90: Buyer Intent Data - Ed Marsh

Thanks for listening. If you're enjoying the podcast, share it with your co-workers on Slack. Just don't give them an ad channel. Good afternoon, everybody. This is John Barrows with Make It Happen Monday. Hopefully, you all had a fantastic weekend. I'm excited to introduce my guest today, Ed Marsh over at Concilium Global Business Advisors. Ed, how's it going, my friend? How are you? It's going good, John. It's going good. Thank you. I appreciate you having me here today. No problem. Ed, you want to give the audience a little bit of a background on how we know each other? Because this has been a long time. I mean, it was kind of a blast in the past when you reached out to me. Because this was like my first real job that I was doing anything.

You want to give a little story on that one? You were early in your sales career. You had just started selling. Of course, it's clear in retrospect where you are today, why I bought from you. Because you were figuring stuff out very quickly. And I think you've got a certain innate understanding of it. But back, you were selling managed IT services. And that was probably, and I would guess, I don't know, 2004 or something like that, I bought from you. So how was your customer? That's how we met. I was definitely cutting my teeth back then. I didn't know what the hell I was doing. So I was just grinding as hard as I could. But, you know, to your point, trying to figure things out quick, right?

You know, failing fast and learning those type of things. So I'm still grinding. But those are my grow-up days. So I appreciate reconnecting here. So talk to me a little bit about what Consilium is doing these days. Just to give the audience some context of where we're coming. Because the topic that we're going to hit on today, which I think is an extremely important one and a very emerging one right now, which is intent data. So talk to me a little bit about what's Consilium all about and where's your angle on this? Absolutely. So my business really has three legs. Number one, I'm a keynote speaker. Number two, I'm a consultant and I work with middle market B2B companies, often in the industrial manufacturing space.

And number three, I've got a product called Sales Fracking Intent Data, which is completely different than the others. Actually, a classmate of mine from Johns Hopkins, you know, one of these brilliant guys that conceived a way to build an algorithm that nobody else has done. So sometimes the intent data overlaps with my consulting. Sometimes it doesn't. But where I speak to trade associations, I consult for middle market industrial manufacturers. And typically, I'm selling intent data to SaaS and tech companies, you know, rapid growth kinds of tech companies. There's a lot of BDRs, SDRs, and AEs. So let's talk about intent data because we were talking before we started hitting record here on, you know, my eyes have been a little bit open recently on two customers that I've actually worked with that do this.

So TechTarget, right? I did some training for them probably about six months ago. And they have their, they have like, I don't know, 180 landing pages, whatever it is, where if somebody goes to that landing page, they gather information, they give it to people. Whereas G2 Crowd, which I trained recently, they actually, you know, we talked about this, I didn't realize G2 Crowd is like the 250 most traffic website on the internet, which is bananas. And it tells you when somebody is searching for your type of stuff, right? So could you kind of give your definition of what is intent data? And then let's kind of dive into the different types of intent data. Yes, absolutely. So you and I will remember, I don't know how many of your listeners will, but it used to be you'd sit across the table from somebody and, you know, are they crossing their arms?

Are they leaning forward? How quickly do they respond to your voicemail? That kind of stuff, that's intent data. Now, today, intent data has to be collected and observed virtually, but it's still the same thing. It's what actions are people demonstrating to indicate they're interested, they're engaged, they're actively looking for something. And then how, I mean, the corollary to that is not only what is it, how do you collect it, but then how do you use it? And I think we'll probably spend some time talking about that, too. Yeah, I think that, and that's, it's funny you bring that up, because it really did used to be, you know, reading people. Like, did they lean in with your question? You know, that meant they were interested.

Or even stuff like objections. You know, objections are intent data, because that tells me that, like, if you weren't objecting, that means you're not interested in this. Right. If you're objecting, that means you're interested. So there's intent there, right? So, you know, I talk about intent data in the sense of, I don't necessarily, actually, I wouldn't even consider it intent data. When we do training, it is, you know, and I'm evolving to quite a bit, but it's more about going on somebody's website, looking at their LinkedIn profile, trying to understand, trying to gain insights into their intent based on certain things that are happening in their business or certain things they say. Right.

So I can look at your LinkedIn profile. Well, I can look at your Twitter account. And based on some of the stuff that you're tweeting about or commenting on, I can infer that maybe, you know, this would be a good option. But it's really based on, hey, I saw you did that. And the reason I wanted to reach out to you is because a lot of my clients who do that leverage my solution in this way. I don't want to talk to you about it. Right. That's a very kind of guessing game oriented intent data. So you talk about like the three, the three, the three types of intent data. Could you walk through first party, second party, third party? Absolutely. And I think it's an important distinction that's often misunderstood.

And in fact, even people really deeply ingrained in the marketing community, this is such a nascent area. There isn't a lot of good agreement around it. Engageo recently produced a map of ABM related software and tools and had it in a very different category, I think, than if people in the intent data space would put it. So there's a lot of confusion about it. So first party intent data is what's happening on your own property. What pages is somebody looking at? What high buying intent pages, in other words, the pricing page or the terms and conditions page are they looking at? How often do they open your emails? How often do they click them? Are they forwarding them? All that kind of stuff.

Are they following you on social media? Are they following your company on social media? Are they talking about the kinds of problems you help solve? That kind of stuff that you can directly observe on your own properties. That's first party intent data. Now, the beauty of it is, in some cases, it's going to be anonymous. You know, if you have just a visitor that you maybe have cookie but hasn't converted yet, you don't know who they are. But in most cases, it's going to be known who that person is. And so that then lets you, as a salesperson, absolutely tailor your approaches. And you combine that with a basic blocking and tackling kind of research that you were talking about. And you've got a really powerful foundation for how to begin to work with somebody.

Second party attention. Can I pause on that for a second, Ed? Because you said a lot of stuff there that I think the audience, I want to make sure the audience pays attention to. Because this is a great way for the audience, the typical SDR, BDR, AE, to prioritize who they're going after. And, you know, look, if you have like a Marketo or an Eloqua and it gives you point scores, and that's kind of conceptually what we're talking about here. But also, you know, a lot more reps have those tools that show how many people open up their emails. So, as an example, what you could do is you could send out, say, and I'm not a mass blast email guy here, but say you have a very targeted email that goes to a very specific persona.

Send out 100 emails that go to that persona. Then, see who opens those emails and how many times. And then, so next week, look at that data and say, okay, out of the 100 I sent, you know, maybe I got a couple of responses, whatever. But, like, 30 of them actually clicked on it, and then 20 of them clicked on it more than once and maybe forwarded it. So, now, instead of trying to personalize to the 100, now I'm going to personalize to the 20, right? And that's on the prospecting end. Let me give you a similar example on the sales end. So, let's say somebody keeps coming back to your website, and you can look at the data and see that 17 times they've looked at the enterprise solution page, and three times they've looked at the, you know, the pro solution page.

And then they reach out to you and they say they want a quote on the pro solution. Well, you know, you know that they really want, there's something about the enterprise they want or need, but they think they can't afford it or their company want to approve it or it's going to be too expensive. So, if you say, geez, you know, how about enterprise, I'm going to say, no, no, no, I don't need that. But if you say, geez, you know, experience tells me a lot of times companies often need some of the capability. They love to get it, but they've got experience where enterprise implementations are so complicated and take so long and they don't want to go there. Is there anything that you're missing in this pro version that we're going to be talking about?

Companies often really need this kind of capability. So, you can lead the conversation in a way with great questions based on that intent data that you've seen. That first party intent data on your own site. I love that. It's like, it's my unfortunate, like I suck at buying. So, I'm great at negotiating when you're buying something from me. I suck at buying from, like, I'm the worst negotiator when it comes, because I just, I have empathy for the sales rep, unless you're being a douche. Like, I don't, you know, take your commissions, right? But I remember one of my first, like, major purchases when I went to buy a car, you know, it was the Acura. This was back in 2005 or 2006. And it was the Acura RL or the TL.

And I only had, quote, unquote, budget for the TL, right? I went in thinking, I'm going to get the TL, whatever it is. But I walked in and sure as shit, you know, on the floor, on the showroom floor was the RL. And it was tricked out and everything like that. And I kind of looked at it. And obviously, you know, the sales rep came over to me. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, I want to take a look at the TL. You know, that's the one. He's like, well, why don't we give the RL just a ride? Why don't we try that first? And sure as shit, I bought the RL. And that was intent data they picked up on, you know, going back to that in-person kind of stuff. Yeah. So, that's first party. That's first party. What's second party?

Yeah. So, second party is very similar, but it's happening on somebody else's site, somebody else's property. And, you know, it's in some cases, it may be a site like G2 Crowd or in some cases like TechTarget. And the user terms in each of those cases will impact how much information they can share. In some cases, it's only anonymous because their opt-in and privacy doesn't allow them to share contact details. In others, it's very clearly part of the privacy terms that they will share, you know, for specific kinds of marketing offers. The point is that those are within the parameter of their site or their syndicated sites. So, if you've got a phenomenal Alexa rank and you're the 250th biggest site in the world and you're getting a lot of people there looking at stuff, there's a lot of important information.

But it's only based on what's on that site. And there's a limit to how many permutations of flavors and variations of pages and kinds of intent signals that are there. So, second party is often really attractive because you often get the information on who the person is. But the tradeoff is that it's for a limited scope. Now, if you're only selling enterprise software, it could be that between TechTarget and G2 Crowd, you get as much as you need. But it strikes me that if there's, what is it, 650 million websites in the world and all of this other information out there, there's probably stuff happening outside of those own platforms that might be helpful signal. That kind of brings us to the third party.

And third party intent data is what's happening everywhere else. So, in other words, not just on TechTarget where they know who's on their site, they've cookied the users, they've got registered users, they know what you're looking at, why you're looking at it, how long you're looking at it, how often, what you're downloading, what you're opening, et cetera, et cetera. But broadly across the internet, who's interacting with content, who's taking action on certain kinds of key terms that you know are related to the problems that you solve, or who's looking for products or services like you sell, who's interacting with your competitors' content, who's sharing it, commenting on it, pushing it out, and sharing it with their colleagues.

Understanding who's taking action with your competitors becomes a really important sort of an intense signal, too. And actually, again, pause there for a second because I want to make sure people heard that. You know, I think it's a great idea to follow your competitors, pick your top five hardest competitors, follow them on Twitter, follow them on LinkedIn, and go see who is interacting with them. And then extract that to realize, oh, okay. And maybe even marry that up with who's following you, right, to see if there is some stuff there and where's the gaps, and then go after those people because they're obviously actively interested and engaged in that type of content. Exactly. Exactly. And so that's intent data.

Now, if you're following them on social media, that gives you one perspective. But who's engaging with their content? Who's commenting on their blogs? Who's passing their content around, you know, to colleagues and stuff like that? And, of course, with competitors, it's fascinating not only from a complex sales perspective, you know, if you're in the middle of a deal and trying to get it done, but target accounts. You know, we can't all be working all our target accounts actively all the time. Great to get that trigger. You know, geez, this person's interacting. And how about current customers, whether you're talking about reducing churn or even cross-sell upsell opportunities? And, you know, we'll talk about that a little bit more probably in a minute.

But third-party intent data then is about everything, everywhere on the internet where people are taking action. The traditional limitation has been that it's anonymous. And so if you're trying to sell to a company that's got 5,000 employees and you see that somebody from that IP address took some action, somebody, some person, what do you do? I mean, you can't call the switchboard and say, oh, you know, by the way, who in your company took this action, right? So you can make some assumptions. And that's what people do. And that's why it's used for ABM. And you begin to target some nurturing and awareness ads. But you can't really segment and personalize marketing. And you can't really hand it off to sales for a very focused sort of an outreach because you don't know.

Now, the good news is that's changed. There's actually that the sales fracking intent data that I talked about actually gives you third-party intent data with the information on who the person is. So that unlocks an amazing amount of opportunity. But let me pause there. And my guess is that where you'll want to go next with your audience is probably kind of use cases on how to use it. But fire some questions at me. Yeah, no, but I'm curious how. So how do you gather the millions of, you know, this is a little bit more product-specific on your end. But I am genuinely curious now to say, okay, you got all these people out there on the Internet doing all sorts of crazy shit. Privacy rules, you know, give or take, whatever.

I've kind of waved the white flag on privacy rules these days knowing that all my shit's everywhere and everybody knows everything about me. So who cares? But what are you doing right now to gather that kind of anonymous data and give me very specific information that John Barrows just Googled this? So you should go talk to John Barrows because that thing. And now, and let's put this in context. There are companies, obviously, big, huge B2C that do this. Google, Facebook, Amazon. And the funny thing is, you know, people are yelling and screaming about, oh, they know everything about us. I want them to know everything about me. I love it when I log into Amazon and there's some new shit there that I've never seen before, but it's exactly what I want.

Or, like, a Facebook ad comes up. I'm like, holy shit. Like, yes, I want that, you know. Now, I've been duped a few times on some bullshit products, but that's besides the point. So, but how are you, like, what are you doing from a real standpoint, a B2B standpoint on how to do that? Yeah, all right. So, number one, you're right. We are focused on B2B. We're not doing B2C stuff. Number two, we're not able to report on people that are just searching. Now, Google can do that because they're watching the search happen itself. Obviously, Amazon and Facebook, you're a registered user on their site, so they know who you are. And that's kind of second-party intent data, if you will, or their own first-party intent data.

The answer to your question is, I'll give you two different answers. Number one, that's the secret sauce. How are we able to do it? That's the secret sauce. Number two, it is all publicly available information. And what we're reporting on is people taking action. So, that action means a share, a like, a click, a download. That kind of stuff is what we mean by action. So, it's not just a search. It's got to be a more specific intent signaling sort of an action. But the amazing thing is, as you said, all our stuff is out there. This is all publicly available information. So, there isn't any sort of an inherent privacy issue with it. Now, of course, once somebody gets the data, they could do all kinds of asinine shit with it that would be, you know, they could bulk email people that haven't opted in, and that's a problem.

But the data itself is GDPR compliant. I mean, it's really straightforward. Very cool. So, you talk about hunters versus farmers and that you disagree. Before we get into the use cases here, tell me a little bit about your theory or your thought process around hunters versus farmers. Because you hear that a lot, right? We have hunters that go out there and find the business, and then we have farmers that get more business out of existing accounts, whatever it is. But you have a little bit of a different take on that? Yeah, I do. I think we're doing a disservice by celebrating what we're calling hunters. Because in many cases, and, you know, this, I know the culture in New England where we're both sitting right now isn't so much about hunting anymore.

But I believe there's an important distinction between a hunter and a shooter. And a shooter is somebody that, you know, will just kind of wander out into the woods, see something moving, and quickly aim and take a shot at it. And it's amateurish. I mean, it's disrespected in the hunting community by people that are artful hunters. And it's the same kind of thing in sales. You know, you send off this moronic sort of an email. You have a lot of great examples that you share of you get these emails from somebody like, what rock did you crawl out from underneath and think sending this to me was going to do any good? That's just shooting. Whereas a hunter understands the weather. They understand the terrain.

They understand the character of the prey that they're going after and what behaviors are and how each of those factors influences the other. And so then they take their time and they're really a student of the craft and they know where to go and how to get there and how to be stealthful and how to effectively hunt. So I think that the people that I've seen that really use data, intent data, really effectively are those that have that hunter mindset. Because, you know, those that think there's going to be a silver bullet, oh, I'm going to get the list. I'm going to pick the top three call and they're ready to order something. Ah, this is shit data. You know, it doesn't work. But those that can understand how to interpret all the different layers of signal and incorporate it with their own observations of first party intent and their own experience, then they just find such rich information that lets them be more effective.

Yeah, I love that. So cool. So let's talk about how to use it, right? So how do we, how do we, so again, I'm a sales rep out there. I got also, I got, people are clicking on my emails. They're, they're liking my shares there. I'm potentially using a solution like yours or G2 or TechTarget. Now I got to make that phone call to that person that doesn't creep them out, right? Because like one of the things I always kind of, there's that balance when, when the, when ToutApp and Yesware first came out with the, hey, somebody opened up my email. I don't think people still know how to react to that. Like, do you call them right then? Do you wait five minutes? Do you wait a day? It's like dating, right?

Do I call her today or do I wait three days? Like that type of stuff. And my, my take on that has always been, look, if you're calling into San Francisco, if you're a, if you're calling into a VP of sales in the SaaS industry at San Francisco, and somebody opens up your email, you're damn right. I'm going to call you up and be like, Hey, Ed, what's up, man? I just saw you opened up my email because you know what's happening. Right. But if you're calling in the middle of America, uh, into HR, who's been there for 30 years in the manufacturing industry, it might not be as tech savvy. You're going to freak that person the fuck out. So, so how do we use intent data to show that we care without being creepy that we know?

Yeah, I think it's a great point. I would also say that when you make that call, you can call at the same time. And with that VP of sales in, in, in Silicon Valley say, Hey, I just saw you open the email. Let's talk. And when you call that HR person, middle America say, it's been a while since we connected. I thought, you know, maybe you'd have a few minutes now to speak about it, you know, very different approach. It's amazing. I've got clients when I call them, they, they know these tools. They use these tools. I help them use these tools. And we haven't talked in two weeks. They've been traveling. I see them open and I call them. Oh man, I'm so glad you called. I've been thinking about it.

We need to connect. So there's a value to it too. As long as you're not a dickhead about how you do it. Exactly. So I think that the creepy factor is something that people worry about and appropriately so the solution though, is to be a thoughtful and an effective salesperson. If you really believe that you can help somebody, then you're not interrupting them. You're not abusing their time. What you're doing is calling and saying, experience tells me companies like yours have these problems, call it a challenger sales model or whatever, whatever labor you want to put on it. You've got expertise. You can very quickly demonstrate to them that you've got the expertise to solve the problem, not just one that's hypothetical, but a specific one that you know is important to them because that's the intent data signal that you've seen.

You know what problem they're trying to solve. You know what solution they're looking for. And so you can tailor that sort of a challenger sale approach to say, experience tells me companies like yours have these issues. We help companies achieve these kinds of things. Do you want to learn more? So it's not creepy. It's helpful and it's perfectly timed help because you know that's a problem they're trying to solve. Well, I think that's also, there's also tools that, you know, and I haven't looked at them in a little while, but like stuff like ClearSlide and those types of things where when you send a proposal or a presentation, you can kind of see where somebody lands on and spends the most time on that part, right?

So therefore, you send them information based on that thing, to your point earlier, they spent a bunch of time on the enterprise and they have a little bit of time on professional, but they're asking for professional. You can guide them towards, hey, buy the RL. You know what I mean? Because it's going to address those challenges there. Anything that, you know, somebody new to intent data, what would be a starting point? Like I'm a rep right now, you know, being told I got to make 50 dials a day. I got to send my emails and that type of stuff. And that intent data stuff sounds really good, but I don't have any tools. I don't have any resources. I'm getting the shit kicked out of me by my boss.

How do I start my journey on understanding intent data or what tools to use so I can start to kind of move in that direction? So I think what you got to do is be very clear about the use case or use cases that you're working on. So if we're talking for SDRs and BDRs, the intent data needs to be really worked and massaged by the marketing people. So they're doing the right kinds of awareness ads. They're doing the right kinds of sequences. They're building the right tools for that SDR, BDR to be able to pursue. And they're pulling in the different signals and they're prioritizing who they ought to be calling and feeding the information on the signals. You know, this person is trying to solve this problem.

Use this sequence. Begin to reach out to them and get it done. On the other hand, if you're talking about somebody in the sales, you know, like kind of the AE, then they're going to be wanting to watch to see if any of their target accounts suddenly are popping up. They're going to be wanting to watch to see if in their pending deals, what other people at that target company are involved? Who are the other, you know, you know, two of the 6.8, but who are the other 4.8 or five people on that serious decisions complex buying team? And intent data can help you figure that out. Which competitors are they talking to? You know, we all say, oh, yeah, we know they're talking to competitors, but we don't really get serious about thinking about it.

So if you see that, suddenly it gets those juices flowing and you're more effective in it. Another really interesting thing, of course, you know, many companies are going to have a different group, the success team responsible for reducing churn. And if you see customers interacting with competitors as renewals coming up, guess what? That's a pretty huge segue. Your success team needs to be on that. But in between there, you've got AEs that are supposed to be upselling and cross-selling. And we've all had the situation where you sell somebody, you've got a good relationship. Every month or every quarter, you say, don't forget, we can also help you with this. You've probably got this problem.

You mentioned this. We can help you with that. No, no, no, no. I'm all set. And six months later, you hear they bought it from somebody else. And it's crushing. You know, like, which part didn't you hear? Well, now you can see. If you see your current customers that are taking action, trying to solve the problem, buy that other thing, talk to competitors, you know about it. So the way you start, really, I think, depends on where in that spectrum you are. Yeah. And actually, you brought up one thing that I found interesting because there's another trend, right, is the chatbots, right, and the hunter versus the shooter, if you will. Help me understand, like, when you talk about the scripts of chatbots, right, there's one thing, obviously, the customer success chatbot where we're live chatting, that's one thing.

But from a, quote, unquote, marketing standpoint, how do you adjust your scripts, if you will, for those chatbots to show true intent versus somebody who's just poking around? Yeah, so part of it depends on whether it's anonymous or whether it's known. And you have to adjust it depending on a situation. But let's say that you've got a chatbot, for instance, that incorporates some enrichment. So you know this is an enterprise-sized company. They use this other kind of software. So they're a perfect fit for what we want to do. Now, you take that information. You combine it with what your intent data is telling you, that this is the problem that they're searching. This is the competitor they're talking to.

This is the solution they're looking for. Whatever that may be, you take that, you plug it in with the firmographic information that you've observed, and you run a chatbot that's specifically designed to speak to that situation. You know, if you met somebody at a trade show, you'd ask them three questions. You'd read their name label, and you would understand where to begin that conversation. So what we're talking about is having chatbots that are written that incorporate that same kind of insight that you bring as a thinking person with experience, so you deliver that same kind of experience. So understanding through intent data how many people from their company are looking, what problem they're trying to solve, what competitors they're talking to, where they are in their buying journey.

Is it an early-stage kind of a key term that they triggered, or is a late-stage kind of a key term let you make sure that the chatbot is effectively created for it? Yeah, it's interesting because I remember back at Thrive, you know, and I didn't know anything about anything, but I remember, like, when we redid our website and all those type of things, I'm like, I want to be able to segment people quickly. So, like, one of our iterations of our websites was, when you came to our website, it was like, which one are you? Are you an executive of a small business with no IT support right now or whatever? Are you a mid-market that has an internal IT department or looking for support, or are you looking to build your infrastructure?

Like, one of those things, and you clicked on that, it would take you down that journey. Why don't more companies do that? Like, I would love to pick your journey, if you will, on almost every website I came to. I would like to say, are you this, this, or this? And I actually coach sales reps, and I forget who said this. I got to go back and listen to my other podcast because I figure out who said this because I love this approach. When they reach out to somebody, or when somebody reaches out to them, they say to them, look, people come to us for three reasons, one, two, or three. Which one are you? And by the way, if you're not one of those three things, we should probably get off the phone right now because we're good in those other areas, but we're great in these three.

And that's what I want to figure out. And then when they say three, okay, cool, this is what we do for those people. And you would even see that on trade shows. So there's another thing for people to pick up on. Too many sales reps I find at trade shows, when somebody comes to the booth, oh, what do you guys do? And they just regurgitate their elevator pitch. And I've always been, well, Ed, we do a lot of stuff here. Let me ask you real quick, Ed, what kind of company do you work for, and what's your role within that company? Just those two parameters right there. And I can say, oh, okay, well, for people like you and companies like that, this is what we do. So why don't more companies do that kind of pitch?

That's a great question, John. I don't know. I just wrote a blog article, I think, two weeks ago about how I believe that the whole idea of website navigation is broken. That, you know, there's people that build websites, commission them, pay for them, and expect navigation because they grew up putting pieces of paper in the file folders. And they think that somehow you have to categorize it that way. Whereas if you've got good chatbots and good site search, I mean, if you watch a recording of somebody on your website, navigation just pisses people off. They go, oh, that's not what I want. They go back. They go down another place and go back. If you've got 1,000 pages, you can't have seven navigation points to get somebody there.

So let's change the way we think about it. And let's make sure that the chatbots interpret all this intent data, whether it's your first party or third party, whatever. And let's make it easy for people to have that experience that they want, get to the information they want. I completely agree. I'd say take navigation off websites. I don't know who's going to be bold enough to do it first. I mean, the only website I know without navigation is Google. Google, you go there and there's one box, right? Aside from that, I've never seen a site without navigation. Yeah, it's interesting. I think we are in this weird transition world right now where, and I say this from a sales standpoint, in the sense that Gen Xers, we grew up with a number on our head.

It was when you're making $50 a day, $100 a day, whatever. And so what's happening now is I think everybody understands that quality is the answer. We hear account-based marketing, account-based selling, you know, blah, blah, blah, all that shit, right? Personalization at scale, all that crap. But we're now Gen Xers are currently the managers, right? We're, well, managers' leadership, right? And everybody knows quality is the answer, but it's very hard to coach towards quality. And also, from an investment standpoint, I don't have a ton of money to invest in all the tools that I would need to understand all these things. So what do I do? The thing I can coach towards most and the easiest thing is numbers.

Hit your $50. Because if you don't hit your $50, fuck you, you're fired, right? Whereas, you know, coaching of quality and using intent data, I don't know. So, and what's happening right now is I think a lot of the, we're almost in the manufacturing transition here where the people are doing the activities and teaching the robots how to do it. And then eventually the robots are just going to take over. So, you know, I think this, what we're talking about here is kind of that evolution. And the best analogy, and I've used it forever, is Iron Man, right? Is that as sales professionals, we need to be Iron Man. Because you could be the best relationship developer on the planet. But if you're not using the tools and technology and all that other stuff, none of that's going to matter.

And I used to say, well, Iron Man was the suit plus the person. But I was missing something, which is Jarvis, right? Because the suit is the technology, something like sales loft, okay? The person, right, is the person. And then the intent data is the AI that you now, you take the AI, the insights from that as a person, come up with the context, put it into a tool like sales loft and let it run. And those are the sales reps that are going to excel in the future. What's crazy though, John, I can tell you, I can take the same set of intent data and put it on the screen or on the table in front of two different people. And I'm going to have one that's going to tell me, oh, geez, I tried calling three of them and nobody bought anything.

And the other is going to be kind of bring a very curious mindset to it. And they're going to be partially psychologists, partially anthropologists, partially sociologists, partially, you know, technical expert. And they're going to weave an understanding and tease out, I don't know, you remember those giveaways they used to have at trade shows, the little sponges, you drop water on them, they change shape and kind of look into something different. But that's what good people I've seen do with intent data. They put a couple of drops of water on it and suddenly it expands into this rich 3D picture that then they really begin how to sell. So I think, you know, that that that piece of the person is really important in order to make it work at scale.

Yeah. And I think that's again, you know, the the the reason I'm not overly concerned with robots taking over is, look, when robots, when robots buy from robots, we're screwed. Right. As long as still people are buying. The sales rep that evolves is going to still be necessary and extraordinarily important in this process. Right. Absolutely. It's almost you look at the last mile. Right. Like I keep thinking of this whole concept of last mile, like let technology do the all the other shit, do the research, you know, all that other stuff. And then but right before it goes to the client, make sure that there's a human being at that point to look at it, put some context around it, make it relevant to that person.

So there's the empathy there. There's the insight there. There's the genuine interest there based on what they're doing. Absolutely. And I'd say the best statistic in favor of that is the startling number. And I've seen different percentages. But what percent of complex sales end in the status quo? No decision. Oh, 60 percent or something like that. And that's because, you know, people that they're relying on the automation, they're relying on the website to provide the information and email to do it. And they don't know who's involved. They don't know what the priorities are. They don't know how that team is making the decision. They don't know which of those people are pissed off that their budget is being jeopardized because now they're supposed to support this other project.

All those factors that weigh into it. Well, that's, you know, the idea that I and I said to my training, I fundamentally do not believe it's our job in sales anymore to about features, function, speed to educate on features, function, speeds and feeds like Google took that away from us. Okay. It is our job in sales to get people to think. All right. And I mean that genuinely, like, because if you are comfortable with where you are right now in your role, in your job, in your industry, if you are comfortable, I'm worried for you. Because there's going to be an app that comes out tomorrow that fundamentally disrupts an industry, that erases the need for a job. And so with this intent data, it's like they might not even know that the stuff that they're doing is leading to something that they should be doing, right?

Because sometimes they're just going to get an idea in the back of their head that something's wrong, but they don't know what it is. So that's why they start poking around on different shit, right? And then it's our job to hit them with something that gets them to say, ooh, wait a minute. Yeah. And I actually take this from, you know, a good friend of mine, Jim Keenan, he's got this new book, Gap Selling, and it's got my head wrapped around this whole idea that our number one job right now in sales, when you first engage with somebody, is to get them to commit that status quo is not okay. Before you sell them on anything about the benefits of your solution or anything like that, you have to sell them on the fact that what they're doing today is not acceptable.

I don't know if you follow Bob Apollo. Do you keep track of what he's up to? No, I don't. I don't recommend it. A guy out of the UK that focuses on complex sales says much the same thing. He's got a lot of great information on that complex sales environment. Yeah. And I think just tactically, you know, every sales rep, I think, should ask this question, which is what happens if you don't make this decision, right? That one question will dictate your forecast accuracy, right? Because there's two answers to it. One is a real answer, like, holy shit, if we don't do this, we're going to lose market share. We're going to get beat by our competition. We're going to miss our quarter or whatever it is.

And then the other answer is anything other than that. And if you get a, well, you know, we'll just kind of go back to doing what we're doing, either A, you're not talking to the right person, or B, I wouldn't forecast that one. Of course, that comes back to the blocking and tackling you work on, the intestinal fortitude to ask the hard questions, ask the right questions, ask them in the way to get the answer you need. Awesome, man. Well, I appreciate it. You're coming close to that 30-minute threshold that the audience really appreciates. So I'm going to start to wrap this up. And I appreciate it. It's been, first of all, great catching up, as usual. Likewise. I've enjoyed this. Absolutely.

So talk to, tell the audience a little bit more about where they can find out information about you, what you're doing these days, and some more insights around intent data. So Ed B. Marsh is Twitter, Instagram. You can find me on LinkedIn at Edward B. Marsh. And if you're interested in information on the sales fracking data, just go to salesfrackingdata.com. And, you know, through my profiles, it's possible to schedule a meeting, get on my calendar for 30 minutes. And, you know, if you want to try to find out how this would fit for your organization, I'm happy to chat about how you might sell it internally. If you're somebody that's thinking, geez, we ought to implement something like this for the organization, then absolutely let's talk about, you know, what happens if you don't make that decision, right?

Yep. And watch out because Ed's listening. So even if you don't go to his website, he's probably going to find you. All right, Ed. Well, thank you so much for your time. And everybody, thanks for listening. As always, go make somebody smile today because there's too much negativity out in the world these days. Because I think we've got to bring a happier face around these, try to combat some of the shit that's going on right now. So go make somebody smile. All right. Great week, everybody. Thanks, Ed. Have a good one. Thanks, Ed. Have a good one. Thanks, Ed. Have a good one. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.