049: Do You Need a Marriage Counselor for Your Sales & Marketing? w/GINA BALARIN

Hello, everyone. And welcome back to another episode of marketing and sales over cocktails. This is your host Allan Langer episode. You're ready for this 49. We are almost at 50. We are at episode 49 and I've got someone from way, way across the world for tonight's episode from Australia. And we're going to get to Gina in a minute, but before we get to Gina, Uh, just a couple of housekeeping notes. The website is marketing and sales podcast.com. Don't forget to send in your question to the ask Allan segment. If you send in a question and we read it on the air during the show, you get a signed autograph copy of my book. We've got a great question up. Great question up a great question coming up. Uh, it's a little late in the evening for me tonight, uh, from Ted in Birmingham, Alabama for our guests later. So we're going to get to that, but Ted is getting. Copy of my book. So without further delay, I want to introduce someone I just met. Um, but we hit it off really quickly. She's very cool. Her name is Gina. She calls herself Gina ballerina, but her name is Gina and, uh, she's an awesome, uh, everything marketing person. She owns her own marketing agency called verbal listings. She started at about five years ago. She's a TEDx speaker. Uh, she's a keynote speaker and she's also a member of the professional speakers association. Associate doesn't generally. Look speaking under her belt, she's marketing, all kinds of stuff. Gina, welcome to the show. Thanks for being here tonight. It's great to be chatting with you and let's not forget she's an author as well. This handy little book again, staple. There we go. The secret army leadership and the power of people. So forgive the book plan, but I'm like, Hey, you know what? If someone wants a free copy of this, feel free to reach out to me and tell me, Oh my goodness, this chat was so amazing. Gina. I want to get a copy and we'll see what we can do. 2:00 Comes out. Uh, they will be in the show notes. You'll, there'll be a link to Gina's book. There'll be a link to how to get in touch with her on LinkedIn and all that kind of stuff. But yes, her book is, is, uh, the secret army leadership marketing and the power of people. And, um, your agency says, you says it's a boutique marketing agency. So before you tell me what that means, I want you to tell everyone about Gina, tell us why you're awesome. And how you got to where you are today. It's a really difficult question to answer when someone sits you up like that.

2:30

Really awesome at the, how do I tell people why I'm I can tell them what I'm done. I can tell them where I am, but

2:40

so I am, uh, an originally a South African with a British possible living in Australia. Call me a little bit of a globe Trotter. I have lived in three different continents and I've worked in communications across all three of those continents. And I've worked in marketing across all three continents, but I didn't. Always, no, I was working in marketing. In fact, it was only when I, um, became aware of the chartered Institute of marketing in the UK and thought, wait, hang on. What's this thing, do I need to be studying marketing? Like as a formal thing, rather than just doing it every day that I was like, Oh, Oh, Oh, you mean the thing I've already been doing for the last four years? That's not contained,

3:26 which is quite ironic. And today I'm actually a member of the board. Of the chartered Institute of marketing. It's been an interesting journey within, but it's also meant that through that journey, I've always seen it through the eye of a marketing content writer. Now I was writing, you know, and, and making up stories from the moment that I was talking and walking pretty much. And I have always loved helping people engage in a story. And the irony is that most marketers, uh, see themselves in like one second. Specific marketing role, even marketing generalists tend to be biased towards something I'm biased towards content writing, but marketing is this incredibly diverse field where you can pick almost any specialism within the marketing field and become an expert at that particular niche.

4:23 So you get marketers who are search engine optimization experts. You get mocked as who content writers. You get marketers who are great planners and that's what they do for marketing agencies, they plan stuff. And the beautiful thing is a free one can be a mock attack because we're engaged in the sharing and exchange of hopefully meaningful communications between our company and our prospective bias. 4:53 But that doesn't mean that marketing is actually done right. A lot of the time. And that is the problem. Um, that a lot of people outside of marketing have, and that's why the perception of marketers is pretty sucky. Yeah. And I want to get into there's a segue there, but I totally forgot before we get into deep, deeper, you are on marketing and sales over cocktails. So you have to share with the audience what you have. It looks like a delicious glass of white wine. Is that what that is? It is indeed. It's a Chablis. What are you drinking? I have, so this looks like milk with ice in it. It's actually not. It's a, uh, Called bourbon cream, Buffalo trace, which is an American whiskey company makes a cream. Uh, it's not like a Bailey's Bailey's way too. Sweet. It's it's just, it's just delicious. It's like eggnog and you can only have one glass because it's a little too much, but I found, I saw it in the fridge. I'm like, I'm having that tonight. So here's a virtual cheers to you for the camera. Cheers. And thank you again for show. There we go. Yes. Cheers to the audience.

5:57 I thought it was, I thought it was a wide brush in there for a second. Hey. All right, 6:02 Jamie, back to my high school days, 6:05 white Russian, my goodness. I need some Koloa for that. Yeah, that's true. It's not quite broad enough for it or,

6:16 and the perception of marketers being sucky. And I can easily say from the sales side, the perception of salesmen is, is salespeople is sucky, maybe even suckier and you're right. It's from a client stand. Point the reputations for both are not great. And then the reputation for both working together is not great. So twofold question. How do you, what do you have to do as a marketer to dispel that perception? And then how do you work together with sales better? I know that's a two completely different questions, but I figured I'd ask them both at one time because that's the kind of guy

6:57 let's begin with explaining why the concept of. Of marketing and sales is so sexy or do some evidence to explain this? Yes. A few years ago, HubSpot did an analysis with 1000 people to look at the perceptions of sales and marketing and various other professionals. Of course, you'd expect that people like doctors and firefighters way up at the top of the trustworthiness scale and you'd expect that salespeople, marketers, insurance salesman, car salesman were way down the bottom. What ended up happening? Was that actually people trust the wrist is more than they trust marketers. I saw that. I actually saw that, yes,

7:42 the guy who makes your coffee trust you trust more than a marketing or a sales person 7:49 and hated it at the same time, but I can understand it. So the first part of your question was how do you get people to trust marketing more? Well, there are two ways of doing this. You get people to trust, marketing more by giving them marketing that actually wants to listen to.

8:06 And that means you have to understand what you're actually not what you're trying to sell to people. No, you have to go the other way around. You have to understand what their needs are, what they want from your product. There's no point in creating a product or indeed a service providing a service. If no one wants to buy what you have to sell. And you can understand that like we're human. You know, we think about ourselves first, more often than not. We think about our needs. And turn that into a product. We turn that into a solution. So we go, well, if I want this, then surely everyone else wants this. But unfortunately the answer is often we'll. Do you know that everyone wants this? Who wants this? Why did they want this? What are they going to do with this? So in order to improve the reputation of marketing, we have to first and foremost, listen with our heads and our ears, but we also have to listen with our hearts. And that means that there's a big place for empathy in marketing. That hasn't yet. And there was a big role for listening to people first and creating marketing second, and also being brave enough to ask questions of your customers, especially if you're afraid, you're going to get honest answers because those honest answers aren't always comfortable.

9:22 The next part of your question is how do you actually get sales and marketing to work together? And, Oh my goodness, we're going to need multiple. Yeah. I said, I'm thinking, that's probably, that's a question for just one entire podcast, but yeah, it is. But let's begin with something I wrote in the secret army and it was a chapter on relationship counseling for sales and lack of time

9:47 really that's I like that. So, so like couples counseling for sales and marketing, I like that was exactly like that. And it's a blog post I've wrote, right. When I was starting to realize that sales and marketers are. I kind of get the yin and yang of the relationship, but also that we can both achieve. If we focus on a goal that 10:10 connects us rather than divides us. And I had a distinction that salespeople were arrogant and pushy, and they didn't really care much about me or the kid up was results. They didn't see any value in the marketing I was creating and they just like, we couldn't co-exist

10:28 and I was wrong. I only discovered I was wrong. When I met a sales person who said to me, please help me. I need to reach this audience. I know you can do some good marketing, help me create stuff specifically for my audience, so that we can talk to them in a way that they understand what I'm trying to sell them. I was like, sorry, what

10:53 are you? Okay. Like you spent too much time in the sun recently.

11:00 So I answered and off the back of that, the originally it was a blog post was created called relationship counseling for sales and marketing and effectively the answers in there summarize. So that's

11:14 when relationships are looked at from both the other person's perspective, we can stop to see what they need. Just like, as in a marriage, you can assume that your wife wants you to unpack the dishwasher. Well, to be fair, who doesn't want their partner to unpack. Right, but it might be that actually, she doesn't want you to pack the dishwasher because she'd actually preferred to hand wash some of those very expensive glasses that shouldn't go in the dishwasher. So by doing a good deed, which marketers would be producing content, which is there a good day for sales, but they haven't asked, you're actually making the relationship worse.

11:55 So the great secret of success to create effective. Collaboration between sales and marketing is to understand what do you both want? And there's a fairly easy way of answering that question. It is actually, what's going to serve your customers and how are you going to help your customers understand that what you're selling is actually going to help them solve their problems. Now it's not rocket science, but it's amazing how hard it is to answer that question. And the bigger organizations tend to get the harder it is often for them to go. Back to that essence of who are our customers, what are we trying to sell them in a context? That means how are we trying to help them? 12:40 And that's what great marketing does. And that's what great sales does as well is you start by going, here's the problem we're trying to solve? What do they need to help them solve this problem? How can we understand the journey that they're going through to solve this problem? How can we be part of that journey? What can we provide that is genuinely going to be what I call I right. Interesting relevant, appropriate, timely, entertaining, engaging, or educating, and then produce the marketing that can help them use that because then sales loves marketing. We're actually doing what helps them make their sales job easier.

13:19 You know, it's fascinating that you're talking about this because I spent a lot of time. I've been in corporate jobs. I spent many, many years selling windows know in-home. And the company I was with was a pretty gigantic company. And they had a, a call center to, to take in the calls from all the marketing and all the ads they produced. And, but it was, uh, instead of really finding ideal customers, they just cast the gigantic net and their reps went out all over the place. 50% of the time or more, you were not in front of the ideal customer. And so all the, all the reps were just complaining about the leads, the leads suck, you know, Glen, Gary, Glen Ross, the leads are weak. You know, this is just. That's what sales does. Well, what I started doing was I would go to an appointment and it was a terrible appointment. Or the person in the house would say, well, the, the girl on the phone said this, this and this, and I'd write it down. And I get back in the car and I called the director of the call center. And like, you may need to check this call. He just said that the girl on the phone said our windows are $200. You know, the windows were $2,000 and he, I tell you at first, when I first did that, he was floored because he's like, I've never. Ever ever been called by a rep who gave me feedback from the field. He goes, you don't have valuable. This is right now. So I would do it three or four times a week. Just say, this was a great lead. Whoever made this appointment, tell them great job. And they let you know, I was endeared by the marketing department because I was doing that on every sales person should do that.

14:48 I agree the tools and tactics, tactics that people are using to be able to identify great leads and to combine a sales and marketing into what Dan tire from HubSpot calls Smarketing. Is very involved and I think, but it can also be divided divisive. So when you look at the relationship between marketing and sales, you have gazillions of tools you can use to help track the progression of a lead that can often be divisive. Molson cohesive. If you look at a series of leads on a dashboard and you see that one part is not converting to the other, then the guilt game and the blame games. Right. Right. And actually that is just a symptom of a much bigger problem. The bigger problem is sales and marketing. If we're actually sit down and go, what is a lead or what is a good lead? 15:46 I haven't agreed to those criteria and characteristics. This, this lead set sales says and marketers, but this was an excellent lead we'll continue or whatever. 16:01 Let me ask you a question on the sucky leads versus, you know, the good leads, because I think sucky leads happen because the C-level folks are the owners of the business. Tell the marketing people, we need a thousand leads a month. That's it. We need a thousand leads a month. So what, what are they going to do is they're going to get a thousand leads a month, no matter how good or bad they are. And rather than saying, well, you know what, if we get five. A hundred of these leads, the sales team is probably going to close 50% of these. We're sending them a thousand leads where 500 really suck. That's why their closing percentage is 25%. So how much is that at the problem? Where, where, where, where it's just a numbers game with, with marketing and leads generation. You've just answered your own question, essentially. It is a question of what, firstly, what are people focusing on? Secondly, what, how did they define lead? Thirdly, where does that lead sit in the progression funnel and fourthly, one of the progression conversion. Right now Marketo's historically have set at the top of the funnel, right? Their job is to bring the leads in sales have sat at the bottom of the funnel. Their job is to get the drips coming out of the bottom of the funnel, but it's not a funnel. It's more like a sieve.

17:18 Well like a bucket that you drill holes all over the place. If you're lucky, if you get one drip out the bottom and list, and this is the big ask, unless you stop filling this stuff at the top with stuff. That is chunky. It's really hard to fill your bucket with rocks and not have something rock shaped drop on the bottom. If you don't actually, you know, if you know what you rockets and there's actually a term in content marketing, big rock content, like if you're filling your con your mom stuff with content that is super valuable. Well, then it means that it isn't going to, it's more likely to convert because you're adding value at each stage of that journey. I had a great manager a few years ago. When she took on a more senior role, she got the role by perfect to be saying to the head of sales. I'm not going to fix your number of things in the top of the funnel. What I'm going to do is I'm going to improve your conversion rate. And I think she made it as simple as I'm going to increase, increase your conversion, right at the stage of the funnel by 5%. And I will double your revenue.

18:22 Like what's not to love, right? Because marketers don't have to do more. They don't have to. Keep spreading news. What they can do is they can be far more focused and targeted. And because of those conversations between sales and marketing, in an honest, open, authentic, like give and take feedback, no, this doesn't work. Why doesn't it work? This is why. Cause we're like, okay, we get it. We'll do this instead. Kind of what, what ended up happening is that marketing started using different tactics and using different tactics and different types of content. Meant that they were then able to attract and engage different types of people, but you're right. Fundamentally Alan, at the end of the day, if business owners are more focused on revenue and they think that just expecting more from marketing is going to miraculously, make their business better. They're going to resort to tactics that will continue to have sales and margin hunting lists trustworthy. Then coffee baristas. And I think especially today, that path is going to get is going to get very, very slippery. And some of these companies are going to fall off the cliff. If they keep like, I know five right off the top of my head that they're sick. You know, when you look at their, their numbers, they very successful company, but their conversion rate is 28% on the sales side. You know, they're, they're selling 28 out of a hundred leads. So there are 72 customers. That they visited out of a hundred that said, no, that's going to come back to bite them in bad reviews and how you're leaving the customer's feeling. And that's where that long-term thought process is not, is not these, these owners are not seeing that. And I, and I, and I'm thinking that the companies that are taught that are thinking like you let's, let's really niche this down and find our ideal culture customer and get these big rocks are the ones that are going to rise to the top. Something else that den tire says is the riches are in the niches. Now, personally, I pronounce it. Niche. So it doesn't arrive quite as nice because you are in the niches, you know, the points. Yeah. Uh, and I agree with you that niching is often good. In fact, it's almost essential, especially in the small business world, because we don't have the time and the capacity as business owners to go out and reach a thousand people or 10,000 people, and then, you know, waste all of those leads as they pour out of the bucket or the civil, or they evaporate into the ether, depending on, you know, how much water you're having to be putting into the time.

21:03 But what we do have is the capacity to truly deeply understand our people. And the closer you are to your customers, the easier it is to be able to ask the really great questions to go, what are you getting from us? Why is associate your needs? How can we do that better? There's one big challenge there, and that is actually spend marketing spent. Now it's easy to throw money at advertising and to be fair, the algorithms. Facebook and LinkedIn have, make it much easier to target advertising than it ever was in the past. Okay. I know I probably once clicked on a dress site for some kind of item of clothing. And I keep seeing these adverts from beautiful clothing popping up on my LinkedIn and my Facebook profile. And I'm like, you know what? I love them. I'm not going to buy them, but I love them. So, you know, you've got your targeting, right? Yeah.

21:57 They're wasting money on me. They're going to have to pay for my eyeballs, but they're not going to get a competition, but they don't know that. And they have no way of getting feedback on that. Right. Right, right. So the question is, how can we do what the marketing communication models have saved should change? Um, across times they may maybe stop that sentence and that thought again, marketing communication models started very simply. I think it was the Shannon Weaver model with communication
with the sender and receiver. That sounds simple enough, right? That's nice. If someone gets that message and
this, when you were thinking about it in the days of television, you would sit and someone would receive, there
was no way of integrating or interacting between that. Then the models of communication got more thoughts. They
were like, we'll send a noise receiver, which also, you know, if the signal is bad on a TV, you're not going to
get that message to the receiver. Then they started realizing what, hang on a second. It's not just noise between
the sender and receiver. There's actually noise in the Sandoz head and there's noise in the receiver's head. And
then you actually have. Well, what if we overcome that noise by using different messages, different ways of
getting that message there. And then of course, you've got, well, this sender and noise and the message and the
receiver and the noise. So then is there a focus on the message? Anyway, the point I'm making is that
communication is complex and the way you reach an audience is complex. And the more you try to reach that audience
by just throwing something at them, by throwing noise at them. The more people turn off. And as I said in the TEDx
talk a few years ago, already people are spending money on ad blockers so that they don't get advertising.
23:44
Exactly.
23:46
Anybody melt to get out of it. Right. And that's the way the world is going. And the problem with marketing is
that especially smaller businesses think, well, the problem is that there aren't enough people know about me. How
can I get more people and more.
24:01
And you know, it is a challenge. Absolutely. But I was asked doing a strategy session the other day for an
organization I work with called project displaced, which is a philanthropic organization designed to get
Australians back into work. In fact, I'm a member of the board of project displaced because they're a nonprofit,
they don't charge anyone to get the advice about how do we fix your CV and how do we, you know, give you the
confidence to get back into it.
24:27
We were talking about how do you get. Able to attend webinars. In fact, their challenge was lots of people drop
off of our webinars
24:36
and they asked me, what does a marketing would you do? And so my brain is swimming with a hundred different
tactics that we can use to improve conversion rights and access rights. And, but they didn't want to necessarily
think about all of the elements because they were like, well, can't, we spend money on advertising. You can, you
can spend money on advertising, but where's the money gonna come from? You know, like we're, we're not even
covering our costs. As it stands. So how are we going to spend money on advertising, but more importantly, who are
we trying to reach? Where are they, what are they likely to be listening to? And more importantly, let's refer to
that communication level, whereas the noise in their journey. And it might be that we're not getting enough people
attending the webinars because they simply don't know about it. And yes, advertising would help if we can be
dropping the messages about why this is good for them in the places where. They're hanging out in there listening
at the times, but they're hanging out and listening, which is a massive art and really mock doesn't get this
right. Deserve enormous accolades. But we also have to be aware of, are we getting the right messages? And also is
the internal noise in gypsy cause heads so loud that they might book up for a webinar and then back out at the
last minute, because actually they're afraid that someone might ask them a question.
26:02
Or did they actually, they know they need the help, but they don't ask for the help for whatever psychological
reason. It is often in Australia, but mental rut attorney meal. Yeah. And they could be embarrassed that they
don't have a job or they're looking for a job. Yeah. So they're embarrassed to ask for help. And so part of the
answer to what marketing tactics can we use to get more people on our webinars? Well, how well do we understand
our audience? And then how well do we understand where they're heading? And only then can you start looking at, if
we're going to spend money, if we had the money to spend on advertising, how can we actually make sure that we're
not just throwing messages out that no one's going to receive?
26:46
That's a big, that's a big, big question. You're right. And that's where, um, you know, you get from the sales
side, that's when they're like, well, why are these people receiving these messages? Because. This is not our
customer. And then you even get to a point where like, why did they even set an appointment with us because they
don't even need the product. And, you know, so everybody's wasting everybody's time because you're right. They,
they just, it was just a missed mistake from the, from the beginning. So I want to, I want to switch gears for a
minute. I wanna, I want to ask you, I get, I've gotten this question a lot. Well, a few times in the past week or
so, and I want to take, get your take on it. So I, I have people saying, I need to hire a content. Marketer, but I
don't really think people know what that is then they're like, well, is it a copywriter? Is it, do they write my
social media? Tell people what a content marketer actually is.
27:42
A content marketer can be all of the things you described. You can write copy for your website. That can be as
someone who writes your LinkedIn profile or even ghost writes LinkedIn articles for you
27:57
effectively back in the day, a copywriter. Sure or a concert. If back in the day, the content marketer was just a
marketer. Before we became specialized. They were the person who did the writing and then content marketing became
a thing. And like many of the sales and marketing tactics that we know anything's go round in circles. If you go
back to the beginning again, what was terribly popular 15 years ago now has a completely different name and it's
terribly popular again.
28:30
The account-based marketing is a really big thing at the moment, which is choosing an account and picking
marketing tactics that are super relevant and super focused to that specific account. You engage all of the
centers in the journey and you build relationships with them and you give them messaging with a super specifically
tailored to them. I love it. I love Adyen, but how different is it to have having built you an honest relationship
with an individual out of the couch, who's going to buy your stuff. Which we have been doing.
29:06
Look, I did not ask you a question. Content marketing is about producing messages that your target audience can
consume content. Marketers can be responsible for content that is as tiny as a single word on an advert, or they
can be responsible for producing content that is as long as a book. If that is how you want to reach your
audience. Most content marketers tend to have a specialism that they specialize in the blog, post writing in Thor.
They specialize in helping you improve your LinkedIn profile, or they might specialize in video content. And
that's a totally different thing. It's the type of content they might specialize in infographics, or they might
specialize in creating interesting combinations of video and audio and words and, you know, kind of. Content
marketing is a, is a bucket category that anything to do with actual marketing communications is in there. So
actually, if you think about opting a job description of marketing communications 15 years ago, it was probably
what content marketing will take, right? Yeah. And if it comes down to the messaging, right. And, um, it can be
anything like, like I was talking to someone the other day who wants to hire, he said, I want to hire a content
marketer just for my Instagram account. I said, so you just want to. Someone to write your Instagram posts. He
goes, yup. So I want him to say, well, you didn't have to call them content. Marketer sounded all fancy, but yeah.
Just hire someone to write your posts, but that's what it is. That's what it is. They can fall into that bucket.
Yeah, they can. Absolutely. And I think that creating content or employing content, marketers who specialize in a
certain area is more likely to give you the results that you want because they understand the nature of the
platform that they're writing for. So a content marketer is writing for Instagram will write differently. Even
from a content bucket that he's writing for Facebook or LinkedIn. Absolutely. The audiences are different. They
have different cultural expectations. Um, the lakes of the content is different. The styles and the tones are
slightly different. The way that he use an imagery is different. You fought more likely to put great images up on
Instagram, then I'll maintain apart from anything else. If you've written a book post already, and you just want
to share on LinkedIn, you put a hyperlink in, and it automatically pulls image that you've had from a different
cup ticks. So, you know, it was far less important than that. It's one very important thing to consider when you
employ a content marketer though, and that is whether the tactic that you're using and that the content marketer
is producing content for you is actually going to reach the people you want to reach in a way that isn't going to
engage them. That helps you look further up your processes or further down the funnel.
31:57
Great point. What I mean by it? Processes in your content marketing is this,
32:04
if you know that your audience is hanging out on Instagram and you employ someone to write Instagram posts for
you, that's great because it means they're more likely to convert, but if you're only using Instagram and your
audience is already hanging out on LinkedIn,
32:22
you've got a problem. That's a problem. So actually, uh, the challenge that many, many small business owners have.
Is it, they don't know enough about the different channels. They don't know enough about the different ways of
reaching their market. And they often don't know where to invest their effort. I went through this myself. COVID
was it actually gave me a great gift because it allowed me the opportunity to really deeply think about my, what I
call the reverse funnel. And now the irony is that great marketers of today. Don't actually start just at the top
of funnel today. Great marketers start with a bottom of the funnel and work backwards. So the reason that you and
I can have a conversation about conversion rates is because I've been educated as a marketer, that it doesn't
matter if I have a thousand leads at the top of the funnel. If there is a conversion rates, as we said are sucky.
If the conversion rates are stuffy, I could put 10,000 in the top. You don't show I'm going to get more off them,
but it just means I might spend 10 or a hundred times as much to get it. That was in the top and we're going to
create the same problems, which is that salespeople have leads that no one wants to talk to them. And so it all
falls horribly wrong. When marketers use a reverse funnel model, what they actually do by necessity is they go,
what does our ideal customer look like? And what are the characteristics that we have that matched this ideal
customer right now, if we look at them at this stage, now this is your set, your stage sales, you're responsible
for this. Great. And then we understand this. I'm not going to get involved, or I might, if we're talking about
social. Cause then you might help script their LinkedIn profiles or script their messages, you know, like spin
your way down the funnel there. There's like, okay, but we want to go up from there. So if we need them to get
this message and we've created this piece of content, well, we need to also make the copies of content available
on our website. But if we want to get people to a website, well, maybe we need to go there a lot. Maybe we need to
consider search engine optimization by the way. Yes. Is the answer always especially organics. Then you might want
to go a level above that and go what we want to do. Paid search, not just organic search. And that's when you
start looking at paid, but you're not going to want to stop putting paid search out there. If your people are not
looking for the stuff that you're writing for, because you haven't gone right down to the bottom of the funnel and
realize the match between what they want to buy, what you have to sell and why they're going to buy that. It's
shocking to me. I mean, what you just said just makes complete and utter total sense. Like find out who your ideal
customer is. Yeah. That's, let's do that. And companies don't start with that. They you're right. They just hear
that, like I just said, they cast out here's this giant net let's bring in as many different fish as we can and
hand them off to the sales team and see how many fish that they could, that they could sell that day. And it, it,
it really, it drives me crazy and it it's, um, you know, hopefully the trend is starting to shift a little bit,
but, you know, I don't see it happening overnight. So, um, that's why people like you and I are. Having a
conversation right now. Absolutely.
35:34
We can have a conversation about any more intelligent way of selling to people also means that we can have a
conversation about more authentic ways of engaging with people, because the more authentic you are in the message
that you have to someone the will, they want to hear it. If you were trying to sell windows and instead of just
renting, running random adverts and getting fun on those and calling everyone on the book and saying, Hey, this
person is interested. What if we went down a road? In a neighborhood and drove around and looked, you know, what?
That person really needs. Their windows replaced. That person. I can see that they take great pride in their lawn,
but their windows actually look a bit yeah. All the techie and then worked back from that like, well, why do we
even need to have a TV set up or better yet? You've got to tell the sales, the people, you know, you want to have
a conversation with them to warm them up before the sales person knocks on their door and says, Hey, I want to say
some windows then, is there a way to go? Right. I'm looking at 506. 62 Worthington Avenue who lives at 562 willing
to meet with you. What is the telephone number? Now? Just think about this logically. If I just call them and say
your windows suck, they're gonna be like,
36:44
but if you're able to go, Hey, I know that Worthington is an area that is really on the rise. I know that the
property prices are increasing. I know that people are going to be wanting to improve their homes because in COVID
let's face it, people are less likely to move out of the area. And the more likely to spend money in investing.
Can I find information that will make me start a drip feed of why people in Worthington Avenue might want to
improve and look at the windows? And then we think we're going to send out a flyer on week one. We're going to
send that in another flyer on week two, we're going to put a billboard up on the bus, stop on the corner of
Lexington Avenue about how beautiful windows can be and get this emotional context of like, Oh, I want to be
really proud of my property. I'm thin. We get their telephone number and go, Oh, by the way, have you thought
about changing your, why doesn't it go? Oh my goodness. It's serendipity.
37:42
And then when the salesperson knocks on the door and goes, you know what I thought you, I heard you might be
interested in, in Brooklyn facing your windows to go, come in.
37:56
That's the kind of lead. That's the Glengarry Glen. Mostly right there.
38:01
All right. We need to switch gears to get to the ask Alan segment. Cause we are running a little late, but we're
flying through this. This has been an amazing conversation, but we did mention, or I did mention you're a TEDx
speaker, you know, professional speakers, association, everything. I actually got a speaking question. Um, this
was a few weeks ago. Yeah. And um, when I found out you're going to be on my podcast, I dug up the question. So
this comes from Ted in Birmingham, Alabama, and I'm pretty sure Ted is not alone in this question. And I think
he's speaking for a lot of people who are listening to this podcast. So listen to what he asks. Ted writes. If you
ever have a public speaker on which we do, please ask them some tips on proper preparation for a presentation. I
am so nervous when I get in front of people. I freeze up. I need help in this area desperately. That's how he ends
it. Thank you for the question, Ted. I feel you. I know it, you know, actually death is in second place and the
biggest fears. People, uh, public speaking is number one. Um, so you're not alone in this. How would you answer
that Gina or help him out? First of all, Ted, congratulations on recognizing that you have a problem and
congratulations on asking for help. As they say, in a lot of, um, organizations which are designed to help people
get over addictions admission or sorry, ed Mitchell is the first step to recovery. So you've invested. You've got
a problem. Yeah. You're asking for help. Good. Now let's look at getting you some help.
39:31
Everyone is going to be nervous when they don't know what they're doing. And they don't feel like they know what
they're and even amazing people who you have commanded an entire army of people across the world. Who've made
multi-millions of dollars are nervous. The first time they do something, I stole something from Richard Branson.
We posted not too long ago, which was when he started out Virgin Atlantic. It wasn't even a thing. He just said a
whole bunch of people started standing around them. Comment after it play, it had been canceled and he found a
plane and, um, hired it and got a whole bunch of people to pay, to get onto that plan and off their flew. Like he
was nervous the first time he did that. Does he look nervous now? No, of course not. So if you're nervous the
first time you do a presentation, the first thing to do is to say it's okay. You're allowed to be nervous, but
that doesn't help you prepare. Except mentally mental preparation is how I've, uh, one of the most important
aspects of any presentation that you're getting, the more prepared you feel more confident. You're going to look
in front of an audience. One of the tips that speakers often give is rehearse, rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. One
of the things that I had to do for a TEDx speech was rehearse for us, for us. No, it revisit it. You can almost
recite it in your sleep. Now that doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to come across as the most brilliant
presentation, and there are different ways of, for his hissing. And here's the good news. You can either write a
script, learn that script word for word, I'm getting ready, flustered. When you forget what you words are, or you
can cheat. And I'm a big fan of this, which is actually give yourself the tips or the reminders that you need
during your presentation to be able to anchor yourself. So I'm a kind of speaker who. Forgets what I'm saying
presentation. In fact, if you watch the TEDx speech really carefully and you spot the moment where I completely
forgot what I was saying, get all to me because I will send you a free copy of my book because it has happened,
right.
41:48
It's very hard to tell. And the reason it's very hard to tell is because I didn't just rehearse exactly what I was
going to say, word for word. I rehearsed the transitions and I rehearsed the. Associations with what I was saying
with that message with the slide. So people often talk about death by PowerPoint and it is possible to just put
all of your content on the slide. And then you don't have to remember anything because it's all right there. And
you just click when you reach the end of the slide, and this is boring. It's not going to help anyone, except it
might help you because then you don't have to worry about forgetting anything. But if you can use a slide that
actually encapsulates your entire concept in that slide, that's fantastic. But you have to be aware of the
transitions between one slide and another. And that's what catches me out, even as a dancer, because I did ballet
my whole life. I would learn a piece and the teachers would teach you a piece and I could be doing this and then
this, and then stop. And we're doing this and then this, and then this. But if they don't teach you to connect
part a with part B, I could still forget what I was doing. And so with slides, no matter what the message is on
slide one and slide to make sure that you can make that segue between the two slides. And I would say in summary,
Why is actually being more comfortable with the transitions and here's one extra special tip that deals with three
different elements. The first one is the power of three. The second is tell them what you're going to tell them,
tell them, tell them what you told them. And the third is a big secret. No one else now is what you're going to
say.
43:28
So if you forget. What'd you say, and you say somebody else completely entirely different. No one will ever know.
43:38
It's the first thing is the power of three.
43:41
Tell people things in threes. It's just makes it easier to remember. I don't know why it's the way the brain
works. Well, there you go. Yeah, that's a whole chapter in my book, actually. Awesome. Well, here we go. Nice.
43:57
So the power of three works in that. The way the brain works, as you say, it's it helps people with repetition.
And the second part of that advice was actually tell them what you're going to tell him, tell him, tell him what
you told him, which ironically is about the power of three. Isn't it? Yeah, it is. Yeah. If you tell people what
to expect, then they are looking forward to what you're going to tell them. Then you lay it out and then you wrap
it up again with going. And this is what I told you.
44:26
Power of three beginning, middle end people, crave stories. They create. Dave a resolution to a story. And if you
get flustered and you completely forget what you're saying, ask the audience, go. Now, remember when we began, I
told you what I was going to tell you. Can anyone in the audience tell me what they said, what I said, I was going
to tell them and some bright spot who pipe up and go, you said you were going to talk about X and you're like,
you're absolutely right. I did. And I haven't covered that yet. So,
44:55
so what I've just said was blah, blah, blah. So-and-so in the audience said. Yeah, I was going to talk about that.
And I talked about that and now, you know, tell him, tell him what you can tell him, tell him what you told him.
Power of three and no one else ever knows what you're going to say until you said it.
45:12
That's brilliant, brilliant advice. And I, I'm going to add one more thing to it. Uh, cause I've done quite a bit
of public speaking and once I learned this, it in every aspect, it kind of changes everything you do. Nobody
cares.
45:31
To the level that you think they do about what you look like or what you sound like.
45:37
I learned this with my podcast. I actually taught myself this. When I was talking to my 17 year old daughter wants
this past summer. She was so upset about what she looked like when she was wearing, you know, typical teenage boy
or girl, but they just worry about what they look like. And I said to her, I said, how many times have you seen
someone walk down the street in this crazy wild. Ridiculous looking outfit. What do you do? She goes nothing. I
said, yeah, you look at them and then you walk away. Right? Okay. So I'm sure he, you know, he clearly didn't care
what he looked like this morning, but you didn't care either. So just dress the way you want and be yourself. And
I've had so many people say you have a great podcast voice. I think my voice is terrible. I really don't. I don't
like, I don't like my voice at all, but people are going to perceive you completely differently than you think.
They're look, they're perceiving you. So. As bad as you think you look, you're not happy. You're not nearly as
bad. Just trust me on that. People think you're a lot better than you think you are. That leads me to another tip
that I think will be helpful, was listening to a song just the other day. What's wrong with being confident. And
it was effectively an Anthem for self-expression, but the message was very care, which is, if you look an act and
feel confident, no one knows that you're trembling inside. And there is an element of fake it till you make it in
speaking, simply because, and I'll illustrate this with a listening physiology. If you go on stage like this,
47:10
what do people who are listening? She's got her head bowed forward. Oh, sorry. I forget that people can't see me
video necessarily. Yeah. If you're, if you're walking into a room where your shoulders are forward and you're head
is down and your chest is crunched, they're going to see you as a, as a lack, an unconfident and really. Free
well-prepared speaker. You can be the best prepared speaker in the world, but they won't believe it because your
body language is not telling them to believe it. Alternative is if you lift up your chin, you drop your shoulders,
you put your shoulders back, you stick your chest out. It's almost impossible not to feel confidence. And there is
actually science that demonstrates that. Um, when you put yourself into a confident body posture, Physiology
actually kicks off elements of your buddy to say, Hey, I feel competent. Even if yup. The same science says it's
impossible to feel bad about yourself. If you raise your arms above your head and in the victory, it's, it's
literally like if you want to feel better instantly do have, do raise your arms above your head. And I think it
actually releases some sort of chemicals that make dopamine or something that makes you feel better. So, all
right. Well, this has been amazing chock full of fantastic information. We are. Wow. We're approaching almost 50
minutes. So we're probably going to have to wrap this up, but Gina, any other final words, any final thoughts, uh,
before we sign off and then I want to have you tell people how they can find you and find your book. So, but any
final advice for anyone that, that, that had been listening tonight
48:49
when it comes to feeling confident about speaking or feeling confident about the relationships between sales and
marketing or feeling confident about, about the marketing. Doing the real key is being able to take herself out of
the equation as much as possible, and to think about the other person who's involved when you are a great speaker.
You're a great speaker because you have a true deep passion for trying to reach your audience and your audience is
more important than you, but same thing goes with sales and marketing. If you have a true deep passion for making
sure that people are really proud of. The home that they live in because their windows are sparkling and perfect,
then that will shine and show through in the way that you interact with customers. You can fake that. I don't
believe you should fake that. I mean, in the case of public speaking, it's often helpful to just fake it till you
make it to, to fool your buddy to overcome those nerves. But in the case of speaking with an audience, just
listen, first we have two ears and one mouth. In all of that, we might listen twice as often as we speak.
50:05
And on that note, how do people get your book? How do people contact you? If they want to say hello, what's the
best way to say hi to Gina ballerina?
50:15
You can get copies of my book on Amazon. It's right there. Buy as many copies as you like. Um, I'm a bit far away
in Australia to sign copies in the U S but you can always send me a message, but it is called the secret army.
Leadership marketing and the power of people. There it is. It's white with a black and, and, uh, and read a text
on it. Uh, so yep. Secret army by Gina. Bellarine look her up on LinkedIn, uh, Gina dot Balor and at verbal
logistics is her email. Uh, and she's pretty easy to find. And she's awesome to talk to. So Jean, I want to thank
you for being on the show tonight. It's been a real pleasure and, um, maybe someday, if I ever make it to
Australia, we'll have a glass of chef Lee together. So.
51:00
Cheers to you. Thank you for being on. And I want to thank everyone else for joining us on episode 49 of marketing
and sales over cocktails. Remember to send your question into the ask Alan segment and just like Ted in
Birmingham, Alabama, you will get a signed copy of my book. That's it for tonight, everyone. Thanks again for
joining us. We will see you again next time.