25: Content Vs Context

hey everybody it's john barrows happy monday to make it happen mondays and i'm doing this once again from the backyard of casa barrows here because inside of my house is getting redone with hardwood floors and painting and a new bathroom and all that stuff so the amount of noise that's happening inside my house right now uh would make this quite annoying so we're going to do this from the beautiful backyard the weather here in boston is fantastic hope you all had a great weekend are ready to close out the quarter strong we got about two two weeks left in the quarter here so you got to focus on closing out deals but also remember q4 is probably the strongest for most of us we got to make sure that we look at our pipeline and realize which deals are real and which ones we should be focusing on as well as do some prospecting to make sure that january isn't a dud so with that um yeah a couple of things from last week hopefully if you're all for all you football fans out there hopefully your team did well uh obviously my patriots didn't on the home opener on thursday night they pretty much embarrassed themselves um which is as ridiculous as and pissed off as i was uh learning about that it's probably the best thing that could have happened to them because expectations i think people were at least here in new england were uh talking about 18-0 and all that stuff and when you walk into a season with that big of a head you know uh nothing but bad can happen so anyways i'm kind of glad they got punched in the face and brought back down to reality because that gives belichick and brady all the fuel they need to just grind that team and and you know get them to figure out what's going on here so one game at a time just as always with belichick um today though we're going to be talking about one of my favorite topics which is content versus context so i'm going to be talking about why that's important for us as sales professionals uh riff on that for a little bit but obviously as always feel free to chime in with questions i'll answer any question you have at any aspect or part of the sales process uh or as it relates to what we're talking about here so context versus content when i first came across this uh concept if you will gary vaynerchuk uh brought it up and it's actually what got me uh interested in gary v in the first place i think it was one of the first videos i saw from him about a year and a half two years ago and he talked a lot about well what he said was look everybody talks about content is king right content is king and i've been saying that for a long time with content marketing and all this other stuff it's you know content is king and whoever has the best content wins and and i think when account-based marketing really started to hit and content marketing really started to hit um what's up colin uh but i think when that hit that was correct i i think the best content usually rose to the top and and differentiated you but now that the market has been so flooded with content it's not necessarily the case anymore um but regardless it talked they talked about content is king this is again what gary said he said look fine if content is king then con text is god and that got me thinking about marketing versus sales right marketing is content sales is context if we as sales professionals are not putting any context around our content then we are absolutely no different than marketing and i have no idea why we're getting paid to do what we do so for instance i'll give you some examples here this is why i mean you've heard me talk about this ad nauseum as far as death of the average sales rep about how i think the average sales rep is going to i don't think i know they're dying a painful death right now they're getting replaced through technology right the ones who are blasting out template emails you know through their cadence tools or whatever um the ones who are you know making generic cold calls with a script or asking just bant questions and going through the motions there or pressing play on demos all that stuff that to me is content and those are the those are the ones that are going to get replaced because there's no i don't see the difference here in marketing and actually i think marketing can do most of that stuff better than we can because marketing is actually going to pay attention to the details where we're not you know marketing for instance when they send out those template emails they're going to split test them they're going to look to see hey what message is resonating and make the tweaks and adjustments and they're going to see that or if they do a demo online for instance they're going to look at that demo and say where do people click through where do they spend the most time on it all that stuff where sales reps aren't going to do that and so that to me is content and and again as sales reps if we're not given that context what's the point so let's talk about emails for an example you know emails that are are you know people are just droning through and blasting out template emails the context i'm talking about is maybe taking some of those emails and and add you know maybe the marketing material is fine but coming out and saying hey john um this material that i have from a marketing standpoint this is why i think it's relevant to you personally okay now i know we can't personalize every single email we send out or every phone call we make i understand that but at least put some context like why is this relevant to me as a as a vp of sales in the training industry for instance or as a ceo in the training industry um same thing with with cold calls right i mean reading a script that's just regurgitating i could record that on a thing and send that out a million times in a in a recorded thing trust me i get them right all the time cold calls from vendors and suppliers of mortgage companies and stuff um put some context do a little bit of homework see what's going on as far as you know something about me that you can put some relevance to to say hey john you know the reason i'm calling is because i read something about you i saw something same thing with social selling here all right it drives me crazy when people just like retweet a 39 page ebook right or it's uh they say they don't say anything about it like they just keep reposting other people's content with no context around it like why is that content important to you why do you think it's relevant you know how many 39 page ebooks i have in my things to read folder i don't know about you guys i got a things to read folder it's the largest folder in my entire inbox and i haven't read a single thing in there so but why not take that 39 page ebook read it and then tweet it out there and say hey really good 39 page ebook here you know if you're a vp of sales in the sas industry trying to integrate social selling into your routine why don't you know take a look at pages 22 to 35 because that's really where the core value of this ebook is and it talks about some very tactical things it's like okay cool or here's one webinars you know how many webinars i sign up for i sign up for hundreds of webinars do you do you know how many i attend zero you know why because i know right after that webinar i'm going to get that email from the marketing department or whoever that says hey sorry you missed the webinar uh here's a link to it you know let me know if you have any questions or something like that and it's going to go my things to read folder and i'm never going to look at it again but if a rep were to ever ever ever ever um take that webinar like say i say i signed up for the webinar and i missed it and if you as a rep would then say hey john i saw you sign up for the webinar i noticed you missed it um i wanted to reach out to you if you start listening to this webinar at minute 15 and go from minute 15 to 32 or you know 22 or something like that that's really where the core value of this webinar is and because it talks about these things and that's why i thought you might find this interesting if a rep would ever do that to me i would immediately start looking at them differently right um same thing i had a rep approach me a little while ago i was doing a call blitz with a team and and this one rep came up and he said hey john um i need some advice here man i just did this campaign uh where we sent books to executives right they fedexed books to executives and you know it was like 25 of them or something like that and he's like i didn't get one response i was like oof that sucks you know that's an expensive campaign to get zero responses from right um but you know so i was like all right well let me kind of sit down and look at your contact strategy like what's the story that you told this person outside of just sending them a book and then following up and saying did you get my book you know what was the strategy there but my first question to him was just out of curiosity you know before we get started here did you read the book and the rep was like well no well then why did you send it you know like you know how many books i have on my bookshelf upstairs that i haven't even cracked the binding for i don't need some random ass sales rep to send me some random book because their boss said it was or said it had something to do with social selling or sales or something like that but if you're gonna do that here's an example i mean if you guys follow me you know one of the things i preach about is is trying to figure out a way to try to drive recurring value to my my audience so that i can create recurring revenue for myself so i can eventually get off of a plane a plane one of these days and spend more time with my daughter and my wife right i mean my daughter's seven years old i'm really trying to figure out how i can be home more okay so i talk about that a lot i blog about it i tweet about it i you know i snapchat about it those type of things and so if a rep was paying attention and and i don't know if you guys have read the four hour work week the the book one of the most famous books out there about really managing your time efficiently and doing some uh offloading of responsibilities and outsourcing stuff if a rep were to kind of follow me and then read that book and then send it to me and say hey john you know it i was i was reading the other day the four hour work week and you know i know you talk a lot about trying to create recurring value and recurring revenue so you can get off of a plane well i was reading four hour work week and it was really interesting to me because chapter seven talked about these things and some very tactical things that you could do to help you know try to get yourself off a plane i thought you might appreciate this if a rep would ever do that and i'm not saying do that don't do that to me by the way if if you're listening to this podcast please don't send me the four hour work week i've already read it i get it i appreciate it though um but if a rep were to do that um i i would immediately start looking at them differently right that context around that content is so important and my final one i'll give you the example of that bugs the shit out of me in every way and by the way daniel i tend to agree with you i i've rarely come across a 39 page ebook that i've thought was any decent at all but let's talk about demos i hate demos i can't stand demos because every demo is exactly the same exactly the same you know most reps what they'll do is they'll say you know say it's a 30 minute so back up i go through a lot of demos on a weekly basis because i'm a i'm a one-man show i'm not a real good lead for anybody but i obviously work with some decent clients like salesforce linkedin and all that stuff and so a lot of these sales tool companies want to show me their newest tool or whatever it is so i can introduce it to my audience right so and look i want to see the newest coolest technologies out there that's what i'm trying to figure out that's part of the value i bring to my audience and and to my clients but and so i don't know i go through three four five demos on a weekly basis but every one of them is exactly the same every one of them hey john is this still a good time so first of all when somebody picks up the phone for a scheduled appointment do not ask them if this is still a good time why would you give me that out it's actually you know what i gotta go to the bathroom right now you know why don't we reschedule this for a little bit later but they always this is still a good time okay well i got about a 30 minute demo here that i'd like to go through with you and if you have any questions about it um as we go through it just let me know okay and then press and they press play and they go through every single slide like they were trained for in boot camp and got their badge for and then they pause intermittently and say stuff like does that make sense does that make sense by the way has anybody ever said no to that question anybody ever you ever been doing a demo where you've said does that make sense and somebody's been like holy shit dude i have no idea what you just said there no no clue and by the way when i used to ask does that make sense nine times out of ten i'd be asking myself that question i'd be i'd be like does that make sense because i don't think it did i was just rambling there for the past 15-20 minutes and i really have no idea what i just said so so you know they say does that make sense let me get the oh yeah that makes sense and at the end after going through a canned demo i say oh thank you so much for your time today you know do you have any questions and 99 of the time when you go through a canned demo like that that isn't doesn't have context around what the client needs or what their priorities are um at the end the client will say you know what that looks really interesting you know it sounds really interesting why don't you uh could you send me the slide deck or the presentation and follow me in a couple weeks and we'll take it from there or by the way and i've written about this if you ever hear this word at the end of one of your demos you know you've done a miserable job and it's the word digest you know where you hear you know what john i don't need a little time to digest what you just said to me right just there it's like if you ever hear that word apologize to the person that you just wasted their time because it is our job as sales professionals to help our clients digest the information if they're walking out more confused than they were walking in we've done a terrible job as a sales professional so instead of that which i think is content by the way if you just drone through your slide deck and in your presentation and like and barely even qualify the account before you do it first of all you're a lazy sales rep because what you're saying there is the demo and the product is actually way more uh necessary in this process that than i am as a sales rep right so you're really discrediting yourselves out of the gate by just relying on the presentation and you're not engaging with anybody right that to me is content and as a marketer with a marketer background for me like i can create a better presentation than you can through online click-throughs and avatars and whatever right so context on a demo is hopefully it's been pre-qualified up until the point where you are giving that demo and it's a customized demo anyways but if it's not say you got a demo that lasts 30 minutes nobody wants to listen to every single thing in that 30 minute demo okay i sold to i wrote a blog post a little while ago called sell to the 20 percent which means you know i fundamentally believe that the majority of people pick a product or service that you buy right i almost guarantee you you only use about 10 to 20 percent of the functionality of whatever that is right i mean think of your iphone right uh that thing has more power in it than we use to send somebody to the moon and yet most people just you know snapchat and look at their facebook and maybe respond to a few emails excel think about excel microsoft excel it's one of the more powerful tools out there if you really know how to use excel but most people just add some right whatever so because i think most people only use 10 to 20 percent of what they're what they purchase that's how i believe people buy and by the way if they aren't buying that way i think they're doing it wrong because there's really 10 to 20 percent that's going to make a difference and usually that is the stuff that aligns with my priorities that aligns with what i'm trying to accomplish as a business so for instance context versus content content is you delivering those you know those 30 slides or the 30 pages uh 30 minute presentation one slide all the way through and not really pot and doing does that make sense context is hey thanks so much for your time today um one of the first things i wanted to do is just i want to go around and get an intro now whether this is over the phone or in person uh just quick introduction and and what do you want to get out of today's presentation what are your some of your priorities that you're really trying to address here because i could talk all day long about my solutions but i really want to focus this presentation on the parts that are most relevant to you because i you know i got about a 30 slide or a 30 you know minute presentation here you know i'd like to cut this down about 10 to 15 minutes that is and make it as relevant to you as possible so hopefully the client appreciates that right because you can say look i have two approaches to this presentation i can go through all these slides and go through the 30 minutes at the end if you want and see does that make sense or we can spend the first five to ten minutes talking about your priorities and what you want to get out of this and then i can really kind of focus on the parts of this presentation that are most relevant which would you rather do hopefully they'll say the latter right if they say the former they're probably just kicking tires and and going through the emotions anyway so i'd be a little worried about that regardless but you do that and then say oh and also so after you go through and understand their priorities and what they want to get out of that presentation then you let them know okay you know what as we go through this presentation i'm going to pause at certain parts of the presentation i'm just going to look for your feedback so you let them know it's coming so you don't want to embarrass anybody right by just calling them out and having them be like oh no sorry i wasn't paying attention effectively so you let them know that's happening and then as you go through your presentation you start you know you kind of skip through some of the stuff that's not as relevant and then you hyper focus on the areas that are most relevant to their priorities and what they told you and then pause and then instead of saying stuff like does that make sense you say something like you know what you had said earlier that one of your priorities was this well this is the part of our solution that really aligns with that and has an impact there so again instead of does that make sense you say so help me understand could you give me an example or could you share with me how this would fit into your existing workflow or your existing process or could you give me an example or explain to me how you see this comparing to what you're doing now because the way that they explain to you how it compares to what they're doing now or how this would fit into their existing workflow tells you everything you need to know on whether or not it makes sense all right so again that's an example of content versus context i would so much rather go through a demo of a rep who had a conversation with me up front and then took their presentation and cut it down to the most relevant parts that i think are you know that'll help me achieve my goals it's like when i do training with any of you who have been through my training you'll know that you know the typical trainers the way that you're taught to do sales training or training in front of a group is you start with a little icebreaker ha ha ha get the cloud your class right you know laughing or whatever and then you start droning through your powerpoint presentation and when somebody asks you that random question that's off topic you say you know what that's a great question um i'm going to put that on the parking lot over here and if we have any time left at the end of the presentation i'll be happy to address that is that fair right and you're like oh look at it you know he put it up on the board and he paid attention to me but then they never leave time at the end of the presentation to address that so that's the way trainers are trained to train um my approach is a lot different i spend the first hour and a half going through a quick intro what do you guys want to get out of this and diving into content immediately that is directly relevant to whatever that rep just said hey john i'm having a hard time with gatekeepers or i'm having a hard time with this objection if i can learn something about that i'd appreciate it so now instead of waiting until the you know mid-afternoon when objection handling part comes up i dive into it right there i'm like well here's some ideas around objection handling a couple of different techniques to use and then go to the next person because what i'm trying to show there is value in the first like hour of the presentation the first hour of my training because that's what gets people hooked in for the rest of the presentation it's the same thing with sales calls whether again whether they're over the phone or they're done in person you've got to get them bought in in the first five ten minutes by showing value and by engaging with them and if you just start by hey thanks for coming in and start droning through your powerpoint you'll lose them almost immediately and you'll see them they'll start checking your iphone when you say does that make sense you'll get the uh-huh yep knowing that you were just on mute and they were checking their voicemails or they were checking their emails i mean that's what i do by the way when somebody everybody does this uh is when i get a demo there's two skype two screens uh one is my main screen here and then the other's my my laptop and usually on my laptop i have my my email up and on your on this big screen i have your demo and as soon as i can tell that this rep is going through the motions with their demo i go from that screen to this screen i put you on holder i put you on mute and i check my emails and then i unmute every once in a while going yep uh-huh sure sounds good yep sounds good because that's content you could have sent me a link with that recording and you would have actually done a better job you probably would have gotten further with me because it would have saved me some time and i could have listened to it on my time instead of listening to you drabble on all right so that context versus content is relevant at every stage of what we do prospecting brand building your personal brand i talk a lot about that personal brand sorry there's a bird behind me going crazy um but uh your personal brands about you know how do you build your personal brand well it's not about just you know getting as many twitter followers as possible by putting as much content out there as you can by you know retweeting and all that other stuff that has nothing to do with it that's actually bad um if you get 10,000 twitter followers that don't do anything and don't engage with you in any way then that's not as good as 10 followers that actually do something when you tweet about it right so i wrote a post last week about how my mind how my mind switched when it came to um social selling when a lot of it started where it switched was me paying attention and leveraging social to educate myself first and then when i read something and i learned something about it that's when i would share it with an audience like twitter and linkedin and say hey anybody really um you know focus on on these type of things you should really take a look at this article because it's really important and this is how that's how that context or or or even disagreeing with an article you know if you want to get some engagement man disagree with an article online like read an article think about it give your response be like i actually disagree with what john said there uh and this is why right that's what starts putting you in the position to be the thought leader that's what puts you in the position to have people start paying attention to you so that context is important right um then there's the the demo and the presentation context is important the the sales even how you present your proposal right do you align what the client's priorities were with what your proposal is and really prioritize those things of what's important one of the things i never did early on in my career or i got away from doing and i'm back on doing now is obviously i want to know what the priorities are from a business standpoint what are you trying to accomplish so i can align my solution with that but i also want to know what the priorities are of this decision like when you're like what are the what is the decision criteria and and what is the priorities like what's most important in this decision process and least important in this decision process and then as i learn that i align my solution the 20 percent with those priorities and that's how i develop my proposals the other stuff is in there don't get me wrong but it's more of a appendix or an attachment or something like that not a highlight in the presentation or the proposal okay so i'm really i'm begging you to think about this context versus content thing and and ask yourself are you just putting content out there are could a marketing engine do this better you know as good if not better than you and if the answer to that is yes pause for a minute and just say what am i doing what value am i bringing to to the audience right now and and how can i put some even just a little bit of context on top of this all right so that was really my main points for today as far as the context versus content again if you're not following gary follow him um he's doing some really cool stuff on social i'm trying to actually follow a lot of what he's doing if you notice what i'm doing as far as building my brand um i'm doing similar things as gary because he's got a proven model around it um but that's why you see the snapchat stuff that's why you see the instagram stuff that's why you see the store right because i it's all about bringing value to the your to to your audience and you know and then having something for the people who want to buy something great uh but don't there's still enough content out there that you can go and and leverage it to help produce some results so make sure you hit up um you know for the free stuff go to my website i just redesigned it my blog page i redesigned specifically with the idea of putting better content out there and making it easier to digest there's the word digest um but uh go to jbarrels.com with the blog and then um also with the blog and the videos is my resource library on my website where there's tons of videos um that i really chop up all my content that i charge people for so go out there take a look at and then obviously you want to buy something buy it uh but the store um that's the make it happen you like this gear here i know it's backwards on the iphone but whatever all most of that goes to charity anyways i'm just doing that for some fun we're coming out with a book and some uh notepads and stuff like that so keep an eye out for that and i got some huge announcements uh coming up here in q4 so october october 21st uh be on the lookout for a pretty big announcement coming my way uh about a re-release of something and then right before dreamforce november 1st uh there's another big announcement that uh i'm shifting a whole bunch of stuff here in my mentality of what i'm trying to do uh try to take things to another level so as far as questions we got about five minutes left here uh there was one question i saw on the um on the facebook page that you asked and the person said hey john as a business owner how much time should i be spending prospecting you know and that's a it's a tough question to answer because um i don't know the context here's a perfect example i don't know the context of of uh your role but you know as a guideline here you know as a former vp of sales slash business owner of an organization uh you know that you juggle a lot of stuff right and i'm a business owner of my own thing and so i have to deliver my content i have to do stuff like this i have to have meetings with clients i have to do customer service stuff uh finance marketing kind of all that stuff as a business owner and so prospecting tends to fall down pretty low on the list but i'll tell you right now um prospecting is probably one of the no i won't say probably is i think the most important thing that you can do as a business owner to keep your business going right because at the end of the day if you can't find more customers uh you're not gonna be in business for long and so my recommendation just like you've heard it before on these videos uh and these uh podcasts here is to do at least an hour a day build it into your routine so quick summary here is find what is that ideal customer profile look like for you right not just size and industry but really what is a truly good client look like for you go find a list of like 25 of them or so and then go follow those companies on tools like owl or sales navigator google alerts whatever even facebook and twitter right and create this morning routine just like mine right i have a morning routine from 7 30 to 8 30 so every morning i get up at around 5 30 6 o'clock you know try to do a little bit of working out um push-ups sit-ups those type of things go go to dunkin donuts grab my you know iced coffee and and come back and from 7 30 to 8 30 all i'm doing is scanning through data feeds and i'm looking at like triggers and things that are happening in my in my target accounts right they open up a new office they launch a new product and i probably only fire off three four five really high quality emails every single day but i do it consistently uh and that's what kind of keeps the prospecting engine going for me and you know i'll get a response or two you know at least a response or two once a week by sending two or three emails every single day to my tier one accounts right and look i mean i get one of those tier one accounts it tends to make my quarter if nothing else so that's what i would recommend as a business owner is building it into your routine but also having the information come to you as opposed to you always having to go out and do research on accounts um and then just always be selling in the sense that to carry that hit list around with you no matter where you go so when you're in partnership discussions or networking events and that type of thing when somebody says yeah sure let's share some business why don't you go back to your office and see if you have anybody that you know would be good for me to talk to and i'll do the same instead of that noise take out your hit list and be like hey great sounds like a plan could you do me a favor could you look at anybody on this list do you know anybody on this list because these are the clients that i'm really trying to get in touch with makes networking and lead gen a lot builds it into your process as a business owner okay i mean i started a company uh back when i was 24 years old and i was always at every event i was at every networking group i was selling all the time in addition to everything else that i was doing and i'm still doing the same thing today and i still prospect almost every day because again i found one solution to pretty much every other problem at every other sales stage of the sales process and it's a big fat pipeline you got a big fat pipeline the rest of that stuff you know does you don't have to try too hard on the rest of that stuff you know negotiation objection handling discounting all that stuff becomes a lot easier with a big fat pipeline so we're wrapping things up here um but hopefully by the way uh if you do like this and if you've been listening to this on on facebook live or you know you catch this on facebook we've turned this make it happen mondays into a podcast so go on to the apple store uh or go on to the apple podcast and search for it you'll find it um it's uh we're getting it out there we're getting some really good feedback i'm trying to get into podcasts myself because i realized this this past weekend i was into podcasts but not as much but now they're great i'm really going to get into them because i realized how dependent i am on social small sidebar story here uh you know i was in germany last week and so i missed the patriots home opener so i did i was like you know what i got a dvr'd at home i'm gonna dvr'd i told my wife and daughter don't watch it we're all gonna watch it together on friday night when i come home and so i i was like see you later i'm not gonna be on social anymore everybody i'll see you i'm gone for a day right so i did everything i could to avoid social i avoided snapchat i avoided instagram i avoided avoided facebook everything which is way harder than you think it is when you're so ingrained in it right and i did it i got home i every i didn't hear about the score i didn't check any updates so i was like i was fresh clean ready to watch the game and as i walk in my the door i'm like gonna go to my daughter i'm like hey you ready to uh you're gonna watch the game tonight it's gonna be super exciting right and she's like oh daddy you didn't hear and i was like no and so she so she kind of ruined it for ultimately ruined it but it was probably the best thing because then i didn't have to sit through you know two hours of watching the patriots lay an egg but anyways my point is i'm gonna get more into podcasts and listen to more of these podcasts to kind of break the time up while i'm traveling and so that's why i put the podcast out there so it's not just facebook uh it's the exact uh exact stuff transcribed onto podcast so download that let me know what you think about it um help me share it out there i'd really appreciate it uh again any likes or shares on any of the stuff i put out there is always greatly appreciated and if you have any questions feel free to send me an email john at j barrows hit me up on snapchat uh it's john m as in michael barrows both twitter snapchat and instagram i'm always open to answering questions and trying to put as much value out there as possible all right make it a great week everybody again focus on what you can control eat effort attitude and how we treat people okay make it a great week make it love you all later so so oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh Bye.