Crafting Your Ideal Buyer Persona

Curt Anderson  00:01

Okay, and then I’m going to let everybody in. Okay Wesleyne if you want to go ahead and and share that I give you sharing. Yep,

Wesleyne Greer  00:11

you did. If you feel that my father mentee please. Yep. And okay.

Curt Anderson  00:25

All right. Let me see more people in a good is it so morning, right? Or hey, it’s 12 o’clock Eastern time. So it’s still it’s technically afternoon where we are Wesleyne. So Happy Thursday, aka Julie, you know, we’d like to call it happy Friday Eve for friends of ours. Right? Happy Friday.

00:42

That Tomorrow’s a big day. Right? Boilers play. Hey,

Curt Anderson  00:46

boiler up, right. I got them. I have them when in my bracket. So just, you know.

00:53

Wow. Saying but I did last year too. So

Curt Anderson  00:57

it’s, you know, what this year is the year this year is the year so? Alright guys, we will. I like starting promptly for those of us that like to show up on time. And we’ll we’ll keep letting people in. So welcome. Thank you for joining us today. Boy. We have a wonderful, amazing, incredible program. We’ve got a great speaker here today. So as I’m letting people in, Julie, why do you want to go ahead and kick things off with a little Purdue greeting?

Julie Warner  01:25

Share now. Happy boiler Thursday. Now welcome to everybody. Thank you on behalf of Purdue MEP. For those that don’t know us, there’s an MEP Center. In every state within the US. We are the one for Indiana. But we like to say that we help manufacturers small to medium is our niche, but we’ll help anybody. If you have a problem, we typically have a solution, whether it’s lean quality, marketing, whatever we can help you out. So I think there’ll be contact info at the end if you need to get a hold of us. But we love partnering, partnering with Curt and Wesleyne on this, these marketing webinars to help out our friends and clients and throughout the state. So thanks to you both for doing this for us.

Curt Anderson  02:08

Absolutely. Thank you. Boy, we’re, what an honor what a privilege. So if you are new to the MEP network, if you’re coming to us whether you know you’re coming to us from the state of Indiana, check out Purdue MEP, they are doing amazing, incredible work, I think 50 ish, strong and just all sorts of experts and very passionate on helping manufacturers move the needle hit your goals. So if you haven’t done so yet, please please reach out to the Purdue MEP. If you’re coming to us from outside of the great state of Indiana, check out your local MEP. If you Googled Manufacturing Extension Partnership, you will find your local MEP. So let’s get let’s see. Can you go I get a note here from all right, Wesleyne. I will check that out. And I’m going to kick things off here. So I want to I’m gonna do a little intro. But as we get started, you know, if we were in person we were you know, we’d be high fiving handshaking, maybe throwing some hugs around, right? COVID is waiting to pass Julie right, we can or we get to hugging stage now. So we would be handing out business cards, what I encourage you invite you welcome you to do drop your website, for those of us who are on LinkedIn. And if we’re not connected, boy, we would love to connect with you on LinkedIn. So drop a LinkedIn connection in the chat box. Great opportunity to connect with some new friends family here, if you will. And so I’m going to give a little intro to my dear friend Wesleyan. So Wesley Whitaker, we connected on LinkedIn speaking of three years ago, we had a wonderful conversation, she sent me a note and said, it went like this if you if you guys connect with me on LinkedIn, my number one job is and we’ll come into it. I think we’re gonna hit that. The worst thing is, I’m a girl dad. And so she sends me notice it says girl dad, well, I’m a boy, Mom, we need a chat. We totally hit it off became fast, best friends immediately. We’ve been collaborating and working together ever since. And she sent me a note and said, What is this MVP that you’re talking about? Curt, I’d like to get on another call to learn more. If you’re looking at this screenshot right here, this is Wesleyan. She was the keynote speaker of the MEP Conference this past September and she absolutely hit the ball out of the park. And Julie Jean just joined us so if he’s coming in right now that’s a picture of Jean Jones from Purdue MEP. If you don’t know Jean, I strongly encourage you welcome you to reach out to Jean so Wesleyan, you’re a recovering chemists sales guru. Please take it away.

Wesleyne Greer  04:33

Awesome. So tell us a little bit more about your y curve. What is your why?

Curt Anderson  04:38

My why is this lovely young lady right here. So this is my daughter Lauren Lauren is She’s a high schooler. We’re starting to look at colleges. She just started driving so I say she’s driving me crazy. I’m just kidding. I didn’t say that out loud. Did I? So this is my wife just my best friend on the planet. You know, she’s taken all sorts of business classes got it. I’m like, Dude, I like you know, I used to have hair when I started a business. I’m like You sure you want to follow in dad’s footsteps. And so this is my daughter, Lauren, and she is my why.

Wesleyne Greer  05:09

Oh, thank you. And so my why are my two boys. And I have two amazing young man, a high schooler and elementary. John, can you mute yourself, please? Awesome. I still are in an elementary school. And so my high schooler and he always learned things very quickly, he started reading when he was two and a half. He’s in an engineering high school right now taking all advanced and AP courses. So whenever I taught him something, he got it very, very quickly. My younger son, it took them a little bit longer to learn to read to get his letters and colors. And a couple years ago, I found out that he’s dyslexic. And so the way the Dyslexic brain works is he actually needs to understand the origins of things he needs to understand when you see an a and an eye together and makes this sound all the time. Or this is the way I formed my mouth when I’m saying this word or the sound. And so throughout this presentation, you’re going to see me use many different learning style teaching styles, because I understand that everybody learns a little bit differently. And what I want to do is I want to ensure that I am meeting you where you are. So we are about to go into a very JAM PACKED hour of prospecting of understanding we’re going to these are going to be building blocks, I’m not just going to say these are all the things you need to do to fill the top of your pipeline. But what we’re gonna do is we’re going to use some building blocks. And before I launch into it, if you are able to, I would love to see your smiling face, it helps me it helps Kurt to see faces instead of boxes and names. So if you can come on camera, I would greatly appreciate that. Awesome. So the very first thing that we’re going to start with are the things that are holding you back. So Kurt, when you hear a self limiting beliefs, what does that trigger inside of you? Why

Curt Anderson  06:58

there’s there’s a lot there, right? You know, you can think of, you know, that word scarcity, maybe self sabotage, you know, not good enough, those types of things, right. And when you’re in sales, what you know, as soon as you know, little sniff, sniff of weak, I’m gonna say weakness, but, you know, lack of confidence, and you will. And I think what’s so important, you know, as you know, here at the Purdue MEP, we’re just so dedicated and so passionate about helping manufacturers is really, how do you overcome that. And another, I’ve, you know, I’m 55 was lean, you know, a great way to overcome self limiting beliefs. I finally figured out what I’m good at, you know, what I’m good at, I’m good at admitting what I’m not good at. So if I’m not good at something, let me find someone like yourself, who’s just an absolute Rockstar speaker on this topic, bring you in, because it just makes me a lot better. I don’t need to be the smartest guy in the room. So that’s where that’s why we bring you here.

Wesleyne Greer  07:50

I love it. I love it. And you’re right. self limiting beliefs are those things that we tell ourselves, what and most of the time, they’re not true. And so we’re gonna walk through a few areas of self limiting beliefs that really impact you in sales. So the first one is negative self talk is really having that conversation in your head that is not productive. I’m not good enough for this, I’m not worthy of this, I shouldn’t be in this room, I shouldn’t ask for more money. It’s all those things that we tell ourselves that we will never say out loud to anyone in our family, anyone that we love, or we wouldn’t even say it out loud, so others can hear us call in meeting anxiety. This is the anxiety you have before you have to make a cold call, before you get on that discovery call with that prospect calls those butterflies in your stomach. It’s the sweaty palms. This is a real thing. And this impacts some people sometimes from even picking up the phone, this anxiety, I spoke to someone recently, and they said the anxiety is overwhelming me so much. I’m unable to focus on all of my other tasks. So if you have calling meeting anxiety, it is a real thing. The fear of rejection. So at times what happens is we’ve gotten rejected before somebody told us know, somebody has hung up the phone on our face, they have done something to reject us. And so we hold on to that rejection, and they’re like, oh, and we literally tell ourselves, I shouldn’t I’m not going to try that again. I’m not going to call this person again. I don’t want to do that again, because they’re just gonna say no, they’re not going to to accept the meeting with me, they’re not going to respond to my email. So our fear of rejection stops us from even going and then losing before starting when we lose before we start. What that means is, we are literally in a place where we are telling ourselves it’s not worth it. I’m not going after this new market, this new industry, I’m not launching the new products. I’m not going to get on LinkedIn. I’m not going to try to update my website because it’s just not going to work. So this loosing before starting it kind of takes all of the other topics that we have spoken about this Are and it puts them into one. And so when we lose before we start, what happens is the thing that we don’t do is we don’t prospect because most people don’t enjoy cold calling. Unless you’re Kurt Andersen and you love it. This is his number one thing, he loves connecting, he loves cold calling, but most of us don’t enjoy it. So we don’t even try. So I want you to take a minute or two and I want you to write down and share in the chat if you feel comfortable with which of these self limiting beliefs is impacting your sales and current Why don’t we share which one impacts us which one impacts you?

Curt Anderson  10:39

Is all of the above and ants Nah, I’m just teasing. I you know, I think you know, as we’re targeting manufacturers and so, you know, a lot of solo marketers are out there some solopreneurs maybe entrepreneurs folks that are bizdev you know, it’s tough, you know, you’ve got to have thick skin right? You’ve got to be relentless. You’ve got to be persistent and a big thing that I’ve learned along the way you have to accept those nose you know, and I another big thing that you and I love chatting about I don’t I hope I’m not jumping ahead is what happens when we try to be everything to everybody Wessling

Wesleyne Greer  11:15

yeah we become nothing to nobody and that is that has the the all of these self limiting beliefs wrapped up into one because we tried to elevate our ego or elevate ourselves by saying I can be a jack of all trades. I can do all the things but we’re actually sabotaging ourselves in the making of doing that. Hey,

Curt Anderson  11:37

let’s grab a couple I’ll check the chat box for you Wesleyne, we’ve got a My buddy Gary, what is in the house today and my buddy Alan is here today. And I met my friend. A Julie Lisa from still cities is here. So she just popped in. So hey, Gary. Gary Woods says picking up the phone. June says fear of cold calling Rebecca. Rebecca says new to all this fear of rejection is huge for me. Kelly says Morning Kelly or good afternoon wherever you’re coming from, I struggle with both losing before starting and the negative talk. And Gene our friend says fear of not having the best response to an objection. That’s a good one there. Thank you, Jean. Yeah,

Wesleyne Greer  12:14

so all of these things, what I want everybody to realize is we all struggle with some self limiting belief. So as we think about stepping into selling, whether you are a full time salesperson, or sales is a portion of your job, there are all things that are holding us back. And so the first action step that I have for you, because you’re going to have lots of action steps coming out of the next 45 minutes is what I want you to do on a day when you feel like your best self. On a day when you have won a deal. You have done something that you are really proud of, I want you to record a video for yourself. Literally, I want you to pick up your phone and record a video. And in that video, I want you to tell yourself how amazing you are, how hard you worked, how, how many objections, you overcame all of the things that you did that led you to get to that point, and I literally will record a video and I’ll be like, Hey, Tina, you are so amazing. Can you believe you beat out all the competitors, and you reign supreme and you were number one with the same enthusiasm and energy I would have after I win a deal. Because on those days when you aren’t your best self when you don’t feel well. What you do is you watch that video. You watch this, and you’re like I can do it. I’ve done it before I can do it again. Right? So overcoming self limiting beliefs is the number one thing because we have to start with our mindset before we build our skill set. So start with your mindset. Have your mind in the game to ensure that you can target and prospect and fill the top of your funnel. Wow. All righty. So hey, a

Curt Anderson  13:55

real quick Wesleyne real quick so yeah, so we did a workshop yesterday diving into this and so in in Here’s a video that somebody shot. They did it they did one of their exact so were these executive coaches yesterday. And Wesley and I did a little workshop for a team of folks and Westling asked the exact same thing. And woman last night put that out so yeah, and we’ve got an Alan says when I was 100% commission sales rep for 10 years I live by Fortune favors the brave. So Alan, thank you for that comment. And so yeah, and we’re gonna dive so guys we’re just doing I just kind of get our mindset going on sales. We’re going to dive right into that buyer persona right now.

Wesleyne Greer  14:35

So what do you call a buyer persona whole cart? Buyer

Curt Anderson  14:39

Persona? So for if anybody’s coming to our workshops in the past, if anybody comes to you know, we call them our soulmates? Who’s that soulmate? Who’s that one person that really has that challenge that you have that that solution for? So yeah, let’s dive right into this.

Wesleyne Greer  14:55

So just as Curtis said, this is your soulmate, your ideal client profile? And what I want to present to you guys today is that in the selling situations that you’re going into, most often there’s not one person involved. Because most times there are multiple people, if you’re selling into the into another business, so be going b2b, there’s typically seven or eight people involved. If you’re doing business to consumers, and you’re selling to just one person, there’s at least one other person involved, whether it’s that person’s spouse, or their children or their family or their friends, they ask questions, they want to know people typically do not make decisions alone. So we are going to dive into the different types of personas. So an influencer in a business when you are going into selling into another business, there are a team of influencers. And when I say there are a team of influencers, there are other people that influence the buying decisions, the decision to choose you versus your competitor. And so how do you know that you have an influencer? An influencer is someone who when asked a question, do you like Adam solution? They’ll say, Yeah, Adam solution is really, really great. If you say, if they say well do what don’t you like about Adam solution? And they all share all the things that they don’t like about Adam solution. But what they don’t do is they don’t offer up information. So an influencer only answers when asked. And again, this is the same thing if you’re going directly to a consumer, so maybe you are dealing with a a woman, and you have this great meeting with her. And then she goes dark. She says, I have to talk to my husband, and she goes dark, you don’t hear from her ever again. She’s the influencer in that situation, she doesn’t have the voice, she doesn’t have the ante to actually speak up, you know that you’re speaking to an influencer, somebody who’s only influencing the decision, if they go dark, your influencer will go dark, because they don’t really have skin in the game. So oftentimes, people focus on the decision maker, I need the person signing the check, I need the person with the money. But the person with the money if there’s anyone on here, who is a CEO and entrepreneur or sitting in an executive seat, a VP or a Chief Operating Officer, anything like that, you know, you don’t have time. So yes, you may have need a solution. Yes, you may need a problem solved. But you don’t have time to talk to salespeople, you don’t have the time to sit down and understand why their solution is working and all the things you just know that you have a problem that needs to be solved. So a decision maker is not going to go through the sales process with you, they’re just going to check the box. And when it comes time to wrap a decision maker into a selling situation, they need high level bullet points. So if you are only talking to the decision maker, and they only answer and respond to bullet points, and you’re not speaking their language, you’re never going to get through to them. So again, a decision maker will respond to your emails, they will schedule meetings, but they will always have to reschedule the meetings, they will be distracted if they ever do hop on a meeting, because again, they don’t have time. Who do we focus on, we focus on the internal champion. So your internal champion is a person within the organization that has the biggest problem, they have the biggest issue, and they know that they need this issue to be solved. Why do they need this issue to be solved? They need this issue to be solved because it personally and professionally impacts them. So when we think about an internal champion, this person may not have the budget authority. But what they do have is they have the authority to bring the right people to the meetings. So an internal champion in your selling situations, in your mind situations could be an operation supervisor, not the operations manager or operations director. Why? Because the supervisor is feeling when people call in, he asked to take over their shifts. When somebody gets hurt. He’s the one who has to file the reports for last time. When he when equipment breaks down, he has to call all of the vendors figure out how to get things fixed. So if you’re selling something that’s going to provide operational efficiency, we talked to him we target him because he’s the one who has a personal and professional impact on the line. Whereas the operations manager Operations Director, they’re not on the floor. They’re not on the plant floor. So they hear about it and they know that it needs to be resolved. Have, but they don’t really have skin in the game. Okay, so I want to talk about a problem versus a pain. Because a lot of times people say well get to the pain, what is the person’s pain? A pain is annoying. So going back to the operation supervisor, what’s annoying is it takes a piece of equipment, 20 minutes to boot up, and they really wants to take 10 minutes, that’s annoying. That’s not gonna convince them to buy a new piece of equipment. It’s just annoying. But our problem is that piece of equipment every two days breaks down. And so they lose time they’re behind schedule, it cost them profitability. That’s a problem. Our problem is something like this is more than annoying. This is impacting my bottom line. This is impacting my reputation. And so what I want us to think about now is I want us to think about the markets that we’re selling into who our actual internal champions are, and what are the problems that they have? What are the problems that they have, and I want you to take note that the problems that they have may not necessarily be the thing that your solution solves for, right. So think about this person in like a little vacuum. So again, that operations supervisor, I kind of use that as an example. So as you guys are thinking and working through that, I’m going to let some people come off mute so I can do some live coaching. But hurt tell us about an internal champion or a client that you worked with where you’ve helped them find their internal champion soulmate. Yeah,

Curt Anderson  21:46

I love this. So here’s here’s So again, what we want you guys to think about so you know, manufacturer, whether your OEM contract manufacturer, if you’re in the food chain, or you know, think about where you’re at, okay, I’m gonna give you guys an example Coronavirus that we work with. I’m in New York and through the New York MEP. It’s a company that manufactures covert antennas. So really a great company think about, you know, first responders, military, just a wonderful company been around since 1967. And they have three soulmates that they’re targeting. And what we found is like most manufacturers kind of fall in these three buckets. So it’s number one purchasing. So it was at purchasing Paul purchasing Patty, you know, they’re trying to find the best price. They’re trying to appease their boss, you know, think about who who’s, you know, who’s, who are they calling to? Or who they trying to, you know, when their day to, right. So you have the person in purchasing. There’s a saying, if you went engineering, you’re gonna win the sale. So typically, we’re targeting you know, it’s common, we’re targeting engineering. So I love either engineering, Ernie, or engineering, Elsa, and how are we putting out that content that you know, whether you’re on LinkedIn, a YouTube video, how to how are you targeting that engineer, okay. The third person is busting it was just describing, I call it like maintenance Murray. Now with this company that I was describing, that has COVID antennas, they it was FBI, agent, Frank, an FBI agent is and you know, like, now, his motivations, his challenges dramatically different than the engineer, the engineers in the office geeking out on numbers and this and strategy and efficiency. You know, FBI agent Frank, he’s in a field trying to protect his team. He’s trying to like he’s worried Am I coming home today? He is much rather drastically different when you talk about problem and pain. Much different, right? So I want as you guys are going through this exercise, think about what are those buckets is engineering. Ernie al says that somebody in purchasing, or is it maintenance Murray, who’s on the line? And you know, 20 people are screaming at him because the machine went down? Or is it you know, FBI, Frank, so think about those buckets? I find those super helpful. And it seems like most manufacturers kind of fall in those, those categories. But what’s the what do you what’s your take? I

Wesleyne Greer  24:01

love it. I think you lay that out perfectly and really describe the difference between different internal champions that somebody could be targeting. So I would love for somebody to raise their hands or come off, mute and share who their internal champion is, as well as problems that they are facing.

Curt Anderson  24:20

What do we get? Who’s gonna come on down?

Wesleyne Greer  24:21

Can it be the brave person? Could

Curt Anderson  24:24

we see how about buddy, buddy? What do you got?

24:29

I think honestly, probably, we, we work in tech, heavy business with safety solutions. I work a lot with nonprofits and churches. So the reality is the person that has me see, the decision maker often is someone on the security team when they need background checks. But a lot of times the decision maker, excuse me, the influencer is the one that wants to get these background checks, but the decision maker that doesn’t have the time to follow through is like leap. pastors or executive pastors within these organizations. And really what we run into is the pain of it’s it’s an inconvenience for them to not have the ability to integrate with some of our software solutions through like their church management systems. But the big problem is budget, the big problem problem is the amount of time that it takes to integrate with some of these safety solutions. So yeah, that’s what we realize who we need to get to is usually a room of individuals. So this is helpful. We need executive pastor, we need security, we need it, because each of them plays really different roles. And I find myself a lot of times go into the wrong individual, I go to the decision maker, but they don’t have the time to follow through. So I really need to go into the internal champion. So that’s been helpful to hear. Awesome,

Wesleyne Greer  25:51

awesome. And it sounds like I’m not sure if you said your internal champion would be it or security, who is the person that you need to target.

25:59

That’s what I’m trying to think through because the it ends up having way more influence than they should within it. They don’t understand the complexities of things like background checks and abuse and prevention training. So that’s, that’s my attention. That’s where I could probably use some help from you. Because I usually talk to head of security, it comes in and says, Hey, we don’t have the time to change our church management platform integration right now. So end up being a standstill for multiple months. And then meanwhile, the true decision maker the pastor’s nowhere in the conversation.

Wesleyne Greer  26:27

Ah, so this is good. Thank you so much for sharing, buddy. So the internal champions should have enough influence and impact to get the decision maker to the table. So when you’re having meetings, you need to be thinking about, yes, this person has a big problem. Yes, it’s impacting them personally and professionally. But can they bring people to the table, if they can’t bring people to the table, then they’re an influencer. They’re not an internal champion. So champion does have power to bring the right people to the table. And I would encourage you to think about this a little bit deeper, because it sounds like if I understand what your product does, it sounds like what you are providing is you’re providing risk mitigation. So who in the organization really cares about risk mitigation, especially when you think about the safety of having children, you know, if you’re, if it’s at church, like, say, children, and elderly people and things like that, who cares about that. And so in your situation, it may not be it or security, it’s maybe like the pastor over the care ministry, or the personnel or the children’s ministry. So really think through who not just has this, this these problems, but who also has the pole, who can have that lead pastors err, to say, these are the reasons why we need to do this, and then they’ll get it together, and they’ll make it happen.

27:49

If I can ask a question, is there a way to help an influencer become an eternal into internal champion by creating some maybe positive tension? And then asking, Hey, can you bring people to the table with you?

Wesleyne Greer  28:03

Um, so you can so the thing is, you have to one of the things you do you have to gauge whether or not this person actually has the the ante within them to ruffle feathers, because an internal champion has to ruffle feathers, if they’re just a status quo, I don’t want to mess with anybody. You’re never going to give them enough of what they need to do what they need to do. But you can ask them questions, and people don’t really like you to say, Hey, do you have the authority to bring this person to the table? Yeah, well, they live like that. They’re like, Oh, you don’t care about me. So you ask questions kind of around the way and that’s slightly outside of the scope of what we’re doing. So I’m gonna answer this and move on. But you would ask a question about some of the last time that you brought in a third party vendor, can you walk me through? How that how you handle that internally? And they’ll say, oh, yeah, I remember we were getting this new HR software, we did this, this and that. So you kind of ask them a question around the way. Excellent, that’s helpful. Thank

Curt Anderson  28:59

you. Wesleyne, let’s tie in something real quick there. So So buddy, haven’t haven’t, you know, when you know, church, politics, right? Sometimes the board get to the board president, or that some words, there’s usually like one one person that’s like, kind of run the show behind the scenes. But anyway, on a more serious note, is let’s talk about content first, for a second here. So we I was with a client yesterday, and we’re talking, you know, they’re putting out a bunch of content. And I was in the content was very heavy driven towards my solutions. If you you know, this, we offer this all the features all the benefits. So they’re, they’re kind of like, I hate this, you know, throwing up all the solutions. So buddy, and everybody on the call here, team what we want to think and we’re all team together today, we’re all accountability to each other, right. We want to think about what are their problems? Okay, Wessling. We do a little exercise it’s called you know, I’m gonna throw it in there real quick. What’s every everybody has one favorite radio station. Remember this one, Julie. Everybody has one favorite radio station. Does anybody know what that I think I did this last time and somebody had the answer. Does anybody know? Every person on the planet listens to one? favorite radio station? Do you guys know what it is? Tic Tac tic tac. Ready? W i IFMW. i Thank you, Gary woods. It’s what’s in it for me. So as you’re putting out content, you’re putting out blogging, you’re putting out videos, I encourage you I implore you follow us Elaine on LinkedIn. On a daily basis. She is relentlessly putting out information for her soulmates about their problems. She’s not really talking about herself. She’s meeting her her soulmate, where they’re at. And they’re talking about content. So let’s dive in whistling. Yes,

Wesleyne Greer  30:47

yes. Thank you, Curt. And so the reason why, just as Kurt mentioned, it is important for us to identify our internal champion and understand our problems, because it loads into the reason why you guys are here, prospecting, right. So if I, if buddy is talking to a lead pastor, in his post, if he is going places where lead pastors are, they’re not paying attention to him, because they don’t like he, they’re not thinking about security, it’s not at the top of their brain. So he’s missing the mark. So really, identifying the internal champion is really, really important. Because everything that we do around prospecting, we want to target them, we want to be around them, we want to surround them completely. So when I talk about prospecting, I talk about these three different pillars. And it is important for you to be in all three of these areas at any every given time, within your business, whether you’re a business owner, or if you’re a salesperson, you should be actively engaging in all three pillars of these prospecting. So first is networking. And there’s two different buckets in networking. So we when we network, we are going places where our internal champion shows up. That is a direct method of prospect of networking. So again, you must know who the internal champion is. And you need to understand the problems that they have. So when you meet them, your 20/32 Elevator Pitch hits them immediately. Because they’re meeting a lot of people and you want to stand out in the crowd. The other way that we network is we go to places where there are referral partners that are also doing business with our ideal client. So if you think about whatever adjacent business, who else is selling to your client, that could be complementary to you, because you can forge partnerships. So in networking, these are just a few examples of different networking mediums that you can tap into trade shows, I really like regional local trade shows where my internal champion is showing up. Because the thing is, a person is more apt to take a day or a half a day away, they can drive to it, and they’re riding your backyard. That doesn’t mean that you don’t go to the larger ones. But you can get a lot of meat in going to a local or regional trade show for pastors of care ministries, if the since but he’s the only person that I know. That’s what I can say, where do operational supervisors go right? Where are they going to get their continuing education? Where did they get their information from? Industry event. So these are specific events that are targeted. It could be continuing education, it can be something where your actual ideal client profile is purchased. Talking about the MEP is a lot. We’re on a Purdue MEP webinar right now, industry event is something where there are all manufacturing exchange partnerships showing up where all manufacturers are showing up Chamber of Commerce. So depending on what your particular business is, a chamber of commerce could be good for you. And it also kind of depends on where you are geographically. Some places like in Houston, I think probably within 2030 minutes of me, I can hit like seven or eight chambers, because there’s so many different chambers. But local businesses are members of Chamber of Commerce, and they have events. And so they have events throughout the month. They have open events that you can just drop in for free and they have opportunities for you to speak for you to learn from people. So again, finding your local chamber and just becoming active in it. And I recommend if you are going to go the chamber route, you don’t just become a member of your chamber you get on a committee, and my sneaky little secret is get on the new member committee, because you get to greet all the new members that come in and you’re like, Oh, that is going to be a soulmate for me. Oh, they call on my soulmate. So that’s how you work with chamber and networking groups. Kurt mentioned that yesterday, we were on a group and it was a mastermind group with like minded people that all have the same goal. And so this networking group is a place where you are typically targeting your referral partners. Or maybe you are going to a networking group where all of your internal champions are and you’re just kind of like the odd person out. So if you are a business owner, and you are doing prospecting and sales as a portion of your job, I recommend that you have one networking event each month. So commit to going to one networking event each month. If sales is what you do, like you are a salesperson, you are you know hitting the world, often you should have two to three events that you are attending per month. You need to be a little bit more intentional about filling the top of the pipeline. But as business owners, I want you to have one. So please go ahead and write down what’s your one event is going to be for the month. What’s your one thing for the month care for the month of April? I’m sorry, since we’re stepping into a new month, we’re building our prospecting plan for the month of April. What’s your gonna be?

Curt Anderson  36:14

I’m doing a ray here with Julian Jean today. Right, Julie? So this is you know, so I you know, I’m out there quite a bit so, but let’s go here. So let’s tie in Alright, from for our marketers out there. Let’s tie in how to take advantage and this has been you know, now that the world’s you know, COVID is behind us, right? Even though I think I had it earlier this year. But anyway, now we’re back you’re in are socializing, we’re getting back out. There’s great opportunities here to target those soulmates. As you know, we want to go where your soulmates are hanging out? How can we be very strategic with these folks? And as Wesleyne? Does this, describe those decision makers, those influencers and those internal champions? are they hanging out on LinkedIn? Are you selling direct to consumer? Maybe they’re more on Instagram or Facebook? Do they need videos? Now if you guys are for our reading friends out there great book to read, they ask you answer. It’s a wonderful marketing book, it’s called they ask you answer. And the more that you dedicate yourself to answering those questions, and what you can do is tied in so I was just at the industrial marketing conference a month ago, month and a half ago. And so we did a ton I was a sponsor. So number one, I sponsored the conference. Number two, we did a ton of like promo events, and like really built it up prior, when we were at the event, we were doing live videos and stuff. So I mean, you know, that might not be in your wheelhouse, maybe that’s a little too much. But there’s a lot of things that you can do before an event during the event. And then after the event, connect with folks on LinkedIn before the event connect with folks on LinkedIn at the, during the event, connect with them after. So again, there’s a lot of things that we can do here, now that we’re getting back in person, we can tie it in from a digital standpoint and get a nice healthy hybrid between the two.

Wesleyne Greer  37:59

Absolutely hurt and you are the master connector. And so that is his his special secret sauce. But he’s absolutely right. If you go to an industry event, or trade show or chamber anything, and you just show up and expect to be fed expect to get leads expect to do, it’s not going to happen, you have to do work, before you show up, you need to be intentional about seeing who’s going to be there even if you don’t buy the cup the list of actual attendees, or you can get that for free, go on the website and see who are the sponsors, then based on who the sponsors are, go find out who’s your internal champion within those organizations and connect with them on LinkedIn, tried to set meetings that maybe they weren’t planning on going but they will go now. So make your time at these events very, very impactful. And that’s why as a business owner, you can just do one, right you can do one per month, but as a salesperson, at least two and if you can you can do three All right. So let us move on to the next pillar which is educating. So for this pillar, I call this educate them and they will come if you teach someone something, they will see you as a thought leader, they will see you as a subject matter expert, and they will lean on you and they will look to you to get more knowledge and to get more education. And when somebody looks to you as an expert, then they realize I should probably work with that person. That person solution is something that I should probably tap into. So educating How can we do this, we can do this in terms of so seminars can be a very variety of things. It can be a full day seminar, it can be a half day seminar, it can be a lunch and learn. And one thing that I really liked to do, we’re here with the Purdue MEP. I like to partner with universities because it is a very neutral spot. And universities are usually like yes industry people come on campus. Yes, you can host something here. We would love to reserve a row for you and it’s usually pretty inexpensive. So find a local university in your area tap in to the right department, whether it’s the business IT department or whatever it is your local MEP, ask if you can reserve a room and just invite people and literally teach something. And the goal with all of these educating pieces is go deep, don’t go wide. Let’s not teach them the whole process of how to do everything. Let’s not go all the way through everything that you’re really excellent and great at. And kind of like Curt said, If this isn’t the show about you, this is this is my internal champion, these are the problems, they have a problem mitigating risks, they have a problem with downtime on their equipment, I’m going to help them understand the reason why this happens, here are some solutions that they can try. And then yes, you weave your solution in there. But don’t make it seem like a sales pitch really educate people. So webinars, just like we’re doing here, you can easily have a webinar no longer than 90 minutes, because people get zoom fatigue. But again, one topic go deep, a white paper case study. So this is written forms of information, like I told you about my children earlier, my older son, when we watch TV, he watches the show with the subtitles on, because he likes to read and watch, which is weird to me. It’s distracting to me, I can’t do the words. But my younger son is like no words, I he’s an audiobook person when he wants to, he’ll listen to a book over reading it. So some people won’t attend a webinar or seminar, but they’ll read a document that you give them that you send to them, right. And so these white papers, these case studies, it is it can be as simple as this is a client that I worked with, these were the problems that they had, these were all the things they tried, and this is the success that they had after working with me. You can even interview your existing clients to get this information for these case studies. And we’re going to talk about the next method shortly, which is direct methods. And you use this in your actual outreach. You use this in the things that you’re doing online, even when you’re going to these trade shows like having this printed material, because it kind of gives you the background information for people, the people that you’re targeting, and finally a podcast appearances. So what this is, is this is you getting on other people’s platforms to tap into their audience. So if you are targeting, again, let’s say we’re targeting finance people, right, we’re targeting managers of finance. So you should know because you know, your internal champion, you understand the problems that they have. And you’ve done a really, really good job of understanding how they consume information and where they get it the podcast that they listen to. So you just reach out to the podcast hosting you say, Hey, this is who I am, I would love to appear on your podcast. Most people like to appear for free. Sometimes there’s a small fee. But again, you’re tapping into their audience and you’re educating their audience. So Curt, what’s your favorite kind of educating pillar? Well,

Curt Anderson  42:59

I you know, so we do tons of training, we work closely with our friends at MEPS in different states. And we have a little tagline that we love to share, as we’re coaching our manufacturers on how to you know, beat the competition how to get that word out there, we have another fun tagline how to stop being the best kept secret, right? And it’s this how do you out teach the competition? How do you out teach the competition, so instead of outspending the competition, or, Hey, let’s spend more money on ads, or let’s do this, and it’s you know, it’s a kind of an easy passive for us old guys, you know, taking the ad out in the phonebook type of mentality, right? Today, if there’s any takeaway that you have today, I would welcome you take a screenshot of what Wesleyan has right here. This could be your most powerful secret sauce, right here. How do you dedicate yourself to out teach the competition? What a better way you know, buddy, like you’re describing to educate those folks, what a better way to earn their trust, what a better way to help them understand what you’re doing, you know, the prot you know, your CNC shop, your your manufacturer of printed circuit boards, whatever product that you manufacture, or produce, you know, they might know if you sell to OEMs they might know their finished good. But they don’t know that little part or that widget that you manufacture in there is nobody on the planet knows that as well as you add just be a fierce educator do any one of these things, and we could go deeper on it. But I’m a huge, huge, huge proponent for all five of these. So I’m, I’m all over it, great job whistling

Wesleyne Greer  44:30

all over it all over. Yes. Because like myself, Curt like to talk. And so if you’re like that and you like to talk, you’ll be all over education, because it’s easier to talk a little, a little bit just a little bit, right. But again, I’m in all of those bits of education. When we step into this what I call directed prospecting. We’re actually going to be using the bits of information that things that you’ve created the things that you done in that education pillar. So I have warm calling and warm emailing on here, because we’re not just using this spray and pray approach, which spray and pray is, oh, hey, I’m going to target every single operation supervisor in the state of Indiana because they are possibly a ideal client, they’re possibly a soulmate. No, I’m going to target operation supervisors that have been in the job for less than six months, because I know that people who’ve been in their job for less than six months have usually have a higher propensity to use my product. So that means I know something about them, and I know their problems. So I’m not just sending these cold emails or cold calling, I actually know something about the prospect. So I’m breaking down that layer. So direct methods. And the social media prospecting card tapped into it a little bit. But this is not the bots that you people are selling you and telling you to try and use. That is annoying, and that doesn’t work. So when you prospect on social media, your goal is to support your internal champion on social media. What does that mean, when they post you like you comments, and then if you’re on Instagram, or Tiktok, or depending on the platform your internal champion is using, then you follow them, then you connect with them, right, but you surf before you do anything. So that serving means like, comment, and be thoughtful about the comment, not just great post, I really enjoyed reading about how your church has taken the initiative to decrease the time it takes a person to check in, I don’t know whatever it is, right? Literally, you write that comment, take the same comment and add that to your connection message. If you’re on LinkedIn, Hey, Bob, I enjoyed reading your posts about blah, blah, blah. And I liked this part, I would love to be a part of your network symbol is that on LinkedIn, on Instagram, the other social media platforms? It’s not, you can’t write a customized connection request. But you do want to like and comment on their stuff first. And so you how do you find this person, literally, who that internal champion is their title, type in the search bar, Operation supervisor in Montana. And you’ll find a whole list of people make a goal to connect with five people a week, 10 people a week, five people a day, give yourself a goal, and be intentional about showing up every single day. And what you’ll see is you’re going to start building your network online, have your internal champions. And so the other piece of that is, so we built this content out for our educating piece. That’s what we used to post. So we use that content on our social media platforms. So again, when I started the segment of three pillars of prospecting, I said how important it is to be in all of these at the same time. And the reason is, is because they’re interconnected. What I want everybody to understand is it takes 10 to 15 touches to convert someone. So you have to be intentional, you have to do different things, you see them at a trade show, then you connect with them on LinkedIn, then you send them a warm email that’s three touches, they may still not take a meeting with you, you have to be intentional and keep going. So in this directed method, I want you to set yourself a goal, a daily goal, a weekly goal of what you’re going to do, I’m going to send five warm emails a day, I’m going to find five new prospects on social media each week. The one I didn’t mention was showing up unannounced. And again, Curt mentioned, we are Hass, COVID. And depending who your internal champion is, they may work in an office, they may have a storefront, they may have something where you can literally just show up, like show up and offer them something about not just a brochure, it needs to be something of value to them. So again, what are the problems that they have? How can you help them solve that problem with something that you offer? So again, make a very be intentional about setting goals and each of these pillars of prospecting, okay? But you got hurt, man

Curt Anderson  49:36

is this. Alright, let’s try. Let’s let’s, we’re gonna start wrapping things up in a bow. And so I want to, we’re talking about that ideal buyer. We don’t want to be everything to everybody. So think specifically Wesleyne, you do an amazing job of like, I want to sell to one person. You know, I always think of Melinda or Lynn. You know, the I have two soulmates that I’m targeting the solo marketer or the solopreneur and everything that You and I do we’re like, Alright, how can we help Melinda today? How can we help Lynn right? And so take that she also talked about the referral network, we call it that soulmate. 100. If you have a sheet come up with 100 clients, you know, we’re talking about the MEP network, there’s one in all 50 states, well, I could start targeting any those MEPs in all 50 states, you know, you know, buddy, with churches, you know, think about not only the list of churches, maybe there’s a specific denomination that you resonate with, let’s get very specific with her referral idea, who’s every person that’s trying to get their foot in the door with that church? Maybe the property insurance, the liability insurance, maybe the janitorial supply, you know, like, what are other people that I can connect with create a relationship, you can do it on social media, you could do it in person, okay. And the last thing I want to talk about is that social media prospecting, if we get very specific, Wesley, when we get off our workshop yesterday, I was talking to a, an E commerce software company that we love working with, with our clients. And I love what they did, they did this. They’re like, hey, we have a bunch of clients who are already customers. And they’re at this scope. And we feel that they could be at this scope, they just need a little nudge. So now they’ve gotten real specific. And they’re like, Well, we started targeting, like certain cities in certain areas. And then we the more we talk we’ve gotten we’ve, we’ve narrowed it down. So instead of that spray and pray that you just described, I was just like, I got chills talking to these guys, because like we got so specific on who we can help. Not that we want to sell to that we honestly feel that we can bring value and improve their businesses through the MEPs. And was just really inspiring when you can think that way. So this is great stuff, man.

Wesleyne Greer  51:41

Awesome that thank you for wrapping that up in a nice little packet. And everything current said sums up all the things that we’ve talked about perfectly. It’s, as you’d like to say niche down until it hurts. So get to that smallest addressable internal champion, figure out and you should be such an expert on that internal champion that you understand where they consume information, the conferences, they go to the social media platforms they have. And current has a fantastic resource on his website where you can build out this buyer persona, this soulmate, so you can actually see these things.

Curt Anderson  52:22

Yes, I’ll grab a link and I’m going to drop into chat and hate to see our friend Gary would drop the low note. Thank

Wesleyne Greer  52:27

you, Gary. I appreciate it. Thank you.

Curt Anderson  52:31

Gary. dropped the mic. Wesleyan. You are amazing. And we all we agree with that. So guys, I just dropped a little link in there. What I’d love to do, I want to be mindful of everybody’s time. So first off as we wind down, hey, how about we give a huge round of applause for Wesleyan for just hitting a ball out of the park as she always does. Wesleyan has a QR code lesson I’m going to have you explain that real quick before anybody jumps. I wanted to say a huge, huge thank you to you. Huge thank you to the Purdue MEP, connect with the Purdue MEP, but Wesleyan you have a really cool QR QR code. Let’s hear what’s going on here.

Wesleyne Greer  53:05

Yeah. So this is called Wesleyne wisdom, AI and so as I said, I love to talk and over the years I have curated hundreds and 1000s of hours of videos so for your sales, your marketing your business, your strategy questions, you can go to ask les lane.com type in how do i prospect better how do I identify my target market? How do I have an effective discovery call? And these answers are for me, this is not from all over the world wide web This is not chat DBT these are actually curated for my videos. So in from all the content that I have curated over the years so scan the QR code are going to ask what’s lynda.com

Curt Anderson  53:47

I gotta right there. So right there. We got it right there unlock instant insights with why Slean and again, everybody love to connect with you guys on LinkedIn connect with Wesleyan, I would I drop my LinkedIn chat in there. I know Julie, you dropped your LinkedIn there. We would love to connect with you Jean. Hopefully yours is in there. We’ve got a really we do these almost almost every month. Maybe we take a couple couple months off in summertime, Julie, but we’ve got a great program coming up next month. The most common marketing mistakes businesses make and how to avoid them. We have a dear friend coming to us from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Her name is Laurie Hi, B. And she’s a fierce advocate for US manufacturing. So we’re coming back a month from now just about a month right? April 18 12 o’clock. So if you want to grab that QR code, or just check out the Purdue MEP website, but I want to be mindful of people that need a wrap but Wesleyan and I would love to stick around and address any questions buddy I want to thank you for participating we appreciate you but if anybody has any questions or if you want to do another fun little exercise, Wesleyan as you can tell does a wonderful job on the spot tackling so if you guys have any other questions we love diving in so we would welcome in we would cherish Any questions that you guys have?

Wesleyne Greer  55:01

Yes, please raise your hand or pop off mute if you have a specific question or comment or concern that you want me to like coach you at Oh

Curt Anderson  55:16

and if everybody’s good again, I wouldn’t be around anybody but boy, we would love to have any, just any questions and again, connect with Wesleyan on LinkedIn, connect with myself on LinkedIn and connect with the folks here at Purdue MEP. If you are not connected with a Purdue MEP, just Julie let’s set it up. Right. You guys cover Lean leadership, operational excellence, our dear friend Jean Jones cybersecurity guys put that’s a hot hot topic right now. Definitely connect with the folks at the Purdue MEP. We offer wonderful marketing services as you can tell what seems a little bit of a sales guru fierce and whistling just share real quick you’re a fierce a recovering chemists as I like to call you. You were in manufacturing for many, many years and just found and how does it come as become a sales coach?

Wesleyne Greer  56:01

You know, I was in the lab and I used to be a failure analysis chemist and I was like, more human interaction. So I found myself in sales and I tell everybody, I figured out what I wanted to be when I grew up because I loved it. And because of my love and my passion I made a really fast ascent from individual contributor to international sales manager. And now I work with organizations really in technical fields to help them understand that complex buying situation to truly help them lay out sales strategy and sales process so yep, that was my transition.

Curt Anderson  56:36

Well, I love it so I before we were a couple minutes we got a couple minutes left any other questions that you guys want to hit up? And if not, we will let you guys go. And boy, we thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We never take these we know how precious your time is. We never take this for granted. So we appreciate you spending your time with us. That is very we are honored. Any last questions before we close out

Wesleyne Greer  57:02

I don’t see anything. All righty.

Curt Anderson  57:04

All right, guys. Hey, God bless everybody. Thank you connect with the Purdue MEP and we hope to see you guys next month enjoy March Madness and Julie How about a go Purdue man yeah boiler up so whoever your team I don’t know what How’s everybody’s brackets look and everybody everybody good shape so far?

57:26

Know what thanks to you both we really appreciate it. It’s it’s great wisdom for for everyone clients and everyone around so thanks so much guys.

Curt Anderson  57:35

Hey, thank you guys. Great comments in the chat buddy thank you for participating go volunteers and so whoever your team you’re rooting for we rooting yard so awesome. Thanks Thanks guys. Thanks for listening. Thanks Julie

57:59

it was Lena and Curt I was here the whole time I don’t know what happened to my video it just kind of dropped out

Curt Anderson  58:05

dropped out but Gina can’t see your handsome face man. I’m you know I’m not good with that.

58:10

Well, you can see when sleeping space so that’s that.

Curt Anderson  58:15

Did you I don’t Did you Wesleyne. Can you keep speaking of, you know what, how about backup. Can you show Can you I think you might have a picture that you might want to show Jean.

Wesleyne Greer  58:24

Great. Do you want to turn off the recording? Absolutely. Yes, sorry.