I think forever, 20 plus years, 20 plus years and probably some marketing
instincts before that is my guess as well.
Yes.
Yeah.
That's exactly right.
Yeah.
Most of us that have been in marketing, uh, didn't realize that until we
went through some training, right?
And we're like, Oh, this is like, I was loved.
Yes.
Marketing and sales and kind of went back and forth between the two.
Awesome.
And what's been, uh, what, what was your favorite job?
Did you have, do you have a job that you really liked in marketing?
They were all so different.
Okay.
I will say my first job actually was I worked for AT&T.
My first job out of college and it was awesome because huge company.
We had multimillion dollar budgets and I got kind of thrown into marketing
and getting to work with some of the top advertising agencies, getting to film
commercials, and one of the, um, there was a product that was AT&T broadband
in Espanol and I had a degree in marketing and a degree in Spanish and the woman who
was running the product marketing did not speak Spanish, interestingly.
And so every time the marketing communications would come back, whether
it was TV commercials, radio spots, you know, direct mail, email, I would end up
reviewing it all and eventually they put me over that product.
And so I got to do product marketing for that, which was really fun.
And, um, getting to go down to Miami and film commercials in Spanish.
And, and, uh, so I would say that was my favorite job.
Wow.
Uh, and the depth that comes from that, what does that, what I've never
managed a budget like that.
I mean, you're talking tens of millions of dollars, um, probably are more.
What is that like?
It was.
All right.
Welcome in to Vision Pros Live with Jackson Calame.
I'm your show host.
We'll be doing interviews for visionary entrepreneurs and guest leaders who are
building fantastic visions out there.
Hey, what's up Vision Pros.
Welcome into Vision Pros Live.
My name is Jackson Calame, your show host, founder and CEO of First Class Business.
I am excited to have Stacey Danheiser on board who not only is a marketing
specialist who's going to talk about unleashing the exponential growth within
businesses by anticipating customer needs, which I'm really excited about
because so many people overlook so many big needs of their customers and they
think they're serving them to their best capacity, but there's so much more you
can do and once you cover those needs, the loyal fans come in droves.
So I'm very bought into this concept.
We're going to be tag teaming this together.
Um, she's going to be leading the way on it.
And she speaks Spanish too, which is really cool because you don't meet a lot
of people on that have that capacity.
And it is a huge unfair advantage in the market because the amount of Latinos
who are in our country, especially for the North American companies, specifically
right now, the Latinos are underserved.
They're not spoken to, um, according to their needs and according to what's,
what's comfortable for them from a language standpoint that allows them to
understand that you actually care about them.
And if you don't know their language, how can you claim that you care?
So anyway, I'm gonna get off my tangent.
I'm excited about it.
I'm excited for Stacey to be joining us in the show before we dive into
Stacey's background, who she is and bring her on stage and talk about her vision.
I of course want to give a shout out to the sponsors up here.
These sponsors are not paid for sponsors.
There are companies that I support.
Um, and I believe in and cold click, for instance, is our
provider for LinkedIn automation.
Um, I believe that at the top, I don't believe this at the top of the funnel.
If you look at marketing funnels and you're new to marketing, the top is
distribution and distribution is often overlooked by entrepreneurs.
Um, most of us want to talk to one to two or three people and consider
a distribution complete, we need a massive audience of people that we can
sort through so that natural relations progress rather than forcing the issue
and trying to convert every single person along your path.
Automation does just that for me.
It connects me to more people, the right people fall into place.
The other people marinate, they take their time, the relationship builds.
I don't have to force, um, you know, there's stranger danger and that's real.
So this helps me with that process of, of helping people acclimate to who I am
as a stranger and then move forward more naturally with us when the timing is right.
Uh, then there's simply fast websites.
This is not a solution that I use because I'm well past the stage of needing it.
But what I love about simply fast websites is that Shane Michael is
offering a website package at $179.
When I was starting a business, I did not pay $179.
I spent hours and hours building on Wix, building on Space, building on Weebly,
um, building on all the free platforms I could, which cost me all sorts of time.
And in addition to that, when I did consult with web developers, web designers
and try to figure that whole process out, I again was overwhelmed.
It was a convoluted process and I spent thousands of dollars.
Establishing my first few websites.
If I had had somebody like this to kind of guide me through the process, um, it
would have saved me so much, so much hassle and time.
And no, I wouldn't have ended up with a Disney.com or Nike.com and one of the
best websites in the world, but I would have ended up with a starting point that
was stronger, much faster, so I could have focused on building my business.
And as they say, you got to be outside your business, working with others, not
in your business, stuck within the walls of it and confined.
Um, this is a great way to make sure that the web presence starts on the right foot.
So I'd take this opportunity.
I compare it against your other options, of course, don't just take my word for it.
But I hope that resource helps somebody today.
In addition to that, we also want to give back to the world.
I'm a big fan of the water project.
The water project helps people get access to clean drinking water.
Um, and I would be remiss not to take the opportunity.
I was like down during this part, hoping my water bottle's right there and I
forgot it, but I mean, imagine having to send your kids miles from, from home.
To go get water from a source that is not necessarily clean.
There are millions of people in this world, maybe billions who don't have access
to the resources that we take for granted.
I can go in my kitchen and get water when I want it.
Um, these communities, you get to see the community that you're going to impact.
You get to choose it.
Um, you get to see how many people are affected by it.
Then through their social media efforts, this organization shows you the before
and after of what has occurred and you get to know that that community now has
a resource that's going to affect them for generations.
Kids are going to be in school.
Parents are no longer going to have to miss work, um, to get water for the
families and the amount of community, uh, fighting that can occur when your,
your family needs water and somebody else does.
And you've got a line of 30 people, um, you know, those who are all waiting on
the important resource, um, and the most important resource in the world, just
to survive, um, we have the opportunity to impact that if you know of another
cause that you'd rather see us support, don't hesitate to drop by and say,
don't hesitate to drop that in the comments.
We've got 8 billion people on this earth to help.
Um, and, uh, our goal is to just make as much impact as we can throughout this
process of creating some awareness and of course, driving some, uh, some
donations to said entities.
So thanks for being willing to participate in that.
Um, as far as Stacey Danheiser goes, um, she's got a company, um,
called shake marketing and she's helping elevate senior B2B marketing leaders
and gain more influence with the C-suite.
She's a fractional CMO as well.
And she does of course, strategy assessments, just like most marketers,
um, as a fractional chief marketing officer, um, she's going to, she's
going to unlock for us again, some of those hidden secrets about
anticipating customer needs.
And so I can't wait to have her on board to talk about that and all sorts of
vision aspects of what she does.
Stacey, thank you for joining us on Vision Post.
Yes.
Amazing.
Thanks for having me.
Absolutely.
Um, so as we, as we dive in it, you know, you've, you've got the ability
to work with the a hundred million dollar budgets.
You also have the ability to work with smaller companies.
So I want to make sure we quantify that really well.
Who do you feel should be listening today and why do you feel they should listen to you?
Yeah.
So, so really my focus and, and, um, expertise is in B2B, the B2B space.
So pretty much any company, whether it's a startup or a Fortune 100 company,
that sells to another business is who I can help.
And it's because the principles of marketing really are the same
and the foundation is the same.
It gets generally more complex and difficult as we move upstream, mostly
because of internal barriers and issues.
So working at a Fortune 100 company has a bunch of internal dynamics and political,
um, savviness required to navigate through that versus at a startup.
It's a little bit faster to make decisions and to go.
But that's pretty much who I help is B2B organizations, um, who are,
who are looking to grow.
Absolutely.
And I'm, I'm glad that you talked about the principal aspect.
Um, most of us, all of us to some degree follow principles, but we often get
confused in the tactics and the fads and the principles, right?
Tactic and fad, um, would be like one threads, uh, TikTok, Snapchat, anything
that's that hasn't been around for 20 years, I would consider a fad.
Um, and in terms of non principles, you know, think of the pickup line guy.
Um, did you fall from heaven or, you know, or did that hurt?
Did you, did that hurt, you know, when you fell from heaven that I see
I'm not even good at the line, but people, people fall into these
circumstances or the LinkedIn one that's most commonly used that I see is.
Hey, it looks like we have mutual connections.
Um, you know, we, we should talk.
Um, and I'm like, Oh my gosh, like, what are you doing with your automation?
Like there's nothing authentic about that.
That's, that's a fad.
That's a trend.
That's not a principal principles.
On the other hand, um, when you, when you can utilize them, it doesn't matter
matter where they're using a phone, a social media channel or, uh, email
marketing or some other means, if you know the principles, you can be
effective at any one of those mediums.
That's what I would say.
What would you add to that?
I'm just, I'm just curious your perspective on principles versus fads.
Yeah.
I mean, I think I like to think of it as like the, um, I think of
marketing as the architect versus the builder.
And so it's, it's like, are you doing, do you have your plan?
The architectural drawings, do you know what the blueprint looks like?
Do you, do you know what you're actually building before picking up the
hammer and starting to build walls?
I think a lot of companies just kind of focus more specifically on, oh, there's
a new brand of hammer or a new brand of nail, and we're going to go try that
without going back to remembering what it is that they're building in the first
place and maybe the hammer and the nail isn't even appropriate.
So it's to me, that's, it kind of comes, comes back to that, um, understanding
and to, to be grounded, right.
And what it is that you really want to achieve.
I love that.
And so let's talk about your vision for those of you who are
working with you, what does that look like?
What, what do you hope people achieve by working with you?
Yeah.
So, so I help, I mean, I have kind of two, two missions, but I'm a
marketer at heart.
So, so lately I've been working with professional marketers to help them
earn and keep a seat at the leadership table by becoming hyper-focused on
customers and the CEOs love that message too, flipping it around to, to
CEOs and to entrepreneurs is I help businesses grow exponentially.
In a, in a safe way.
That's not leading to extreme burnout by hyper-focusing on their customers
and going back to kind of the fundamentals.
Um, many, I found many of the CEOs that I work with are engineers by
training or finance professionals.
And so they are going with this engineering led approach to marketing,
which doesn't work or resonate with the audience that they're trying to sell to.
And so, um, that's, that's what I'm hoping to fix.
Yeah, absolutely.
That's that makes perfect sense.
And let's shift gears to your personal vision.
So moving outside of, uh, it could be outside of work too.
Um, but what do you see for yourself over the next five, 15, 20?
Don't let me define this.
It could be a hundred years if you want to.
Um, but what's on your horizon?
Yeah.
So, so as I've been doing this work, I think one of the things I've discovered
and have become really passionate about is helping women leaders specifically
become more confident and to step in and kind of own their value.
And I think this is very prevalent because I work with marketers.
I mean, no other function of the business has to deal with more opinions
than the marketing department.
And there's a lot more women, I think, in these roles than men.
And, and if you don't have somebody that's kind of an assertive personality
or that has extreme, um, confidence in what they're doing, then they
tend to kind of get burnt out.
They become feeling like an order taker.
Um, and so really that's the thing that I want to help impact is
that the role is valuable.
Your career is valuable.
What you're doing is valuable.
You know, don't let other people define that for you and, and help kind of
learn, um, how to show up with confidence and not take things so personally.
I love that.
Um, we're going to dive a little bit deeper on that one, um, because it
is one of those aspects that becomes a lose lose situation for both the
chief marketing officers or the women executives in that position, as
well as the company itself.
Um, and it's usually created, um, well, one, I would say there's an internal
aspect of confidence and lack of confidence that has to be addressed
in order to not get steamrolled.
But when you're working with an entrepreneur and entrepreneurs tend
to be extremely alpha in nature, very self-assured, very committed
to what it is they're doing.
And so even if we're working with somebody who's confident, if we're not
good at learning listening skills, we will end up creating a team of yesmen
or force in the hands of our teams to move into a position to where they
cater to our desires rather than creating what our business needs.
Um, I would love to hear you talk about that.
Yeah.
I think that's a really big one.
Um, it's interesting because it requires, you know, let's look at the entrepreneur,
the business owner, the CEO requires a level of self-awareness, um, as to kind
of what, what type of leader you are and what type of culture you want to create.
I've worked with CEOs and business leaders who will say with their words,
I want my team to feel empowered.
I want my team to have ownership.
I want my team to be accountable.
And then, but their actions are, I got to attend every single meeting that
they're going to, I'm going to talk for 80% of the time, um, compared to, I'm
not going to let my team make decisions or take over.
And so there, your, your words really have to match up with your actions and you
have to really understand what type of culture it is that you want to create.
Um, so that's kind of on, on the CEO side, I think order takers, you know, are
never going to drive the growth that you want or that you envision because
that's assuming that you know, everything.
Right.
You know, that our knowledge is so small and limited that you may be an expert in
your product that does not make you an accounting expert and a legal expert, you
know, and a product expert and a marketing expert and a sales expert.
And so, you know, you have to have, like I said, a level of self-awareness to
admit that and to know like, what are your strengths and where do you want to play?
And then where do you need to bring other people in and let them do their thing?
And what their passion and excited about.
Um, I think on the, on the marketer side, I think it's important to
know that it's going back to what you said.
There's definitely like a mindset piece, right?
That, you know, confidence, um, starts with, with that, with
the, that belief in yourself.
And then you can pair it up with knowledge.
Um, and so we, we become more confident.
This is like one of the skillsets that I always say every marketer means is, is
that you have to be very committed to continuous learning.
And so, you know, the way that marketing is changing all the time and, you know,
there's the way customers are buying is changing the way salespeople
are selling is changing the way people consume information is changing.
And you as the marketer have to be constantly at the forefront of that and,
and learning, and so that you're absorbing that knowledge, because the worst case
scenario, and I've seen many marketers work themselves out of a job when the
CEO or the salesperson or the, um, the product leader comes into the room with
no marketing or more knowledge about a particular channel or tactic, um, than
the marketer themselves, and all of a sudden their credibility is kind of being
questioned because they haven't kept up with what's going on.
So we're seeing this happen right now actually with AI, um, you know, and how
CEOs are like, yes, let's, let's go.
I mean, everybody should be jumping on this.
Why isn't our marketing team using AI?
Why are they driving more of the AI, um, implementation in our organization?
And marketers are kind of sitting that maybe a little bit more hesitant to adopt
the technology, but it has to be flipped.
Um, otherwise, yeah, they might find themselves out of a job.
Right.
Absolutely.
Um, I'd agree with that.
And, uh, that, by the way, if I ever ask you a question or steer you towards
something and you're like, Jack's not really agree with that, go for it.
Just so you know, you're welcome to, uh, be the contrarian.
Awesome.
I didn't get an issue with it, but I want to make sure cause you're obviously very
diplomatic, um, and you have really great communication skills for both sides of
the spectrum, but I also just want you to be able to clash if you need to.
Um, marketing is all about that.
It's about healthy debates.
Um, you know, and, and with, you know, we'll, we'll exemplify that because the
entrepreneur, again, you've got to make space for that in your brand, um, if
you're going to win, so there's this, there's this AI debate going on right now.
And, and I stayed out of it a little bit longer than I probably should have.
Um, you know, and at the same time, uh, I've used it in many ways without
realizing that chat GPT is not the first AI that's out there, right?
So part of the challenge as well, and again, you mentioned this is the
marketers having that strength, you know, to realize to say like, no, um, you
know, like, well, yes, you've now learned you, you now watch the two hour Ted
talk on, on chat, on chat GPT and all the videos that came after it.
Great.
You know more about the foundation of that new tool that doesn't change
the fact that I've studied the principles for 15 years.
Right.
We again have to find us our centeredness.
That's where every marketer needs to do some training on sales too.
Um, but you've, you still, you've talked about some important points.
Maybe it leads into the next question.
Maybe it doesn't.
So as far as the next question goes, um, this can be your worst business experience
ever, or the worst business experience you've been a part of, um, but you
know, I don't even mind if it's one that you've read about because the goal is to
help the audience learn from our most impactful experiences, whether they were
ours or ones we learned from.
And, and I think a lot of people listening in, uh, they go, they've been
through some stuff, right.
And we've become a beacon of hope for them by answering this.
So what would you say your worst business experience ever?
Worst business experience ever.
Okay.
Yeah, that's interesting.
Um, the first one that comes to mind, I'll, I'll probably have like a couple,
just cause I, so I, before I became an entrepreneur and did my own thing, I
worked in corporate for a very long time.
So I have empathy really for both sides of the house.
And I will remember that being said, my personality and the way that I look at
things, um, is always as learning experiences.
So I think I shifted, you know, it doesn't happen necessarily in that moment,
but when I go back and reflect on it, I'm like, that was really great because I
learned all these things.
So that experience for me, the first, the first time was, um, actually getting
some feedback, going back to that concept of self-awareness.
I thought I was doing this great job as a, um, director of marketing in house.
I was, you know, juggling all these projects and working with the sales
team and working with our PR team and working with our product team.
I thought pretty efficiently and pretty great.
Um, and I remember getting called into the office of our, um, chief
communications officer, and this is a big fortune 500 company.
Uh, he called me and I was thinking to go, you know, get some praise for all
of this great work that I was doing.
And he said, uh, yeah, I just want to give you some feedback.
My team is finding it difficult to work with you.
And the team was the PR team.
Um, and I think in my mind, you know, marketing and PR, I was like, they,
you know, that's not a priority right now.
I got more important things to do.
And they felt that they felt that I had kind of neglected them and
deprioritized them.
And I remember sitting in his office as he's giving me this feedback.
And I was like, my first reaction was to go defense, like, you know, that
gut reaction of like, that's not even true.
And let me tell you all the 50 ways that I'm actually being a great partner.
But I took a deep breath.
I looked away, I took a deep breath and I looked back and I said,
thank you for that feedback.
You know, I was not prepared to hear that obviously today, but I got to go reflect
on it and I appreciate it.
I really appreciate it.
I got to go reflect on it and I appreciate it or whatever.
And I kind of walked back like still a little fuming, but immediately
called the PR team and like figured out how do we fix this?
Let's get regular meetings.
You know, what do you guys need for me?
What do you feel like I'm doing that can help you?
And years later, this is interesting.
So, so that guy, the chief communications officer was so impressed
with the reaction that he told, you know, his, his peers, and then I kind of got
internal promotions and projects and things because of just that level of,
of self-awareness.
And even years later, I ran into him and he said, I still remember that how
impressed I was with how you reacted, because most people don't react that way
when they're getting, you know, negative feedback about their performance.
And he's like, and you just kind of like immediately turn it around and fixed it.
And I think it was like a, you know, a poor experience in the moment, but then
ended up being a great lesson for me to be able to, to take feedback.
And I took that as an entrepreneur because, you know, it's, and, and when I
work with clients and as a, as a consultant to really ask them honestly,
like, how are things going?
What could I improve?
And to be prepared to listen to that, to that feedback.
And it doesn't feel good a lot, you know, if you're getting negative feedback,
but it's kind of like putting yourself in a humbling experience and recognizing
this is the lesson I learned from this is perception is reality.
So whatever their perception is does not matter what, what mine is.
If those things don't match up, like, then I have an opportunity to fix it.
And so I always like to give an opportunity for people to provide feedback
and, you know, to listen to that.
And it just helps make, make me a better entrepreneur and a better
consultant as it is.
So I'm keeping my jaw from dropping the, the humility and power with which you
share that story alone is, is, is a masterpiece.
I'm just going to own that right now for you.
I'm like, Whoa.
And to go back to that experience, I mean, you said self-awareness,
certainly you had to have that.
You also exercise a maturity that most people don't have the ability to do.
And so there's a framework that you followed right there that most people
aren't aware of one is you actually didn't react.
You responded to the individual, right?
Instead of reacting and being defensive, you responded to him in a appropriate
way to show that you were willing to make adjustments, but then you
took it to the next level.
And the next level is you listen to understand you didn't do it in the moment.
You didn't do it with that person.
You, you said, I need some time.
You put a healthy boundary, so I need to take some time to think.
And then you went to the PR team though, and you went and found out what can I do.
Right.
And that's, that's that next, again, there's a third level that most
people have never even heard of.
Um, and if we were all to practice that more often, I mean, I know levels and
sometimes I find myself reacting like a child, um, in situations.
So, uh, no, thank you so much for sharing that story.
And it's, it's really cool how, how you can express that in a way that.
You didn't make it all about you.
You made it all about the value of the lesson.
Um, so let's talk about your best experience in business.
So, um, what, what does that look like?
Um, and specifically, let's talk about your best experience related to, um,
anticipating customer needs or a company that has made that shift that we're
going to be talking about for exponential growth.
Um, that would be, that'd be fantastic to unlock.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, a couple, um, things pop up.
So I would say it's very exciting to go from a corporate career and to
start doing your own thing.
And there's a lot of advice, you know, start a side gig, make a full business
plan.
I didn't do any of that.
I just knew one day I was done working in the corporate world.
I always wanted to start my own thing.
And I decided that I was going to announce this to my, um, my boss at the
time I was working at a financial service company.
And I had this idea right before I went to her office.
And I, I thought, I want to, I want to see if I could pitch them being my first
client.
And so I went in and I said, Hey, um, I'm resigning to start my own thing,
but I have an idea.
I want you guys to be my first client.
And she made it was like, yeah, let's go.
I mean, we don't want to lose you.
So, and it was great because I got a transition period to then go, you know,
basically work part time for my previous company, um, and to help really like
leave on a high note and establish a framework.
And I was at the time leading a pretty significant, um, integrated campaign
that involved literally like 10 or 12 different departments, um, and
coordinating this whole entire effort.
Um, ultimately leading to, you know, multi-millions of dollars worth of
assets under management that the sales team ended up selling, but it was, it
was a great experience, you know, one, like getting to sell something on my
own for the first time, right.
And it was, it was me and my services and not really even having that defined.
Um, but then it was just validating.
Cause I was like, I am on the right path.
This is what I'm going to do.
And giving, you know, getting to have that opportunity to really define
like, what is my process?
What are my.
Packages.
And while I was working in that, that gig, um, another opportunity
came from my, my employer before that.
And so then they called me and said, Hey, we want you to, um,
help work on this project.
And so it was, it was, um, a great, I guess, validating experience, um, to,
to be able to, to move, to make that transition.
So since then I have worked with four different departments, um,
all around helping to come in.
And what I, what I see is that many organizations start with execution.
I mean, it's very easy to go start a LinkedIn page, start a TikTok page,
start a, um, you know, threads page, just like, but what they don't really
realize is like the amount of effort required and the consistent execution
are required to, to keep that up and running.
And so while it looks easy and simple at the onset, it's not that easy.
While it looks easy and simple at the onset, typically companies call me in
when they have been doing this for one or two years and they realize we did
all the stuff, all the silver bullet, you know, techniques that these marketing
people are telling us to do, and it's not working now.
We don't trust anybody.
We don't trust any marketing agency.
Can you please come in and help us make sense of it all?
And so the growth that I help kind of orchestrate is really all about alignment
to, um, first understanding what do customers really want?
And many of them, it's interesting, don't even have agreement on who is
our ideal customer and who are we targeting.
And so, you know, it's like all these little wins when I, when I come into a
company that that's like, okay, we're going to make some decisions and we're
going to make like move some of these hurdles out of the way, starting with
who are our customers, who do we want to be our customers?
You know, what are these people want?
What are they motivated by?
What are their pain points?
And do we all agree from the marketing organization, the product organization,
the executive team, the sales team?
So that's kind of step one.
And then step two for alignment is what, what does our company want to achieve?
So this is also interesting because most companies will have like, let's say a
high level revenue target.
Um, but then I like to give, get deeper.
Well, how does that break out by then the customer segments we want to go after?
How does that break out by geography?
How does that break out by products?
You sell more than one product.
That's important.
And so looking at it and just starting to put some strategy around this, because
then when they come up and they say, we want to start a TikTok, we can go back
and look at, well, what are our goals here?
Our goals are to sell to CEOs at fortune 500 companies that, you know, in this
highly sophisticated market, like TikTok does not align that does literally go
literally does not make sense.
So stop listening to your niece or whatever in college, you know, like, and
let's go back to who we're trying to attract and what our goals are so that we
can make those tactical decisions and, and really focus our, our energy and our
efforts versus trying to do everything.
Hmm.
There was a lot of gold in that.
Um, there, there, I just, again, I, I feel like I'm like, I don't know,
becoming too strong as an advocate for you right now, but like, there's, I
got to ask a couple of very pointed questions.
Number one.
Um, do, do you know how you became as good of a communicator as you are?
Do you know where that came from?
I don't know.
I mean, maybe years in marketing and it's for, I think it's deeper.
I think it's further than that.
I want to figure that because Stacy, there's only one of you.
Okay.
There's hundreds.
There's millions of companies, um, that, that could use it.
And you, you do, you have this way of communication that shows that you're
very clear, um, about what it is that you know can be done.
You have the, and you know, granted we're in an interview.
Um, so we've got our interview voices on, um, the, the two of us.
Do you, do you find yourself clashing those environments sometimes when
you're, when you're, when you're going to edit is, or is it, or do you keep this
bed of sunshine and roses with you as you go through these explanations
with these entrepreneurs because you're, you are so on point, but you,
some, you just have this aura when you talk about the, those aspects of clarity
that so many of us as marketers and so many entrepreneurs can get so frustrated with.
Yeah.
I mean, I think it's interesting.
So reflecting back, I think I've always been curious.
And in fact, before I went into marketing, I wanted to be a journalist.
Now the principles of journalism, I was always a writer, took newspaper
in your book and learned how to ask questions and dig deeper.
And so I was always interested in the why behind things.
So not taking, you know, a problem for face value, but really trying to understand
it, dig a little deeper as to why this problem persists or what is getting
in people's way.
And I think having worked with, um, when I transitioned from B2C marketing, so I
worked, you know, at three or four different companies on the B2C side.
And then I switched over to B2B.
And the one thing that was massively different that I had to learn right away
was working with the sales organization and B2C marketing is sales.
There is no separate department.
And in B2B, the marketing team has a tiny little budget and they have
to work with the sales team.
And I think I figured out pretty quickly that I had to build a relationship
with the sales team and really get into their world.
To understand what their job is.
If I was going to be successful, I needed to get them on my side.
And so I started, you know, getting out of my comfort zone a little bit.
I asked to attend sales training.
I asked to travel with the sales team.
I asked to go to customer meetings and customer events to listen to how the
sales team was doing their job.
And all of that helped give me credibility because now I could speak
the language of salespeople.
And by the way, this is the job of a marketer.
So this is really what I was doing.
I was just applying it to my internal audience.
So here I was like, what does the CEO care about?
What does the salesperson care about?
What does the product person care about?
I was always kind of like conscious of that lens when I was talking
to or presenting to them.
And then I think I've refined over time, you know, going from the corporate
world where, by the way, I was surrounded by professional marketers,
people who had trained in marketing to then going over to becoming a
consultant.
And I remember being shocked at one of the Inc 5000 companies that I was
talking to the CEO.
And we went out for coffee and he said, I'm just really confused.
I don't really understand the difference between marketing and sales.
And I was like, what?
You're the CEO of this massively successful software company.
And that's when I think I learned how to start talking in a different way
that wasn't so marketing ish, you know, in corporate speak, because I was like,
wow, this is, I have to like really go back to kind of the beginner mindset
and load that this guy's an engineer and maybe he's never even taken a
marketing class.
And so how do you talk to somebody who doesn't have really any familiarity
with the subject?
You know, you've got to kind of refine that, that, that approach.
If you've done strengths finder 2.0, then I would, I would assume you
ranked fairly high for woo.
But did it turn out as one of your top five?
Have you ever done that before?
I have, I want to say it to you.
Woo is over.
Yes.
Okay.
You've got that.
Yeah.
Thank you.
My number one actually was strategy.
That was my number one.
I believe that too.
And that's what I'm talking about.
Number one, I believe that too naturally as a, as a marketer, you're
going to have that too, but no, it's, it's just my, it's mind blowing to me.
I had a, I had a VP of, of cells that, um, used to talk about woo cause he was
so disappointed he didn't have it.
And his wife did.
And he was like, man, I wish I had a woo.
I, I remember looking at that and I was a young, I would torch anything that
got in my way type of guy and I had no woo whatsoever.
So I was like, I would do want that, you know?
And now I realized like, oh my gosh, like I wish I had that.
That one, when he put that on my radar.
Um, okay.
So, um, we're going to go into, uh, one, one, we'll go into one powerful lesson.
Let's make this one a little bit shorter because I, because I want to dive into that
anticipation of customer needs.
I know you got some, some gold in there for that.
Um, but if you had, you know, I don't know, this is your last 90 seconds to talk to us
and you can only give us one powerful lesson as visionaries.
What would it be?
One powerful lesson.
Um, I would say, I mean, I'm, I'll probably tie it back to, um, marketing, of course.
Um, but I would say it's, it's that we don't have to measure everything and that sometimes
it's like, you've got to trust your intuition and your gut.
And I know that feels uncomfortable, especially for the engineers and the finance professionals
among us, but we all have this, um, innate ability to do it.
And I think, especially, you know, if we realize marketing is really just about connecting
to other people and that's really what marketing and sales is, um, that when you start to kind
of pay attention to all of the signals and things around it, not just staring every day
at the data and looking and kind of becoming obsessed.
Cause I think our, our culture and especially this profession has become kind of ultra obsessed
with this data driven approach.
And we are forgetting this whole other side of human nature, um, psychology, intuition,
you know, things that we don't really learn anymore in school, um, in favor of let's just
look at the statistics and the math and the data.
And I think we're, we're missing that whole piece.
Oh, it's thank you so much for that there.
And it's, it's the marketers justification, right?
Of our, of our livelihoods and we feel forced to do it.
We're not, we have to back back up.
We have to help people to back off, right?
We have to set the boundary and realize that, no, it's not.
You can't measure everything.
Um, you know, I think of this poster that the spurs is handed San Antonio spurs have
in the locker room and it's about a person, uh, who's taking a pickaxe to a rock.
Um, right.
And he hits it hundreds of times with seemingly no effect whatsoever.
You cannot see any ding in this rock.
And it's not until he actually hits where it breaks through after the 200th blow that
the effect happens.
Um, you know, and that's, that's their discipline for their culture of the sport is you have
to just keep going and trusting in those principles.
You cannot measure that process.
So it's so important.
Now you also talked about something else important.
You said, um, you just started, um, you didn't do any of that when you were referring to
move, you know, switching into the entrepreneurial role.
And you're right, a lot of us think we have to take that course or we have to get certified
by X, Y, or Z, or we have to have this in order.
And we forget about the universal laws, right?
If we go back to the basics, uh, I've never met somebody who was born in their due date.
And I actually asked that kind of often because I got curious after I had kids.
Oh, I was like, are you born in your, were your kids born in their, no, we, we just happens,
right?
The kid comes out when it's ready to come out.
You can jump on a trampoline.
You can breathe.
You can do all the yoga exercises, swimming, whatever you want to do, but the kids going
to come out when the kids going to come out.
And then you're going to learn how to walk.
How?
Not with a book.
Just, you're just going to do it one day.
It's just going to happen.
We can't force that child.
And the same is true with business.
There is healthy measuring, but 99.9% of us, I'll include myself in that don't know how
to measure what we're trying to measure.
And so it's healthy to let go and look at the principles.
So thank you for that.
All right.
Anticipating customer needs and unlocking that, that exponential growth.
We have about five minutes if you're, do you have five minutes?
Okay, great.
And I would love to dive into that at a greater depth.
So what are, we can start with red flags that people are overlooking with the process or
we can start with the green check marks of what we should do.
Well, let's start with red flag number one, which is that companies aren't doing customer
research.
Now this was shocking to me also moving from B2C to B2B because in B2C when you're managing
multi-millions of dollars worth of one second, when you said customers aren't doing research,
did you mean like your clients, business owners?
Yeah.
So yeah, B2B organizations, basically companies are not doing customer research.
That's that's problem number one.
They don't budget for it.
And then if they do think it's a priority, they are relying, let's say on the salesperson
to do customer research or pay the executive talk to a customer and therefore that's customer
research.
But like anything, customer research is a skillset.
Not everybody has the ability to do it.
You know, I would highly encourage everybody to budget for some formal research at least
once per year and, and or send your marketing person to training on how to do customer research.
Because it's not it is a skillset like you have to be kind of a little bit of a journalist
mindset, right?
To be able to dig, dig the story out.
And so that's that's problem number one.
Number two is that I find that companies aren't doing this because they think they are the
customer or quote, we know our customer, we know exactly what they want.
And I'm working with a company right now who sells technology devices and they are engineers.
And so when I see, tell me what you know about your customers and how are you communicating
the value of what you do, it's all very engineering, technical feature driven.
And people don't buy that.
They buy the problem.
You know, they buy the solution to their problem.
And so being able to present customer, the whole purpose of doing customer research and
diving deeper into understanding customer needs is so that you can present your offering
through a lens and into a world that they understand.
And example of that, by the way, is Kleenex and describing the fibers and the tissues
that go with it or saying this will make your nose feel better.
Yes.
Right.
What people want.
The other one is stuff that mumble jumbo gargant.
So yes.
Yes.
Well, and what I found too is in that that example, you're going to have maybe some of
the nerdy people that want to know all of that information about the fibers and how
it's made.
And that's great.
Make it available for those people.
But not everybody wants that.
And so you have to know what kind of buyer you're talking to and what they care about.
And that's research.
Exactly.
So how much budget would you dedicate towards the formal research process?
I know it's different case by case, but what is that?
What do you try to look at?
I mean, it's literally it could be all over the board, but it's generally like around
ten thousand dollars depending on this is for like, you know, highly technical, maybe
more sophisticated products.
If we're talking about consumer research, you can actually do that.
A lot of that on your own or with surveys or even hire somebody that's pretty inexpensive
on an hourly basis to.
I like what you said, though.
You did.
You talked about having your person go and learn this right.
You can do an hour's worth of research or have an executive assistant do that.
And you can get that person in a program.
It's probably not going to be the best program in the world.
That's OK.
At least get them in some type of program to you talked about the sales team doing the
research.
The problem is the bias that exists in that regard.
There's no objectivity.
So we look at modern journalism.
The goal is to drive the click, right?
It's to get people interested.
That's not journalism from a background standpoint of objectivity.
We're not trying to influence.
We're trying to create and uncover.
Thank you.
You know this better than I do.
So you uncover the realities that exist so that you can speak to what people actually
need and anticipate that.
Yeah, those are interesting.
Like when I do, I do research for my for my clients and when I go through this process,
there's always this moment with how customers are talking.
I always do.
This is what the exercise I do.
I interview already internally, salespeople, executives, anybody who's kind of in a customer
facing capacity.
And then I interview customers and I show them the discrepancy between the two.
You guys are presenting value like this and this is what your customers said.
And 99% of the time, it's different.
And the reason it's different is because the company does not.
The company assumes that the customer is living and breathing and obsessing about their product
and that decision that they have to make and they're not.
And so when you ask customers, what drove you to make this purchase?
Because we have to grow and I only have three months to prove myself in this role.
So we had to make a decision quickly and they were the fastest ones.
It's like something that would never come up in a sales.
They chose us because of this unique feature that we have.
And most customers will never say that.
And the other thing I love about the formal research is that what customers say verbatim
is what you end up using in a lot of your marketing communications.
So you can write articles based on this and testimonials and talk in a plain English way
about what it is that you do and the value you provide directly from the mouths of your
customers.
And there's no better source for doing that work than customers.
Well said.
And so to dive in a little bit on another level of that too, here's the important takeaway
of VisionPros.
You want to do this research.
You want to get these fundamental principles in place.
And at the same time, you also as a visionary have to trust your own heart and your mind
in this process because it's not always applicable.
The way you learn the research process does not always 100% of the time apply.
For instance, Restaurant Connect.
When I was running Restaurant Connect, we did a ton of different things for research
and development.
As Stacey pointed out, we launched a video knowing that all of our customers were going
to obsess over the video and share it.
We were going to be viral the next day.
We woke up, we had 17 views on the video.
It was the most discouraging thing we'd ever experienced.
And we were like, wow, okay, we got that wrong.
And as we continued to work very hard to uncover our own R&D, it also became apparent that
restaurant owners, they wanted to provide great and chefs, they wanted to provide great
food and great experiences to people, but they didn't necessarily understand the day-to-day
operations.
And so as we catered less to what it was they thought they needed and wanted and more to
solutions that the people who actually ran the restaurant, the host team needed and the
assistant managers needed, we ended up creating an army of support that drove our software
into their restaurants.
And it had very little to do with the top level needs of the decision makers of the
process.
And so like Stacey said, you can always measure the results.
You also can't always predict what somebody needs and people don't always know what they
need or want.
And that's what makes this whole process kind of chaotic if you don't have somebody who
understands the principles behind it working with you.
And Stacey, you've done an excellent job of revealing a lot of those realities.
You mentioned asking internally and then asking the clients.
I'm excited to see more people do that.
And oh man, I would love to just continue to borrow your unpaid time as much as possible,
but I won't do that to you.
Daisy, what's the best way for people to get in touch with you?
Yeah.
So I would say LinkedIn, connect with me on LinkedIn.
That's the most active platform.
My website, of course.
And then I do offer a free marketing scorecard that I would encourage people to take just
to help identify where might you have some strengths and where might some gaps be in
your marketing approach.
And so this can help you figure out where you should focus.
But also if you're bringing on team members or you have a marketing team already, you
can start to direct them a little bit more.
And it can give you some words to basically articulate that problem.
Even the marketing teams that have the ego, that think they have it all together or know
they have it all together, love taking a little assessments like that and learning.
Oh, you know, even if they're comparing and saying, I'm better than this, there's little
audit pieces that they can get out of those processes.
So I definitely recommend doing that.
We'll drop the...
Well...
I was going to say on that note, going back to my self-awareness story, I love that.
I would say for the marketers, especially that fill this out and they're like, yeah,
I'm like a 95% and I'm practically a hundred.
The next step would be to send that to some peers and have them take it and answer this
for you because it's pretty revealing that your perception might not match up with your
peers.
So...
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Well said too.
And then the rest of the marketers, I mean, I think more people are more holistic than
I described.
And so when they receive a resource like this and they go through it, sometimes a breath
of fresh air and they're like, oh my gosh, this is a resource that I needed in order
to unlock the next level of understanding.
And none of us are perfect.
We all got so much to learn.
So Stacey, thank you for hitting us with all the knowledge that you did.
Just, I think a lot of businesses are going to flourish if they listen to the advice that
you gave.
And Vision Pros, we'll see you on the next episode.
Take care.
All right.
Thanks for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is going to get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show and thank you for giving us your time
and attention.