hit the button. So I mean, that's what the show is about. It's about vision and purpose
and personal stuff too. So we'll have some fun with it. We'll see how it goes.
And we were talking right there just about LinkedIn and the profile and all that. And
before that, you were on a train of thought. You remember what your train of thought was?
MQLs and how to get around them. That's right. MQLs and how to get around that. What do you
mean by that? Can I be completely blunt? I hope so. I mean, that's, that's the, can you?
Yeah, I can. They're BS. They're, they're the legacy. They're the bus. Yeah. I believe
that I don't hear talked about often. So well, the whole concept of waterfall sales, the
whole concept of opportunity, MQL, SQL, 20%, 40%, whatever is still widely used. Literally
like 95% of companies are still sticking to that model. They just call it a different
name. They're trying to modernize the form without modernizing the substance. What do
they call it now? Leads. Okay. Yeah. Very simple. Same thing. Absolutely. It's one of
the, one of the, those probably hundreds of cold emails and LinkedIn messages. Hey, we'll
help you join businesses. Yep. Yeah. What's the secret sauce, man? Make yourself. 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 and welcome to another episode of vision pros live. I'm your host, Jackson
Calame, founder and CEO of first-class business. I'm excited to have Nikola Korac on today.
Nicola is based out of Dallas, Texas. I need to go visit him and say, hi, I like that area.
And I don't know if you'll notice I'm in San Antonio, Texas. If you're ever in town, don't
hesitate to hit me up and see if I'm available for a game of pool or something. So before
I bring Nicola on stage though, I want to make sure to talk about some of these sponsors.
Cold click is an assistant that we use for LinkedIn automation. It's all about businesses
is in large part about distributing your voice, getting in front of people. It's very important.
How you do that is what determines whether you're successful, your laughed off stage,
people hate you, et cetera. Your messaging matters a lot, but cold click is the mechanical
system that helps us with our LinkedIn automation and protects us as well from the algorithm
changes that occur on LinkedIn. What's your threshold of people you can contact per day,
for instance? You want to stay within the bounds. And honestly, if your messaging is
good enough, then you shouldn't need to maximize it beyond what that system's capable of doing.
That means you have to know what's attractive to your market and understand that you're
reaching out to people who are likely strangers to who you are and what you do. Stranger danger
is a very real thing. I think Nikola and I will talk a lot about that later in our conversation.
And there's Simply Fast websites, which I don't use, but because I don't need it. If
you want to get a new website, this is a platform where you can invest 179 bucks to get started.
I wish I had known a web developer, web designer. I'm sure they existed, but I interviewed at
least 15 different agencies. And beyond that, I did research on probably a hundred different
agencies in addition to playing with Wix, Squarespace, Weebly back in the day, all sorts
of stuff to get my websites established. The modern world's a beautiful thing. If you don't
know how to tell chat GBT, hey, just create me a website real fast, perfectly. Then it
might be a good idea to reach out to a company like this. But I just know that if you're
starting out brand new, you have so many things you need to be spending your budget on and
you have so many things you need to be spending your time on that having a solution like this
on your radar is certainly something that I would have loved to have if I were just starting
out today.
Before we dive in again, the cause that I want to talk about is the water project. The
water project is an awesome opportunity to help people in the world who don't even have
access to this, something we take for granted every single day. I find myself getting a
glass of water. I don't think about it. I'm sure most of you don't either. And that's
okay. But what if we took a moment to think about the people who just don't have access
to that? And what if we had a cause or we could see the communities that are affected,
contribute to it, and then see the posts of them receiving their water well or their sand
dam that they create. I think it's a really cool opportunity to give back and know, be
updated on what's happening and how your money is being put to good use. And if you have
another cause that you'd rather see us promote or give to, just drop it in the comments.
I'm happy to check it out. We've got 8 billion people in the world who need a lot of help.
Most of them need a whole lot more help than I do in life. And so it's important for me
to take the opportunity and I think for you to take the opportunity to give back. So with
that said, Nicola has a LinkedIn page. I'm going to reference just for a minute here.
Let me dive over. There we are. Hey, look at that. We're live. I've never seen this
before. That's cool. What's up, Nicola? Good to see you. I don't know if he did that or
if that's the live. That's cool. That's a fun feature. Way to lead me speechless when
I'm not supposed to be LinkedIn. So anyway, he's got a marketing background and we were
just talking about his current opportunity to work with Texas young professionals and
being on the phone with Geekdom. Geekdom is the local startup community and rent an office
space or the ability to go to this office and be part of the greater startup community
of San Antonio. I absolutely love it. And when I found out he's working with them and
Texas young professionals, I got all the more excited about our conversation, which is going
to be about making your marketing the quarterback of your sales team and how to go about doing
that. Why you should even consider doing that. And it's going to be an awesome discussion.
So without further ado, Nicola, thank you so much for joining us in Vision Pros Live.
Hey, Jackson. Well, thank you for the opportunity to be here with you and thank you for the
great intro. Yeah, absolutely, man. You kind of blew my mind there talking about the Texas
young professionals and what they're up to. I've been around it a few times, gotten to
go to a couple of small events, never really got fully integrated. Partially excuses and
partially because I'm a dad of four children. And that keeps me pretty busy and outside
of the city. But how did you get involved with Texas young professionals? I met like
a year ago, I met the current sitting president of the network, Ms. Sarah Dowd here in Dallas.
I met her as a startup founder. And she's a top 40 under 40, correct? Yes, she is in
the on the private bankers. I will definitely make that introduction. I'm pretty sure you
will have a chance to talk with her. Yeah, but that's how I that's how I met her. Then
we started talking, then we switched to Texas young professionals and what are they doing
and how are they doing? And yeah, I kind of got pulled in. That's awesome, man. That's
really cool. So to quantify for the audience, the visionaries that are listening in, who
do you feel should be listening in will benefit the most and why why should they listen to
you? Okay, that's a good one. That's a really good one. Who should listen? Primarily this
kind of conversation is a lot better and a lot easier to be applied in a small business
and in the entrepreneurship world in general with the startup founders, with the small
business owners. Yes, a lot of medium sized companies can also benefit from it more in
the indirect way they're doing, but they're a lot slower in introducing the change. That's
exactly the reason why we will be talking about what we will be talking within next
45 minutes or so. The any anyone who wants to understand why and how marketing has changed
and why the old fashion of marketing that or 90% of companies are still doing just simply
doesn't work. I mean, I would say 96% at least because that's the that's the failure rate
of businesses over a 10 year period. And so you've got this concept of that I love. I
was like, that's a brilliant idea that marketing, making the marketing the quarterback of yourself
seems a good analogy because I often see sales team over here, marketing way over here, a
wall in between, you know, and every once in a while notes are thrown back and forth
across the way that or bombs are thrown back and forth. You got to bring someone for something.
Yeah, absolutely. And the you know, in order to to avoid the politics and the conflict,
you know, the leaders think they're supposed to keep those separate. And that's such a
weird concept once you know how marketing works. So let's let's talk about your vision
for those that you serve. What that said, like, Mitch, tee up with that. What what's
your vision for those that you serve, knowing that that's the reality most of them face?
Well, the the general problem when people start their own business, when people start
their their small business, their entrepreneurship, their entrepreneurship journey, they know
something, they're doing something and they're doing it great. And they want to do that for
other people. Right. That's how you usually start. You don't just come up with the idea,
wake up one morning and say, Oh, I'm going to do this. You do something, you become really
good at something, then you want to start your own company. And you want to do that
for the others and make your living from that. One of the biggest challenges is how to build
authority and how to realize and understand if there is a product market fit, how to get
your product or service or whatever it is to the people in a way where they will say,
Okay, I want this. And not just I want this, I want this from that person, that company,
that whatever it is. That's the challenge, the the the results, the revenue that we're
generating, the revenue companies generating has to be a result, not the cause of doing
business. Once we make it about a cause, we are changing the game completely. We're marketing
differently, we're selling differently. And when you see a split between those 96% of
businesses that fail, or amazing statistical data, it is expected in this year that over
70% of salespeople will miss their target quotas. That's amazing. That's crazy. And
they were not some of those people were in sales for 10, 15, 20 years. So I don't think
it's up to them. What changed what really changed is the way how people want to buy
is the way how people interact with the vendors, how people interact with the companies, how
they're looking for products. And that's exactly what brings us a great, a great foundation
for the conversation further on. Interesting. Yeah, I mean, I like we're trying. I said
that's the good that's that makes us that makes us a great, great foundation for the
continuing this conversation, why the way most companies are marketing their product
doesn't work. Yeah, absolutely. I believe that too. I will, I'll push back on the sales
data aspect just a little bit to provide, you know, a couple different perspectives
on that for both of us. Over 70% of salespeople will miss their target quota. You know, in
marketing, the devil's always in the details, as are the answers. And usually there isn't
one usually have to go with the intuition on top of that. But, you know, one, I don't
trust the quotas that most companies set. And why will you got you got people who set
be had goals, big hairy audacious goals that are very unlikely to be hit. You also have
people who set smart goals, the specific measurable action will relevant and timely. And yet people
who have no idea how to set a goal. So they just throw a number on the board. And so I
think that regardless of the percent that exists there, you know, I would rather have
somebody, I'd rather have a 70% success rate than a 100% success rate with a crappy goal.
Right? So there's, there's some nuances there to dive into. We can do it. We can dive into
those or we can just sum up with an overgeneralized statement that when it comes to tracking performance
metrics, businesses are notorious for, for not having great systems for figuring out
what the heck they're aiming for. Is that fair to say?
Absolutely. That's one of the core problems we were talking, we started, you mentioned
silo since, and that will just quote an amazing person I had, I had an honor to work with
long time. That was in 2005. I was, I just started working for Microsoft office back
in Belgrade in Serbia. And I, by literally by chance, I started working in Microsoft
Belgrade on the same day when the founder of Microsoft development center, Mr. Bodin
Drescevich started working at the same office and we're having tables across each other.
I mean, that guy's sitting in Redmond right now and taking his helicopter to work. He's
amazing. He is a doctor of physics. He had over 20 patents implemented in, in Microsoft
and so on and so forth. But the thing is they started, he was started building a Microsoft
development center team and they were bringing people from all over the world on the interview
and the selection process. And they were giving them, so we're talking 2005, 2006, they were
giving them pen and paper. And I think it was three mathematical assignments to do over
the course of four hours. And when they were preparing, I was sitting at the backstage
when they were getting ready, the, the assignments and when they were evaluating the assignments
and they realized they're pulling assignments from the Mathematica mathematics Olympics
in like seventies and eighties. So those were literally problems that were not meant to
be solved. Yeah. And I was like, okay, why do you do that? Why do you give them a task?
Why do you give them an assignment that you know, dang well, it's absolutely impossible
to solve. They were never solved. It's like, well, those people are sitting there, have
their master's degree, their PhD in math, in physics. They were talking at that time,
they were talking about handwriting recognition and math formula recognition for the PDAs
and tablet devices. And he said, I don't want to have out of 50 people in that room. I don't
want to give them easy assignments where I will have 50 people that have a 100% score.
I want to see how they think. And I want to see the direction they will take and how far
along can they take. Yeah. The only way that I can actually fairly grade their efforts
and their thinking, that's how I can make and really select the best out of it. Well,
that was a great lesson for me. And that applies. We started talking about for the companies
and how we set the metrics. I repeat this all the time. Hope is not a strategy.
I saw that on the site too. That was a very well, it's not a strategy. It's an important
virtue, but it's not a strategy. Exactly. Hope is super important, but it's not a strategy.
When you're founding your small business, when you're founding your startup, you're
pushed and that's a whole different game. But by the VC and the angel networks, you're
pushed into the expectations that say, Oh, you got to make 5 million revenue within so
many months or so many years in order to get there. So they, what they do, what the founder
does. Okay. I'm a founder. I'm not a sales guy. I don't really know that I never really
worked on the quota, but I know I got to make 2 million. Okay. So I will do the calculation
or that will say I need a hundred thousand users for that. I have some money there on
the, for the sales. I'll hire one sales guy and the sales team and I'll say, okay, guys,
these are your quotas. One or two or three of you have to make 2 million next year. There
you go. This is the marketing agency that will assist you with that. You get the retainer
agreement or two, three, 4,000 a month with the marketing agency and you think your problem
is solved. You sit back and wait after a couple of months, there is no results. You start
getting onto the marketing team, getting onto the sales team. Sales team says, well, we
don't have leads. So what do you do? You hire the lead gen agency, right? Right. They start
throwing some meetings. You realize that the average closure on those opportunities, so
called leads, quote unquote, that you get is like 0.01%. And you realize it's just a
waste of time. That's, and usually those silences we were talking about between marketing and
sales. That's where the problem is. That's why the quotas are not realistic. I'm coming
from the sales background. I have spent most of my career as a salesperson, as a sales
director, sales and marketing director later on in the corporate world in my previous career
as a CEO of the company. I've learned that the hardly I was setting my team's target
based on the board expectation to grow 20% next year. So you just go with the flow and
you hope that you will figure it out somehow throughout the year.
That's right. So Nicola, what's your vision for you? I like the educational part of what
I'm doing. What personally drives me is to change, to help people understand and implement
the knowledge in their businesses and then run along with it. I like to see the result.
The reason why I stepped out from corporate world into the consultancy agency, however
you want to call it right now, is exactly that. That's what I love doing. I love talking
with business owners. I love talking with sales and marketing directors and I love to
see how what we're doing changes the landscape and makes those businesses grow.
Absolutely. I would call that the E-myth approach. Sounds like you're familiar with it and that's
important to me. That's one of my favorite business books. He's actually showcasing something
that many entrepreneurs then want. They want to stop delegating by abdication. They want
to stop giving out assignments irresponsibly without thinking about it. But I still don't
see enough entrepreneurs making the shift to spend quality time with the executives
who are supposed to be guiding them. They spend a little time saying, hey, Nicola, I
want you to do this and I want you to do it this way and I want you to just shut your
mouth and go do what I asked you to do and I know we will win. That is not how you win
with working with executives. Let's shift gears a little bit further too. Maybe on that
same token, maybe not. You're welcome to take this either direction, but what's your worst
leadership experience? Where I was in the role of a leader. Your call. It can be what
you did or it can be something you experienced or watched. There is plenty of those. I've
been in sales and marketing business for nearly 20 years. So there is a ton of that. But usually
it's coming from, I'm not going to put names out of the companies out there, but it's one
of my last experiences in Belgrade before I moved permanently to the US where the ownership
was so misaligned and that was largely my fault. I was the CEO of a small business, small business
system integration company and I just couldn't and I was experienced enough and I would say
I learned a valuable lesson of when is the time to walk away and to cut the cord. Say
nope, it's not working. Misalignment between board and the ownership of the company with
the actual direction and strategy is not something you can correct on the go. It brings me, it
brought me a great experience and a great lesson that I'm applying since then. I'm applying
it nowadays. Not every client that wants to work with me is the right client. Product
market fit goes in opposite directions too. There is a market product fit or a market
service fit and that is the first thing since then in every leadership or consulting, which
is kind of like extended leadership position. I do a lot of coaching and CEO advisory and
consulting. That is one of the things I always pay a lot of attention to. How is the CEO
of the company reacting to what we're talking about? Is there the willingness to change
things and is there support from the board or from the owner or whatever to implement
that change? That's huge. That's why it's a lot easier to do this business with small
business owners and entrepreneurs because you have the responsible person and the owner
and the board all in one person. You just sparked some incredible passion within me.
If you don't mind, I've got to get this. Have you read the five dysfunctions of a team?
Have you ever read that? It's a very rare book. It's again, right up there. I was very
fortunate. I read it right after the E-Myth. Listen to it on audio because it's way easier
to listen to. It is so good, but this executive comes in and she comes in with the intent
of listening for several weeks. Everybody's kind of antsy and kind of judging her. Does
she really know what she's doing? She hasn't done anything yet. She's just sitting there
and watching all this stuff play out, not making any moves. It's the best leadership
thing that you can do. You have to be empowered though by a board too that respects that.
You have to be empowered by a team. As I'm thinking about what you're talking about,
which reminds me, I can tell that you learned that lesson as a CEO. You said, we can't just
jump in and do it on the fly. There's a lot of thought process and there's a whole lot
that goes into that that we oversimplify. Where that led me to, Nicola was remembering,
wait a second, I talk about the 96% of businesses that fail often, but the assumption I think
some people make is that on the 4%, the 4% are ultra successful. No, they're not. 4%
survive. They survive. The percentage of ones who are actually successful and awesome out
of that is far smaller. We as owners, CEOs, like you talk, we got to take ownership of
what we don't understand and don't know, move into that territory of the unknown and seek
counsel from people who have found success in their different departments. That's again
why I'm excited to have, but you just sparked that in me and I was like, wow, I need to
be more vocal about that. What are your thoughts on that? Before we go into the best leadership
experience ever that you've had, what? That's the thing about the business owners in general.
Is that the readiness for change and to learn? You cannot. And that is literally, that's
one of my key questions when I'm talking with the prospective client. The CEO, the owner
of the company has to understand their sales process and their marketing process. Yes.
It's non-negotiable. If he doesn't want to understand that there is no way his marketing
team is going to perform well or his sales results are going to be the way they're supposed
to be. I will say, unless you choose to take the silent investor role, but shut your mouth
and get out of the way. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's fine. But if you are in the actual execution,
if you're running the company, you are doing that. You have to understand how people freaking
buy from you because it doesn't affect only your revenue. It affects your product development.
It affects your customer care. Who are the people in the company? One of the breakthroughs
for me, how many CEOs absolutely ignore the people who know the most about their client
problems? Oh geez. That's such a sad, hard question. Who is the best client expert in
your company in any company, customer care, customer success. They don't read brochures.
They hear problems. They know what's actually bothering your clients. Why marketing fails
when in silos? Again, just common sense, just pure logic because marketing never talks with
the client. How often do you see marketing manager reaching out to a sales executive
and saying, okay, I want to go on one of your sales meetings? Simple. It's super simple.
So even if they want to though, even if they want to, and I think this is part of the problem,
right? Absolutely. What does that salesperson, how would they react to that? Yeah, I don't
want to take you with me. You're just some office guy. You're some nerd who's sitting,
designing some brochures, designing some, I don't know, graphics, whatever, posting something
on social media. You're going to tell the boss, I suck at selling and I'm going to lose
my job. And like, no, the political self-driven motivations, right? I mean, they're there.
They're natural if you don't incubate and foster, you know, cultivate. How about, but
that's the thing. How about if you empower your marketing person to actually support
that salesperson on that sales meeting? Yeah. The marketing people, that's one of the reasons
why marketing usually sucks. Marketing people are disconnected from the market. Sounds crazy,
but it's a fact. Marketing agencies that work with the clients, in most cases, they just
provide some random generic content. They provide social media posts. They provide SEO
strategy based on the internet research without ever really meeting the end user. Yeah. Get
down in the trenches. Get out. Marketing is not a passive geeky role of designer behind
the computer screen. Absolutely. And here's another point. To validate what you're talking
about, I am so bought into this idea of the marketing being the quarterback of the sales
team in 99, I shouldn't say 99, in a lot of environments. And here's why. Again, most
companies aren't paying attention to their org board. They don't have a great chain of
command of who's in charge of what. And that isolation means that they're not acturating
as a fundamental department. I believe that typically the sales team belongs either in
the chief marketing officer's department or they belong in the chief operating officer's
department. Those are the two most common scenarios because if you have a system and
a company built primarily around operations, then usually the sales team needs to be super
close to the guidance of the operations team. On the flip side, if you're a marketing agency,
for instance, your sales team needs to be interacting with your chief marketing officer
at all times because they're trying to sell marketing and it should be very in line with
what you do, not fragmented. But when you talk about this quarterback example and the
marketing being the quarterback of the sales team, what do you mean by that? Talk us through
that. I mean, the sales team is the sales guy, the sales executive is your wide receiver.
He's the one who's catching the ball, scoring that touchdown. Right? So now imagine in a
world where marketing works disconnected from the sales is in silo. It's some random agency
that is just doing what they're supposed to do and taking care of, I don't know, tradeshow
booths. Oh, dude, that's the worst. So as a sales guy, you show up to the tradeshow booth
to help out and you got no collateral materials because marketing didn't help and now you
don't know what to do. So translated into football example. Now imagine your wide receiver
going all the way back to get the ball and then he needs to score the touchdown. What
does he need to do to score the touchdown? He needs to run across the whole freaking
field. That's not going to happen. I mean, that's not going to happen. He will get blocked
somewhere on that way. Some amazing, great or just a lucky one will made it and score
the goal. But when you have disconnected sales and marketing teams, you're literally, it's
literally like playing a football game where you're forcing your wide receivers to go all
the way back to get the ball and then score. Right. They act like the running back. I love
the analogy because, and I hadn't thought about it that in depth. I was just thinking
in terms of making the decisions on the field, but you're right. I love the analogy further
when you say that the sales team is the wide receiver because you can accomplish more further,
but you have to be given the ball and you have to be given the right object in order
to take it to that particular end zone. So it's a very good analogy that entrepreneurs
should be paying attention to and thinking, okay, in my business, how does it supply?
What is the ball that the salesperson needs and how do we get it to them effectively so
that they have the easiest path possible to score the touchdown? Well, guess what's the
first step in every consulting, marketing, whatever the first step in every client's
journey when we start working together. What's that rolling backwards? Who are their best,
best clients? Who are the people that love absolutely love to buy from them, excluding
friends and family smart. And then why the heck do they like buying from that company?
Why are they buying your service? Why are they buying your product? What do they want?
Who are the competitors? How did, why would they pick out your product? Yeah. That's the
thing. Talking about marketing research. We guided the research and I refer to that as
a slingshot effect. Right? You go back before you let go and you go further. So what would
you say your best leadership experience is? Shifting gears a little bit. We'll come back
to that though. Oh, yeah. Here I will definitely call names. There is a company in Belgrade
called Algotech, one of the biggest system integrators in the customer care and contact
center world in Southeast Europe. I worked there for two times. I worked in 2008 and
I came back in at the beginning of 2017 as a sales and marketing director. The best coordinated
sales and marketing team I ever had. The energy, the way how we build that team that reflected
into results within a short period of time, like literally we had a 20% revenue growth
in the first year and we maintained when we were talking about that, Algotech is like
60-ish people business. So not a, definitely not a small business for Southeast Europe.
Having a 20% growth was pretty dang good. The energy of the team, the team buildings,
the way how we interacted with clients that we literally had and we're mostly working
with the mid-market and enterprise companies. We literally get to the point that clients,
IT directors, customer care directors wanted to work with us because of the energy and
experience. Experience not as an experience team, experience as how we handle the projects,
the implementations, the client results. That's ultimately the best one. That's awesome. Like
number one on top of that list. Okay. What made that leader, what made him stand out
beyond the result? What were some of the attributes that led to that type of result?
The team cohesion, the team energy. You know, when you have, it literally felt like, I don't
know, Chicago Bulls in the nineties with Jordan. Yeah. That was the feeling. You know, you're
getting in the game and you know, you're winning that game. And that brings a huge moral boost.
That brings you, you develop young people who step into that team. And I still, I'm
still in touch with a couple of people who started there as interns. They developed amazing
careers now, 10 years, six, seven years later, they grew, they developed. It was the team
cohesion. It was, I can say it was a little bit on the luck side. Sure. Who were the people
in that team, but the way, how we clicked all together, me as a manager of that team,
as a coach of that team, that's how I would use it against sports analogy. And the players
that were on that team, that was, that was literal. I was there for like two and a half,
three years, something like that. That was amazing. Awesome. That's all. That's a good
thing. Really, really a life changing, really a life. That's one of those experiences where
you say, I want to create this again. I want to do this again. I want to make it happen.
That's awesome, man. Let's say that this was your last, your last chance to share something
of super value with us, you know, with an audience. What powerful lesson can other visionaries
learn from your experience? Use common sense. Think about your buyers.
Think about how your buyers want to buy. If you don't know how your buyers want to buy,
put yourself in the role of a buyer. How are you buying every day? That's where your marketing
journey starts. That's where your marketing strategies starts. If you're not accepting
meetings through cold calls. Yeah, I don't think your prospects will. If you're not responding
to cold emails, stop sending cold emails with the invitation to book a meeting. Right. What
do you respond to? Start from yourself, start from your buyers and see how they want to
think, how they want to buy things. Meet them where they are. Don't try to push them. We
cannot convince anyone in anything. Well said. That is some very good self-awareness
advice. What feels like common sense to you is what you're going to want to gravitate
towards. And usually, Nicola, to back you up on that, the more polarizing, like if we
go with an experience that we're not aligned with, that relationship is likely to become
highly explosive down the road, even if it doesn't start there. So I think that's super
wise. The rest of the time that we have together,
we can dive deeper into marketing and sales. In fact, I'd like to. In fact, your business
name is Downstream Consulting, correct? Yes. We'll pull that up a little bit while we talk.
There's some pages that Cynthia will be helping us pull up while we discuss this. But tell
me about your brand and what you do, how you go about driving results for businesses.
It started with going downstream instead of upstream.
Stop chasing leads. I love that opening line. Sorry. Go ahead. I know people are listening
and they're not seeing, and that's a big statement, and it's an important one for most people
to hear. Stop chasing leads. Go ahead. Yes. Stop chasing anyone. People don't like to
be chased. No, don't.
One of the reasons, and I always had a problem with that term. I'm an introvert myself. I'm
not the type of person. I'm an engineer by trade. I have a master's degree in applied
statistics. I'm not an extrovert salesperson. I'm not the guy who's going to go out there
and meet 20 people and network everywhere with anyone. That's pretty much what drove
me to this concept. I did not recognize and articulate it in a way I did until a couple
years ago. But when I rolled back, that's how I came to this. That's why I said downstream.
I never liked convincing people. I was never the type of a sales guy who can sell ice to
Eskimos. If it's not a fit, it's not a fit. If it's not a good thing for a client, then
it's not. No, it's not.
That's how I came up. When I was going through the ideation stage for downstream, I came
up with the name because I wanted people to understand that it has to flow, that it has
to just go. You have to get into the stream and let your business flow and then guide
it and steer it the way you want. If you're going upstream, you're trying to pedal, you're
trying to push, the harder you push, the harder it gets. Nope, not a good way to go. That's
where the stop chasing leads. Stop chasing anything. How often do you hear, even in the
job ads, people asking for a hunter type sales guy?
Okay, I had a post on LinkedIn recently about, if a sales guy is a hunter, does that mean
that the client is a prey? Do you want to be the prey? Do you want to feel that someone
is hunting you? I don't.
I mean, okay, that goes. Why the heck are we trying to find someone and we are identifying
the role of a salesperson as a hunter if we don't want our prospects to feel like a prey?
How about we build some authority on the market? How about we talk like me and you are talking
now? Why is my product or service good? It's simple. There is a reason. What is the reason?
Why you started doing? What are you doing? What is your motivator? How about use that
as a sales strategy? As your revenue generating strategy?
That's what we're all about.
Get into one well-oiled engine that is led by a CEO, build a CEO authority, build a
personal brand, get your message out there. Don't just do a lot of brands, especially
a lot of startups, are mostly focusing on their product marketing. My product is the
best because the feature is this and this. My product is the best. And here is an example
of a consulting company that made 100,000 revenue, blah, blah, blah.
Even if they hit the benefit right though, Nicola, so did 100,000 other competitors.
So why you versus them? And that is the scariest thing to face for a lot of entrepreneurs.
And so I love that, you know, I mean, granted, that's why we call this vision pros, right?
Because we understand the value and the importance of the vision in the front end. But I remember
I was working with a, and I won't name her, of course, but I was working with a therapist
and the unique selling proposition that they came up with was I change people's lives.
And one of the most dramatic, scary realizations for her was when I said, how many other therapists
in your city alone will say that their unique selling proposition is I change people's lives.
And the look of sheer horror and panic on this woman's face, I'll never forget. And
the feeling of inadequacy, which was really sad because she wasn't, you know, but she
wasn't unique. It was an important aspect, but it was nothing unique about it.
And she was thinking that she's coming up with something that is bolsy, that is bold,
that is provocative. Yes. And she's feeling the need to wear the
chief marketing officer hat, take the hat off, be a therapist, you know, allow people
to help you in the things you don't understand. It's not your job to understand it fully.
That's not your job to figure out how to do it. It should be what understand it.
Exactly. Don't try, don't try to wear the hat that doesn't fit you. People want to work
with you. People will hear your message if you're acting like a therapist. They don't
want to work with someone who is wearing CMO hat and saying, I'm a therapist. Right. What
are you? You're not a CMO. And I have strong doubts that you're even a therapist.
Right. And I mean, you bring up such great points with that. The leadership, you know,
when you're wearing all the hats, people can see it and they can feel it. And then they're
going to know that you don't have the capacity to help them at the same level as a therapist
who's actually built a structured organization where they don't need constant therapy for
their own challenges because they don't have any order in their life. Sorry. You know,
but that's, that's the case of. There is another thing. There is another thing that I would
challenge in that marketing concept of, uh, is do people really want their life changed?
Depends on the person, I guess. Imagine exactly. But imagine putting that as your leading sales
pitch. I will change your life. Right. Imagine getting in a meeting. Now let's in a, in a
therapist role, it's kind of hard to relate, but let's put it in a corporate, a little
bit more safer, uh, surrounding. So let's say a corporate surrounding and we're selling
consulting services, which kind of can be, can relate to being a therapist. Uh, so you
get in front of the CEO, you come to the CEO and you're leading sales pitch. I will change
the way your company works. Right. Exactly. You're out of that office. Who are you to
do that? Right. Exactly. You know, most people, most people don't want Jesus to change their
life or Mohammed or anything. So when you're coming up with that type of phrase and idea,
that is scary because I don't want to put my hands, my hands, I don't have my life into
your hands. I don't know you well enough to make that type of commitment. I'm not even
gonna let my mom change my life. Um, you know, like it's my life to run. So well said, man,
this was so awesome. I look forward to having you back someday. Nicole, I think we could
probably do some type of event on marketing, um, and really dive into some mechanical details
of like if, you know, structure, what, what can people do to apply these concepts even
further? But if people want to connect with you, what's the best way to connect with you?
Email LinkedIn phone. There is all possible, there is all possible networks and I'm, I'm,
yeah, I'm active on LinkedIn. I'm, uh, I respond to my emails. I actually read my emails. Awesome.
Well, it's been great to have you today on the show. Vision pros. Those of you who are
listening, if you would love to share your own vision, um, we started a debate, something
similar about vision, feel free to apply for the show. We'd, we'd be happy to consider
bringing you on. And, uh, if you want to connect with Nicola or myself, you can also drop a
comment, um, a comment or a question. If you have feedback for us too, things that we can
be doing better, we would love the feedback. We're all about serving as many people as
possible with this, uh, making sure we're providing the right type of value, likes,
comments, subscribers, all that super helpful to help everybody has a fantastic day and
a wonderful Thanksgiving as well. Nicola, thank you for being my honored guest, man. Thank
you, Jackson. Thank you for being here today. I'm really happy that you tuned into 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.