[E286] Business Growth Evangelism, with Sam Dunning (Part 1)

Jason: Welcome to the sales experience podcast. My name is Jason Cutter. And on today's episode, I have a special guest. It's fun because I was on his show and then we've stayed in touch and I'm excited to have him on mine. His name is Sam Dunning. And he is the sales director and co owner of web choice. So a digital marketing agency that helps businesses skyrocket their lead sales brand positioning via SEO results, driven digital marketing, conversion focused websites, and custom web and mobile application. Development, which if you know me, I'm all about the results driven marketing, not just brand marketing for the sake of that, but really performance and result driven. So I love the stuff that he does. He's also the host of Sam's business growth show podcast, where he interviews amazing business leaders, experts, and entrepreneurs from around the globe. Even made an exception for me, but we had a fun chat anyway, Sam, welcome to podcast. Sam: Hey, Jason, appreciate it, man. And thanks for the intro. Looking forward to having a chat today. Jason: Yeah, and anybody that knows me and listens to the show knows that I love talking to marketing people because one of the things that always occurs in organizations, not all of them, but most of them is that there's marketing, their sales don't always work together. They do have one theoretical goal in common, yet it's always a battle. And so I love having marketers on the show to share their side and what's working and what's not working. Sam: Yeah, man, it's funny because some of my friends some of the guys that i've met on linkedin They like to take the mick out of me because they're like sam You're not really a salesperson. You're just a marketer So leave your opinion out of this us sales professionals are talking i'm like dude I sell as well as market you need to listen to me Jason: And that's the thing that most people don't realize, especially if you run a business, even if that business is doing marketing for other people, you have to get clients somehow, which is going to involve some level of sales, which is always funny. And that's interesting that you have that. Response from people on LinkedIn who think, Oh, you're just a marketer, Sam, the marketer. So just stay out of this. Let the adults talk, right? Let the sales people talk. Sam: Yeah. It's funny, man. But no that's all part of it. I love the banter. And just like you say, running a business, you've got to sell, you've got to do the marketing, you've got to drive the leads, you've got to look after your clients. There's a lot of things to juggle, but it's part of the fun. Keeps you busy. Yeah. Jason: And everything in life is sales. So even when you look at somebody who works at an organization, maybe they're doing the marketing at their organization. So they're not even selling, they're not responsible for new client acquisition. They're just servicing and doing the creative for the marketing side. There's still sales involved because they're either selling the client on their ideas for the marketing, or they're selling their boss on their ideas or their team. That's the part when someone's close minded and says, Hey, you're just a marketer. This is not sales. Then that's what's causing this division. That's why I want to have you on the show. Should be fun. Talk to him, man. Okay. So I'm doing a bit of a different format. I warned you in advance. Normally what I do for people listening is I free flowing conversation. I have a couple of bullet points we want to talk about, but I'm wanting to do something different where I have a set of questions that I want to ask and not interview. Tell me your life story mode. People can still go find you online for that, but more of I want your opinions on these set questions and topics. I just want to hear from you and then what other people say that way the listeners can go into that. So how does that sound? Sam: Sounds good to me, man. Let's have it. Jason: All right. And so just so everyone knows, I did send these the same in advance. So he's a little prepared, but we'll see where it goes. So in the first one here, what I'd love to know is with the businesses that you're dealing with, what are they doing well? Sam: Sure. I guess we could look at it from a couple of standpoints. Us being a digital marketing company. Especially when we've, everyone knows we've been through COVID and when those times hit, a lot of our clients, a lot of our customers came to us and said, look, Sam, we want to shut down all our marketing. Marketing. We're going to stop everything because we've got no money. We've got no cash coming in. We've got our clients are on halt and essentially what I said to them is appreciate that we're all in the same boat. This is all happening to everyone, but one of the worst things you can do is switch your marketing off and then you've got no pipeline. You've got no inbound inquiries. You've got nothing coming in. Which is obviously terrible, because then you're just gonna try and milk your existing clients for all they're worth. Probably put more stress on your current customers, who's gonna be pushing them into other products. Which isn't always bad, but it's gotta be helpful to them. And it's quite strange, that was quite a battle, the clients that have done the best for us have stuck out long term strategies. So when I say long term strategies, I'm talking things like SEO, search engine optimization, getting the website to the top of Google organically. So they have a steady flow of inquiries coming in and they've kept up their social media work. So if they're B2B. Businesses, they've been regularly posting on LinkedIn, engaging with kind of ideal prospects, putting out good content and that kind of good stuff. And of course they've, some of them have been doing paid advertisement to getting more shorter term traffic, more short term inbound inquiries from their websites and stuff like that. And there's a few other things in between that, but that's some of the key strategies that our own clients have. Had success with, which makes sense of the digital marketing. And that's how we've helped businesses. Jason: And it's interesting. Cause as you're talking, this is a theme I've heard from both a lot of service provider professionals like yourself, as well as other people in the industry, on the sales side. Is this whole reaction during this time of COVID, which is, Hey, let's just constrict. Let's worry about right now, or we can't sell to anybody because we have to be understanding. It's all about relationships. So just put off sales, but this is obviously not going away, right? Like we're recording this in September, 2020, like it's not going away anytime soon. And people have to realize that. And as you're talking, I'm thinking SEO, that's like. If you're hungry today and you need to eat today instead of planting seeds that are going to grow for long term, you only focus on today and what you can find and then what happens, you're going to end up in this terrible cycle and then in six months you're still going to be starving, right? Instead of taking that initiative and playing the long game and the short game, right? Like I always say, you have to act like a hunter and think like a farmer. Like you've got to do both. Sam: Definitely, man. But it doesn't necessarily have to be just for digital marketing as well. It's the same if you're doing cold outreach. Whether it's cold email, cold calling, all this kind of stuff. It's not instant, is it? Because you've got to build your pipeline from scratch. You've got to start the conversation. You've probably got to book an initial meeting. Then you've probably got to go to book a demo and then you've got to put them through your sales cycle and eventually go for the close, which depending on the products you sell is going to take time. So moving back to SEO is not instant either. It's going to take a fair few months for you to see results, for you to start getting the inquiries in. So it's looking at those strategies and don't get me wrong. When COVID first hit, we did lose clients. I'm sure like many businesses, some of the clients, even though we talked to them, they still said, look, we don't have the money to carry on. So it's fair enough. Some of the clients we had to help out, we had to. Look at things like offering them payment plans or discounts to keep them going, which is what you do as a business to look after your customers. And as a result of that, some of them have come back to us a few months later because we helped them out and said, let's ramp up things now because you helped us out on times are tough. So it's also understanding that customers are people too. And if you look after them properly, then they're going to come back and respect you. Yeah. Jason: And I think that's where the balance is, right? So respecting them, having empathy, working with them, understanding their situation. And then for the ones who, you know, that you can help and they need it. And the timing is there is to also. Focus on moving people forward. Okay. The next question here. So obviously you're on the marketing side, but you do sell what we talked about in the beginning, but you're providing marketing to your companies and your interaction is more on the digital agency side. Plus the companies you're helping with. It's the online digital footprint, right? So it's not just sales marketing to lead to individual sales reps on the phone, but in your experience, let's talk about this wider. What are some success traits that you have seen for Top sales teams, top sales reps. Sam: Sure. The top one, in my opinion, is the sales reps, which I can say has directly helped me is they're keen to learn. So I've made the mistake myself in years gone by, especially when I worked at different marketing company that I thought I was great at selling as I'm hitting target, I'm doing all this good stuff, but then when my retained clients, so when this. Big client list. I had clients started dropping off. They started going to other agencies. They didn't want to spend money anymore. When these kinds of things happen, I realized I have to prospect again. I have to find new business. So I'm not as good as I thought I was. And all those things came crashing down when really as sales professionals, I believe we should constantly be working to develop ourselves. So should constantly be learning, striving to learn. From people that are smarter than us. So I tend to listen to a lot of podcasts and consume a lot of video content. So I found that's helped me and I didn't even start doing that until about a year and a half, two years ago. And it's just steadily helped me get better and better. It's helped me form a decent sales process. It's helped me understand self strategies, self techniques for all parts of the process, be it discovery stage, the actual kind of demo and presentation, be it follow up, be it closing. So I'd say one of the most important traits, in my opinion, is to always be learning to try and develop yourself, because we can all learn different things. LinkedIn is a great source of content, that's our podcasts, our books. So is YouTube. There's so much stuff out there. So that's one of the key things. There's tons of other things. But that's probably my first and foremost tip for anyone. Jason: All right. That's it for my first part of the conversation with Sam Dunning. He is amazing. We're going to continue this conversation tomorrow. Going to keep talking about his ideas and responses to my questions that fall under authentic persuasion. And I will catch you tomorrow. That's it for another episode of the sales experience podcast. Thank you so much for listening. If you find yourself on iTunes, can you leave the show a rating and a review? It helps other sales people and sales leaders find the show and please subscribe to the show and share episodes you find valuable with anyone you know in sales. Help me on my mission of changing the way sales is done. And if you're ready to work together, go to Jason cutter. com. Again, that's Jason cutter. com. To find out how I can help you or your company create scalable sales success. I will see you on the next sales experience podcast episode, and keep in mind that everything in life is sales and people will remember the experience you gave them.