July 25, 2022 • 34 mins
In episode 122, host Eric Dickmann talks with Dean Waye - CEO of WayeCreative, a copywriting firm helping businesses and fractional CMOs attract, impress, and lock in new clients.
Dean Wayne also co-hosts "This Audience Means Business," an interactive LinkedIn live show where he and his guests discuss and review company messaging.
For more information and access to the resources mentioned in this episode, visit: https://fiveechelon.com/attract-new-clients-fractional-cmo-s8ep7/
A fractional CMO can help build out a comprehensive marketing strategy and execute targeted campaigns designed to increase awareness and generate demand for your business...without the expense of a full-time hire.
The Five Echelon Group - Fractional CMO and strategic marketing advisory services designed for SMBs looking to grow. Learn more at:
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Eric Dickmann (00:01):
Welcome to The Virtual CMO podcast.
I'm your host, Eric Dickmann.
In this podcast, we haveconversations with marketing
professionals who share thestrategies, tactics, and mindset
you can use to improve theeffectiveness of your marketing
activities and grow yourbusiness.
Today, I'm excited to haveguests Dean Waye on the program.
(00:23):
Dean is the CEO of WayeCreative,a copywriting company helping
fractional CMOs attract toimpress and lock-in clients.
Dean also cohosts a LinkedInlive show called This Audience
Means Business.
Dean, welcome to the show.
Dean Waye (00:39):
Hello.
Your intro is way fancier thanmy intro, I like it.
Very pro level.
Eric Dickmann (00:44):
Well, thanks very much.
I appreciate you being here.
I'm looking forward to ourconversation.
One of the things that we'vereally been focusing on with
this program is this whole ideaof fractional executives,
especially the fractional CMOspace.
And I was really intrigued whenwe connected on LinkedIn, and I
saw that you were reallyfocusing your business on
helping fractional CMOs gettheir messaging right to sort of
(01:08):
bring in those clients.
So before we drill into that alittle bit more, I'd love it if
you could just share with theaudience a bit of your
background and sort of how yougot into this space.
Dean Waye (01:17):
I have had two lines of business pretty much since I
was 14, 15, and on one, it wason a tech track and I was a
software developer.
I got my first job, paying jobas a software developer at 14.
And then I became a softwareproject manager for a very long
time, like big, big, massiveprojects.
And then I went into tech salesand then I actually ended up in
(01:37):
sales proper, which I nevershould have done.
I'd made more money than I evermade in my career, but I was not
suited to like that.
And at the same time I had acopywriting career.
My dad ran a bookstore, like,you know, as a manager of a
little bookstore where we livedin a pretty remote place in
Canada, and we could just readwhatever we wanted.
As long as we didn't break thespine of the book, that was a
big deal.
Cause then they could keepselling it.
(01:58):
And I remember my firstcopywriting book was like 14,
15.
And the idea that you couldwrite something and then someday
in the future, some strangerwould read it and then do
something based on you writingsomething just blew my mind.
And I said, that's incredible.
I like writing.
I'm gonna learn how to do.
And the whole thing is kept up.
(02:18):
I ended up on the side, I hadeven just a few years ago, I had
a company called Audience Teamwhere I had about a dozen
professional speakers around theUS and Canada.
Eric Dickmann (02:27):
Okay.
Dean Waye (02:28):
I would write their webinars, I'd write their
outbound email and leadgeneration campaigns and do
their marketing and help'em withtheir, you know, with their
speaking and stuff.
So a lot of experience inwriting for live speakers and a
lot of stuff, writingtraditional copywriting.
And then tech and then it allcame together about 18, 20
(02:48):
months ago, going out on my own.
And now I even write for salespeople now, which are far easier
to write for professionalspeakers than it is to write for
sales people and what they'regonna say across a table to
someone else, but it's veryrewarding field.
So I,have that as part of what Iwrite for people.
Eric Dickmann (03:06):
So when you help sales people, do you help them
with their pitch decks?
Dean Waye (03:09):
Yeah.
The pitch decks and what they.
Eric Dickmann (03:11):
Yeah.
What do you think is theproblem?
Why do you think, uh, salespeople struggle so much in
knowing what to say?
Dean Waye (03:18):
You cannot be successful over a long career in
sales, unless you have like areally hardcore resiliency, you
call it a thick skin, but reallyit's a resiliency for rejection,
right?
And what you do is over time youend up, some things will work
for you, some kind of phrases orattitudes, or you know, whatever
(03:39):
will work for you and you'llmake your way through.
And then you end up with is youdon't wanna move out of that,
even though the audiencechanges.
And first thing I tell them whenwe start settling down, say,
let's look at your pitch deck,let's look at these slides,
let's figure out what phrasesyou're gonna say while this
slide is up and stuff.
And I say, I tell you, rightfrom the beginning, I'm an
advocate for the audience.
(03:59):
I'm a specialist in audienceattention.
I wrote for tons of speakers.
I know what we're gonna hookthem with.
I know how we're gonna keeptheir attention, and I know how
we're gonna get it back if itwanders off.
So I'm the advocate for them.
So when I tell you this isn'tgonna work, or this is better
than that, it's not my opinion.
It's the fact that someone elsethat I have to represent is in a
(04:20):
chair.
And we all know that the, themost senior decision maker in
that room is the one who walksin late, and sits furthest away
from your slide, and has themost other things pinging them
while you're pitching to them.
So their attention comes inlittle bits about the size of a
thimble, and we need to makesure we grab it every time it's
(04:42):
there.
Eric Dickmann (04:42):
So when you look at the difference between a
speaker, a salesperson and maybewebsite content, how do you look
at framing those messagesdifferently based on sort of
those communication channels?
Dean Waye (04:57):
Well let's say website content or email
sequences and that kind of stuffyou write for clients, right?
All of that messaging lives onone of three levels.
And once someone points it outto you, it's like someone points
out how much squeaking there iswith sneakers in a basketball
game.
And once someone points it out,you can't ever stop hearing all
the squeaking
Eric Dickmann (05:16):
That's so true.
Dean Waye (05:16):
Right?
So all content that you're gonnaread, all commercial content,
marketing content, all lives onone of three levels, right?
There's informational,inspirational, and
transformation.
So the bottom level where almostall of it lives is
informational.
And that's just, you go to awebsite and the company's
telling you here's who we areand what we.
Just like lays it out, right?
(05:37):
Inspirational is not sort of awoo woo, you know, kind of
thing.
It's very much a, you could bebetter, you could be a better
company, you could be a betterperson, you could have a better
career.
Something could be better.
And then that's usually as highup on the scale as a B2B
communication marketing can evergo.
And then transformational is youcould be new and you normally
(05:57):
only see that in certain B2Cstuff, health, fitness, beauty,
diet, you know, that kind ofstuff.
You could be a new person, ornew company altogether.
Almost no one you're trying tosell to in a B2B context is
looking to become a new company.
they're just looking to become abetter version of what they are.
And so if everything's down oninformational and nothing in
B2B, especially, you're notdoing anything on the
(06:20):
inspirational level, thenthere's nothing for them, they
don't see themselves in yourstory.
You're supposed to be tellingthem their story with you in it,
not your story and hoping thatthey care,
Eric Dickmann (06:30):
Yes.
I think that is such animportant point because I know
when I get engaged with clients,you know, and I work mostly in
the B2B space.
That is the most common problemthat you see.
They're very excited about theirproducts and services, and they
love to share all of thesethings that those products and
services can do.
But it's all at thatinformational level.
It's not anything that reallyconnects to people on an
(06:51):
emotional level.
Dean Waye (06:52):
Since you work with mostly B2B, I have a little
basketball squeaking tip foryou.
When you look at their pitchdecks.
Count up like, literally justlike concentrate.
Don't follow along themessaging, just treat it like
it's like a painting.
Look at a slide and look at howmany times their name appears on
the slide.
It's not uncommon for their ownname between the NDA disclaimer,
(07:14):
on the bottom, the logo,something else on the top, half
of every product has the name inthe product name.
So it's not unusual to see 3, 5,7 times per slide.
They've got their own name on aslide and it's invisible to them
until you point it out.
Eric Dickmann (07:30):
So as we talk about this whole fractional
space, how did you getinterested in helping fractional
executives, particularlyfractional CMOs with their
messaging?
Dean Waye (07:40):
It still exists, but I don't promote it anymore.
I have basically a service a onehour at a time service called
perfectlydescribed.com where Istarted writing on the advice of
a strategy coach.
I started writing people's.
Summaries on LinkedIn, just theAbout section, not the whole
page, nothing, just the Aboutsection.
(08:02):
Just that little paragraph thatpeople write about themselves.
I started writing that forcompanies on their company page
and for individuals and I didabout 200 in a year.
It's usually a one hour Zoomcall.
I give them a document ahead oftime, like a Google doc.
They fill in some rawinformation and then I just walk
'em through it, right?
And one of the earlier peoplearound month, two month three
(08:23):
was a fractional CMO, I've neverheard of any kind of fractional
executive at all.
Now I know hundreds, but backthen, none.
I said like, who hires afractional executive and said,
well, typically startups orbusinesses that are small
enough, they know that they wanta really high level person, but
(08:45):
they're not going to pay what ahigh level person would cost
full time, or basically they'renot going to, when you think
about it, when you hire anemployee, you're paying for
exclusive use of that employee.
Eric Dickmann (08:55):
Right.
Dean Waye (08:56):
And they're not ready to pay or can't afford exclusive
use of a very, very experienced20 plus year veteran CMO, but
they can get almost everythingthey need right now for whatever
10 hours a week, 30 hours amonth.
However, whatever the engagementis structured, like.
And then the other people whohire them are usually, it's a
(09:18):
company that even that has oneor more CMOs, but they have some
kind of new service or productthat they're launching.
And so they bring in afractional CMO.
Usually that person is much moreof a specialist, they're
specialists in new productlaunches.
They're product in, you know, sothey've just done a lot of
spinoffs, or there's like asmaller third set that you don't
(09:43):
see very often of clients whoare prepping.
They wanna grow in a certain wayat a certain rate so that they
can be acquired for the maximumamount of money.
And part of that is having anestablished sort of brand and
presence, or at least in thedomains that the acquirer would
see and interact with.
And so there are actuallyfractional CMOs who specialize
in getting you acquired bymaking you look attractive.
Eric Dickmann (10:04):
Yeah, absolutely.
I'm curious, because you talkedabout the fact that fractional
CMOs are typically people whocome from industry, they have
many years of experience.
Now they're trying to apply thatexperience to multiple companies
at once in a fractional role.
But what do you see as theymessage themselves
Dean Waye (10:23):
This is the hardest part for them.
Partly because marketing it's avery different to coming up
through like the ranks andmarketing and being, you know,
having a career in marketing.
It's very different to convincestrangers to buy or pay
attention to a thing versusgetting this stranger across the
(10:46):
table from you to be interestedin buy this thing, which is you.
It's completely different,right?
One is marketing marketing, andone is sales marketing.
And so I mean, they're allexperts, they're all solid in
that field, but as soon as youhave to like overlay a sales
mechanism for them, they havetwo problems.
This is the first one, theydon't really have much
(11:06):
experience selling and sellingyourself is the hardest thing to
sell.
Eric Dickmann (11:11):
Agreed.
Dean Waye (11:12):
The other aspect to it is very similar to how
copywriters or graphic artistsand certain other professionals
sell themselves.
The medium that you're sellingthrough, like what you're
showing, what your pitch decklooks like, how you say things
and whatever.
In my case, like what I write,right?
It is the product.
(11:32):
And so you're judged not only onyour experience in the past, but
what you're doing right now,talking to that prospect.
I mean if my copy for myoutreach and stuff sucked, no
one's gonna hire me, even thoughI've got tons of big brands in
my background that I've writtenfor.
And so the CMOs are in the samesituation, right?
They, their marketing reallyneeds to be killer marketing
(11:55):
because that's the first thingyou're gonna get judged on is
whether or not, you know, you'regood at marketing yourself to
that prospect.
They wanna see their future inwhat, in what you're showing
them about you.
So they have an extra challengethat makes it even tougher than,
you know, selling yourself as anindustrial workflow engineer
(12:16):
freelancer or consultant, right?
I mean, no one expects you toshow up with anything related to
your work cause your work isdifferent than how you would
sell or market yourself.
Marketers, CMOs, very tough.
They have a tough road.
Eric Dickmann (12:29):
I think that's so true.
I think you nailed it too whenyou talk about this idea of
self-promotion, it's just notsomething, especially if you're
coming maybe from a Fortune 500background, you know, you
promoted the company, youpromoted your products and
services, you're not the numberone person in that company.
You're promoting the company asa whole or your CEO or the
management team, and it's verydifferent than to go off on your
(12:49):
own.
I would just add that anotherthing that can be complicated
from what I've seen andexperienced myself is typically
when you work for a largerorganization, you play a part in
something, but there are lots ofother pieces of that puzzle.
And it's much harder to look andsay, I'm taking credit for this
result because you just played apart in it.
(13:11):
When you're working at a smallerorganization, it's much easier
to say I ran the whole strategy,I did everything, and this was
the result.
At a bigger company.
That's much harder to say.
Dean Waye (13:20):
Yeah.
And the CMOs of fractional CMOswho come out of a long career in
say Fortune 500 or Fortune 100,or even Fortune 1000 marketing,
right?
A lot of marketing yourself andhaving that messaging just
really dialed in and instantlystanding apart from the other
four or five fractional CMOsthat some prospects is looking
at.
Like it's, if you, your skillsetis not the creative end of that
(13:46):
messaging creation anymore.
Your skillset is strategy andplanning and managing teams and
identifying, you know, peoplewho should be, you know,
promoted up or moved out andgetting the right, you know,
pieces in place.
You delegated the creative stuffages ago.
And now suddenly you're beingjudged on the creative end and
the creative end might only belike a very thin wafer between
(14:08):
you and all the stuff you'resort of stack in between, but
it's what you're judged on untilyou can get across the table
from someone and impress'em withyou know, how you speak and what
you say, but to get to thetable, you need that like really
killer creative end.
And that's that that littlelayer is what I felt for.
Eric Dickmann (14:26):
Hmm.
I would add something else intothe mix as well.
If you're a doctor, a lawyer, afireman, you know, a real estate
agent, people immediately have apreconceived notion
Dean Waye (14:38):
They know what box in their head you belong to.
Yeah.
Eric Dickmann (14:40):
That's exactly right.
You don't have to explain it.
You might wanna explain yourspecialty if you're a doctor,
but they know what a doctor is.
When you say you're a fractionalCMO, a lot of times it results
in some blank stares.
It requires that extra step ofactually explaining what it is
that you do, and then trying toput your expertise on top of
that and say why you may be thebest in this particular area.
But how do you help fractionalCMOs overcome just that barrier
(15:04):
of understanding of what the jobeven is?
Dean Waye (15:06):
Well, fortunately, that starts by being a
prospecting problem.
Because obviously if you'retalking to most, in my
experience, most Fractional CMOsactually target CEOs
Eric Dickmann (15:19):
Hmmm.
Dean Waye (15:20):
to make the connection, and get a
conversation going.
And a CEO knows what a CMO is.
So they know fractional CMOs.
Also, it helps in a way that thesort of first, at least it seems
to me, the first group ofexecutives that went fractional
were CFOs.
Eric Dickmann (15:36):
That's right.
Dean Waye (15:37):
And then it moved into HR.
A lot of businesses, forinstance, they might want a
fractional HR director orFractional VP of HR because they
have a specific need, like onethat I know she specializes in
hiring and most of her clientsfor whatever reason are
seasonal.
So they have massive hiringspikes and then they don't need
someone like her the rest of theyear.
(15:59):
They need her like every Aprilor May.
And so that's great.
So usually the way that they getaround it, uh, the fraction CMOs
for not having to explain whothey, who they are, what they
do.
And as a copywriter, I can tellyou it's very frustrating.
I mean, I can't tell you howmany people I've explained, I'm
a copywriter and they think I'msome kind of lawyer.
(16:20):
By default, they think acopywriter's a lawyer, most
people, right outside ofmarketing.
So the way that they avoid theFractional CMOs, the way they
avoid it is they just gostraight to CEOs and market, try
to do all their marketing CEOsor members of a board.
Is those people at least knowwhat a CMO is.
And once they have that, thefractional part usually just is
either self-explanatory or ithelps them, you know, get past
(16:42):
it.
So essentially the answer toyour question is it's all about
which audience you're talkingto.
Eric Dickmann (16:49):
Hey, it's Eric here and we'll be right back to
the podcast.
But first, are you ready togrow, scale, and take your
marketing to the next level?
If so, The Five Echelon Group'sVirtual CMO consulting service
may be a great fit for you.
We can help build a strategicmarketing plan for your business
and manage its execution,step-by-step.
(17:09):
We'll focus on areas like how toattract more leads.
How to create compellingmessaging that resonates with
your ideal customers.
How to strategically package andposition your products and
services.
How to increase lead conversion,improve your margins, and scale
your business.
To find out more about ourconsulting offerings and
schedule a consultation, go tofiveechelon.com and click on
(17:32):
Services.
Now back to the podcast.
I've noticed a lot of people onLinkedIn are getting a little
bit more creative in that secondline underneath your name and
talking a little bit more aboutwhat they do as opposed to just
listing off a more recognizabletitle, because you've gotta cut
through this noise.
And there are a lot ofinteresting new positions that
(17:53):
are showing up, growth marketeris an example.
That's not a position that'sbeen around forever, but you ask
people what it is and you know,they'll scratch their head a
little bit in terms of definingwhat it is.
So I, I think that'sinteresting.
So as you start to work withsome of these fractional
executives, sort of, what is theprocess that you go through to
help them refine theirmessaging?
(18:13):
You talked a little bit aboutLinkedIn profiles, about
websites, what do you startlooking at and how do you help
them refine that message?
So that it's tailoredspecifically for them.
Dean Waye (18:23):
I still use most of the questionnaire.
It's not a very longquestionnaire, but these are not
comfortable sessions.
People like to think ofthemselves as being in one box,
whereas a stranger or a prospectwill automatically put them in
another box.
People don't like it, but Istill use that question a lot.
One of the things we go through,a few of the questions is like,
they're going to be looking atmultiple people just like you.
(18:47):
Why are you the safer choiceamong those top five?
Eric Dickmann (18:52):
Yes.
Dean Waye (18:52):
Because the ones who are seeing like the riskier
choice.
They're gonna be dropped prettyquickly.
It all comes back to like thenumber one question when you're
marketing and or selling in B2B,the number one question that you
might never be asked, but youneed to provide an answer for is
from the employee prospects,cEO's point of view.
(19:15):
Why is it safe for me to vouchfor you in here company?
Because no matter how much moneyyou might make or save my
company as a vendor, if I wouldend up losing my job, if you
blew up or I even lostreputation, then I'm gonna pass.
And we'll just find, we'll gowith whoever the biggest player
in the field is.
And so if you don't have ananswer for that prepared, you
(19:38):
don't answer that questionnecessarily directly, but your
marketing needs to sprinkle thatanswer throughout so they feel
safe.
I mean, what is B2B salesanyway, except a series of you
and the prospect, allowing eachother to get closer to each
other until you finally have adeal, right?
Nobody closes a big B2B sale inone meeting, right?
It's just a series of steps for,let me get closer.
(20:00):
Okay, you can come closer.
All right, let me get closeragain.
Okay.
You can get closer.
Let's have the initial pitchmeeting, let's do the second
deep dive meeting and so on
Eric Dickmann (20:10):
It's building that trust, right?
I love the way you phrase that,presenting yourself sort of as a
low risk option compared tomaybe others that they're
looking at.
But I think one of the otherchallenges that I often see is
that businesses think that theyare going to be most comfortable
with somebody who comes fromtheir industry, right?
It comes from exactly the samebusiness that they're in, which
(20:32):
is really difficult to find.
And yeah, if you can findsomebody like that, maybe that's
a great fit.
But in general, When I talk toclients, I generally put things
into, you know, the two basicbuckets, right?
B2B and B2C.
Generally, if you find amarketer, that's a B2B marketer
and you're a B2B business,you're probably gonna be pretty
safe with their skillset, B2Ce-commerce, you know, there's
(20:54):
some specific skillset and youcould probably argument that
maybe selling into the publicsector is a little bit unique or
something like that.
But in general, B2B B2C are thetwo big categories I look at.
How do you help people messageto that so they can say, I come
from this background, you comefrom that background, but we're
still a good match.
Dean Waye (21:14):
Okay.
So the, the next two questionsthat we go to of the four big
questions that we need to doafter all the preliminaries are
done are, what big impact canyou promise this customers,
where if they give you money,you can shortcut them to this
positive future.
Right?
They're always in a negativepresent.
If there was no negativepresent, there's no need to look
(21:35):
for a solution.
So they're in a negativepresent.
What big impact can you havethat shortcuts them, and why are
you the easy choice for this?
Do you do everything for them?
Do you put boots on the ground?
Do you just deal with strategy?
Do you make sure you bring in ateam, you have all the
relationships with agencies.
Like how is it easy to just giveyou the problem and forget about
(21:57):
it?
And then the last part is I tella story about a horse lady.
So I say, imagine that you aregoing to for the first time in
your life, try to find apsychologist, a psychiatrist, a
mental health counselor, atherapist, let's call it, right?
So first time in your life, andyou're gonna go wherever you
would normally go to start asearch, you're gonna go to
(22:17):
Facebook or Google or LinkedInor wherever, right?
And then the next day, you know,your spouse, so how's the search
going you say?
Yeah.
So I've looked at five, right?
Five's about the most thatanyone can keep in their head
without a spreadsheet.
If there's multiple things tothink about, four of them.
So you see how automatically,cause this is how our brains
work, we amalgamate most of theminto one of'em, you go to their
(22:40):
office, it's like in a stripmall or, you know, it's a
converted Victorian housedowntown that used someone used
to live in, and now a bunch ofoffices are medical center,
right?
And you go in, you sit down andusually she asks you questions
and you talk about yourself, andthen there was the horse lady.
What she says is forget aboutthe office.
You're gonna come out to thisvery nearby farm.
(23:02):
I'm gonna be on a horse and I'mgonna put you on a gentle
sweetest horse, and we're justgonna walk, take the horses and
walk them down this nice path.
And I'll ask you questions, andyou know, you talk.
Now, not everyone's gonna wantthe horse lady.
But she's remembered the nextday.
And she is not consolidated intoone of the other four who looks
(23:24):
so identical and couldn't put inenough marketing imagination to
delineate themselves from thecrowd that they all, they're
basically just one therapist andthe horse lady.
And the horse lady, like I said,doesn't get everybody, but she
gets a disproportionate amountcompared to any of the other.
All of the value that I providein that exercise, cuz they just
(23:45):
give me details for the rest ofit.
All the value I provide is inthat question, figuring out for
what they've done, how you arethe horse lady for the people
who are looking at you and yourcompetitors.
That's it.
Eric Dickmann (23:57):
it's building that trust.
I hear that over and over.
Dean Waye (23:59):
You need an angle that builds on all those
components, right?
Why is it gonna be easier?
How do I know you're the safechoice?
How do I know we are going to bea good fit?
How do you get into a box intheir head?
This goes way back to marketingin the sixties and recent trout
and positioning all that stuff,right?
Like how do you have your ownthing in there?
Because if they don't rememberyou the next day, why did you do
(24:21):
all that work?
Eric Dickmann (24:22):
So when you're helping people, where do you get
the most pushback?
Dean Waye (24:26):
Oh, I get the most pushback, usually on why it's
easy and what sort of big impactthey can have.
People tend to over supplyinformation on why it's easy,
but it's irrelevant informationand they tend to undersupply how
they can have a big impact fortheir client because they're
reticent to sort of commit.
Eric Dickmann (24:48):
Yes.
Dean Waye (24:49):
And the problem is in all of this marketing
communication, underlying all ofit is the promise with a capital
P right?
There's a Promise being madewhere if you do, if you bring me
in, you will have this andpeople are great, but what
they'll do is, the CMOs,especially it's different with
the most small businesses, butwith the CMOs, they fall back
(25:11):
into their marketing language.
And then we have to stopusually, and I talk to them
about the four types ofresistance in sales, right?
There's the inertia first ofall, I mean in B2B.
It's almost always easier to donothing than to do something,
right?
And then there's reactants,we've all felt reactants in a
sales situation,.
We feel like the salesperson isforcing our options to disappear
(25:36):
and sort of fencing us in.
We all hate that feeling.
And then there's, what's theother one?
Inertia, reactance, there'sdistrustive claims.
This is the main one formarketers, right?
Marketers understand that mostpeople distrust, claims, they
distrust claims from salespeopleand for marketers, but they
don't admit it.
(25:56):
And what they'll do is they'llfall back on their language.
It's sort of overblown,corporate, meaningless
sentences.
And that's where it getsuncomfortable.
Cuz I have to say no, that's notgonna work.
You're talking to one person.
Even if we're writing somethingon a website, we don't know who
that person is.
It's still one person.
And that's where we have to pushback and push back and push back
(26:19):
and get down until we get to atruth.
A truth that they're willing tostand on and say, yeah, I
believe this is true to myknowledge.
And then that's the assertionthat we use to put into their
angle and figure out how they'rethe horse lady.
Eric Dickmann (26:35):
it's A well known statistic, right?
That the CMO tends to be theshortest lived C-suite
executive.
And oftentimes it's becausethere are unrealistic
expectations of marketing andhow quickly campaigns and
programs can really turn aroundmeasurable results to revenue.
And I think that's one of thereasons that many marketers are
reluctant to commit to specificresults because they know it
(26:57):
takes time.
And if you go into a client andsay, well, we're gonna start
this program, but it's gonna bea year until you can see the
results from it, they'll belike, I don't know if I wanna
pay you for a year.
I want results today.
And that's always a tricky kindof line to walk is how can you
show short term results whileknowing that some of the
exercises that you're gonna gothrough are gonna take a little
bit longer to produce meaningfulresults.
Dean Waye (27:18):
Yeah.
I ended up, it didn't come rightaway.
I was well over a year into thisof helping fractional CMOs, you
know, with the first part oftheir process, like getting the
client and doing some work forthe client.
And then as they start coming upfor renewal, they wanna get
re-up some clients you justdon't want'em to re-up you hope
they'll just like, forget aboutyou, right?
(27:38):
And you can go on, but otherclients you want the re-op,
right?
And they would come back causeit had been months since I'd
needed to work for them.
They'd come back and say, I'vegot a problem, and it would
break down into one of twothings.
We didn't actually like achievemuch and the client seems bored
and ready to look for someoneelse or I made promises and
(27:59):
they're not, I made concretepromises and we are not gonna
hit the targets.
Eric Dickmann (28:03):
Hmmm.
Dean Waye (28:04):
And so if they come early enough, I said, you can
never guarantee that you'regonna hit any KPI that you
promise a client cuz you don'tcontrol the marketplace.
Eric Dickmann (28:13):
Yes.
Dean Waye (28:14):
So, I don't think we wanna concentrate on that.
I said, instead, what we'llstart doing and start adding in
for them is I had always thoughtthat the work for the CMOs and
the work I was doing with salesteams and sales enablement
stuff, and writing what salespeople are gonna do and say, I
always thought of them as veryseparate businesses, but I
realized you don't have to relyon market metrics or you hit a
(28:38):
certain NPS score, right orsomething like that.
If the sales lead, if the headof sales loves you and would be
afraid to lose you, it would bea very brave CEO to go to the
board and say, the head of salesthinks this guy walks on water,
this gal walks on water, they'reproducing numbers like they've
never seen, but I wanna fire'em.
(29:00):
And you're like, why would youfire like a sales formula that's
working?
Eric Dickmann (29:04):
Yeah, exactly.
Dean Waye (29:04):
And so I said, try to shy away from promises around,
you know, net promoter score orwhatever your market awareness
or whatever.
And instead, let's focus ontaking what we've done for
marketing at a strategic level,all that messaging and branding
and stuff, and I'll transform itinto tactical stuff that sales
can use every day.
Eric Dickmann (29:24):
I like that.
Dean Waye (29:25):
And because I said like, you know, you can't rely
on one thing, but sales, youcould be very clear every day,
whether sales is happy with you,so let's focus on that, cuz it's
doable.
And so it helps them preemptthat danger that they get to the
end of their 9 month or 12 monthengagement or 24 month game.
And all of a sudden, no onereally cares if they're cycled
(29:46):
out and replaced with anotherbody.
Eric Dickmann (29:48):
Yeah, the relationship between sales and
marketing, especially with B2Bcompanies and long sales cycles
is so important
Dean Waye (29:55):
there's no CMO in the world that happens to have a
head of sales who is happy withthe leads they're getting for
marketing.
Like it's not a thing,
Eric Dickmann (30:05):
Yeah, they always want more.
Dean Waye (30:07):
They always want more, they always want better,
they always want, we wanna wasteless time on people who really
aren't considered leads and soon.
So yeah, so it's a wide openmarket.
As a CMO, if you're willing tosay, go to the head of sales and
say, I've got this stuff to doat the high level, and I'm gonna
around the branding and themessaging and our positioning
and making sure we stick inpeople's heads and they remember
us the next day.
(30:27):
And then once that's doneprobably around months 4 to 6,
we're gonna take all that andwe're gonna make it very
concrete, tactical that yourfolks can use to book more
appointments, to get more demos,to get in more rooms, to get in
front of more people, and thenjust execute on that.
Then you will win the re-upbecause nobody's gonna fire
someone who's that good.
Eric Dickmann (30:49):
I think that sound advice and something we
should all take to heart,especially with these kinds of
clients.
And I know we're sort of comingto the end of our time here, but
I'd love it if you could justtell us a little bit more about
the show that you're doing onLinkedIn live, The Audience
Means Business.
I love the title.
Tell us a little bit about that.
Dean Waye (31:04):
We do it three days a week and we have a theme for
every day.
So on Tuesdays, the guests Ishow up and the guests will come
up with social media stuff,LinkedIn pages, all that.
And I will actually walk throughit and explain what someone's
doing right, what they're doingwrong, what they could do
(31:26):
better, and so on.
Then on Wednesdays, we haveWebsite Wednesdays.
And they either give me a searchterm and I'm sharing my screen
the whole time, everything'sdone live.
There's no prep.
I don't know what I'm gonna geton any day of the week.
They'll give me either a searchterm, we'll put it into Google.
We'll go to the 10th page ofGoogle, like where nobody goes.
Halfway down the page.
I will just pick a website.
(31:47):
Usually it's some company andthen we'll go through and I will
rewrite it in real time.
Cuz you have a little Chromeplugin tool, it's free, that
lets you change all the text ona website once you've loaded it
in your browser.
So I will rewrite that company'sheadlines and everything else in
real time in the course of like20 to 30 minutes, and explain
like what I'm doing and why thisworks better, and what we're
doing the whole thing, it'salmost like a tutorial with
(32:09):
someone's actual website andthen on Thursdays, it's more
wide open and we usually discusstools and how people achieve
stuff, like how do marketers orsales people, like what do they
use this for?
What do they do that for?
What exactly are they doing withlike this funnels, service,
click funnels, or drop funnels?
What exactly are they doing onCanva when they're making these
(32:30):
social media type things andwe'll actually show.
How they're doing it and whythey're doing it, how much it
costs, whether we've used it andrecommended it, and so on,
Eric Dickmann (32:38):
I love that.
I think it's a great format andanxious to check it out myself.
And so I I'd love it as we kindawrap up here, can you just tell
people where they can find youon LinkedIn, where they can find
your company information, andI'll make sure that we get that
linked up in the show notes aswell.
Dean Waye (32:53):
I might be the only Dean Waye W A Y E on LinkedIn,
and so that could work.
And then I think my email isprobably on the screen.
deanwaye@creative, andwayecreative.com is my website.
So there's a form there tocontact me, they can see
portfolio of work.
As you can imagine, a lot ofstuff's under NDA, but the stuff
(33:14):
that isn't is, you know,examples of that are there for
what I've done stuff, includingstuff for brand names that I'm
sure they've heard of.
Eric Dickmann (33:21):
Dean, that's great.
you know, One of the things thatI love is there are all these
great platforms where people canconsume information freely.
You don't have to go out and payfor it.
You can have some greatinteractive content.
And so I love it when creatorslike yourself are going out and
putting this kind of valuableinformation in the hands of the
people that need it, especiallythose in the Fractional CMO
space.
So thank you so much for being aguest on the show today.
Dean Waye (33:43):
it's great to meet you.
Eric Dickmann (33:46):
Thank you for joining us on this episode of
The Virtual CMO podcast.
For more episodes, go tofiveechelon.com/podcast to
subscribe through your podcastplayer of choice.
And if you'd like to developconsistent lead flow and a
highly effective marketingstrategy, visit fiveechelon.com
to learn more about our VirtualCMO consulting services.
Welcome to The Virtual CMO podcast.
I'm your host, Eric Dickmann.
In this podcast, we haveconversations with marketing
professionals who share thestrategies, tactics, and mindset
you can use to improve theeffectiveness of your marketing
activities and grow yourbusiness.
Today, I'm excited to haveguests Dean Waye on the program.
(00:23):
Dean is the CEO of WayeCreative,a copywriting company helping
fractional CMOs attract toimpress and lock-in clients.
Dean also cohosts a LinkedInlive show called This Audience
Means Business.
Dean, welcome to the show.
Dean Waye (00:39):
Hello.
Your intro is way fancier thanmy intro, I like it.
Very pro level.
Eric Dickmann (00:44):
Well, thanks very much.
I appreciate you being here.
I'm looking forward to ourconversation.
One of the things that we'vereally been focusing on with
this program is this whole ideaof fractional executives,
especially the fractional CMOspace.
And I was really intrigued whenwe connected on LinkedIn, and I
saw that you were reallyfocusing your business on
helping fractional CMOs gettheir messaging right to sort of
(01:08):
bring in those clients.
So before we drill into that alittle bit more, I'd love it if
you could just share with theaudience a bit of your
background and sort of how yougot into this space.
Dean Waye (01:17):
I have had two lines of business pretty much since I
was 14, 15, and on one, it wason a tech track and I was a
software developer.
I got my first job, paying jobas a software developer at 14.
And then I became a softwareproject manager for a very long
time, like big, big, massiveprojects.
And then I went into tech salesand then I actually ended up in
(01:37):
sales proper, which I nevershould have done.
I'd made more money than I evermade in my career, but I was not
suited to like that.
And at the same time I had acopywriting career.
My dad ran a bookstore, like,you know, as a manager of a
little bookstore where we livedin a pretty remote place in
Canada, and we could just readwhatever we wanted.
As long as we didn't break thespine of the book, that was a
big deal.
Cause then they could keepselling it.
(01:58):
And I remember my firstcopywriting book was like 14,
15.
And the idea that you couldwrite something and then someday
in the future, some strangerwould read it and then do
something based on you writingsomething just blew my mind.
And I said, that's incredible.
I like writing.
I'm gonna learn how to do.
And the whole thing is kept up.
(02:18):
I ended up on the side, I hadeven just a few years ago, I had
a company called Audience Teamwhere I had about a dozen
professional speakers around theUS and Canada.
Eric Dickmann (02:27):
Okay.
Dean Waye (02:28):
I would write their webinars, I'd write their
outbound email and leadgeneration campaigns and do
their marketing and help'em withtheir, you know, with their
speaking and stuff.
So a lot of experience inwriting for live speakers and a
lot of stuff, writingtraditional copywriting.
And then tech and then it allcame together about 18, 20
(02:48):
months ago, going out on my own.
And now I even write for salespeople now, which are far easier
to write for professionalspeakers than it is to write for
sales people and what they'regonna say across a table to
someone else, but it's veryrewarding field.
So I,have that as part of what Iwrite for people.
Eric Dickmann (03:06):
So when you help sales people, do you help them
with their pitch decks?
Dean Waye (03:09):
Yeah.
The pitch decks and what they.
Eric Dickmann (03:11):
Yeah.
What do you think is theproblem?
Why do you think, uh, salespeople struggle so much in
knowing what to say?
Dean Waye (03:18):
You cannot be successful over a long career in
sales, unless you have like areally hardcore resiliency, you
call it a thick skin, but reallyit's a resiliency for rejection,
right?
And what you do is over time youend up, some things will work
for you, some kind of phrases orattitudes, or you know, whatever
(03:39):
will work for you and you'llmake your way through.
And then you end up with is youdon't wanna move out of that,
even though the audiencechanges.
And first thing I tell them whenwe start settling down, say,
let's look at your pitch deck,let's look at these slides,
let's figure out what phrasesyou're gonna say while this
slide is up and stuff.
And I say, I tell you, rightfrom the beginning, I'm an
advocate for the audience.
(03:59):
I'm a specialist in audienceattention.
I wrote for tons of speakers.
I know what we're gonna hookthem with.
I know how we're gonna keeptheir attention, and I know how
we're gonna get it back if itwanders off.
So I'm the advocate for them.
So when I tell you this isn'tgonna work, or this is better
than that, it's not my opinion.
It's the fact that someone elsethat I have to represent is in a
(04:20):
chair.
And we all know that the, themost senior decision maker in
that room is the one who walksin late, and sits furthest away
from your slide, and has themost other things pinging them
while you're pitching to them.
So their attention comes inlittle bits about the size of a
thimble, and we need to makesure we grab it every time it's
(04:42):
there.
Eric Dickmann (04:42):
So when you look at the difference between a
speaker, a salesperson and maybewebsite content, how do you look
at framing those messagesdifferently based on sort of
those communication channels?
Dean Waye (04:57):
Well let's say website content or email
sequences and that kind of stuffyou write for clients, right?
All of that messaging lives onone of three levels.
And once someone points it outto you, it's like someone points
out how much squeaking there iswith sneakers in a basketball
game.
And once someone points it out,you can't ever stop hearing all
the squeaking
Eric Dickmann (05:16):
That's so true.
Dean Waye (05:16):
Right?
So all content that you're gonnaread, all commercial content,
marketing content, all lives onone of three levels, right?
There's informational,inspirational, and
transformation.
So the bottom level where almostall of it lives is
informational.
And that's just, you go to awebsite and the company's
telling you here's who we areand what we.
Just like lays it out, right?
(05:37):
Inspirational is not sort of awoo woo, you know, kind of
thing.
It's very much a, you could bebetter, you could be a better
company, you could be a betterperson, you could have a better
career.
Something could be better.
And then that's usually as highup on the scale as a B2B
communication marketing can evergo.
And then transformational is youcould be new and you normally
(05:57):
only see that in certain B2Cstuff, health, fitness, beauty,
diet, you know, that kind ofstuff.
You could be a new person, ornew company altogether.
Almost no one you're trying tosell to in a B2B context is
looking to become a new company.
they're just looking to become abetter version of what they are.
And so if everything's down oninformational and nothing in
B2B, especially, you're notdoing anything on the
(06:20):
inspirational level, thenthere's nothing for them, they
don't see themselves in yourstory.
You're supposed to be tellingthem their story with you in it,
not your story and hoping thatthey care,
Eric Dickmann (06:30):
Yes.
I think that is such animportant point because I know
when I get engaged with clients,you know, and I work mostly in
the B2B space.
That is the most common problemthat you see.
They're very excited about theirproducts and services, and they
love to share all of thesethings that those products and
services can do.
But it's all at thatinformational level.
It's not anything that reallyconnects to people on an
(06:51):
emotional level.
Dean Waye (06:52):
Since you work with mostly B2B, I have a little
basketball squeaking tip foryou.
When you look at their pitchdecks.
Count up like, literally justlike concentrate.
Don't follow along themessaging, just treat it like
it's like a painting.
Look at a slide and look at howmany times their name appears on
the slide.
It's not uncommon for their ownname between the NDA disclaimer,
(07:14):
on the bottom, the logo,something else on the top, half
of every product has the name inthe product name.
So it's not unusual to see 3, 5,7 times per slide.
They've got their own name on aslide and it's invisible to them
until you point it out.
Eric Dickmann (07:30):
So as we talk about this whole fractional
space, how did you getinterested in helping fractional
executives, particularlyfractional CMOs with their
messaging?
Dean Waye (07:40):
It still exists, but I don't promote it anymore.
I have basically a service a onehour at a time service called
perfectlydescribed.com where Istarted writing on the advice of
a strategy coach.
I started writing people's.
Summaries on LinkedIn, just theAbout section, not the whole
page, nothing, just the Aboutsection.
(08:02):
Just that little paragraph thatpeople write about themselves.
I started writing that forcompanies on their company page
and for individuals and I didabout 200 in a year.
It's usually a one hour Zoomcall.
I give them a document ahead oftime, like a Google doc.
They fill in some rawinformation and then I just walk
'em through it, right?
And one of the earlier peoplearound month, two month three
(08:23):
was a fractional CMO, I've neverheard of any kind of fractional
executive at all.
Now I know hundreds, but backthen, none.
I said like, who hires afractional executive and said,
well, typically startups orbusinesses that are small
enough, they know that they wanta really high level person, but
(08:45):
they're not going to pay what ahigh level person would cost
full time, or basically they'renot going to, when you think
about it, when you hire anemployee, you're paying for
exclusive use of that employee.
Eric Dickmann (08:55):
Right.
Dean Waye (08:56):
And they're not ready to pay or can't afford exclusive
use of a very, very experienced20 plus year veteran CMO, but
they can get almost everythingthey need right now for whatever
10 hours a week, 30 hours amonth.
However, whatever the engagementis structured, like.
And then the other people whohire them are usually, it's a
(09:18):
company that even that has oneor more CMOs, but they have some
kind of new service or productthat they're launching.
And so they bring in afractional CMO.
Usually that person is much moreof a specialist, they're
specialists in new productlaunches.
They're product in, you know, sothey've just done a lot of
spinoffs, or there's like asmaller third set that you don't
(09:43):
see very often of clients whoare prepping.
They wanna grow in a certain wayat a certain rate so that they
can be acquired for the maximumamount of money.
And part of that is having anestablished sort of brand and
presence, or at least in thedomains that the acquirer would
see and interact with.
And so there are actuallyfractional CMOs who specialize
in getting you acquired bymaking you look attractive.
Eric Dickmann (10:04):
Yeah, absolutely.
I'm curious, because you talkedabout the fact that fractional
CMOs are typically people whocome from industry, they have
many years of experience.
Now they're trying to apply thatexperience to multiple companies
at once in a fractional role.
But what do you see as theymessage themselves
Dean Waye (10:23):
This is the hardest part for them.
Partly because marketing it's avery different to coming up
through like the ranks andmarketing and being, you know,
having a career in marketing.
It's very different to convincestrangers to buy or pay
attention to a thing versusgetting this stranger across the
(10:46):
table from you to be interestedin buy this thing, which is you.
It's completely different,right?
One is marketing marketing, andone is sales marketing.
And so I mean, they're allexperts, they're all solid in
that field, but as soon as youhave to like overlay a sales
mechanism for them, they havetwo problems.
This is the first one, theydon't really have much
(11:06):
experience selling and sellingyourself is the hardest thing to
sell.
Eric Dickmann (11:11):
Agreed.
Dean Waye (11:12):
The other aspect to it is very similar to how
copywriters or graphic artistsand certain other professionals
sell themselves.
The medium that you're sellingthrough, like what you're
showing, what your pitch decklooks like, how you say things
and whatever.
In my case, like what I write,right?
It is the product.
(11:32):
And so you're judged not only onyour experience in the past, but
what you're doing right now,talking to that prospect.
I mean if my copy for myoutreach and stuff sucked, no
one's gonna hire me, even thoughI've got tons of big brands in
my background that I've writtenfor.
And so the CMOs are in the samesituation, right?
They, their marketing reallyneeds to be killer marketing
(11:55):
because that's the first thingyou're gonna get judged on is
whether or not, you know, you'regood at marketing yourself to
that prospect.
They wanna see their future inwhat, in what you're showing
them about you.
So they have an extra challengethat makes it even tougher than,
you know, selling yourself as anindustrial workflow engineer
(12:16):
freelancer or consultant, right?
I mean, no one expects you toshow up with anything related to
your work cause your work isdifferent than how you would
sell or market yourself.
Marketers, CMOs, very tough.
They have a tough road.
Eric Dickmann (12:29):
I think that's so true.
I think you nailed it too whenyou talk about this idea of
self-promotion, it's just notsomething, especially if you're
coming maybe from a Fortune 500background, you know, you
promoted the company, youpromoted your products and
services, you're not the numberone person in that company.
You're promoting the company asa whole or your CEO or the
management team, and it's verydifferent than to go off on your
(12:49):
own.
I would just add that anotherthing that can be complicated
from what I've seen andexperienced myself is typically
when you work for a largerorganization, you play a part in
something, but there are lots ofother pieces of that puzzle.
And it's much harder to look andsay, I'm taking credit for this
result because you just played apart in it.
(13:11):
When you're working at a smallerorganization, it's much easier
to say I ran the whole strategy,I did everything, and this was
the result.
At a bigger company.
That's much harder to say.
Dean Waye (13:20):
Yeah.
And the CMOs of fractional CMOswho come out of a long career in
say Fortune 500 or Fortune 100,or even Fortune 1000 marketing,
right?
A lot of marketing yourself andhaving that messaging just
really dialed in and instantlystanding apart from the other
four or five fractional CMOsthat some prospects is looking
at.
Like it's, if you, your skillsetis not the creative end of that
(13:46):
messaging creation anymore.
Your skillset is strategy andplanning and managing teams and
identifying, you know, peoplewho should be, you know,
promoted up or moved out andgetting the right, you know,
pieces in place.
You delegated the creative stuffages ago.
And now suddenly you're beingjudged on the creative end and
the creative end might only belike a very thin wafer between
(14:08):
you and all the stuff you'resort of stack in between, but
it's what you're judged on untilyou can get across the table
from someone and impress'em withyou know, how you speak and what
you say, but to get to thetable, you need that like really
killer creative end.
And that's that that littlelayer is what I felt for.
Eric Dickmann (14:26):
Hmm.
I would add something else intothe mix as well.
If you're a doctor, a lawyer, afireman, you know, a real estate
agent, people immediately have apreconceived notion
Dean Waye (14:38):
They know what box in their head you belong to.
Yeah.
Eric Dickmann (14:40):
That's exactly right.
You don't have to explain it.
You might wanna explain yourspecialty if you're a doctor,
but they know what a doctor is.
When you say you're a fractionalCMO, a lot of times it results
in some blank stares.
It requires that extra step ofactually explaining what it is
that you do, and then trying toput your expertise on top of
that and say why you may be thebest in this particular area.
But how do you help fractionalCMOs overcome just that barrier
(15:04):
of understanding of what the jobeven is?
Dean Waye (15:06):
Well, fortunately, that starts by being a
prospecting problem.
Because obviously if you'retalking to most, in my
experience, most Fractional CMOsactually target CEOs
Eric Dickmann (15:19):
Hmmm.
Dean Waye (15:20):
to make the connection, and get a
conversation going.
And a CEO knows what a CMO is.
So they know fractional CMOs.
Also, it helps in a way that thesort of first, at least it seems
to me, the first group ofexecutives that went fractional
were CFOs.
Eric Dickmann (15:36):
That's right.
Dean Waye (15:37):
And then it moved into HR.
A lot of businesses, forinstance, they might want a
fractional HR director orFractional VP of HR because they
have a specific need, like onethat I know she specializes in
hiring and most of her clientsfor whatever reason are
seasonal.
So they have massive hiringspikes and then they don't need
someone like her the rest of theyear.
(15:59):
They need her like every Aprilor May.
And so that's great.
So usually the way that they getaround it, uh, the fraction CMOs
for not having to explain whothey, who they are, what they
do.
And as a copywriter, I can tellyou it's very frustrating.
I mean, I can't tell you howmany people I've explained, I'm
a copywriter and they think I'msome kind of lawyer.
(16:20):
By default, they think acopywriter's a lawyer, most
people, right outside ofmarketing.
So the way that they avoid theFractional CMOs, the way they
avoid it is they just gostraight to CEOs and market, try
to do all their marketing CEOsor members of a board.
Is those people at least knowwhat a CMO is.
And once they have that, thefractional part usually just is
either self-explanatory or ithelps them, you know, get past
(16:42):
it.
So essentially the answer toyour question is it's all about
which audience you're talkingto.
Eric Dickmann (16:49):
Hey, it's Eric here and we'll be right back to
the podcast.
But first, are you ready togrow, scale, and take your
marketing to the next level?
If so, The Five Echelon Group'sVirtual CMO consulting service
may be a great fit for you.
We can help build a strategicmarketing plan for your business
and manage its execution,step-by-step.
(17:09):
We'll focus on areas like how toattract more leads.
How to create compellingmessaging that resonates with
your ideal customers.
How to strategically package andposition your products and
services.
How to increase lead conversion,improve your margins, and scale
your business.
To find out more about ourconsulting offerings and
schedule a consultation, go tofiveechelon.com and click on
(17:32):
Services.
Now back to the podcast.
I've noticed a lot of people onLinkedIn are getting a little
bit more creative in that secondline underneath your name and
talking a little bit more aboutwhat they do as opposed to just
listing off a more recognizabletitle, because you've gotta cut
through this noise.
And there are a lot ofinteresting new positions that
(17:53):
are showing up, growth marketeris an example.
That's not a position that'sbeen around forever, but you ask
people what it is and you know,they'll scratch their head a
little bit in terms of definingwhat it is.
So I, I think that'sinteresting.
So as you start to work withsome of these fractional
executives, sort of, what is theprocess that you go through to
help them refine theirmessaging?
(18:13):
You talked a little bit aboutLinkedIn profiles, about
websites, what do you startlooking at and how do you help
them refine that message?
So that it's tailoredspecifically for them.
Dean Waye (18:23):
I still use most of the questionnaire.
It's not a very longquestionnaire, but these are not
comfortable sessions.
People like to think ofthemselves as being in one box,
whereas a stranger or a prospectwill automatically put them in
another box.
People don't like it, but Istill use that question a lot.
One of the things we go through,a few of the questions is like,
they're going to be looking atmultiple people just like you.
(18:47):
Why are you the safer choiceamong those top five?
Eric Dickmann (18:52):
Yes.
Dean Waye (18:52):
Because the ones who are seeing like the riskier
choice.
They're gonna be dropped prettyquickly.
It all comes back to like thenumber one question when you're
marketing and or selling in B2B,the number one question that you
might never be asked, but youneed to provide an answer for is
from the employee prospects,cEO's point of view.
(19:15):
Why is it safe for me to vouchfor you in here company?
Because no matter how much moneyyou might make or save my
company as a vendor, if I wouldend up losing my job, if you
blew up or I even lostreputation, then I'm gonna pass.
And we'll just find, we'll gowith whoever the biggest player
in the field is.
And so if you don't have ananswer for that prepared, you
(19:38):
don't answer that questionnecessarily directly, but your
marketing needs to sprinkle thatanswer throughout so they feel
safe.
I mean, what is B2B salesanyway, except a series of you
and the prospect, allowing eachother to get closer to each
other until you finally have adeal, right?
Nobody closes a big B2B sale inone meeting, right?
It's just a series of steps for,let me get closer.
(20:00):
Okay, you can come closer.
All right, let me get closeragain.
Okay.
You can get closer.
Let's have the initial pitchmeeting, let's do the second
deep dive meeting and so on
Eric Dickmann (20:10):
It's building that trust, right?
I love the way you phrase that,presenting yourself sort of as a
low risk option compared tomaybe others that they're
looking at.
But I think one of the otherchallenges that I often see is
that businesses think that theyare going to be most comfortable
with somebody who comes fromtheir industry, right?
It comes from exactly the samebusiness that they're in, which
(20:32):
is really difficult to find.
And yeah, if you can findsomebody like that, maybe that's
a great fit.
But in general, When I talk toclients, I generally put things
into, you know, the two basicbuckets, right?
B2B and B2C.
Generally, if you find amarketer, that's a B2B marketer
and you're a B2B business,you're probably gonna be pretty
safe with their skillset, B2Ce-commerce, you know, there's
(20:54):
some specific skillset and youcould probably argument that
maybe selling into the publicsector is a little bit unique or
something like that.
But in general, B2B B2C are thetwo big categories I look at.
How do you help people messageto that so they can say, I come
from this background, you comefrom that background, but we're
still a good match.
Dean Waye (21:14):
Okay.
So the, the next two questionsthat we go to of the four big
questions that we need to doafter all the preliminaries are
done are, what big impact canyou promise this customers,
where if they give you money,you can shortcut them to this
positive future.
Right?
They're always in a negativepresent.
If there was no negativepresent, there's no need to look
(21:35):
for a solution.
So they're in a negativepresent.
What big impact can you havethat shortcuts them, and why are
you the easy choice for this?
Do you do everything for them?
Do you put boots on the ground?
Do you just deal with strategy?
Do you make sure you bring in ateam, you have all the
relationships with agencies.
Like how is it easy to just giveyou the problem and forget about
(21:57):
it?
And then the last part is I tella story about a horse lady.
So I say, imagine that you aregoing to for the first time in
your life, try to find apsychologist, a psychiatrist, a
mental health counselor, atherapist, let's call it, right?
So first time in your life, andyou're gonna go wherever you
would normally go to start asearch, you're gonna go to
(22:17):
Facebook or Google or LinkedInor wherever, right?
And then the next day, you know,your spouse, so how's the search
going you say?
Yeah.
So I've looked at five, right?
Five's about the most thatanyone can keep in their head
without a spreadsheet.
If there's multiple things tothink about, four of them.
So you see how automatically,cause this is how our brains
work, we amalgamate most of theminto one of'em, you go to their
(22:40):
office, it's like in a stripmall or, you know, it's a
converted Victorian housedowntown that used someone used
to live in, and now a bunch ofoffices are medical center,
right?
And you go in, you sit down andusually she asks you questions
and you talk about yourself, andthen there was the horse lady.
What she says is forget aboutthe office.
You're gonna come out to thisvery nearby farm.
(23:02):
I'm gonna be on a horse and I'mgonna put you on a gentle
sweetest horse, and we're justgonna walk, take the horses and
walk them down this nice path.
And I'll ask you questions, andyou know, you talk.
Now, not everyone's gonna wantthe horse lady.
But she's remembered the nextday.
And she is not consolidated intoone of the other four who looks
(23:24):
so identical and couldn't put inenough marketing imagination to
delineate themselves from thecrowd that they all, they're
basically just one therapist andthe horse lady.
And the horse lady, like I said,doesn't get everybody, but she
gets a disproportionate amountcompared to any of the other.
All of the value that I providein that exercise, cuz they just
(23:45):
give me details for the rest ofit.
All the value I provide is inthat question, figuring out for
what they've done, how you arethe horse lady for the people
who are looking at you and yourcompetitors.
That's it.
Eric Dickmann (23:57):
it's building that trust.
I hear that over and over.
Dean Waye (23:59):
You need an angle that builds on all those
components, right?
Why is it gonna be easier?
How do I know you're the safechoice?
How do I know we are going to bea good fit?
How do you get into a box intheir head?
This goes way back to marketingin the sixties and recent trout
and positioning all that stuff,right?
Like how do you have your ownthing in there?
Because if they don't rememberyou the next day, why did you do
(24:21):
all that work?
Eric Dickmann (24:22):
So when you're helping people, where do you get
the most pushback?
Dean Waye (24:26):
Oh, I get the most pushback, usually on why it's
easy and what sort of big impactthey can have.
People tend to over supplyinformation on why it's easy,
but it's irrelevant informationand they tend to undersupply how
they can have a big impact fortheir client because they're
reticent to sort of commit.
Eric Dickmann (24:48):
Yes.
Dean Waye (24:49):
And the problem is in all of this marketing
communication, underlying all ofit is the promise with a capital
P right?
There's a Promise being madewhere if you do, if you bring me
in, you will have this andpeople are great, but what
they'll do is, the CMOs,especially it's different with
the most small businesses, butwith the CMOs, they fall back
(25:11):
into their marketing language.
And then we have to stopusually, and I talk to them
about the four types ofresistance in sales, right?
There's the inertia first ofall, I mean in B2B.
It's almost always easier to donothing than to do something,
right?
And then there's reactants,we've all felt reactants in a
sales situation,.
We feel like the salesperson isforcing our options to disappear
(25:36):
and sort of fencing us in.
We all hate that feeling.
And then there's, what's theother one?
Inertia, reactance, there'sdistrustive claims.
This is the main one formarketers, right?
Marketers understand that mostpeople distrust, claims, they
distrust claims from salespeopleand for marketers, but they
don't admit it.
(25:56):
And what they'll do is they'llfall back on their language.
It's sort of overblown,corporate, meaningless
sentences.
And that's where it getsuncomfortable.
Cuz I have to say no, that's notgonna work.
You're talking to one person.
Even if we're writing somethingon a website, we don't know who
that person is.
It's still one person.
And that's where we have to pushback and push back and push back
(26:19):
and get down until we get to atruth.
A truth that they're willing tostand on and say, yeah, I
believe this is true to myknowledge.
And then that's the assertionthat we use to put into their
angle and figure out how they'rethe horse lady.
Eric Dickmann (26:35):
it's A well known statistic, right?
That the CMO tends to be theshortest lived C-suite
executive.
And oftentimes it's becausethere are unrealistic
expectations of marketing andhow quickly campaigns and
programs can really turn aroundmeasurable results to revenue.
And I think that's one of thereasons that many marketers are
reluctant to commit to specificresults because they know it
(26:57):
takes time.
And if you go into a client andsay, well, we're gonna start
this program, but it's gonna bea year until you can see the
results from it, they'll belike, I don't know if I wanna
pay you for a year.
I want results today.
And that's always a tricky kindof line to walk is how can you
show short term results whileknowing that some of the
exercises that you're gonna gothrough are gonna take a little
bit longer to produce meaningfulresults.
Dean Waye (27:18):
Yeah.
I ended up, it didn't come rightaway.
I was well over a year into thisof helping fractional CMOs, you
know, with the first part oftheir process, like getting the
client and doing some work forthe client.
And then as they start coming upfor renewal, they wanna get
re-up some clients you justdon't want'em to re-up you hope
they'll just like, forget aboutyou, right?
(27:38):
And you can go on, but otherclients you want the re-op,
right?
And they would come back causeit had been months since I'd
needed to work for them.
They'd come back and say, I'vegot a problem, and it would
break down into one of twothings.
We didn't actually like achievemuch and the client seems bored
and ready to look for someoneelse or I made promises and
(27:59):
they're not, I made concretepromises and we are not gonna
hit the targets.
Eric Dickmann (28:03):
Hmmm.
Dean Waye (28:04):
And so if they come early enough, I said, you can
never guarantee that you'regonna hit any KPI that you
promise a client cuz you don'tcontrol the marketplace.
Eric Dickmann (28:13):
Yes.
Dean Waye (28:14):
So, I don't think we wanna concentrate on that.
I said, instead, what we'llstart doing and start adding in
for them is I had always thoughtthat the work for the CMOs and
the work I was doing with salesteams and sales enablement
stuff, and writing what salespeople are gonna do and say, I
always thought of them as veryseparate businesses, but I
realized you don't have to relyon market metrics or you hit a
(28:38):
certain NPS score, right orsomething like that.
If the sales lead, if the headof sales loves you and would be
afraid to lose you, it would bea very brave CEO to go to the
board and say, the head of salesthinks this guy walks on water,
this gal walks on water, they'reproducing numbers like they've
never seen, but I wanna fire'em.
(29:00):
And you're like, why would youfire like a sales formula that's
working?
Eric Dickmann (29:04):
Yeah, exactly.
Dean Waye (29:04):
And so I said, try to shy away from promises around,
you know, net promoter score orwhatever your market awareness
or whatever.
And instead, let's focus ontaking what we've done for
marketing at a strategic level,all that messaging and branding
and stuff, and I'll transform itinto tactical stuff that sales
can use every day.
Eric Dickmann (29:24):
I like that.
Dean Waye (29:25):
And because I said like, you know, you can't rely
on one thing, but sales, youcould be very clear every day,
whether sales is happy with you,so let's focus on that, cuz it's
doable.
And so it helps them preemptthat danger that they get to the
end of their 9 month or 12 monthengagement or 24 month game.
And all of a sudden, no onereally cares if they're cycled
(29:46):
out and replaced with anotherbody.
Eric Dickmann (29:48):
Yeah, the relationship between sales and
marketing, especially with B2Bcompanies and long sales cycles
is so important
Dean Waye (29:55):
there's no CMO in the world that happens to have a
head of sales who is happy withthe leads they're getting for
marketing.
Like it's not a thing,
Eric Dickmann (30:05):
Yeah, they always want more.
Dean Waye (30:07):
They always want more, they always want better,
they always want, we wanna wasteless time on people who really
aren't considered leads and soon.
So yeah, so it's a wide openmarket.
As a CMO, if you're willing tosay, go to the head of sales and
say, I've got this stuff to doat the high level, and I'm gonna
around the branding and themessaging and our positioning
and making sure we stick inpeople's heads and they remember
us the next day.
(30:27):
And then once that's doneprobably around months 4 to 6,
we're gonna take all that andwe're gonna make it very
concrete, tactical that yourfolks can use to book more
appointments, to get more demos,to get in more rooms, to get in
front of more people, and thenjust execute on that.
Then you will win the re-upbecause nobody's gonna fire
someone who's that good.
Eric Dickmann (30:49):
I think that sound advice and something we
should all take to heart,especially with these kinds of
clients.
And I know we're sort of comingto the end of our time here, but
I'd love it if you could justtell us a little bit more about
the show that you're doing onLinkedIn live, The Audience
Means Business.
I love the title.
Tell us a little bit about that.
Dean Waye (31:04):
We do it three days a week and we have a theme for
every day.
So on Tuesdays, the guests Ishow up and the guests will come
up with social media stuff,LinkedIn pages, all that.
And I will actually walk throughit and explain what someone's
doing right, what they're doingwrong, what they could do
(31:26):
better, and so on.
Then on Wednesdays, we haveWebsite Wednesdays.
And they either give me a searchterm and I'm sharing my screen
the whole time, everything'sdone live.
There's no prep.
I don't know what I'm gonna geton any day of the week.
They'll give me either a searchterm, we'll put it into Google.
We'll go to the 10th page ofGoogle, like where nobody goes.
Halfway down the page.
I will just pick a website.
(31:47):
Usually it's some company andthen we'll go through and I will
rewrite it in real time.
Cuz you have a little Chromeplugin tool, it's free, that
lets you change all the text ona website once you've loaded it
in your browser.
So I will rewrite that company'sheadlines and everything else in
real time in the course of like20 to 30 minutes, and explain
like what I'm doing and why thisworks better, and what we're
doing the whole thing, it'salmost like a tutorial with
(32:09):
someone's actual website andthen on Thursdays, it's more
wide open and we usually discusstools and how people achieve
stuff, like how do marketers orsales people, like what do they
use this for?
What do they do that for?
What exactly are they doing withlike this funnels, service,
click funnels, or drop funnels?
What exactly are they doing onCanva when they're making these
(32:30):
social media type things andwe'll actually show.
How they're doing it and whythey're doing it, how much it
costs, whether we've used it andrecommended it, and so on,
Eric Dickmann (32:38):
I love that.
I think it's a great format andanxious to check it out myself.
And so I I'd love it as we kindawrap up here, can you just tell
people where they can find youon LinkedIn, where they can find
your company information, andI'll make sure that we get that
linked up in the show notes aswell.
Dean Waye (32:53):
I might be the only Dean Waye W A Y E on LinkedIn,
and so that could work.
And then I think my email isprobably on the screen.
deanwaye@creative, andwayecreative.com is my website.
So there's a form there tocontact me, they can see
portfolio of work.
As you can imagine, a lot ofstuff's under NDA, but the stuff
(33:14):
that isn't is, you know,examples of that are there for
what I've done stuff, includingstuff for brand names that I'm
sure they've heard of.
Eric Dickmann (33:21):
Dean, that's great.
you know, One of the things thatI love is there are all these
great platforms where people canconsume information freely.
You don't have to go out and payfor it.
You can have some greatinteractive content.
And so I love it when creatorslike yourself are going out and
putting this kind of valuableinformation in the hands of the
people that need it, especiallythose in the Fractional CMO
space.
So thank you so much for being aguest on the show today.
Dean Waye (33:43):
it's great to meet you.
Eric Dickmann (33:46):
Thank you for joining us on this episode of
The Virtual CMO podcast.
For more episodes, go tofiveechelon.com/podcast to
subscribe through your podcastplayer of choice.
And if you'd like to developconsistent lead flow and a
highly effective marketingstrategy, visit fiveechelon.com
to learn more about our VirtualCMO consulting services.
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