Devin Reed: Influencer Marketing Trends in B2B Sales

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And we have a returning guest who's a good friend of mine, Devin Reed. Devin is the head of content over at Clary, and he's also the founder of The Reader, which is a kick-ass newsletter. And I brought Devin on because I've been noticing a huge shift in the B2B marketing space, that influencer marketing, right, which was huge in B2C, is now coming heavy for the B2B market. I mean, I am being approached by tons of companies asking me to do posts for them and all this stuff, so I've noticed this trend. And Devin has a unique perspective on this because not only is he an influencer in himself and gets paid for it, but he also hires influencers and signs contracts for people like me to come and rep their brand.

So I brought him on to pick his brain about what's going on out there from both sides of this equation and see how we as sales professionals can take advantage of this, which is why I keep pushing on people why brand is so important. Because if you build the right brand, authentic brand, people will then come to you and you could potentially get paid for it. So we dive into all aspects of it here on this podcast. I'm not even going to give you some of the nuggets here because you've got to listen to this whole thing. Because first of all, Devin is a fantastic person and filled with knowledge on this one. And we had a great time with this conversation. Hopefully you enjoyed it as much as I did.

Let's make it happen. Devin Reed, what's going on, brother? Welcome back to the Make It Happen Monday podcast, my friend. How you been? I've been good and I feel honored that this is my second appearance on this show. I think the last time I was on, it was like 2020. And it was a big show. It still is a big show. When you get a chance to be on a good pod, especially with you, John, you're like, damn, I hope I rock it in a way where I get an invite back. So when I got your email a couple of weeks back, I was like, let's go. It's time. I love it. I'm actually, you know, this year I'm really trying to up the game on the podcast and everything else too, right? Because there hasn't been a strategy for me up until this day, like just, you know, coming up with cool conversations with people.

But now I'm really thinking of how can this whole concept I have of learning out loud, right? So my whole idea here is that there's not one person right now that can stay up to date on what's going on right now because of how fast things are moving. For sure. So I got to learn out loud. And I'm, you know, I got access to smart people like you and stuff like that. So I'm almost acting as a proxy to the audience where it's like, hey, teach me some shit. And hopefully everybody else can learn along the way and we can figure this out together. So cool, brother. For those people who don't know you, give a little background where it, especially with what you're up to now, because back in 2020, we were in a different situation.

And I'd love to, because this is for those of you listening, we're going to be talking about influencer marketing right now as it relates to B2B. And we're going to be talking about both sides of the equation. Devin has a unique perspective on that. And, you know, for those of you think that this might not be relevant to you, I promise it is because it's all about personal brands. And if you do your brand the right way and build it along while you're selling or doing whatever you do, you have the opportunity to make some extra money on the side or whatever it is as an influencer if you do it right. So Devin, why don't you give the audience a little background on you and what you're up to these days?

Yeah. If you look at my LinkedIn, you see a head of content. You might be like, why is this marketing guy on the Sales Guys podcast? So I've been in sales and marketing for over 10 years now. First six years of my career was as an AE. So I just, instead of telling you the companies I worked for, I'll say I went from terrible to fairly terrible to pretty good. And right when I was starting to get pretty good, making some real money, I decided to give that up while I was a sales rep at Gong. That's kind of like where most folks know me. I was the second sales rep in 2017. I was with them until they scaled into the millions of AR they're at today. But I moved over to the content role. So I was supposed to be an IC.

And the guy who was bringing me over, Chris Orlov, decided he wanted to go back into sales. So instead of becoming an IC for him, I became the de facto one-man band. Led the team for about three years there. Scaled it to about seven people. And now I'm head of content over at Clary. So that's the super fast version of my professional career. Around the time that I started that transition to marketing is when I launched The Reader, which is my company, my side hustle. And so I've been doing that for about five years. Similarly to you, John, where I kind of was just doing things. And then over the last two years, started doing things much more intentionally and monetizing intentionally and more successfully as well.

So the influencer thing has been funny because as a marketing leader for the last few years, I've been shelling out money, evaluating different people and little media companies to help grow and reach our strategic goals at the B2B side. And then also last year, on The Reader, at the individual level, I made about $50,000 as an influencer. And so I do have the unique perspective of I'm evaluating and writing checks. And I'm on the other side evaluating and receiving checks. And so it's been fun to watch OGs like you, your path and how are you operating and the new up-and-comers and myself and, you know, just trying to figure out this landscape and how I can maximize it. Yeah, and that's the thing that's fascinating.

Last year, and I don't know about you, you might have been seeing it sooner or paying attention to it more because the B2C influencer marketing world has been around forever, right? Like Kylie Jenner grabs a Pepsi, whatever, whether she drinks Pepsi or not, who gives a shit? She's got a huge following. People actually, you know, I hate Pepsi. I'm, you know, I hate Pepsi, but that's okay. Coke for sure. I don't drink Pepsi. It's disgusting. There's this noticeable shift, at least last year for me, where the B2B space, almost it was like, yeah, we've done webinars before and I've gotten paid to do kind of SKOs. SKOs, but all of a sudden it was like everybody was reaching out to try to get me to promote their software, their whatever it was, and paying handsomely too, to the point where, you know, for one post on LinkedIn, you know, five grand or 20, and it's like, holy shit.

And at first I was like, especially at the beginning of this year, because I was definitely needing some cash, right? Because of how rough it was. I was like, yeah, definitely. But then the problem was I started trying to figure out how to do this in an authentic way. And I think the B2C, you can get away with not being truly authentic and just be like, hey, go buy this thing. Who gives a shit? But in B2B, I think authenticity really matters. And I had a hard time representing something that I either didn't know, didn't use, or didn't believe in. And so I ended up turning down a lot of money because I just, I would sit there for literally like an hour trying to figure out how to write this post in a way that was authentic to me, didn't dupe my audience, and was beneficial to the client.

I just couldn't figure it out. So let's start with this. Have you seen that same shift? Was it last year? And why do you think it's happening? And then we'll get into the details. Definitely experienced the same thing last year where, so I have a newsletter, thereader.co. You can sign up slash newsletter. But so I have this newsletter, and I've been writing it for about two or three years now. But what I noticed was just, it's all organic. The ad sales have been all organic. People just reaching out to me. You know, I have friends in marketing. They might need, you know, have some ad dollars to spend. But last year, I just started getting a lot of, I'll call, random slash unsolicited, hey, Deb, do you do sponsorships?

Hey, Deb, do you have a rate sheet? And I'm like, yeah, I for sure have a rate sheet. Opens up Google Slides, creates a rate sheet. Do you have a rate sheet I could borrow? Yeah. Seriously. And so what I noticed, like, I'm getting a lot more people asking me for it. I don't have to even go outbound. I did like one LinkedIn post. People see that, DM me, or they're on my, you know, they, again, respond to the newsletter. That's kind of the central hub for my business right now. And so I just noticed, like, wow, I'm getting a lot of inbounds on these things that no one was ever really asking about, at least from, you know, my level. And so for pricing, I, you know, won't get into, you know, exact numbers unless you really want to, but it was like 500.

All right, cool. These are random numbers. Like, all right, 500. Cool. Next time, 750. Oh, they said yes. All right. Next time I thought. Now I have a very good understanding of my price integrity. We can kind of talk in like where I say yes, where I say no. But that was a fun exercise, you know, last year, figuring out where, that pricing integrity stands. But you said something that's really important about the B2C and the, like, choosing Pepsi, right, or over Coke. Let's run with that for a second. B2C is extremely transactional by nature. You're basically doing impulse buys on Instagram, right? And so they're hoping, Pepsi's hoping that you're in whatever grocery store aisle, you're in the drink section, and you're looking at Coke and Pepsi, and you remember Kylie Jenner, and you go, you know, continue to drink Pepsi or try Pepsi or retry, right?

Like, you just go left instead of right to, you know. And so that makes a lot of sense for consumer products. But in B2B, buyers are not going to any aisle and doing impulse buys. Not by a long shot. Even some of the, like, you know, freemium models or, you know, product-led growth, you know, approaches. So the way I see it is, look, the B2C playbook does not work for the vast majority of B2B marketers, despite them trying so. Because in B2B, what we need to do is build trust at scale. Right. You need to build trust at scale. And not everybody with a following has trust. They might have an audience, but they don't have trust. They don't have that reputation. And so as I'm building my reputation the last few years, and when I think of, like, my personal brand, because I use the little finger air quotes, is like, I'm just trying to build a reputation.

So when Devin's not around, when John and Kevin Dorsey are talking about me, what are they saying? Is it what I want them to say? And is it positive? That's the center of it all. And then all the things we're going to talk about probably for the next few minutes here is ways to monetize that reputation, expertise, personality, etc. Hey, I want to take a quick minute to share with you what I'm working on these days with my new JBSales membership. It includes live monthly training delivered by me on my two signature courses, Filling the Funnel and Driving to Close. It also includes monthly workshops that I'll be running on specific skills and different tech like ChatGPT and how to leverage it in the sales process.

And it gives you access to my entire online catalog with every course and every tip I've ever done. You get all of this for $420 a year as an individual or $5,000 for teams. And as an exclusive offer to my podcast listeners, if you go to www.jbarrows.com and click on the individual or team membership and use code podcast, you'll get 20% off. Let's make this happen together. That reputation piece is, you know, somebody said instead of build your brand, think about it as your, instead of your online brand, you're on run longline reputation. And what does that mean? And, and it is so easy for your reputation to like, it's just like a hundred attaboys get destroyed by one fuck up, right? Or, or like one, like a bunch of great reviews gets destroyed by one, one star review.

I think it's like there's something ridiculous. Like if you have a hundred four star review or five star reviews and you get like one negative, like one star review, you go from a five to like a 4.2, even though 99 positives, you'll get that one bad one, it'll crush your entire thing. Even though 4.2 is actually the optimal star that you want. You don't want five stars quite frankly. Just, just good enough and just believable enough. Yeah, exactly. I don't believe five star in anything, anything over a hundred reviews and five stars. I go, this is not, this is not real. So why do you think that the, like what's happening in the marketing B2B space right now that is driving this shift? So what's happening on the B2B side.

So the, the, the marketing leaders are finally being held accountable for pipeline. That's the first thing, right? The growth at all cost areas, a lot of marketers, and I was on it, I was at gong during growth at all costs. Luckily we were still very tied to revenue. And so I think I still got like, I got good growth at all costs experience and good operational excellence experience. But the truth was, you know, you could get away with like engagement and web traffic and like, look, we're doing marketing because we're doing a bunch of things. We're doing a bunch of deliverables. Now, and it's still happening. It's still early, but marketing teams are responsible for revenue pipeline and kind of like strategic impact on the business.

And I leave that a little vague because it's going to be dependent on the company and, you know, what, what their, what their scheme is. So what's happening now is marketers are realizing we don't have an audience. We don't have much of a brand. Even the big ones. And as a result, people aren't coming to our website. They're not downloading our content. They're not coming to our events and we need a way to accelerate it. And so then now they're looking around and going, Hey, who are the Johns of the world? The Devons of the world that we can give money to, and they will, you know, amplify our message. That's the highest level going around it. The thing that I love on both sides of the table is some, there's dollars.

I wanted to almost say for some reason, there's just dollars behind these initiatives. And I, and you know, there's a lot of different reasons for that. But at the end of the day, people are saying, look, we need to invest in marketing. They're starting to realize the old ways aren't working. Let's pay some, hopefully, credible people to, you know, represent our brand and get our message out there and drive revenue. Why don't they, I think there's, look, the reason marketing, I think is, is struggles in the B2B spaces. Nobody believes what you say about you. You know what I mean? Like as, as I'm. Hey, hey, hey, four out of five dentists recommend. But, but, well, and I'm going to, I'm going to actually bring this back to Gong.

Yeah. Nobody believed what Gong was saying. The only time people, at least from an outsider's perspective of what I saw when Gong, because look, let's admit, Gong, Chorus, Executive, you know, whatever. At the time when they first, when everybody first came out, it was kind of tomato, tomato. They all kind of fucking did the same thing. Gong had some cool colors and whatever. But it was like, yeah, it wasn't until Chris Orlob started pushing it out there that like the data out there, but it was the data plus Chris, right? And then what happened was you saw this boom of like, holy shit, Gong's everywhere, right? Because I was sharing the content and everybody was sharing the content. It was like purely organic.

And then he took a break and he said, no, I want to go to sales. And literally as you were ramping, Gong disappeared for a while. And it was like, where'd Gong go? And then you got back on track, restructured a little bit and started blowing it up again. It was like, oh fuck, there's Gong again, right? Now we can argue all day long whether Gong's better from a technical standpoint than Chorus, but it was blatantly obvious to me that it wasn't just Gong's marketing. It was you and Chris with Gong's content doing their marketing. So you were the brand. It wasn't Gong. So I guess my question is, why don't companies do more of that with their internal resources to build personal brands internally than look to the outside for that?

It seems like it'd be a lot more economical, man. I wish I had more time to do the proper list. So I'll just go off the top of my head of why don't people do this? All right. First one is B2B companies as we're all going to know and nod to this, but I got to say it. B2B companies are so obsessed with their product that the idea of producing content that doesn't blatantly promote their company or their product, there's resistance or there used to be. That's lessening. And we're kind of back in 2019, 2020 time for a moment. But so the idea of making, you know, call it thought leadership or industry content, right? Because the data you're talking about, you didn't need to use Gong to get value from the content.

And that was intentional by the time, by the way, by the time I took over, I had a literal rule that we do not talk about product. We can get into that later, but people try to roast me for that now. That would never work. I'm like, it did though. Number two, they would rather publish from a company name than an individual's name. That's a huge miss, right? So people would want to like, you know, imagine, well, your company's name is John Barrow. I'm like, you know, JB Sass, right? JB Sass, JB Sass. There's no soul to that. There's no face to that. There's no real voice to that. But when you see someone's name and face on an article in a video, you start to identify with that person. That person gives you more trust and credibility, right?

And again, it depends on the execution and all that. CEOs will say, no, I don't want anyone building, you know, their reputation, their brand, or, you know, why would I put John, this enterprise sales guy in front of a camera and have him represent our company? He's going to leave one day and then I'm going to lose all that with him. I go, no, it's mutually beneficial. Like I didn't, I didn't, you know, fall off the face of the earth and Gong didn't fall off the face of the earth when we broke up. We both had a mutually beneficial relationship. We both grew. And then eventually as all human beings do, even when you're a CEO, you leave the company, right? And so I think those are like the two big ones.

And maybe I'm sure there's like a handful more other than like, candidly, it's just hard to do like hard work of getting data, writing good copy, you know, producing it and distributing it. Like to do that at a high level is just hard. And a lot of, I would say marketers probably actually like to do that work. Yeah. But senior leadership and execs want fast AI written content and like fast results instead of like, hey, let's take a second and say, are we really earning mindshare? Are we really doing something that's getting people to talk? Because that's all we were trying to do. There's literally like little goals we had, which is we were trying to dominate LinkedIn for 48 hours when we dropped this report.

Nice. We want to spark word of mouth. We want people on Slack talking like, have you seen the new thing? Yeah. You're not going to get that with AI driven SEO blogs, even if you pump out a hundred a month, you're going to get other results, but it won't be the stuff that we're talking about right now. Yeah. And I think that's the big thing that I try to get, and I think the big reason why most reps don't work on their personal brand is because there's no short-term benefit to it. Like there's no, like you're not going to be able to post, I mean, maybe out of the blue, you might post something and somebody will say, holy shit, I want one of those. But the likelihood of you posting something, having somebody be like, wow, that was awesome.

I want to buy your shit is, is like a one in a million scenario. Right. And so with the drive to short-term results, I got to hit, you know, my numbers, whatever. Yeah. I know I should build my brand, but right. I got to hit this number. So me posting and shit like that is just not worth it. So it just takes too much effort because it's, it's, it's a long play with this. And so what is your advice to those reps that have that mentality? Let me, let's go kind of micro here to the rep and, and cause I'm trying to get through to them to say like, you need to start doing this because in the world of AI, your brand is going to matter more than anything, more than it ever has. And so what's your advice to those reps who is like, Hey dude, I'm drowning right now.

My client, my, my company that I'm working for is not overly supportive of me doing this. I know it's something I have to do. I don't have time to do it though. And I'm not getting a lot of support here. So what the fuck should I do? I'm going to say the harsh answer. And then like the, the, the more fun, uplifting and, and, and, you know, a prescriptive one. The first one is kind of like, if you just, and I know weight loss is like the ultimate, like cliched one, but you basically imagine someone's like, look, I want to be in shape for the season, but like, I'm tired. You know, my wife's not really pushing me to do it. My husband, not really pushing me to do it. And like, you know, I got these kids.

I got, I just be like, it sounds like you're not going to do it. Like you've already found all the reasons not to do it. So you have to change your mindset into it and prioritize it. So I got to just say the like obvious blanket statement there. The truth though, is like, I think people are viewing it. Reps are viewing it as this action is not going to help me right now. Sell the software that I'm selling right now to the, for this company. And that's accurate. That is true. But that's not your goal. But your goal isn't to sell software now for your company. Your goal is to build your reputation for your career in your industry. So no matter which company you go to next, there's already people interested and willing to talk to you.

I've also heard feedback, well, you know, you're not going to work at that company for so long. Why would you bother building up their brand? You know, there's always that, you know, like I said, that symbiotic relationship. Well, but if you're, let's just say you're going to be, I don't know, sell the IT. Sure. Are you going to sell the IT for four years, then sales for three years, then marketing for two years? In that case, that's, that's tough to build a brand around because it's tough to build a career around. But for myself, I'll just use myself as an example. Like I've sold sales, like sales tech to sales teams for most of my career. That was intentional. I don't want to start all over with developers and go try to earn a whole lot of credibility.

That's going to take me a decade to get. So if you think of it, like build your career around like what either audience are you going to sell to type of software you're going to sell or salute, you know, types of problems you want to solve, even if they're going a little differently. Then building your reputation, right, starts to make a lot more sense because I'm saying, hey, I'm going to invest in this, invest in this for a return later. Yeah. And I do it with our money all the time. We just don't do it with our brand or personal brands because there's no ticker on some screen to be like, well, personal brands are up 9% this quarter. Like I should really put some more stock into my newsletter.

Like it's a bit of a, you know, to kind of end it, there's this football coach, I love this, this phrase he said, which is like, how far are you willing to run into the tunnel? Like before you can see the light, something to that effect. I might've done it a little bit, but like the concept is like, like when my CEO asked me, like, how do you know this? I go, oh, I don't know. Oh, I'm sorry. No one does. Yeah. No one knows that this is going to work, but guess what? Doing nothing, not changing. Look at the last 12 months and tell me your marketing is crushing it. Cause if it is, then don't talk. Leave. It's shake hands. Congratulations. Tell your VP of marketing. She's doing a great job and I'll catch you on the next podcast.

Yeah. Yeah. I think that's the thing. It's like, and you mentioned something there that I think is important for people who are building their careers to pay attention to. It's if you bounce around, like you stay in sales, right? But if you bounce around to different types of sale and you're all over the place, I don't think you're ever going to be overly successful. Right. I mean, you could be a hired assassin, I guess, if you want to, but what's amazing to me is that once you said, and I think it's been debunked, but the whole 10,000 hours thing, whatever. But still, there's some validity to it in the sense that when you pick that lane, it's almost like after you do it for long enough, what you start talking about, people start paying attention to and you don't even realize how much you know.

And I usually look at the buckets of years, right? So in your 20s, for instance, you're always looking up because you don't know what the fuck you're talking about. And you're like always looking for permission. I don't know what I'm doing. Right. In your 30s, you kind of pick a lane, but you're still holding on to your 20s a little bit. And you're still looking up to the 40, 50-year-old saying you're smarter than me and you've been there, right? When you hit 40, and I was actually just hit 48, when you hit 40, it's like, and you stay in your lane for that period of time, it's almost like when you hit 40 and you start having conversations with 20-year-old, 20-somethings, they're like, whoa, what'd you just say?

Like, that's fucking genius. And you're like, what? Like, to you, it's like 101 shit that you talked about 20 years ago, but to that 22-year-old, 23-, 25-year-old kid, it's fucking genius, and you don't even recognize it. And so by staying in your lane, you almost automatically become a thought leader, automatically become, whether you're an actual thought leader or not, you have the thoughts. And now all you have to do is figure out a way to share them with other people, right? Yeah. Yeah. I think of it this way. I did the, like, for those who can't see me, I was in the, like, I pretty much agree with the $10,000 rule, but it's kind of like two things. If someone's like, call it a, I don't know, VP of marketing, I'm a director of levels, call it a VP of marketing.

If they have 20, call it 10 more years of experience than I do, I lean in. Yeah. You've done, you've been in the game longer than me. I should be quiet and grab a pen and listen. Yeah. Now, just because, but just because you've been in marketing for 20 years does not make you better than me or good at your job. So I'm being cautious. Yep. Yep. The other thing is you can be in the game for a short amount of time, have a large amount of success that's earned. You got to be careful, like, making sure it was that person that did the work. And you can also become a thought leader, become credible in three to five years, you know, without all that time. So that's why I'm kind of like, it's a little bit of both.

I don't think I would ever say, don't go get your 10,000 hours. Right. Right. It's just no guarantee. And I know that's not what you were saying, but it's like, to you, John, like, to your point, like, when I was in, I was, by the way, I was, I don't know if you even know this. But I was out the day you came for training, which is a bummer, but a clear slide. I didn't know that. My very first job out of college was, it was something and then it was in sales, like, very quickly, like three months out of college was SaaS sales roll at clear slide. Oh, yeah. Oh, shit, you went to clear slide. I didn't know that. I never missed a day of work because I couldn't afford to, again, and the terrible phase, didn't know what I was doing.

But some reason I was out for like, I don't know, sick or like a day or two, I come back and there's this like a printout, like PDF, like bounded book thing on my, I said, PDF, God, it's physical content on my desk. So it's my age. And they're like, oh, yeah, dude, this like sales trainer guy came in, not just saying this, they said he was good. He's like, he was good. And I'm like, oh, because I looked at the thing and it's like, it said like John Barrow sales training. And I remember literally going to the left, I'm like, who the fuck's this John guy? And they were like, oh, he's this trainer. He was here. He was really good. He's been in the black belt, you know, all the things. And I was like, literally, oh, he's been doing this for 10 years.

I suck. I should open this and read through it. And I was bummed that I missed it. I almost forgot why I went on that tangent, but the concept being of like, looking up to people that were right. Yeah, I did. Oh, good point. Thank you. I'm getting back on track. I have too much fun sometimes. It was no. Who the is this John guy? Oh, he's been in the he's been doing this for 10 years. Yeah, I'm going to listen. Right. And then obviously inform your opinion later and make sure John's legit. So but I mean, I think that's it. It's like, you know, I'm unfortunately like I don't learn as much as I should from people who've been there, done that. I'm usually one that makes all my own mistakes, which is a bad idea.

I'm not recommending anybody do that. But but when you find somebody who's been around the block for a while, even the super old school, right, because now these days, it's almost like old school is new. And I go back to this grow at all costs for the past 10 years. And I'm going to and I'll say it and I'll say it again. If you got into sales and a SaaS sales after 2010, it hasn't been that fucking hard. Like you've been able to get away with blasting out template emails, setting up fucking disco calls with anybody with a pulse, asking dumbass band questions, droning through demos, letting your SE do the majority of the work and then getting your VP to come in and offer a massive discount. Like that's pretty much been sales for the past 10 fucking years.

And so now that sales are hard and we've over engineered the sales process and we've forgotten about the fundamentals. So now a lot you got all these kids who are over bloated egos about how good they were and they've forgotten the fundamentals. And so now all these old school where it's like back to hand to hand combat networking relationships and all this other stuff. Like there's a vast amount of knowledge to be learned from that crew to be able to be better at what we're doing today and mix the two, the old and the new. I mean, don't get me wrong. I don't want to go straight old school because there's too much new school shit that's happening right now. Yeah. Well, I'm laughing because you just described like my sales career for the most part.

And that will sound like a generalization or hating, but it's quite accurate. But you said something you're like, but you said like you said it really quickly that the like the new guys will have forgotten the fundamentals. Never have. I would argue and I'm not hating. I would argue most have not taken the time to truly even learn them in the first place. Do you see that? That's the same with marketing too. Do you think the same? Because I see it in sales all day, every day. Do you see the same or is marketing a little bit more structured that they go through the process a little bit better as opposed to skipping all the steps? You know, I don't know if I identify as a sales person or a marketer.

I've still technically been doing sales a little longer. So I think I lean a little that way. But here's what I thought about, John. It's kind of answer the question. I was in sales. I was in sales. I met some of the literally some of the best human beings in terms of ambition, accountability, passion, like just desire to get better. And if you're just hanging out with them, you will get better. Yeah. When I went to marketing, it took me a little time to understand that the DNA of the people around me are not that. It's just a different thing. And when I've spent a lot of time thinking about this and here's what my conclusion is. Salespeople, being in sales is part of their identity. It is part of their identity.

When they talk to people, they're usually very proud. Now, you might not be very good at it. But even my cousin, who's not good, but learning, he's like stoked that he's a sales guy. He's like, this is who I am now. And you can feel that. I think when you talk to sales pros, we've been doing it for five plus years, especially. In marketing, there's just a lot of people who are in marketing. And when you talk to them, they're not saying like, I'm a marketer. There's just not this passion of like, this is who I am. This is what I do. And so I think like a lot, I'm not saying that's why sales and marketing don't get along. It's just, you know, DNA training makes sense. But it makes a lot of sense when you look at how these departments are run, how they, you know, the level of coaching or lack of in marketing.

Right. You don't, there's a, you know, commonly said you don't go to school for sales. You don't really go to school for marketing either. Like there's not, I know you say business degrees, but like how many people come out of business school and they really know how to like run an internet business or like understand. Let's put it this way. I went to school for marketing. I got my degree in marketing. Oh really? And I have no fucking idea. Like none of what I learned in college had anything to do with what I actually was doing in the real world. That's why I got into sales because I remember learning whatever the hell I learned in marketing. By the way, I probably didn't learn much because I drank my way through four years of college.

But regardless, I didn't show up to a few classes. And, but I remember looking out in the real world. It's like when I was looking for jobs and I was like, this, this doesn't, this doesn't seem nearly as cool as I thought it was. And it doesn't seem like I'm going to use any of the stuff I learned to this. I'm going to be a straight fucking admin for like five years of my life in the marketing world. Yeah. Oh, nah, let me try this thing. I don't even know sales was a thing. Like you could get a job here, but that looks kind of cool. Let me go try to do that. Cause I was always one where I felt the effort in effort out. Right. Like I always had this innate like disdain for, cause that's why I was always a waiter and all these different things.

Cause I figured the harder I work, the more I should get paid. If I worked harder than somebody else, I should get paid more than somebody else. And that doesn't just mean the amount of hours that I put into something. And so that's why sales, like when I really understood it, I got it. I was like, Ooh, okay. I, now it doesn't matter. And if we're all on equal playing field here and if I work harder and I'm better than you, I'm going to make more money than you done. This is my fucking world. So it's a great sense of control, right? Like I know to your point, I can put in 10, like more hours this week, or I could put in two hours getting smarter about this one little part of my process. Yeah.

And how rewarding is it when you do, you know, we worked the way I've been asking these types of questions at this point with these people and testing, testing, and then you don't need the data. No one's really tallying. I mean, maybe some people are tallying on a notebook. I don't think anyone really does, but just feeling like, dude, this is working. Like I got a couple of deals out of this and it's cause I, I identified the gap. I took the time to study. I took the time to test and practice and now it's working. That gives you self-confidence, like almost nothing else that I've experienced. I agree. And in marketing, it isn't that in and out. It's much more of a team sport and it's much harder to see your, it's much harder to see your input translate directly into outcomes.

And specifically income, right? Like you could do, you could do, you know, fine. Cause marketers are better at tweaking the dials and looking at data, but, but regardless. Okay. So you got an extra 50%, you know, click-through rates, whatever it is. That doesn't mean you're getting extra 50% in your pocket. Whereas a sales rep, if you make that tweak and you get 50% better close ratio, that means direct income to your pocket. So it's a, it's almost like this inherent motivating factor of like, Ooh, yep. Yeah. That worked. I'm making more money. Let's go. Yeah. So let's, let's shift though, to, to now the other side of what do you look for? So, so, cause, cause we talk about how I think, you know, the influencer thing is coming big.

I think brand is going to be huge for individuals. And if they haven't started doing it, they need to start doing it right now. And now we, now what are you, so you're an influencer. So you get approached. What as a buyer though, for influencers? Cause in, and I'm going to couch this in a couple of ways. I've had other companies and I won't name who they are, reach out to me and offer me. And I, like I said earlier, decent amount of money to pitch their shit. And I get why they're coming after me. Cause I have a brand, but I, but I also don't get why they're coming after me because they're coming after me with an agency who knows very little about me other than my social profile. They look at the numbers and they're like, Holy shit, we need, we want John.

But, but they, but I look at their product and I'm like, why should I represent this product? So I think there's a lot of them right now who are quite frankly, in my opinion, doing it wrong. They're going after the wrong people. They're offering money just because people have following. So you knowing both sides, knowing authenticity matters, knowing the B2C transactional bullshit is not going to play in the B2B world. What do you look for? And what do other mark? What should other marketers look for in influencers to help support their brand? The number one mistake that B2B marketers make on their influencer strategies is making a spreadsheet and ranking people by how many followers that they have.

That's the number one mistake. And I see it everywhere. I'm not saying it's a useless signal, but you should not be investing thousands of dollars just because someone in some cases hacked their way to a hundred thousand followers. And so that's, that's one thing you got to look out for. So is it a signal that I look for? Of course I want reach. No one wants less reach, but you shouldn't just go, Oh, top five influencers and sales are John and for other people just because they have the most followers. That's flawed. And who knows what like the sub niche or the brand of each of those individuals are. Is that going to resonate with your buyers and the software that you're selling right now? There's a lot of thought that you really got to put into this.

When I'm evaluating, cutting a check to somebody and bringing them on, I'm looking at three things. First thing is, are you going to help me grow my audience? So do you have the right people in your audience that I want to come and follow Clary, subscribe to Andy, our CEO's newsletter, right? Because I know if I get you at the top of funnel that way, I should have a higher likelihood of converting you through our marketing funnel, right? So I'm looking for that first. The second thing is a little bit more specific to me as head of content, which is I'm looking for ways to accelerate content production and distribution. I don't know a content marketer or content marketing team on the planet that has enough people.

We're all wildly understaffed. Unfortunately, often the first to go when there's a riff and I can explain why later on different show. And so I'm looking for like, who can produce great high quality content to accelerate my output and then help distribute that again to their audience. And the third one, which is the hardest one to do, we can spend an hour and a half here figuring, try to figure this one out is who is, which influencers are actually going to contribute to pipeline and revenue because everything before that was about reach and what is called vanity, you know, metrics because they're visible, but it's very hard to know, Hey, dev's got 75,000 followers, but can he fill a room? Do people want to come hear him on a webinar?

Are the people at the webinar really going to convert into pipeline? And that sometimes you have to backdoor channel people. You have to trust your gut. You can tell, you know, there's a lot of different ways to figure that out. But those are the three things that I'm looking for. And it's not all or one. I'm not just hiring someone just for number one or just for number two. It has to be a blend of those three science of scaling hosted by Mark Roberge is brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network, the audio destination for business professionals. Each week host Mark Roberge, founding CRO at HubSpot, senior lecturer at Harvard Business School and co-founder of Stage 2 Capital sits down with the most successful sales leaders in tech to learn the secrets, strategies, and tactics to scaling your company's growth.

His most recent episode, how do diligence marketing and sales leadership with one of my good friends, Sydney Sloan is a fantastic. Listen, it talks about how we do a ton of due diligence on founders for CEOs, but not as much due diligence on the CMOs or VPs of sales. So they dive into all the challenges around those roles, especially those first hires. And you're going to want to listen to this if you're in the startup space. So listen to science of scaling wherever you get your podcasts. Yeah, I think that's the thing for me. And I would probably add my own because on my side is, you know, again, the quality of the reach, right? So the authenticity, and I keep tying this back to authenticity, right?

If I believe that person is, you know, using this product, can represent, if I believe that person, I trust that person, then I need to trust that they've used the product, they know the product, they've done their due diligence on the product, and they're not just getting paid for the product. That's why like a lot of these ones that I've actually tried to work with who have approached me, I'm like, okay, um, I don't know much about you. Could you, can I get a license? Can I, can I get a license of the software so I can at least start fucking around with it a little bit so I can speak to it, right? Versus like, I'll give you an example, like Sprout Social. I've done more free promotion shit for Sprout Social because I use it, and I'm a fan of it, right?

And so I've done some organic shit for them that they have not paid me for because I'm like, look, this is how I use Sprout, let me show you how I organize all these different things and whatever it is. Now, they give me their product for free, so that's a nice little reciprocity, but they're not paying a huge check to me to say, go do this because, and there's been more than a few companies that I think have pretty much built their entire fucking business in the first early years of my career because I would introduce their shit every time I did a training. You know, Owler, Crystal Nose, like all these different products, I'm like, just use it because it's fucking awesome. And all of a sudden, they see these huge spikes, right?

And so now, like leveraging that and but doing it in an authentic way. So it's almost like what I did with, you know, because we're both signing up with a new agent now, which I'm excited about. One of the things he asked me to do was, because I told him, I go, I just can't represent something I don't believe in. I just can't. And so he's like, John, write down every product that you use, every product, and that you like, do products that you use and products that you like, right? That you feel like you could say something, even if you don't use them, you like them, right? And so I ran that, you know, and I, everything from dunks, coffee to Adidas, Sheltos to all sorts of shit, but obviously the software stuff too.

And that's going to be our first, hey, let's go to them and say, look, John loves your shit, wants to represent you. Let's work together here. As opposed to go get me anybody that'll pay a check, right? Because I just, too many people are doing that right now. And I think it's degrading their credibility. Okay. I want to focus on that real quick. And then I want to talk about the product usage or not, because I have an idea to not to disagree, but to challenge you to make you think, maybe think differently about it, maybe put more money in your pocket in a good way. Yeah. I'm trying. So, so everyone, by the way, yeah, we all want, we all want, we don't want less money. So first I want to say, I think if you're listening to this, whether you're getting started in this phase or exiting the phase, everyone that I've ever talked to has done the said yes to everything approach when getting started.

Cause you're like, I'm getting nothing. If I say, you know, it's from nothing to something. Right. So I get that. And you don't know anything. This is like some of the very early content for guys, gals in B2B who are doing it and like talking about like what we're doing right now. Right. So there's not a playbook that exists that I've seen that's credible, um, for people to follow. So my point being is like, it's normal. I would, if you're listening to this, if you care, I would shorten that period as quickly as you can and get intentional because to your point, I don't want to be a NASCAR slide. No, I don't want to be the hood of a NASCAR. If you're not familiar, you know how many, how many brand logos are on NASCAR uniforms and their cars and all that.

I don't want to be that Ricky Bobby. Yeah. There's some good clips on this as well. Yeah. Nothing's, nothing's funnier than that when it comes to like influencer comparison, but you know, it's okay. Get a couple of dollars here, get a little, you know, experience, but don't just say yes to everything because you'll stand for nothing. Yeah. And I have a good friend who's done this and I think he's legit and he's a nice guy, but he says yes to too much stuff. And now I'm like, when he promotes stuff, I'm like, I just know you don't really care because there's no way you could care about so many things. Like, and some of these texts conflict with each other. So it's like, you're like, think of it like your megaphone like becomes weaker.

Yeah. Right. So like, or trust, right. I think we're talking about the same person, but I know, I know what you mean. Yeah. And it's no, Hey, like that's his choice. That's his strategy. I disagree with it, but it's not my income. Yep. My income looks different. And so that's why I wanted it. So think of it that way. And the other thing too, is we're going back to like, who's really making money in the influencer game versus just getting reaching, you know, like, uh, wow, that's cool. Yeah. Like I'm trying to make money. Yeah. This is, I'm trying to help people with, with what I know and I'm trying to monetize and put money in my pocket. I got two little girls. I got, you know, I got things to pay for.

Yep. And so I'm not just saying yes to everyone. I'm not just saying yes. Like, you know, Hey, Devin, come do our webinar where we're making a bunch of money or we're going to, you know, get a bunch of pipeline, but you're just going to get 250 people to hear you talk. Right. That's not worth my time. Not at this phase of my career. If you're younger or not even younger, sorry. If you're earlier in your brand building influence, yeah, get out there. You got to get your name out there and kind of hit the streets, but you should also know at what point in time am I going to start saying no for certain reasons, start saying yes to other reasons. And so speaking of a, I'll give Anisha a shout out for it.

I don't think he cares. He doesn't operate in secrecy. I don't think, but I have the same thing. I just sent him today, John, which is a five. I'm like a bit of a spreadsheet when it comes to stuff. So I have five pillars and then all the brands I want to work with. And it's so he can understand when to say yes and when to say no. Do I use your product as one of them? If I don't, and this is where I'll challenge you a second, do I believe in your mission and what you are setting out to solve? Even if I don't use it yet, that's have to hit one of those two. And then it's, you know, uh, brand equity. Does this brand make me look bigger? If I can get a deal with Spotify, I'm going to look a lot more legit.

I'm going to look a lot bigger than if I get, uh, I want to say another company's name, like the one you never heard of. Right. Obviously. And so you can tell though, like if a guy like you, John says yes to like D read Sasco and no one's heard of that, you must be doing it for the money because you probably have never like you're bigger than that brand. Right. And the other ones like money, like, you know, the likelihood or no, like, do we know that they, you know, have a fair budget for this type of stuff? Um, and the other one is, do I like them? Yeah. Am I excited to see a Spotify contract? I'm putting into the universe right now. By the way, if you work at Spotify, by the way, Spotify, if you're listening, right, same year, early adopter over 10 years.

Um, but anyway, so like, that's going to like, you know, if you saw that on your feed, John, you'd be like, Oh, okay. Yeah, exactly. And that snowballs into bigger deals, into bigger deals, into bigger deals, and the bigger deals have more money. So that's my strategy. Long-term build trusted scale, increase my credibility with a certain demographic of people and then command a high ticket price versus NASCAR 10s, 20s, 50s, you know what I mean? And by the end of the year, people are like, I've seen that guy's face a lot, but I have no idea what he stands for. And, and so, so on that journey, right. Cause I'm on that, I'm on that thing. Like everybody keeps telling me, cause I, I never put myself like at, at whatever level people think I'm at, I'm always counting.

You know what I mean? Um, but like more than few people be like, John, are you fucking kidding me, dude? Like you're John Barrows in this space, dude, like lean fucking in. And I'm like, you have a brand dysmorphia. Yeah. There's a, there's a, like it's imposter syndrome. I've talked about this on the podcast multiple times. Like for some reason, I never, I always put myself as kind of one of the people and not here, even though like, if you look at the stats, it's like, Holy shit. Um, but I've definitely gotten based on what happened last, year and a few other things, you know, um, you know, the movie, uh, obviously, um, Goodfellas, right. Of course. Remember, remember at the beginning when they're talking about like hustling everybody and protecting, he's like, fuck you, pay me.

Fuck you, pay me. Fuck you, baby. Like I've gotten to that point in my career where I'm, I'm done doing favors, right. I've done enough favors. I put enough out there, but what people don't understand is I've been doing that for 15 fucking years. Right. I've been doing favors for 15 years. And yes, I believe in what goes around, comes around. Yes. I believe in the universe and all this other shit, but I have a daughter. She's about to go to high school, private high school. You know what I mean? All this different shit. I got to get paid. And so, but I don't want to get paid just to get paid. And I think that's the difference, right? There's this dynamic of whoring yourself out NASCAR or having integrity and a great way to do this, by the way, a little small tip.

I actually gave this to a kid who was trying to figure out how to get to like Saster for instance, right? Yeah. How can I get my company to pay for Saster? How can I get, how can I get paid to go to Saster or not have to pay to go to Saster? Sure. Call up the head of Saster. Say, what are you trying to drive? I will be your brand advocate. Give me a ticket for free. And this is what I'll do for you. I'll, I'll post five times for you, whatever it is internally. Hey boss, what do I need to do to get, to get to Saster? What do I need to promote for us as an organization? And how many likes do I need to get? How many things do I need to get to get me a free ticket to Saster? Yeah. That's a nice small way of you figuring out how to get free shit first of all, and building your brand.

Right? So you're the thing that I've been trying to like, there's a lot of different, why is, why is X broken? It's because like marketing is a lot about outputs, not outcomes. Yeah. Outputs, how many blogs, how many social posts, how many likes, not how many qualified meetings, not how many, you know, media placements. That's my like, that's my like point of view that I'm standing on. It's like, why also when I say like, why content strategy? Cause that's my thing versus like content marketing. Content marketing is outputs. I'm about outcomes. I'll do less work, work, less output, but I'll get better outcomes. When you're doing an influencer model, some marketers are going to come and say, we're only, you know, work with people who have a hundred plus likes on average.

And I go, okay, well I qualify for that, but in the back of my head, I'm going, that's a flawed way to think about it because those likes are not all, they're not all equal. And so the better way to do it is, yeah. What are you trying to drive towards? Trying to get a webinar filled. You're trying to do, you know, trying to break into a new persona. If you find a marketer who this year needs to break into a new persona and your audience is that persona, turn your price up, turn your price up. Yeah. I have a couple right now. They're like, we're breaking into marketing. We know you have a good, strong sales marketing background. I'm like, great. I'm in, I'm in for sure. All day. And then we start breaking down other outcomes and then you get to have the fun part of what are the outputs that align with them.

And then that's to your point, John, like it doesn't feel, uh, uh, forced. Yeah. You're excited now. Yeah. I'm like, oh, this company that I work that I've used and you're trying to get into marketing and I know marketing. Well, Oh wow. I just hit fireworks on the, on the FM. I don't know how we did it, but, um, some, some screen, if you're, if you're listening, some weird visual effect happens, I did two thumbs up, I guess, but like that's extreme value, extreme value. And then high ticket costs versus like you're, uh, you pointed out, don't do it the opposite way. It was like any way to make it, you know, make a dollar. I think, you know, sales and marketing, you know, sales, I always tell people, you know, the number one thing I think you need to be successful in sales is a belief in what you do.

You know, if you don't even what you do, then fuck off, right? You're just some douchebag trying to get a commission trying to, and you're giving us the rest of Batman. But when you believe, and I say this all the time, that sales is the transfer of enthusiasm, right? It's like, if you believe it, then it just, it, it comes through and that's something, and we'll finish up on this. That's something that AI can't do. Yeah. AI can't believe and show true conviction that will at least translate to another human being, right? It'll show whatever, but, but you can, it's like, when I get these emails from AI, I can just tell they don't have a soul. I don't know how to explain it. I just can tell that they don't have a soul.

And, and so that belief in marketing is, is the same thing. You are going to be so much more successful working with brands and companies and people that you believe in, whether it's their values, their product, whatever it might be. So find that niche of belief, and then it'll start to pay bills pretty quick. I like that. I'm not going to add anything. I just want to say yes. Love it. Awesome. Well, we got like you and I, like we're going to have another one of these, cause I, cause I'm, we're both on this journey together. Right. And I want to go back to learning out loud. Uh, like I want to guide people on how, how to do like what to do and how to do this and how to figure out the right way.

So if you want to, cause all these kids right now, like every kid out there wants to be an influencer, every kid wants to be a YouTube star. It's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. It takes a little while to get there kids. So just jump right into it. It's like motivational speakers. Like I I'm sorry, I hate this. When you see like a fucking seven year old kid giving a motivational speech, I'm like, dude, cut the shit. Like you're fucking seven. What, what, what possible experience have you had in life to help motivate me? So yeah. Has your mom told, you know, to that new toy, has your dad left you square in the face and said, you didn't earn this new toy in the aisle of target? Well, I've got five tips.

They're going to take you from toyless to overflow toy chest right now. Step number one. I haven't seen, I have not seen a seven year old do motivational speaking, but I admittedly, you know, I would, if one found me on my feet, I would watch it out of sheer curiosity. Oh, I see it, but it's just like, you know, but you can do it. And it's like, they're on the court. And I'm like, dude, shut the fuck up. I'm sorry. You're just, you're just not waking up early enough, John. That's what it comes down to. And you're seeing your family way too much. I saw this other one. I'll, I'll, I'll tease on this. It was, uh, all these, I'm like really into like, uh, what I say really into, I mean, really into hating on entrepreneur bros, creator bros, marketing bros.

And there was this gal that you can be a woman, of course. And there was a gal and she was like, you know, on stage at some sales thing, you know, you're assuming a sales thing based on just like entrepreneur thing. And she's like, you know, people ask me how many, you know, how many hours I spent with my kids. I don't spend any hours. I spend 20 minutes a day with my kids. Well, you're in like horrible parents. Like this is where we've devolved into like entrepreneur bro culture where it's like, Hey, you know, that family that's supposed to, you're supposed to love. Forget them. You're spending hours a week with your son, idiot. You'll never make it. And it's like, okay, let's just put that into a box and leave it in 2023 if we can.

And like, let's just come back to like reality this year. You know what I mean? And so it's like, Hey, stop saying things to get attention and to steer people wrong. Say things to help people. If it's working, you'll get a bigger, you'll get a bigger, better following. Quit doing, Hey, Hey, Hey, marketing, bro. Quit doing weird stuff to get attention and followers. That's what this boils down to. Yeah. And, and somebody said, I was watching something where they said like, you know, in a hundred years, like, do you know your, have you ever met your great grandfather or your great, great grandfather? No. Okay. No. So, so your great grandfather, you've never met, right? I've all, no, only grandparents.

Yeah. Never. Great. So you are two generations away from being a hundred percent irrelevant, a hundred percent irrelevant. You're way sooner. Think about it though. Right? Like your grandfather and father. Yes. Okay. There's lineage there, but your great grandfather. So two generations removed, nobody remembers his name. He does. You know what I mean? I mean, maybe if he was Rockefeller or something dumb like that, but mine weren't right. So all of that stuff, all the shit that we collect in our lives a hundred years from now, nobody's going to give a fuck. It's all going to be in a dumpster. So all that shit that you did, all your dumb ass fucking followers, all the stupid fucking money that you made is literally makes zero difference in a hundred years.

Nobody will remember your name. It's not really a legacy. Your legacy is your kids. So my point is, is like, when you put it in that perspective of all the shit that we worry about, all the shit that we do and thinking that after your kid has a kid, you're pretty much irrelevant after that. Nobody cares. Right. Yeah. I think, I mean, I see your point. I think it's like, if you think of trying to tie it back to the influencer conversation, what are you really influencing? Yeah. Now that sounds like a cliche, obvious question, but I don't think a lot of people really think, who am I really influencing? What am I influencing? To your point, no one's going to remember how much dollar, well, no one really knows how much in my bank account, except about two other people, my accountant and my wife.

But, and you know, the followers, yeah, no one's going to care that Devin added however many thousands of followers when I pass away or in a couple generations, but you can use your money and you can use that following with integrity and, you know, being intentional and hopefully influence people, right? Make, you know, make them better at sales, make them better at marketing, hopefully make some businesses grow. And I think that's kind of like this duality we've been talking about today is like, you do the transactional, easy, kind of thoughtless thing, which again, you can hear by my tone. I don't agree with it, but I would never judge somebody by that. I'm not going to like, you can still come hang out, go make your money, do whatever.

Or you want to be intentional, right? And make a bigger impact and then be intentional on how you monetize that. So that's kind of like the two things. So I like your approach of like two generations. Now I'm hoping, I thought you were going to say our generation is going to live longer and therefore I will know my kids, but my kids is kids is kids, but I don't know. Well, I mean, maybe if we all get uploaded to the matrix, which I genuinely believe we all live in, right? I'm on the wait list. I'm on the wait list. I'm going to, have you, have you seen the, uh, have you seen the show upload by any chance? I have seen season one and I thought it was actually very well done. Very well done. It's really creepy and probably why I didn't watch season two.

So I was like, ah, too close, too accurate and close to home. Love it. Awesome, man. Well, look, I appreciate the conversation as always in the knowledge here. Uh, tell people it's the reader.co, right? The reader.co, the reader, reader with two E's like my last name.co. uh, doc. If you ask me why not.com, it's way more expensive, way more expensive. So we on the.co life, uh, you can find me on LinkedIn. Uh, and if you want to drop in the show notes, uh, my newsletter every Saturday, less than five minutes to read expert advice for growing your career and company with content strategy. So love that by the way, I'm sorry. I love those, uh, that you're putting out there. I was actually going to reach out cause we're, cause I don't have, cause I have a newsletter for my members, but I don't have the big newsletter to get from a kind of click funnel standpoint.

And I got to get into that. So part of what I'm doing with the niche and this team is creating a newsletter and content and everything else. So we'll be in touch here soon, but. Dude, you've got like 10 years of blogging. You have 10 years of newsletter waiting to happen. Yeah. The amount of content that I'm sitting on right now is fucking insane. So I'm looking forward to figuring out a way to leverage it. Right on, man. Wait, thanks for having me. Always a pleasure. And now my goal is of course, to get back on the pod. No pressure, but I got to holler at my agent. There you go. That is your agent and tell him. I'll have my agent talk to your agent. We'll figure this out. All right, my man.

I'll catch you later. All right, everybody. Thanks for listening. Hope you got enough value out of this and ton of value out of it. Like I did here. And like I always say at the end of all of these, go out there and make somebody smile today. Cause no matter how bad your day is, or you think it's going, you make somebody smile and you know, you had a good day and the world needs a lot more of that right now. So thank you all very much. And I will see you on the other side. I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did with your support and our incredible guests. We're one of the top sales podcasts out there right now. And I can't thank you enough now to keep the momentum going. It would mean the world to me.

If you could go and leave a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform and share some of your favorite episodes with your network. Also check out my new website, jbarrows.com. Well, you'll find even more ways to engage. There's a ton of free content and you can also get trained from me directly as an individual or for your team. Look, I'm out there selling every day, just like you are. And I'm doing my best to stay on top of all the latest trends in sales and technology. So if you're looking to level up and you give a shit about this profession of sales, let's connect and make it happen together.