yet or
your service. So you figured out, okay, what can we
do to provide the value so early on, and then
at the same time also to use that to collect
all this information that we can then demonstrate in numbers
(30:35):
how by working with us they can benefit and what
the ROI would be. I thought that was so brilliant.
And with all of these tactics in place, what were
the results of the program. And this was of course
a pilot program that you just rolled out. Statements started
rolling up basically rolled out just a month ago or so.
(30:58):
So I wonder, like, so far, knowing of course that
you have such long sales cycles of two years, but
what were the results so far?
Speaker 3 (31:07):
Yeah, So I'd say, first and foremost, we developed a
process for prospecting that we didn't have before. So I
think before, you know, we we had a process for
managing our pipeline once we had an opportunity and you know,
how we're going to close the deal, But we really
didn't have a process for the beginning piece of how
do we identify the target accounts?
Speaker 1 (31:26):
How do we organize them in.
Speaker 3 (31:27):
Such a way that we can prioritize who we want
to go after so that we can focus the sales
team's time. How do we create a daily cadence, a
daily habit of you know, social selling and follow up
and you know, following up in different stages, and the
focus for the sales team and what they're going to
target you know, that week, we didn't have any of
(31:49):
that right So, first and foremost, putting that in place
was a huge game changer for us to be able
to organize our activity and focus the time on what
where we think there's a likely opportunity, where there's going
to be a project that can turn into an opportunity
that can hopefully turn into a deal down the road.
So that's first and foremost, So once we were able
(32:09):
to do that, and then we can start to get
you know, some introductory meetings. Out of that, we start
to see the flywheel happen right where we actually are
finding more opportunities through this. You know, we've added a
new a new channel, new avenue for us to find
opportunities than what we were doing before with just networking
in client referrals.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
So now we're.
Speaker 3 (32:29):
Adding those opportunities into our pipeline and starting to manage
those into closing deals.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
So I'd say the results have been great.
Speaker 3 (32:38):
We've probably added at least ten opportunities so far from
just that program, and we're close to closing i'd say
our first big one, which would be really great in
the next hopefully couple of weeks.
Speaker 2 (32:59):
We have a couple of questions from our community. But
before we'll dive f ind the community questions, I would
like to ask very specific question around what you have shared.
So having an experience of working this partner like full
final data, right, what would you say, uh, the benefits
if you have a partner helping you out with developing
(33:23):
the strategy and rolling it out versus like trying to
figure it out and house.
Speaker 3 (33:29):
Yeah, I mean absolutely, we couldn't have done it without you.
We'd try it on our own before, and we didn't.
We didn't have the process right, We didn't have that
whole I would really say full funnel piece, that beginning
piece of you know, really being able to bring the
marketing and sales together show us, you know how beneficial
that is, right, the whole process of prioritizing target accounts,
(33:52):
researching them and you know, thinking about you know what
all your next actions are, your next steps you're going
to take. You didn't we didn't think about that before. So,
you know, working with your team with Stafo, he was
a great leader for us to you know, spend a
couple hours a few hours every week on you know,
teaching us your process but adapting it for our business, right,
(34:14):
because not every business is the same. So I think
being really flexible to think about, how is real estate different,
how's this long sales cycle different, how are these investors different?
And so how do we want to adapt the program
to make sure that you know it fits your need?
So really good about doing that and then setting that
process and working with our sales team because you know
pt as you mentioned, he was our lead sales team.
(34:35):
He didn't post on LinkedIn before. He wasn't like super
active and now he's very into it, right, So you know,
Stapho took a lot of time and worked with him
to establish that habit and get him comfortable with it
and see the results. And you know, I think once
you start seeing the results, seeing the feedback, seeing that
you're getting meetings as a result of this activity that
you're doing, is like super powerful, right, so that they
(34:56):
see that this actually works and then they want to
continue doing it.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
So I don't you know, without that structure.
Speaker 3 (35:02):
And that you know, your your wisdom, knowledge and your
experience of having worked with so many different clients, I
don't think we would have been able to do it
on our own.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
Appreciate love. Also, it also reminded me about dozens of
hours that we spent all together internally when staff I
was bringing quite challenging questions from you and thinking how
to solve it, because again, it's not the market where
you can, you know, buy a software and reach accounts
(35:32):
and just create change pety created emails to that pretended
to be personalized rights and the expect revenues. Thank you
so much for sharing this. We have a couple of
questions from our community, so maybe let's pick them up.
A question from any how to position the initial email
(35:54):
or conversation to the executive of the target account that
is not too generic but not kind either since that's
the first personal inte So this is.
Speaker 3 (36:05):
One of the things that that full funnel will teach
you if you engage in a program with them. And
this is what we really learned from STAFFO was to
you know, research First of all, you're thinking about on
your target account list, you know, who do you want
to connect with? And you know, once you know, then
you want to research do a little research on that person.
Do you have any connections you know in common and
(36:26):
we actually had lots of connections on LinkedIn in common,
so there could be a thread there or you know,
did you go to school together? You know, what what
are the things that you that you can reach out
to and sort of make a personal connection with that person.
Also really understanding in our case with the you know,
real estate, with the projects.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
Do they have an active project, what do we know.
Speaker 3 (36:46):
About it, what are the challenges there and how have
we seen you know that that you know tape play
over and over again and the things that we've done
so that we can add that value. So we really
think about the customization of that first initial outreach. You
target it based on whatever that personal connection you might
have with them, and then think about from a business perspective,
(37:09):
how what you've done can really help them with what
their what their challenges are. But be led about it, right,
you know, it's not really you're not there to sell.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
You're just there to really make the connection, get a
response and then try to get a follow up conversation
or meeting. So don't don't go out with the heavy sell.
Speaker 4 (37:31):
Yeah, as well in a follow up, you're using content
as well, and you were selecting content that was more
useful and more specific to the projects that I had,
Like you mentioned that example where you already had six
projects in the same area as one of these targets.
I want to say target because like, is the developer
(37:52):
that you were approaching, this is a normal language, normal
people's language, and so that also helped them to continue
that conversation, engage them again and again and eventually book
book those calls. And I remember also like we have
to also give credit to pt who was like so
amazing and just like picking up the phone just holding
them and booking them, you know, get together a meeting
(38:18):
and then of course things become a little bit easier
after that first initial discovery call.
Speaker 2 (38:24):
Yeah, I feel I just wanted to add five cents here.
I feel there are two also sayings that are really important.
The first one is always have a genuine reason to
reach out. So why you reaching out? Right? Because if
you're not, I mean we're already forget about pitch slabon right,
(38:45):
So same connection request and then immediately pitching This is
absolutely broke and playbook. But then a lot of companies
they can send you know, hey, I went to the
same school or whatever, we used to work for the
same company. But then the question what's next? I know
a company we used to work in the past, they
sent a lot of connection requests, for example, to start
(39:06):
up founders. Congrats with the funding, and then they ask
a question, but what's next? Right, So it's not that
hard to get connection request accepted after it. Right, But
you need to have a good playbook how you going
to engage and nurchre that relationship. And one of the
best probably pieces of advice here, I always think about
(39:28):
the old Dale Carnegie's book How to Make Friends, Right,
which is the classic book for everybody in marketing and sales.
So just use these principles. Right, if you'll go to
any meetup, you're probably not likely to pitch anybody, right,
or you're not likely to start talking about thel. Hey,
I'm marketing manager, manager, I'm helping with blah blah blah
(39:50):
blah blah. Right, so obviously you'll open the conversation. You'll
try to find the common touch points, right, And that's
another piece of advice that I can pro here.
Speaker 4 (40:01):
Yes we have, we have one more question that you
wanted to share and they are all right, So yeah,
do you wanted to say something?
Speaker 2 (40:10):
Use an AI to personalized content for each target account
a buyer?
Speaker 3 (40:15):
Uh no, No, I mean I think you know, we
use AI when we when we're producing content at MASS,
you know, to write a blog article or something like that.
But the thing about AI is it's really great to
help you. I think the best application of AI is
when you're actually using your own content to help you
(40:37):
to drive efficiency. Now, when you're going out to find
content off you know, the internet and create something, so
helping you organize your thoughts to create efficiencies. But when
we're creating content for specific targetic ant buyers, no, we're
not using AI.
Speaker 1 (40:51):
Because it has to be so specific to.
Speaker 3 (40:54):
What their challenges are and to our process and approach,
and you know, we have a we have an approach
is very different than other real estate firms out there,
and you know, we are looking at specific projects that
we've worked on in the past with specific market data.
And in the case of you know, we're doing something
like a sample performer, we're actually using data from the
(41:18):
client to be able to do that.
Speaker 1 (41:19):
So it's all all content that we create ourselves.
Speaker 2 (41:24):
Thank you.
Speaker 4 (41:25):
So it's like the the tool is only as smart
as what you feeded, the data that you feeded, right,
So it's not about using the AI as a tool
to create new content to give you the message, but
it's it's more to just improve deficiency of the existing
(41:47):
content you're producing. I think that like people should actually
use it like that as a tool rather than a replacement.
Speaker 3 (41:57):
You need to be authentic, you know, and and.
Speaker 4 (42:02):
I think that is really good at copying is not
really going to help you become.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
It will be very straightforward. There is an old quote,
A full with a tool is still a full, right,
which is very relevant.
Speaker 1 (42:19):
That's exactly right.
Speaker 2 (42:21):
Yeah, that's use case. So another question from nils on
linked in my feet is filled with all these posts
claiming that lead generation doesn't work, but that we have
to engage with demandsion and programs because only five percent
of how a target accessible market is in the market. Actually,
how do you see this in relation to account based marketing?
Speaker 3 (42:43):
Yeah, I mean to me, account based marketing is really
being proactive, right, You're not waiting for people to come
to you. So when you think about lead generation, a
lot of times that's making sure you have the right
content on your website, that it's optimized for SEO so
that when people are searching, they're coming to you, you
have the right you know, lead GM capture forms and
workflows set up through your CRM to make sure that
(43:07):
you're you know, going back out and reaching out to
them and then you know, maybe getting in front of
a salesperson.
Speaker 1 (43:11):
That's really kind of leaden this. With demand gen, You're
you are going in your putting.
Speaker 3 (43:18):
Thought leadership content out there as we talked about before,
to create an awareness about your your brand, and then
you're actively going out and finding your targets and contacting them.
You're not waiting for them to come to you, and
you're doing this you know, with a partnership between marketing
and sales, right, so that you're you're making sure that
(43:38):
you're both aligned on you know who the targets are,
you know what your message is, and you're that you're
able to create that that right content to be able
to do that, and you know the right channels, whether
it's a d M on LinkedIn or it's follow up
through email or however. But that's how I see the difference.
Speaker 2 (43:58):
And I think there is Yeah, Sarah just wanted to say,
see there is an important nuance to all of this.
Even if you look at this question, Neils, you try
to separate demand generation from account based marketing from lead
generation and obviously lead generation in a natural the way
how Imma described it, it's I mean, you don't need
to look at LinkedIn posts. I would just say it's
(44:22):
pretty enough to take a sober look at the performance
of your legion programs, right, not just looking at MP
also whatever, but just holistically look at how you lead
generation program produces revenue and unit economics. If it's working
for you, feel free to continue le generation. There is
no problem, right, But if it's not working, then you
(44:44):
are in problem. And now here's I feel really important point.
A lot of people, especially on linked then they try
to separate different motions from each other. Here's demand generation
and you need to go all in. Here's the print
and you need to go all in print. Here's ABM.
You need to go all in print in ABM. Here's
the sales enablement slash buyer enablement. This is what you
(45:08):
need to do right, But in reality, this is what
Amy mentioned. We're all always advocated for full funnel approach,
which means that you influence the entire buyer journey from
how are you going to create awareness among the buying
committee members of your target accounts to how you generate
sales opportunities with them? And there are two most steps,
(45:30):
how fast you can accelerate the time to value, which
is all about client success right and then expansion because
if you don't have meaningful client success, then you need
to forget about expansion right. If simply if your customers
are not getting any value out of your product or service,
you won't be able to upsell right. And then if
(45:52):
you are selling technical product, then it's just the red
flag that indicates that you have a your issue. So
as simple as that always in a cohisim model. How
can you influence that journey? Right? And the point here
is what we do an account based market and we
always look at these three lists of accounts class the
ICP future pipeline and actually focus. This is how we
(46:16):
do the prioritization based on how likely certain accounts would
become sales opportunities. Right. This is this is where marketing
and sales should spend all the time proactively, but at
the same time not neglecting to other lists, because if
you're not working on future pipeline at one point, you'll
have a significant problem and you'll squeizz out everything from
(46:39):
existing one.
Speaker 4 (46:41):
And I was also going to highlight what Amy said,
it's not necessarily just imbound. It's not necessarily just outbound.
It's all bound in a way that you are using
content and marketing to create awareness, and then your sales people,
working together with salespeople, are then leveraging that awareness and
(47:06):
engagement with your content to start conversation. So you're just
waiting passively, but you're also not just reaching out cold
and with a generic message to everyone. And a follow
up question on that, because we spoke a lot about
demand generation and content and thought leadership on LinkedIn, And
a really relevant question from Luke is what if your
(47:29):
targets are not on LinkedIn? And just like wanting to
remind everybody, maybe you didn't tune in from the start,
because we were discussing this at the beginning to our
big surprise, although we expected that, you know, the real
estate developers are not like B to B marketers or salespeople,
very active on LinkedIn. You may even check out their
(47:51):
profile and you don't see a lot of activity. However,
you shouldn't assume, and luckily we didn't make that assumption
and it worked out for Al's Gate, So you shouldn't
assume that LinkedIn might They are not lurking, they're not reading,
and in niche markets it can actually be an advantage because,
(48:11):
like for Charles's Gate, it turned out that even if
you're posting about real estate in Boston, you can still
get a lot of relevant engagement as long as you're
doing everything that Amy described, not just putting the content
out there, but also proactively connecting to those people and
building those relationships. But I think it is worth answering
(48:33):
that question, and I think we can share some of
the anecdotes from our own experience about other ways to
engage buyers that are not active on LinkedIn, but maybe
amy maybe not in Charles Gate, but in other companies
that you worked at. You had that situation because you
did work on a lot of different projects, and I wonder, like,
what are your thoughts on that.
Speaker 3 (48:54):
Yeah, I mean if you can find their their email
or phone number, there are obviously other channels that you
can be using besides LinkedIn, and we.
Speaker 1 (49:03):
Do you know, there are a lot of you know,
ways to get.
Speaker 3 (49:08):
That information, different services out there to find that for
your targets.
Speaker 1 (49:11):
But then the same approach that you would take on a.
Speaker 3 (49:14):
DM on LinkedIn, you can take via email, which is,
you know, less intrusive than maybe calling, but then calls
could be maybe part of your follow up later on
after you've sent email.
Speaker 4 (49:28):
And I think you mentioned two other things. You mentioned
that you were that there were a lot of these
networking events, so that there were the specific I don't
know if there were like some associations or other types
of organizations that the developers belong to that you could
leverage to just like visit them at the places where
they hang out and meet each other and be part
(49:49):
of the community. For if you're not local like your
company is, there are in some cases other communities I
mentioned earlier during this podcast episode q engineers called engineers
and sea teams. They may not be so acting on LinkedIn,
although there as well it worked. They are very active
(50:13):
on some of these niche either slack or no. No,
it's not like in their cases discord discord communities or
other kinds of communities. And it's just amazing, like even
like a much smaller community than LinkedIn, which is much global,
but the level of engagement and kind of conversations they
can get started there are just amazing. And I think
(50:35):
there was another thing that you mentioned while we were
actually talking about your project before that you had some partners,
so other companies or service providers. I don't know if
it was the lawyers of other kind of vendors well
partners of developers that you also sometimes collaborated. Is that right?
Speaker 3 (51:00):
Yeah, yeah, that's absolutely right. And you know, first to
your point about the events, events absolutely are a great
way to go out into network. And you know, whether
it's like for in the example of real estate, there's
you know that like in Massachusetts, the Massachusetts Department Association,
I think every state has one of those they put
on events. Then there's industry research companies like build Up
(51:24):
that put on events. So there's all all kinds of
events that you can go to network or we we
tend to do speaking opportunities at some of these, or
have a boot so you.
Speaker 1 (51:33):
Can get in front of your audience. But but yeah,
I mean I think that.
Speaker 3 (51:39):
There's there's the the traditional ways of you know, networking
and meeting people, and within your industry, and particularly like
within real estate, there's a huge network of other players
that you say, so there's architects, there's you know, attorneys, lawyers, lenders.
Speaker 1 (51:53):
So you know, when you creating connections with those.
Speaker 3 (51:57):
One of the things that we actually saw on LinkedIn though,
was that we would we would go and have a
second degree connection with one of our targets and they
would be connected to like.
Speaker 1 (52:06):
One hundred other people that we knew.
Speaker 3 (52:09):
Right, So it's just that we're in that type of
a small industry, there's going to be someone else that
can make an introduction for us, right. So having a
strategy to your point also that's not just like focused
on your target accounts, but also reaching out to those
partners within the ecosystem, whether it's directly or creating content
that might be reletivant to them is also a big
(52:32):
piece of this as well, because if you can get
someone to make an introduction for you, that's a lot
better and more genuine. You know, someone who can actually
provide a referral than just that cold outreach.
Speaker 4 (52:50):
I wanted to say. Also mentioned like how one channel
is leaking into the other, and how you're basically trying
to string create a series of touch points essentially, and
how you will maybe go to an event and here
he might go to an event and hear about oh
senior content and give them give them compliments about his content.
(53:13):
So they have seen him on LinkedIn. But the fact
that now they see him on LinkedIn, they see him
in the event. He might actually follow up later on
with some other people he met at the event on
LinkedIn and they may start following and seeing. So actually
trying to kind of create think about journey and multiple
touch points and not just like very transactional. Oh, I'll
(53:34):
go to an event and I'm going to get come
back home with some business or some leads, or I'm
just going to reach out to a bunch of people
on LinkedIn and expect this transactional thing to happen where
I will, but actually just using all the different opportunities
to build that relationship, to get in touch and again
and again and again until the time is right.
Speaker 5 (53:56):
Sure, if you were doing that with an event, if
you're a speaker, you're sponsoring event anyway, you oftentimes get
a list of the attendees prior to the event, So
it's a great way for your sales team to.
Speaker 3 (54:10):
Take that and identify who they want to talk to. Right,
make a game plan so that you make that event
productive for you.
Speaker 2 (54:18):
Thank you so much. And also look came as a
follow up question. I wanted just to add two sense
auto summarize. Ever, and I feel that the most important
thing is just really nail down your ideal customer profile,
not just ending up with generic one, right, because this
is only the answer to the question what are the
(54:38):
accounts that we want to go after?
Speaker 4 (54:41):
Right?
Speaker 2 (54:41):
And the second one is deeply understand that by our
journey not just being biased by platforms. Everybody says linked
and let's go for linked and because for example, was
what we'll do a lot of projects when our companies
sell to manufacture and engineers so think about companies Coca
Cola and that's et cetera. And these people they don't
(55:02):
even have social profile and maybe they have a profile
on Facebook where it's just John d d dot and
that's it, right. You don't even know if that's the
right person, right, and there are no updates at all.
So you need to think about how you can influence
and exactly what Emmy mentioned, think about other channels, right, communities, associations, events,
(55:23):
maybe private events that you can leverage two to engage
with these people. So that's that's the key. But maybe
let's quickly cover the last question for today, the follow
up question from Look, if this relationship building concept is
not intuitive to sales, they create a playbooks or p
for the team and exactly what to do is a
(55:45):
significant training to see a success with this approach.
Speaker 3 (55:49):
Yeah, so I think you know, in general, most people
who are in sales are relationship builders, but maybe not
in the way that we're talking about here, right.
Speaker 1 (55:58):
So I'll use Peach who I love as.
Speaker 3 (56:01):
An example, Like he's fantastic at building relationships and has
done that, but that through personal relationships networking, you know,
going to to coffee meetings and golf. So taking you know,
that skill set and then applying it to here to
LinkedIn was not something you know that he was familiar
with and did. It needed a little training and we
need to create a playbook and a daily you know
(56:23):
habit for here's what you need to be doing, you know,
researching these accounts going and you know, commenting on people's accounts,
you posting yourself, you directly connecting, following up and it's
it's you know, something like a like a working out right.
Speaker 1 (56:38):
It's like a muscle you have to build.
Speaker 3 (56:39):
You have to do it every day and create a
habit of it to get comfortable with it and then
you see that it works.
Speaker 1 (56:44):
But it's absolutely possible to do.
Speaker 3 (56:46):
It's just you know, taking again taking those skills, the
things that they're already good at, and using it in
a different medium.
Speaker 4 (56:52):
Wow. I thank you. This is this has been one
of my favorite episodes, uh talking about life case studies.
So I think this is a masterclass for a lot
of people, especially if you're in a niche industry have
long sales cycles. These things work, they work really well.
(57:12):
Is there a place where people can go and learn
more about Charlesgate about maybe cheap outsiders yourself, what would
you recommend people if they wanted to connect to you
or learn more about your organizations, your work. Where would
you send them?
Speaker 5 (57:30):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (57:31):
Sure, so for I'll start with myself. You know again,
I work for Chief Outsires. You can just find us
our website chiefoutsires dot com or you know, follow us
on LinkedIn.
Speaker 1 (57:42):
For sure.
Speaker 3 (57:43):
We work with all different size companies across all different industries.
So if you've got a growth challenge that you need
marketing or sales help, definitely reach out.
Speaker 1 (57:53):
As far as Charlesgate at Charlesgate dot com is our website.
Speaker 3 (57:57):
You can learn more about our services, past projects, case studies,
you know everything there. We also have another site called
Transforming Cities dot io and that's really.
Speaker 1 (58:06):
Our content site. We have a podcast, we have blog articles.
Speaker 3 (58:10):
You'll see Mike and Chris Arnold, who is the co
founder of Authentic, who's our marketing arm agency. There's a
lot of content from them on there. You can follow
both of them on LinkedIn. They're both thought leaders on LinkedIn.
And finally, we actually have a webinar next LinkedIn Live
next Thursday on eleven twenty one at eleven am Eastern
(58:34):
time and the topic. There is proven new development strategies
for twenty twenty five how multi family developers are getting
four x ROI. So if you're interested more in real
estate and learning what we do, that's a great webinar
to join. If you miss it live, obviously you can
check it out another time.
Speaker 2 (58:51):
Tyler recommend to follow m as well on LinkedIn, as
probably you rarely have a chance to get connected to
a seasoned B to B market and professional. Emmy, thanks
a lot for jinin us.
Speaker 3 (59:05):
Thank you so much, Andrew and Vlad. I really enjoyed
working with you and staffo. I really appreciate the chance
to come talk about it here, so thank you, thank you,
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (59:16):
Guys as well for fantastic questions. Happy to see a
feedback that you love this session as well, So stay
tuned and welcome with new sessions next week. Take care, everybody,
Cheers
This is the Full Funnel B t B marketing podcast,
brought to you by full Funnel dot io Let's Starve.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Live Today were co hosting it with Emmy Losh. Emmy
is a fractional CMO our client company called Charles Gate
and as promised today, we have pretty exciting and I
think one of the most underappreciated topics in account based
(00:37):
market and account based content. Uh. This is what our
team worked very closely with Amy's team and it helped
to contribute to pipeline generation and we would like to
show with you all the process. Feel free to ask
any questions in the chat as always, and Amy, thanks
(00:59):
a lot for jinuine.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Me absolutely, Andre, thank you so much for having me.
It's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Let us know, guys, why you all joining us from
Let us know in the chat. I saw Leslie from Nashville.
Good to see you. Any value based.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
In Austin, Texas.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
I'm broadcasting from Villareal, Valencia, which is not that signing
these days, so curious to survey all guys from Uh
your MONEYA from India, got to see your Natalia from Italy,
got to see you again. Cool. We have a pretty
international audience today, Kira Toronto, Good to see you, and
(01:43):
just to let you know, my Dia, co founder of what,
will join us in a second. So to give everybody
a little bit of background, Charles Gate is not a
tech company. And obviously whenever we talk about account based
market and everybody thinks about tech space, either service based
(02:05):
companies or software as a service, right, Charles Gate is
in real estate. This is definitely an industry that you want.
As I said, account based marketing. That being said, this
is why we worked on the deal sizes are really high,
the sales cycles are very long, and this is why
(02:26):
you need to take consultative approach. This is not the
space where you can just run a bunch of programmatic
display ads and send outbound emails and steroids. Right, So
this would be our entire genda for today. And first
of all, m maybe you can just start with a
quick interest share on what Charles Gates does and your
(02:48):
ideal customer profile, your role and also mentioning Chief Outsiders
where you.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
Also sure sure, so thanks again for having me. Great
to see you, lad.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
Yes, so I'm fractional CMO, so I work for Chief Outsiders.
We're a national consulting firm of over one hundred and
twenty former heads of marketing and heads of sales worked
over eighty different industries, you know, across our company, and
we work with CEOs and leadership teams to help them
drive growth strategies and you know, whatever their their business
(03:20):
problems are. So we actually sit on leadership teams and
but work.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
In a fractional capacity.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
So I've been doing that with Charlesgate now for two
and a half years.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Charlesgate is a full service real.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
Estate firm based in Boston and we serve i'd say
the greater Boston area plus southern New Hampshire. And we're
real comprehensive in that we offer services from we'll work
with investors and developers as.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Well as single property owners. But we service all.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
The way from consulting on when a new development building
is built, to marketing sales and leasing of the building,
depending if it's a multi family building or condo, to
property management of those buildings.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
And then we also have a traditional residential brokerage as well.
Speaker 4 (04:09):
So it's like, and you mentioned, it's a very different
kind of market and just for people to understand, can
you maybe share the different challenges of selling and marketing
into well to developers and investors as opposed to let's say,
and I know you had experience also in a more
of course you cannot say traditional, but it's so weird
(04:30):
that actually with this audience and in our world, we
think of salas as something traditional. So how is then
marketing and selling into the aerial state, specifically to the
developers and investors different?
Speaker 3 (04:46):
Yeah, So, as you mentioned, it's very long sales cycle.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
So really what we are.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
Mainly focused on, and particularly with the ABM program that
we work with you on, is working with investors and developers.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Of new development buildings so new construct projects.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
Right, So from the time that an investor developer identifies
a piece of land all the way up until they
get COEO or certificate of occupancy on that building.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
It could be two or three years, right.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
So working with a partner like us, we we actually
like to get in early at the beginning stages because
we do consult with you know, design of the building
and helping them to get funding. But oftentimes they don't
realize the value of bringing in a partner in early, right,
So that can be challenging as well as just thinking
about that long sales cycle. You know you're selling in
(05:34):
you know, to work with a partner on a consulting basis,
but the revenue doesn't come for a couple of years.
So it's really an interesting thing to be thinking about
as you're developing, you know, your revenue pipeline. You're really
thinking out, you know, two three years ahead of where
you need to be revenue wise as you're developing your
pipeline today.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
So it would be really interesting to dive deeper. But
I would love to ask you a question that we're
here quite often from people who are attending our live
sessions or our webinars. It's all about getting internal buy in.
A lot of teams want to launch account based marketing
for multiple reasons, either because of having a desire to
(06:14):
go up market or just because of the complexity of
their product right, but a lot of them failed to
get buy in from stakeholders and also from sales leadership.
So a question to you before we dive into the
specifics of marketing to developers, right, can you share ask
how did you get the internal buy in run and
(06:36):
account based marketing program, and maybe what the key conversations
that you handled at Charles Gate.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
Yeah, sure, so I'd say I'm really lucky.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
So Michael de Mala, who's our managing partner, is basically
the CEO of the business. He really believes in marketing
and that's something that you don't find with a lot
of CEOs who believe or understand marketing, and he does.
Uh And and you can actually follow him on LinkedIn
because he's been an amazing contributor to content on LinkedIn
(07:11):
and the idea of social selling, so it's something that
he's already bought into him, was already practicing.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Before we started this.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
So we had the basics of what I would call
sort of an ABM campaign before we came to you,
and that was but it was mainly you know, paid
paid LinkedIn ads.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
You know, we were doing some email.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
We obviously had you know, connections on our website, but
we didn't have that full integrated piece between sales and
marketing and how you actually put that all together and
how you think more strategically about the content you know,
based on the target accounts we're going after. We also
didn't have like a way to a process i'd say
for you know, daily prospecting or identifying target accounts and
(07:52):
prioritizing them. So you know, all that we knew was needed,
and we knew that that could actually help us moving forward,
So it wasn't too tough to get buying for Mike
to do this.
Speaker 4 (08:04):
You mentioned several things that I think it's definitely worth
the impack right now. First of all, you mentioned, you know, comparatization,
being more structured about your approach, and especially like when
you have such a full service offering you can be
selling into developers who are looking to lease out their apartments.
(08:29):
You could be selling to developers who are looking to
sell out the condos. You could be offering them different
services from planning all the way up to property management
if they're leasing. So I wonder like, first of all,
how did you select the focus Because you mentioned you
decided to focus on new developments of a partments CE,
(08:49):
So how did you decide on the one hand, where
to focus on And then also like, how did you
actually prioritize those accounts also knowing this complexity of Okay,
they are not all in the market right now, the
long sales cycles, et cetera. So I'm really curious to
hear more about that.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
Sure, well, we wanted to keep the program focused so
that we could really get the process down and then
we could later on use it to apply to other
areas of our business or even to expand.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
Outside of Boston geographically.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
So so what we decided to focus on was new development,
of course is you know, our main revenue driver, but
specifically on multifamily, which is apartment building, so construction of
apartment buildings.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
And we have a we have.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
An agency and in house agency called Authentic who does
amazing work on branding and go to market strategy for multifamily.
So I think the integration with them as well was
a nice way to you know, bring the us all
together as a team and think about how we put
this in place specifically, you know, for multifamily in Boston,
(09:55):
and then you know, Authentic actually works on a nationwide basis,
so then we could take it to other markets if
we could prove out the success in Boston.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
Love it And coming back to our main topic for
today's podcast, to count base specific content. A few things
that I would like to emphasize on the first one
is that you assigl them to developers, and they are
very different from B to B marketers or sales or
startup owners. Right. These are not people who are hanging
(10:24):
out on linked In all the day long, generally speaking,
on social media, consuming content you know, like and comment
and etc. Right. So the second challenge probably here is
that when we think about social media, let's say LinkedIn platform, right,
we always think about global audience as we can do
(10:45):
so leadership program, right, and the content will be distributed
across the globe or across our broader network. Right. But
your specific challenge is that your company operates in a
very specific region, right, mostly New England in the United States.
So these are the main constraints, right, two questions here,
(11:12):
looking back at pilot abon program, what would you say
were the key channels that worked out for you? And
the key channels and the key programs. And then I
will ask the second follow up question.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
Yeah, sure, So you know you mentioned you know, small
area and investors, developers not being on LinkedIn. So one
of the things is that Charles Gate has been around
for over twenty years, so we know a lot of
people within the real estate community and are well connected.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
Right. So the majority of our business in the past.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Has come from client referrals or you know, introductions and
networking events that type of thing.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
So when we actually take.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
That to LinkedIn, which you know, we were in part
doing but not really they're actually on LinkedIn, they may
not be active, but we were actually able to find
that we could connect to the target accounts and we
know the target accounts we want to go after, and
there's a lot of you know, real state industry research
ways that we can research different projects in the area.
(12:14):
You know, build up is one, and we can go
and we can actually find the target accounts that are
in our area a lot more easier than maybe you know,
a SAS account because we know that there's active projects
there or there isn't and then identify those people on
LinkedIn within those target accounts and then reach out to
them that way, and surprisingly it worked very well for us.
So it was it was definitely like, I think an
(12:36):
eye opener to our sales team on how well LinkedIn
could actually reach the targets that we were going after.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
I think this is one of the biggest lessons for
a lot of companies because when they try to post
something on LinkedIn and they don't see engagement, especially if
sales team is involved into it, right, they might be
frustrated or they say, okay, nobody is concerning that content.
I don't see any meaningful engagement, so why doing this? Right?
(13:04):
But the truth is that in many verticals, and especially
in these conservative verticals, right, these people could be just
lurking on LinkedIn. They are not engaging, they're not liking,
they are not comment and not something that we are
seeing in market tech space or sales tax space, right.
But it doesn't mean that they are not consuming the content.
(13:26):
And also, what I have noticed, and this is the
question that I wanted to ask you, that in this
conservative niches and this conservative markets, you don't often see
companies of vendors creating really good sought leadership content.
Speaker 5 (13:44):
Right.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
Quite often it's very generic. Maybe you know companies press releases,
why I happen to announce or whatever. You know, companies
pictures with everybody smile, And we attended the conference of
very generic news, right, but not the content that address
us the jobs to be done, or the strategic initiatives
and challenges of your target accounts. So coming back to
(14:08):
my question, they feel that it's indeed ARUs wait and
it can influence the sales process and influence the pipeline generations.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
The content, Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
So luckily, you know, we had Mike already paving the
way with his thought leadership content on LinkedIn, and so
he got us start in that direction. And we have
a really strong content marketing person on staff as well
who knows.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
The real estate industry.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
So we were in a good spot when we started
the program with content, and so it was really about
how do we think about our target audience and taking
the expertise, the case studies, you know, all the work
that we've done in the past, and turn that into
relevant content that that has to do maybe with the
(15:00):
specific project that our target account is working on.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
Right, so we could connect to them through LinkedIn and.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
Say, hey, you know, I saw your project X y Z,
and you know, we've done these five projects that are
very similar and really bring immediate value and credibility, you know,
to to the conversation and then back that up with
content that we're either you know, posting on LinkedIn, but
that we could send to them, you know, directly.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
That was a very nice remark from Hun Publom, a
neighbor from Barcelona. People forget that the content can and
must be used in triv a DMS. We see your
net for convinkent and like stuff on you.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
This so absolutely and that was something you know that
our sales team I think didn't realize, right. So once
we started reaching out and then you know, giving them,
sending them content through DMS or following up and with
email and content, they saw how well it worked. And
and to your point about you know, it's not about
(16:01):
necessarily engagement likes. You know, maybe people are lurking. We
started to hear anecdotally, Oh, I saw your post on.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
LinkedIn the other day.
Speaker 3 (16:08):
It was great, you know, and so we know that
our audience is there even if you don't necessarily see it.
Speaker 4 (16:15):
I really want to underline this. I think I've seen
it in other niches. We did a similar podcast episode
with a test trail that is a company that builds
these tools and sells them to Q and A engineers
call qual It engineers and software teams. And when you
look at their profiles on LinkedIn, very frequently I don't
(16:38):
even see a picture like a photo. You just see
like this half empty profile. They have never liked, never commented.
And when you observe that, you think, like LinkedIn is
absolutely not the place to market to them. We know,
maybe directing on some communities, but not so much on LinkedIn.
And I think actually this was proven wrong because like
(17:03):
exactly as we do, you saw this engagement, andthing like,
what's amazing for me, for you guys, is that you're
even seeing engagement when Michael posts about something very specific
like zoning policies in Boston, which is like so local,
and yet you might have like fifty or sixty people
engaging from your market. But back to my point about
(17:26):
the opportunity, I think there is a big opportunity if
you're in a niche market like that. Even though you
might consider these people not being active on LinkedIn because
they're not usually, but just because you start posting content
that is actually relevant to them, you're going to stand out.
It's much easier to stand out in a market like
(17:47):
that than it is to stand out in our market,
where there's so much noise, there's so much content already
being produced. So I just wanted to underlie this for everyone.
And it's not just about content and engagement, and also,
like jo Amparo said, it's also about the opportunity to
actually start conversation, drive those meetings, and end up obviously
(18:13):
with new business. So I just wanted to underline. I
think this is really important for people to understand, and
I wonder, like we spoke about content, I think you
mentioned as well that you were looking at the projects
because you wanted to go after developers who had a
(18:34):
new project coming up, working on a new development project. So,
if I understood you correctly, you were actually checking out
these developers, these target accounts as we call them, and
trying to understand, hey, they have a project, this is
you know, this many units in this location, They're likely
(18:56):
to have these kind of challenges. And then you were
selling or even creating content that was specific that you
could basically refer Okay, you did a similar project, et cetera,
et cetera. So in a way you were creating content
that was aligned with that specific account or at least
like sharing that is that what you did. Did I
(19:17):
understand that correctly?
Speaker 1 (19:19):
Yeah, that's absolutely correct.
Speaker 3 (19:20):
You know, as I mentioned before, CHARLDS Kids has over
twenty years of experience in the Boston market, right so,
and working from anything from single family homes up to
you know, two hundred unit buildings. We've worked on over
sixty least new development projects throughout the area, have over
three billion in assets under management, right, So we have
(19:43):
all this experience that we can take and then apply
you know, a specific lens to a project because likely
we've done something very very similar or in an area
of Boston that's very similar. So for example, we were
looking at a that was in the Awesome Right neighborhood,
and we've done probably ten different projects right around the area.
(20:05):
So it was easy for us to pull market data
show how you know, we were able to beat you know,
the market in terms of the rental market, in terms
of driving rents and help to accelerate revenue faster for
these different projects based on our approach to leasing and
(20:26):
marketing right, and so making that the connection of you know,
if you can go in and you can invest early
at the right time and help to build a brand
and start to generate interest in the building early, way
way before you're close to CEO, right, and start to
get that interest and demand generation comes early, you're going
(20:48):
to you're going to accelerate your leasing quicker, you're going
to reach absorb quicker, You're going to have a cash
flow come in sooner, right, and then you're going to
improve your overall investment on the project and we've done
that time and time again and in that often bright neighborhood, right,
So we were able to take all of that that
we've done in the stats and put it together in
a really great piece of content that resonated so well
(21:10):
with that investor.
Speaker 4 (21:14):
Sorry, I just wanted to deconstruct this for everybody. Maybe
they couldn't really follow that, and companies see immediately how
that that could apply for them. So I think like
the first thing that I heard here was that you
figured out what is the most important goal that these
developers have, and you were talking about absorptions just for
(21:35):
the folks out there, it is about how quickly you
can rent out, lease up your properties, so how quickly
you can start to make money out of the property,
because the longer it sits, the more money you're wasting.
And you knew that this was especially important to developers
right now this year because they were high margins. I'm sorry,
(21:58):
they were how high interest rates and low margins? I
wanted to say, so, basically, when you were deciding to
create that content, you were looking at a number of
things that were happening in the industry, knowing what their
top problem was, and then you basically were educating, Hey,
we know this is important for you, this quick absorption
(22:20):
and having basically the ROI increasing your margins, especially this year.
And if we look at similar projects we did there,
we can help you be the market, we can help
you get there, we can help you basically make more money. Right,
And I just just wanted to kind of deconstruct it
(22:42):
for people and they want to apply to themselves. Is
really like you selected a very specific account we call
it account cluster, or is a very specific use case
new development of apartment building multi families as you call them.
Then you said, what are the biggest challenges of these
(23:02):
accounts that have that use case? And you knew because
of the low margins and high interest rates, it's like,
how can I maximize my profit here? How can I
make sure that I'm actually not losing? And how can
I as quickly as possible rund those out? And then
you were creating content to show them exactly how they
can do that, which was like very valuable and useful
(23:25):
for them, but also it help you create that awareness
because if I understand correctly, there is no like not
all developers have that idea, Oh we should just start
marketing early. And you know, doing things like that, So
you had to like work a lot to generate the
awareness this kind of change their mind or change the
way that they think about marketing their their properties.
Speaker 3 (23:47):
Yeah, absolutely right, and you said it, you know, way
better than I did.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
But also I think there's value that we can add
early on.
Speaker 3 (23:55):
So like if they're even considering whether a project should
move forward, right and are looking on at trying to
get financing, so we can actually help them to evaluate
the market and you know, put together a sample pro
form of what it's going to look like to operate
the building in like the first couple of years, what
their cash flow will look like that they can actually
(24:16):
then take to potential lenners to secure debta equity.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
So we've done that you know many times. And when
when you can go in and add that.
Speaker 3 (24:24):
Type of value early so that I wouldn't necessarily consider
that content, but going you know, you get a meeting
and you can show them, you can take their data
and show them what you can do.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
It adds that value.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
Early and it builds that trust that we can actually
help them through every stage of their project. So when
it comes time to actually going out and you know,
leasing up the marketing and marketing the building and leasing
it up.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
You know, we have the operating know how to be
able to do that.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
Awesome. So one of the pactics that we used, we
call it internally account love letters and hopefully liked that concept. Right,
this is the tactic. Well, basically we create a super
specific account content right based on known strategic initiatives or
the challenges that we were able to just cover through
(25:15):
one on one conversations as different engagements. Right, So from
my experience, this was one of the let's say, most
available tactics right when it comes to account engagement. I
would love to ask you to share a little bit
(25:36):
how did you leverage account love letters in sales and
maybe the process around creating them, maybe just sharing specific example.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
Sure.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
I mean it's also very similar to what that had
just articulated.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
So nicely.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
You're really identifying what their problems are, what are their challenges,
and there might be things that they don't even know
that they have or that they can't see, right, and
then we can go and create a piece of content
that identifies what those are and then shows what are
solve is right, So it could be for example, their
(26:14):
project is you know, near stalled construction, and we've had
that experience working with other investors of developers before, so
we can actually create a piece of content on you know,
here's here's what you can do, uh to think about
how do you get out of this install? And that
could be for you know, whatever the reasons are. But
(26:34):
if it's you know, securing funding for example, as you
mentioned before, we can help them put together that you know,
operating plan and and do that through a piece of
content that shows them the similarity you know, with their
with their business. And so again that again that it
earns immediate trust when you're able to show results and
(26:55):
market data that directly applies to whatever their challenges are.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
Maybe one of the better specific questions that everybody might
have how to distribute that content, how to ensure that
your target accounts will actually see and consume it.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
Yeah, So we started, you know, by connecting through LinkedIn,
and then we would try to you know, we'd get
their email address or try to get a meeting. And
I think the best way is if you can get
a meeting and get in front of them, so then
you research their project beforehand so that you know the
right question to ask. Once you're in that introductory meeting,
(27:32):
and then you can get as much information for them
as possible on the project, and in many cases they
might be willing to share specific data. Right, So if
they're able to share like operating expenses and things that
allow us to help create a simple performa, we can
then walk away from that meeting with the right information
to then create a piece of content that is super relevant.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
That's the best way to do it, right.
Speaker 3 (27:55):
But if you can't get that meeting, then it's really
about you know, researching as best you can and what
their project is, and then putting together some case studies
around you know, what you think their challenges might be,
and sending it to them, you know, either DM through
LinkedIn or through email.
Speaker 4 (28:12):
I remember I think pt who was the main salesperson
during the pilot, one of the two founders but also
playing the role there, mentioned that how did he say,
I think that people were already kind of educated before
they already knew what you were all about when he
was able to share this piece of content with the
target accounts and then would go in a meeting afterwards
(28:35):
that they were already quite educated about what Charles Kate
did and how you might be able to help them.
That that was very useful as well for him during
the sales process.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
Yeah, And I mean that's part of the full funnel approach, right.
It's that making sure you've got that cadence of continuous
posting on social not just reaching out directly, but that
you're establishing that thought leadership, putting out the right cadence
of content that.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
So that that creates this awareness.
Speaker 4 (29:06):
Right.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
So just like you said, they're familiar with us by
the time he's reaching out to connect with them.
Speaker 4 (29:12):
One of those dimensions, one of the things is said
to get out again, help people connect the dots. I
think is said that you were all also able to
provide a lot of value to your buyers, even if
they're early on in their projects, by essentially creating a
business case for them the projections of the return and
(29:33):
investment of the project, which is something that you need
to have anyhow, right. But I think for you it
was really good as well because we know that, for example,
in sales, we just know that when you're able to
create a business case for a client, which kind of communicates, okay,
this is what you can make if you don't do
anything and this is what you can make if you
(29:53):
basically deploy our approach or work with us. Essentially, you
will like, there is no better way to communicate the value,
especially to business people and developers at the end are
very number oriented at the end. They do this to
of course get the ROI. So I thought that was
so clever of you that you did it like that,
(30:14):
And so on the one hand, it provides a value,
so you can't really sell them your product yet or
your service. So you figured out, okay, what can we
do to provide the value so early on, and then
at the same time also to use that to collect
all this information that we can then demonstrate in numbers
(30:35):
how by working with us they can benefit and what
the ROI would be. I thought that was so brilliant.
And with all of these tactics in place, what were
the results of the program. And this was of course
a pilot program that you just rolled out. Statements started
rolling up basically rolled out just a month ago or so.
(30:58):
So I wonder, like, so far, knowing of course that
you have such long sales cycles of two years, but
what were the results so far?
Speaker 3 (31:07):
Yeah, So I'd say, first and foremost, we developed a
process for prospecting that we didn't have before. So I
think before, you know, we we had a process for
managing our pipeline once we had an opportunity and you know,
how we're going to close the deal, But we really
didn't have a process for the beginning piece of how
do we identify the target accounts?
Speaker 1 (31:26):
How do we organize them in.
Speaker 3 (31:27):
Such a way that we can prioritize who we want
to go after so that we can focus the sales
team's time. How do we create a daily cadence, a
daily habit of you know, social selling and follow up
and you know, following up in different stages, and the
focus for the sales team and what they're going to
target you know, that week, we didn't have any of
(31:49):
that right So, first and foremost, putting that in place
was a huge game changer for us to be able
to organize our activity and focus the time on what
where we think there's a likely opportunity, where there's going
to be a project that can turn into an opportunity
that can hopefully turn into a deal down the road.
So that's first and foremost, So once we were able
(32:09):
to do that, and then we can start to get
you know, some introductory meetings. Out of that, we start
to see the flywheel happen right where we actually are
finding more opportunities through this. You know, we've added a
new a new channel, new avenue for us to find
opportunities than what we were doing before with just networking
in client referrals.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
So now we're.
Speaker 3 (32:29):
Adding those opportunities into our pipeline and starting to manage
those into closing deals.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
So I'd say the results have been great.
Speaker 3 (32:38):
We've probably added at least ten opportunities so far from
just that program, and we're close to closing i'd say
our first big one, which would be really great in
the next hopefully couple of weeks.
Speaker 2 (32:59):
We have a couple of questions from our community. But
before we'll dive f ind the community questions, I would
like to ask very specific question around what you have shared.
So having an experience of working this partner like full
final data, right, what would you say, uh, the benefits
if you have a partner helping you out with developing
(33:23):
the strategy and rolling it out versus like trying to
figure it out and house.
Speaker 3 (33:29):
Yeah, I mean absolutely, we couldn't have done it without you.
We'd try it on our own before, and we didn't.
We didn't have the process right, We didn't have that
whole I would really say full funnel piece, that beginning
piece of you know, really being able to bring the
marketing and sales together show us, you know how beneficial
that is, right, the whole process of prioritizing target accounts,
(33:52):
researching them and you know, thinking about you know what
all your next actions are, your next steps you're going
to take. You didn't we didn't think about that before. So,
you know, working with your team with Stafo, he was
a great leader for us to you know, spend a
couple hours a few hours every week on you know,
teaching us your process but adapting it for our business, right,
(34:14):
because not every business is the same. So I think
being really flexible to think about, how is real estate different,
how's this long sales cycle different, how are these investors different?
And so how do we want to adapt the program
to make sure that you know it fits your need?
So really good about doing that and then setting that
process and working with our sales team because you know
pt as you mentioned, he was our lead sales team.
(34:35):
He didn't post on LinkedIn before. He wasn't like super
active and now he's very into it, right, So you know,
Stapho took a lot of time and worked with him
to establish that habit and get him comfortable with it
and see the results. And you know, I think once
you start seeing the results, seeing the feedback, seeing that
you're getting meetings as a result of this activity that
you're doing, is like super powerful, right, so that they
(34:56):
see that this actually works and then they want to
continue doing it.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
So I don't you know, without that structure.
Speaker 3 (35:02):
And that you know, your your wisdom, knowledge and your
experience of having worked with so many different clients, I
don't think we would have been able to do it
on our own.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
Appreciate love. Also, it also reminded me about dozens of
hours that we spent all together internally when staff I
was bringing quite challenging questions from you and thinking how
to solve it, because again, it's not the market where
you can, you know, buy a software and reach accounts
(35:32):
and just create change pety created emails to that pretended
to be personalized rights and the expect revenues. Thank you
so much for sharing this. We have a couple of
questions from our community, so maybe let's pick them up.
A question from any how to position the initial email
(35:54):
or conversation to the executive of the target account that
is not too generic but not kind either since that's
the first personal inte So this is.
Speaker 3 (36:05):
One of the things that that full funnel will teach
you if you engage in a program with them. And
this is what we really learned from STAFFO was to
you know, research First of all, you're thinking about on
your target account list, you know, who do you want
to connect with? And you know, once you know, then
you want to research do a little research on that person.
Do you have any connections you know in common and
(36:26):
we actually had lots of connections on LinkedIn in common,
so there could be a thread there or you know,
did you go to school together? You know, what what
are the things that you that you can reach out
to and sort of make a personal connection with that person.
Also really understanding in our case with the you know,
real estate, with the projects.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
Do they have an active project, what do we know.
Speaker 3 (36:46):
About it, what are the challenges there and how have
we seen you know that that you know tape play
over and over again and the things that we've done
so that we can add that value. So we really
think about the customization of that first initial outreach. You
target it based on whatever that personal connection you might
have with them, and then think about from a business perspective,
(37:09):
how what you've done can really help them with what
their what their challenges are. But be led about it, right,
you know, it's not really you're not there to sell.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
You're just there to really make the connection, get a
response and then try to get a follow up conversation
or meeting. So don't don't go out with the heavy sell.
Speaker 4 (37:31):
Yeah, as well in a follow up, you're using content
as well, and you were selecting content that was more
useful and more specific to the projects that I had,
Like you mentioned that example where you already had six
projects in the same area as one of these targets.
I want to say target because like, is the developer
(37:52):
that you were approaching, this is a normal language, normal
people's language, and so that also helped them to continue
that conversation, engage them again and again and eventually book
book those calls. And I remember also like we have
to also give credit to pt who was like so
amazing and just like picking up the phone just holding
them and booking them, you know, get together a meeting
(38:18):
and then of course things become a little bit easier
after that first initial discovery call.
Speaker 2 (38:24):
Yeah, I feel I just wanted to add five cents here.
I feel there are two also sayings that are really important.
The first one is always have a genuine reason to
reach out. So why you reaching out? Right? Because if
you're not, I mean we're already forget about pitch slabon right,
(38:45):
So same connection request and then immediately pitching This is
absolutely broke and playbook. But then a lot of companies
they can send you know, hey, I went to the
same school or whatever, we used to work for the
same company. But then the question what's next? I know
a company we used to work in the past, they
sent a lot of connection requests, for example, to start
(39:06):
up founders. Congrats with the funding, and then they ask
a question, but what's next? Right, So it's not that
hard to get connection request accepted after it. Right, But
you need to have a good playbook how you going
to engage and nurchre that relationship. And one of the
best probably pieces of advice here, I always think about
(39:28):
the old Dale Carnegie's book How to Make Friends, Right,
which is the classic book for everybody in marketing and sales.
So just use these principles. Right, if you'll go to
any meetup, you're probably not likely to pitch anybody, right,
or you're not likely to start talking about thel. Hey,
I'm marketing manager, manager, I'm helping with blah blah blah
(39:50):
blah blah. Right, so obviously you'll open the conversation. You'll
try to find the common touch points, right, And that's
another piece of advice that I can pro here.
Speaker 4 (40:01):
Yes we have, we have one more question that you
wanted to share and they are all right, So yeah,
do you wanted to say something?
Speaker 2 (40:10):
Use an AI to personalized content for each target account
a buyer?
Speaker 3 (40:15):
Uh no, No, I mean I think you know, we
use AI when we when we're producing content at MASS,
you know, to write a blog article or something like that.
But the thing about AI is it's really great to
help you. I think the best application of AI is
when you're actually using your own content to help you
(40:37):
to drive efficiency. Now, when you're going out to find
content off you know, the internet and create something, so
helping you organize your thoughts to create efficiencies. But when
we're creating content for specific targetic ant buyers, no, we're
not using AI.
Speaker 1 (40:51):
Because it has to be so specific to.
Speaker 3 (40:54):
What their challenges are and to our process and approach,
and you know, we have a we have an approach
is very different than other real estate firms out there,
and you know, we are looking at specific projects that
we've worked on in the past with specific market data.
And in the case of you know, we're doing something
like a sample performer, we're actually using data from the
(41:18):
client to be able to do that.
Speaker 1 (41:19):
So it's all all content that we create ourselves.
Speaker 2 (41:24):
Thank you.
Speaker 4 (41:25):
So it's like the the tool is only as smart
as what you feeded, the data that you feeded, right,
So it's not about using the AI as a tool
to create new content to give you the message, but
it's it's more to just improve deficiency of the existing
(41:47):
content you're producing. I think that like people should actually
use it like that as a tool rather than a replacement.
Speaker 3 (41:57):
You need to be authentic, you know, and and.
Speaker 4 (42:02):
I think that is really good at copying is not
really going to help you become.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
It will be very straightforward. There is an old quote,
A full with a tool is still a full, right,
which is very relevant.
Speaker 1 (42:19):
That's exactly right.
Speaker 2 (42:21):
Yeah, that's use case. So another question from nils on
linked in my feet is filled with all these posts
claiming that lead generation doesn't work, but that we have
to engage with demandsion and programs because only five percent
of how a target accessible market is in the market. Actually,
how do you see this in relation to account based marketing?
Speaker 3 (42:43):
Yeah, I mean to me, account based marketing is really
being proactive, right, You're not waiting for people to come
to you. So when you think about lead generation, a
lot of times that's making sure you have the right
content on your website, that it's optimized for SEO so
that when people are searching, they're coming to you, you
have the right you know, lead GM capture forms and
workflows set up through your CRM to make sure that
(43:07):
you're you know, going back out and reaching out to
them and then you know, maybe getting in front of
a salesperson.
Speaker 1 (43:11):
That's really kind of leaden this. With demand gen, You're
you are going in your putting.
Speaker 3 (43:18):
Thought leadership content out there as we talked about before,
to create an awareness about your your brand, and then
you're actively going out and finding your targets and contacting them.
You're not waiting for them to come to you, and
you're doing this you know, with a partnership between marketing
and sales, right, so that you're you're making sure that
(43:38):
you're both aligned on you know who the targets are,
you know what your message is, and you're that you're
able to create that that right content to be able
to do that, and you know the right channels, whether
it's a d M on LinkedIn or it's follow up
through email or however. But that's how I see the difference.
Speaker 2 (43:58):
And I think there is Yeah, Sarah just wanted to say,
see there is an important nuance to all of this.
Even if you look at this question, Neils, you try
to separate demand generation from account based marketing from lead
generation and obviously lead generation in a natural the way
how Imma described it, it's I mean, you don't need
to look at LinkedIn posts. I would just say it's
(44:22):
pretty enough to take a sober look at the performance
of your legion programs, right, not just looking at MP
also whatever, but just holistically look at how you lead
generation program produces revenue and unit economics. If it's working
for you, feel free to continue le generation. There is
no problem, right, But if it's not working, then you
(44:44):
are in problem. And now here's I feel really important point.
A lot of people, especially on linked then they try
to separate different motions from each other. Here's demand generation
and you need to go all in. Here's the print
and you need to go all in print. Here's ABM.
You need to go all in print in ABM. Here's
the sales enablement slash buyer enablement. This is what you
(45:08):
need to do right, But in reality, this is what
Amy mentioned. We're all always advocated for full funnel approach,
which means that you influence the entire buyer journey from
how are you going to create awareness among the buying
committee members of your target accounts to how you generate
sales opportunities with them? And there are two most steps,
(45:30):
how fast you can accelerate the time to value, which
is all about client success right and then expansion because
if you don't have meaningful client success, then you need
to forget about expansion right. If simply if your customers
are not getting any value out of your product or service,
you won't be able to upsell right. And then if
(45:52):
you are selling technical product, then it's just the red
flag that indicates that you have a your issue. So
as simple as that always in a cohisim model. How
can you influence that journey? Right? And the point here
is what we do an account based market and we
always look at these three lists of accounts class the
ICP future pipeline and actually focus. This is how we
(46:16):
do the prioritization based on how likely certain accounts would
become sales opportunities. Right. This is this is where marketing
and sales should spend all the time proactively, but at
the same time not neglecting to other lists, because if
you're not working on future pipeline at one point, you'll
have a significant problem and you'll squeizz out everything from
(46:39):
existing one.
Speaker 4 (46:41):
And I was also going to highlight what Amy said,
it's not necessarily just imbound. It's not necessarily just outbound.
It's all bound in a way that you are using
content and marketing to create awareness, and then your sales people,
working together with salespeople, are then leveraging that awareness and
(47:06):
engagement with your content to start conversation. So you're just
waiting passively, but you're also not just reaching out cold
and with a generic message to everyone. And a follow
up question on that, because we spoke a lot about
demand generation and content and thought leadership on LinkedIn, And
a really relevant question from Luke is what if your
(47:29):
targets are not on LinkedIn? And just like wanting to
remind everybody, maybe you didn't tune in from the start,
because we were discussing this at the beginning to our
big surprise, although we expected that, you know, the real
estate developers are not like B to B marketers or salespeople,
very active on LinkedIn. You may even check out their
(47:51):
profile and you don't see a lot of activity. However,
you shouldn't assume, and luckily we didn't make that assumption
and it worked out for Al's Gate, So you shouldn't
assume that LinkedIn might They are not lurking, they're not reading,
and in niche markets it can actually be an advantage because,
(48:11):
like for Charles's Gate, it turned out that even if
you're posting about real estate in Boston, you can still
get a lot of relevant engagement as long as you're
doing everything that Amy described, not just putting the content
out there, but also proactively connecting to those people and
building those relationships. But I think it is worth answering
(48:33):
that question, and I think we can share some of
the anecdotes from our own experience about other ways to
engage buyers that are not active on LinkedIn, but maybe
amy maybe not in Charles Gate, but in other companies
that you worked at. You had that situation because you
did work on a lot of different projects, and I wonder, like,
what are your thoughts on that.
Speaker 3 (48:54):
Yeah, I mean if you can find their their email
or phone number, there are obviously other channels that you
can be using besides LinkedIn, and we.
Speaker 1 (49:03):
Do you know, there are a lot of you know,
ways to get.
Speaker 3 (49:08):
That information, different services out there to find that for
your targets.
Speaker 1 (49:11):
But then the same approach that you would take on a.
Speaker 3 (49:14):
DM on LinkedIn, you can take via email, which is,
you know, less intrusive than maybe calling, but then calls
could be maybe part of your follow up later on
after you've sent email.
Speaker 4 (49:28):
And I think you mentioned two other things. You mentioned
that you were that there were a lot of these
networking events, so that there were the specific I don't
know if there were like some associations or other types
of organizations that the developers belong to that you could
leverage to just like visit them at the places where
they hang out and meet each other and be part
(49:49):
of the community. For if you're not local like your
company is, there are in some cases other communities I
mentioned earlier during this podcast episode q engineers called engineers
and sea teams. They may not be so acting on LinkedIn,
although there as well it worked. They are very active
(50:13):
on some of these niche either slack or no. No,
it's not like in their cases discord discord communities or
other kinds of communities. And it's just amazing, like even
like a much smaller community than LinkedIn, which is much global,
but the level of engagement and kind of conversations they
can get started there are just amazing. And I think
(50:35):
there was another thing that you mentioned while we were
actually talking about your project before that you had some partners,
so other companies or service providers. I don't know if
it was the lawyers of other kind of vendors well
partners of developers that you also sometimes collaborated. Is that right?
Speaker 3 (51:00):
Yeah, yeah, that's absolutely right. And you know, first to
your point about the events, events absolutely are a great
way to go out into network. And you know, whether
it's like for in the example of real estate, there's
you know that like in Massachusetts, the Massachusetts Department Association,
I think every state has one of those they put
on events. Then there's industry research companies like build Up
(51:24):
that put on events. So there's all all kinds of
events that you can go to network or we we
tend to do speaking opportunities at some of these, or
have a boot so you.
Speaker 1 (51:33):
Can get in front of your audience. But but yeah,
I mean I think that.
Speaker 3 (51:39):
There's there's the the traditional ways of you know, networking
and meeting people, and within your industry, and particularly like
within real estate, there's a huge network of other players
that you say, so there's architects, there's you know, attorneys, lawyers, lenders.
Speaker 1 (51:53):
So you know, when you creating connections with those.
Speaker 3 (51:57):
One of the things that we actually saw on LinkedIn though,
was that we would we would go and have a
second degree connection with one of our targets and they
would be connected to like.
Speaker 1 (52:06):
One hundred other people that we knew.
Speaker 3 (52:09):
Right, So it's just that we're in that type of
a small industry, there's going to be someone else that
can make an introduction for us, right. So having a
strategy to your point also that's not just like focused
on your target accounts, but also reaching out to those
partners within the ecosystem, whether it's directly or creating content
that might be reletivant to them is also a big
(52:32):
piece of this as well, because if you can get
someone to make an introduction for you, that's a lot
better and more genuine. You know, someone who can actually
provide a referral than just that cold outreach.
Speaker 4 (52:50):
I wanted to say. Also mentioned like how one channel
is leaking into the other, and how you're basically trying
to string create a series of touch points essentially, and
how you will maybe go to an event and here
he might go to an event and hear about oh
senior content and give them give them compliments about his content.
(53:13):
So they have seen him on LinkedIn. But the fact
that now they see him on LinkedIn, they see him
in the event. He might actually follow up later on
with some other people he met at the event on
LinkedIn and they may start following and seeing. So actually
trying to kind of create think about journey and multiple
touch points and not just like very transactional. Oh, I'll
(53:34):
go to an event and I'm going to get come
back home with some business or some leads, or I'm
just going to reach out to a bunch of people
on LinkedIn and expect this transactional thing to happen where
I will, but actually just using all the different opportunities
to build that relationship, to get in touch and again
and again and again until the time is right.
Speaker 5 (53:56):
Sure, if you were doing that with an event, if
you're a speaker, you're sponsoring event anyway, you oftentimes get
a list of the attendees prior to the event, So
it's a great way for your sales team to.
Speaker 3 (54:10):
Take that and identify who they want to talk to. Right,
make a game plan so that you make that event
productive for you.
Speaker 2 (54:18):
Thank you so much. And also look came as a
follow up question. I wanted just to add two sense
auto summarize. Ever, and I feel that the most important
thing is just really nail down your ideal customer profile,
not just ending up with generic one, right, because this
is only the answer to the question what are the
(54:38):
accounts that we want to go after?
Speaker 4 (54:41):
Right?
Speaker 2 (54:41):
And the second one is deeply understand that by our
journey not just being biased by platforms. Everybody says linked
and let's go for linked and because for example, was
what we'll do a lot of projects when our companies
sell to manufacture and engineers so think about companies Coca
Cola and that's et cetera. And these people they don't
(55:02):
even have social profile and maybe they have a profile
on Facebook where it's just John d d dot and
that's it, right. You don't even know if that's the
right person, right, and there are no updates at all.
So you need to think about how you can influence
and exactly what Emmy mentioned, think about other channels, right, communities, associations, events,
(55:23):
maybe private events that you can leverage two to engage
with these people. So that's that's the key. But maybe
let's quickly cover the last question for today, the follow
up question from Look, if this relationship building concept is
not intuitive to sales, they create a playbooks or p
for the team and exactly what to do is a
(55:45):
significant training to see a success with this approach.
Speaker 3 (55:49):
Yeah, so I think you know, in general, most people
who are in sales are relationship builders, but maybe not
in the way that we're talking about here, right.
Speaker 1 (55:58):
So I'll use Peach who I love as.
Speaker 3 (56:01):
An example, Like he's fantastic at building relationships and has
done that, but that through personal relationships networking, you know,
going to to coffee meetings and golf. So taking you know,
that skill set and then applying it to here to
LinkedIn was not something you know that he was familiar
with and did. It needed a little training and we
need to create a playbook and a daily you know
(56:23):
habit for here's what you need to be doing, you know,
researching these accounts going and you know, commenting on people's accounts,
you posting yourself, you directly connecting, following up and it's
it's you know, something like a like a working out right.
Speaker 1 (56:38):
It's like a muscle you have to build.
Speaker 3 (56:39):
You have to do it every day and create a
habit of it to get comfortable with it and then
you see that it works.
Speaker 1 (56:44):
But it's absolutely possible to do.
Speaker 3 (56:46):
It's just you know, taking again taking those skills, the
things that they're already good at, and using it in
a different medium.
Speaker 4 (56:52):
Wow. I thank you. This is this has been one
of my favorite episodes, uh talking about life case studies.
So I think this is a masterclass for a lot
of people, especially if you're in a niche industry have
long sales cycles. These things work, they work really well.
(57:12):
Is there a place where people can go and learn
more about Charlesgate about maybe cheap outsiders yourself, what would
you recommend people if they wanted to connect to you
or learn more about your organizations, your work. Where would
you send them?
Speaker 5 (57:30):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (57:31):
Sure, so for I'll start with myself. You know again,
I work for Chief Outsires. You can just find us
our website chiefoutsires dot com or you know, follow us
on LinkedIn.
Speaker 1 (57:42):
For sure.
Speaker 3 (57:43):
We work with all different size companies across all different industries.
So if you've got a growth challenge that you need
marketing or sales help, definitely reach out.
Speaker 1 (57:53):
As far as Charlesgate at Charlesgate dot com is our website.
Speaker 3 (57:57):
You can learn more about our services, past projects, case studies,
you know everything there. We also have another site called
Transforming Cities dot io and that's really.
Speaker 1 (58:06):
Our content site. We have a podcast, we have blog articles.
Speaker 3 (58:10):
You'll see Mike and Chris Arnold, who is the co
founder of Authentic, who's our marketing arm agency. There's a
lot of content from them on there. You can follow
both of them on LinkedIn. They're both thought leaders on LinkedIn.
And finally, we actually have a webinar next LinkedIn Live
next Thursday on eleven twenty one at eleven am Eastern
(58:34):
time and the topic. There is proven new development strategies
for twenty twenty five how multi family developers are getting
four x ROI. So if you're interested more in real
estate and learning what we do, that's a great webinar
to join. If you miss it live, obviously you can
check it out another time.
Speaker 2 (58:51):
Tyler recommend to follow m as well on LinkedIn, as
probably you rarely have a chance to get connected to
a seasoned B to B market and professional. Emmy, thanks
a lot for jinin us.
Speaker 3 (59:05):
Thank you so much, Andrew and Vlad. I really enjoyed
working with you and staffo. I really appreciate the chance
to come talk about it here, so thank you, thank you,
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (59:16):
Guys as well for fantastic questions. Happy to see a
feedback that you love this session as well, So stay
tuned and welcome with new sessions next week. Take care, everybody,
Cheers
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.