This week on The Digital Download, we are doing the maths on your sales strategy, and the numbers are frightening.

We have all heard the stat: only 5% of your market is ready to buy right now. But new insights suggest the reality is far worse. Research indicates that you are only likely to get in front of 5% of that 5%.

Do the maths. That means you—and every single one of your competitors—are fighting tooth and nail for 0.25% of the market.

When supply exceeds demand to that degree, you have no leverage. You are forced into a "race to the bottom" where the only point of difference is price.

I’m joined by my co-hosts Tim Hughes and Adam Gray to discuss how to escape this trap. Tim, who has long argued that "legacy process competitors may never catch up" , and Adam, who advocates for a strategy built on "inevitability rather than luck", will explain why the answer lies in the other 95%.

Join us as we discuss:

• The Maths of Failure: Why chasing the "in-market" buyer is a statistical dead end.

• The Race to the Bottom: Why fighting for the "5% of 5%" destroys your margins and your brand authority.

• The "Relationship" Moat: How to build "authentic human engagement" that differentiates you before price ever comes up.

• The 95% Opportunity: How to engage the buyers who aren't ready yet, so you are the only call they make when they are.

• Differentiation: If everyone looks the same on paper, how do you use your personal brand to stand out?

It is time to stop fighting for crumbs and start baking the whole cake.

We strive to make The Digital Download an interactive experience. Bring your questions. Bring your insights. Audience participation is keenly encouraged!

This week's Host was -

• Bertrand Godillot, Founder and Managing Partner of Odysseus & Co, a proud DLA Ignite partner

Panelists included -

• Tim Hughes, Co-founder and CEO of DLA Ignite

• Adam Gray, Co-founder of DLA Ignite

• Richard Jones, Richard Jones, Director of Qure 8 Ltd

Transcript of The Digital Download 2025-12-12

Bertrand Godillot [00:00:03]:

Good afternoon, good morning, and good day, wherever you may be joining us from. Welcome to another edition of the Digital Download, the longest running weekly business Talk show on LinkedIn Live, now globally syndicated on TuneIn radio through IBGR, the world's number one business talk news and strategy radio network. Today on the Digital Download, we're doing the math on your sales strategy and the numbers are threatening. We have all heard that only 5% of your market is ready to buy right now. But new insights suggest the reality is far worse.

Bertrand Godillot [00:00:52]:

Research indicates that, that you are the only. That you are sorry, only likely to get in front of 5% of that 5%. Do the math. That means you and every single one of your competitor are fighting tooth and nail for 0.25% of that market. Today we're going to discuss how to escape this trap with our panelists. But before we kick off the discussion, let's go around the set and introduce everyone. While we are doing this, why don't you in the audience reach out to a friend, ping them and have them join us. We strive to make the Digital Download an interactive experience and audience participation, as you know, is highly encouraged.

Bertrand Godillot [00:01:40]:

So, Tim, you want to introduce yourself?

Tim Hughes [00:01:43]:

Yes, thank you. My name is Tim Hughes. I'm the CEO and co founder of DLA Ignite and I'm famous for writing the book Social Selling the techniques to. To influence bars and change makers. Before I finish my introduction, I want to basically congratulate Tracy for doing a hundred episodes of her podcast.

Tracy Borreson [00:02:08]:

Thank you, dear. Technically, the 100th episode will be on Wednesday, so if you would like to join us for the party, come on out.

Bertrand Godillot [00:02:15]:

And.

Tim Hughes [00:02:16]:

And your podcast is called what, Tracy?

Tracy Borreson [00:02:19]:

Crazy Stupid Marketing.

Adam Gray [00:02:20]:

There we go.

Bertrand Godillot [00:02:21]:

Wow, that's a. That's a great leading, leading sentence to actually introduce yourself, Tracy.

Tracy Borreson [00:02:28]:

Oh, well, thank you. And thank you, Tim. And I'm glad to be back. I haven't been able to. To come and hang out for a while, but I'm Tracy Borreson, founder of TLB Coaching & Events where we help you not do crazy stupid marketing. Hence the show crazy stupid Marketing. A proud partner of DLA Ignite. And I'm excited.

Tracy Borreson [00:02:49]:

I don't know if I ever said the words, I'm excited to do the math, but I'm excited to do the.

Bertrand Godillot [00:02:54]:

Math.

Adam Gray [00:02:57]:

Excellent. Adam. Hi, everybody. I'm Adam Gray. I'm co founder of DLA Ignite and I'm Tim's business partner and we were actually presenting a branding workshop for a bunch of guys and and girls yesterday. And one of the really interesting things was that this, this stat I actually was, was talking at the time and Tim was watching everybody and he said it was like a ripple of oh my God. Going across the people in, in the room as one by one they thought ah, that explains why nobody wants to talk to us. And it was, it was a really interesting aha moment I think for.

Bertrand Godillot [00:03:43]:

Everybody and hopefully we'll find a few ways out of that tribe today. Okay, great. And myself, Bertrand Godillot. I am the founder and managing partner of Odysseus and Co. A very proud DLA Ignite partner. So thank you all for these introductions and I'm going to start with a foundational question. Why chasing the in market buyer is a statical statistical dead end, as I just.

Tracy Borreson [00:04:14]:

Explained. Can I start?

Tracy Borreson [00:04:17]:

Yeah. Okay. I think the key word in that for me is chasing. Right. I feel like even when you think about the idea of chasing, it's just exhausting. And then if you layer on this idea of racing a whole bunch of other people to like a very tiny destination, there's actually a small percentage of people in this world who are very good, like sprint runners. And that's for a reason. It's like there's a lot of training, you gotta do a lot of stuff that a lot of people aren't willing to do.

Tracy Borreson [00:04:52]:

So then you take those people who aren't willing to do the things and you put them in a chase against other people to a solo destination. I mean I, I feel like it's destined to fail regardless of how big of a market you may be.

Tim Hughes [00:05:08]:

Chasing. Can you explain the, the formula to us? The 5% of the 5% for the, for the people that weren't great at maths at.

Adam Gray [00:05:18]:

School. For us, Me.

Tim Hughes [00:05:20]:

Yeah.

Adam Gray [00:05:21]:

So generally speaking, if you say to people what percentage of your market or your total addressable market are in market at any one time, generally speaking, people come back with the answer 5%. So 1 in 20. And obviously last week on the digital download we had Kerry Cunningham as a guest who has just done this massive research project where he has asked many, many or they As a company, 6Sense have asked thousands of companies some questions and then they've built a series of outputs from, from the. I think as you said when we, we had a conversation yesterday, Tim, this is not about opinion, this is about data from facts from research from these people. And some of the things that, that Kerry said were I guess not altogether surprising. But when they were laid bare you went ah, right now I See why that's the case. So one of the shocking statistics was that the average buying team or buyer produces a short list of around five companies that they are planning to do business with or that they are considering doing business with on a particular project. And 95% of the time they buy from one of those five companies.

Adam Gray [00:07:00]:

So if you are not one of those five companies, you are chasing the 5% opportunity that exists to be selected as the supplier for that particular product. And that 5% is overlaid on the 5% of people that are in market at the moment ready to buy the product or service. And I think that, that maybe the, the we're all familiar with sales being a numbers game. You know, you got to knock on a lot of doors, you got to phone a lot of people, you got to send a lot of emails. Whatever it may be. The shocking part here is that if you're not one of the five, then you and all of your competitors are chasing that 1 in 400 chance of being selected as the anomaly in the buying process. So basically it means that you are not going to be selected. I mean that's the long and the short of it, isn't it? You've got you and all of your competitors in the market.

Adam Gray [00:08:03]:

Less 5 are sharing that 1 in 400 chance. And that that explains why so rarely is it possible to interrupt the buying process and become the supplier of choice. And I think that one of the interesting things about what Kerry said was a, as we all have known for some time, you have to be out there influencing the decision making process before buyers identify as being in market to buy something. But also, even if they're not going to select you this time, you should still move forward with any opportunities that you have with them because you may be the premium buyer of supplier of choice next.

Tim Hughes [00:08:45]:

Time. It's interesting what you said about influencing the deal beforehand. I mean that, that's pretty obvious, isn't it? What we need to do is we need to spend more money on brand advert, more branding, more advertising, basically doing more stuff to create an emotional feeling with, with the buyer for our.

Adam Gray [00:09:08]:

Brand. Well, I think that's what companies would like to believe. I think, you know, the, the challenge that we have and this is one of the things that we flagged yesterday for, for the workshop that we did so for the 1.2 billion people that weren't at the workshop yesterday and are on LinkedIn, I will say it. So people do not engage with corporate content. And one of the examples that we used was and this is not flagging them as being a poor example. They are just an example of this. IBM have 19 million followers on LinkedIn. They do a post, they get 250 likes on the post.

Adam Gray [00:09:52]:

So 250 people have read the content or consumed the content and thought to themselves. That resonates with me. I'll engage with that piece of content. So I see more of that kind of thing in my newsfeed. If I do a post, a good personal post, it might get 50 or maybe 100 likes and I haven't got 19 million followers. So the proportion of my audience that is engaging with my content, even if only get 10 likes, the proportion of my audience that is engaging with my content is orders of magnitude greater than IBMs. Now, I'm not holding myself up as being the high watermark for this, but I think what it does prove is that people care about people, they don't care about companies. So if you keep shoving your company in people's faces, it's unlikely to make them engage with it and it's unlikely to make them think, oh, that's an organization I would like to do business with.

Adam Gray [00:10:44]:

Whereas with people it's very different, isn't it? You build some rapport, you build some friendship, you build some trust. And then when you speak, I listen because I like you and I believe.

Tracy Borreson [00:10:53]:

You. It's so simple, isn't.

Bertrand Godillot [00:10:57]:

It? Yeah, it sounds really.

Tracy Borreson [00:10:59]:

Simple. It's just, it's interesting for me from a marketing perspective because there is this relationship with sales and marketing that's like sales over here collecting these stats. Okay, if we're not going to do the work to be in the consideration, sit in advance, right then we're chasing this 1 in 400 chance. So marketing better go out and do something magic. Like one of the things that I found really curious about marketing and why I love the concept of social selling in marketing is that for the past, I mean, I've had a 20 year career in marketing and for the past 20 years, people in marketing have been moving farther and farther away from the customer. So marketers are no longer creating a relationship with the customer, which means it has to be the sales person's responsibility because marketing is not doing any of that anymore. But also somewhere along the line we think that marketing has a better relationship with the customers than sales and can just send out an email and get a whole bunch of people to buy stuff, which there's like absolutely no data to back up. But this is the relationship in the back and forth that we have is one of the reasons that I don't believe that marketing and sales are really two different departments.

Tracy Borreson [00:12:22]:

That it doesn't actually serve for them to be two different departments. But if the people are out in the market being helpful, that generates brand trust. Is the number one thing that generates brand trust, the people being in the market doing something.

Adam Gray [00:12:40]:

Helpful.

Bertrand Godillot [00:12:41]:

Yeah.

Tim Hughes [00:12:45]:

That. But that. But that, Tracy, is revolutionary, what you just.

Adam Gray [00:12:50]:

Said.

Tim Hughes [00:12:51]:

Yeah. People out in the market being helpful creates brand.

Adam Gray [00:12:54]:

Trust. And I think, you know, when somebody looks at you, Tracy, they couldn't care less about, about TLB coaching and events. However, they love you. And that's the point, isn't it? Even though you are, the two of you are synonymous really, from a business perspective, people don't have a relationship with your business, they have a relationship with, with you. And, and that's the key thing. You know, when we met up in London, having never met face to face, the first thing we did was have a big hug. Yeah. You know, at the end of the day, it's because in the digital world you get to know people and.

Tracy Borreson [00:13:32]:

You can, if you be a.

Adam Gray [00:13:34]:

Human.

Tim Hughes [00:13:36]:

But. So why do we have a situation where we have marketing departments that say, I don't trust my people because they'll go out on to social media and well, here's me, here's me asleep in gutter after getting drunk, eating a.

Adam Gray [00:13:53]:

Kebab. A normal Friday night, some might.

Tim Hughes [00:13:57]:

Say.

Tracy Borreson [00:13:57]:

Yeah. So which probably speaks to specific customers, which may not necessarily be bad. But I think this comes down to like, like we talk about the concept of brand. Most people don't treat the concept of brand as simply as your people out in the market being helpful. Right. Like, that's not, that's not what people think about it. They think about a logo, they think about a tagline, they think about trademarks, they think about consistency, they think about all of these things that end up turning your brand kind of into a prison. So then we hire people and we say, you're going to be the voice of the brand, but you can't use your own voice, nor did I hire you because your voice actually matches my voice.

Tracy Borreson [00:14:42]:

That wasn't even in the hiring process at all. But it was that this is our brand guidelines and you will behave within our brand guidelines. And it's, it's, it's a fear mechanism. It's people trying to protect something because they assume that it's going to get broken. And whether that is the lawyers in your ear being like, we can't get sued over this, you're like you guys who got sued from going out into the marketplace being helpful. Did, did you. Did I, I haven't.

Adam Gray [00:15:16]:

Right. I think that there's.

Bertrand Godillot [00:15:18]:

An. Adam, you've got fans. So.

Adam Gray [00:15:21]:

Hi. No, no, no, I, I don't have fans.

Tracy Borreson [00:15:24]:

Fan.

Bertrand Godillot [00:15:25]:

Fan. And then, and then we had a comment from Chris that says, great conversation, simple. Yet many companies will spread out corporate.

Tim Hughes [00:15:34]:

Content. Hi.

Bertrand Godillot [00:15:35]:

Chris. And hi. Hi.

Tim Hughes [00:15:37]:

Chris. If Chris is tuning in, we're in the, we're in the. The presence of podcast greatness. If Chris Stone is. Is. We are not worthy. We're not, we're not worthy.

Bertrand Godillot [00:15:50]:

Chris. So, so I've got the question for you. So why don't we, you know, knowing what we just said, why don't, why don't we just, you know, Forget about the 5% in.

Adam Gray [00:16:01]:

Market? Well, I, I think that, I think that part of the challenge here is that the, the sales structure of organizations actually is always chasing a deal this quarter. And that's a really big challenge. You know, I want to interrupt. I want to try to become that supplier of choice. I want to disrupt, I want to discover what the challenges are and then I want to bring in that deal in three months, even though I've traditionally got an 18 month deal cycle time and you know, and customers are not in market most of the time. Um, and so it's a, it's, it's delusional to try to do that a lot of the time. But I think that, that one of the key things with worth a try, though. Well, oddly, oddly, it is worth a try, but I think it's only worth a try if it's a byproduct of what you do rather than the focus of what you do.

Adam Gray [00:16:59]:

So if you do what Tracy said, you know, you go into the market, you be really helpful to people. Well, being really helpful to people means that I can become your trusted advisor in the digital world five years before you buy something. But also I might be lucky and be the trusted adviser five minutes.

Tim Hughes [00:17:17]:

Before you buy something on the basis that you're unlikely to win the battle of. In corporate, that we, we do need to close something this, this, this quarter. I don't think that Adam is going to win that one by.

Adam Gray [00:17:35]:

Himself.

Bertrand Godillot [00:17:37]:

No.

Tim Hughes [00:17:37]:

But should the answer be we actually need to do.

Adam Gray [00:17:41]:

Both? Well, I think the two can be one and the same thing, can't they? I think the problem with when you are chasing. Tracy said that at the beginning about chasing the deals, when you are chasing this quarter's sale, the behavior that you have to no. That you have to. The behavior that normally salespeople exhibit there is around burning relationships and burning bridges. Tim, is there anything I can do to make you buy this quarter? No. All right, we'll go away then. I don't want to talk to you anymore. Bertrand, is there anything.

Adam Gray [00:18:15]:

You know, and it's that kind of attitude. And the problem is that you may well bump up against somebody that says, well, okay, if you do me a deal, maybe I'll buy it now. Great. But for everybody that doesn't. Which is a vast proportion. Vast, vast majority of those. For everybody that doesn't. They're unlikely to ever touch.

Adam Gray [00:18:33]:

Want to talk to you again.

Tim Hughes [00:18:35]:

So. So if we can park the. It's a quarter. Because we're not going to win that battle in. On however long we run it. Yeah, if we can park that for a second. What can we. What.

Adam Gray [00:18:48]:

Let.

Tim Hughes [00:18:48]:

Let's. What can we do be doing as marketing? I liked Tracy's comment about you're turning your brand into a prison. Because I bet. I bet that there are people that will be going on to. That will be saying, on the one hand, what we need to do is have brand guidelines, and the next minute they're saying, actually, as people, you need to have agency, and we've delegated authority to you, and. And, you know, you need to be. Feel. Feel empowered, right? We kind of have uncovered this imbalance there.

Tim Hughes [00:19:24]:

What do you.

Tracy Borreson [00:19:24]:

Think? It's interesting because even yesterday. So I. I'm still sponsoring the UFC's Marketing Brand Hackathon this year, and so they asked for my logos and my brand guidelines, and I was like, so I sent my logos, and I was like, I don't have brand guidelines. Don't squish my logo. Weird. Like, that was what I told them, right? Like, if you shrink it, shrink it. Keep the proportions the same, right? Like, that's it. Right? That's my breakfast.

Tracy Borreson [00:19:56]:

Like, I said that my brand colors of my fonts, but, like, nobody. They're not gonna. They're not printing material for me, right? Like, they're not designing material for me. They're gonna put my logo on a thing and say, sponsored by TLV coaching events, right? Like, what are your brand guidelines actually doing for you? There's a lot of people. I've created a lot of brand guidelines in my time, right? There's. There's tone and there's ideal customer profiles, and there's what we say and what we don't say. But, like, you just created so many restrictions that people opt out. It's the same reason I won't load the dishwasher at my mom's house, because she has her way of doing it.

Tracy Borreson [00:20:34]:

And if you don't do it that way, you're gonna get in trouble. So you just don't do it. Right. Like, this.

Tim Hughes [00:20:39]:

Is. It's easier to go into the front room and. And, yeah.

Tracy Borreson [00:20:43]:

Right. It's. It's. It's Human Behavior 101. And so if we take out marketing label on top of it and just look at what will humans do if we put too many rules in place? Humans will do nothing. Right? So, like, why are we surprised then that our employees aren't even liking our own posts? Which is not a thing I recommend that people even bother thinking about. Like, this is not. The conversation is wrong.

Tracy Borreson [00:21:09]:

The conversation about how we talk about brand is wrong. And if we keep talking about it the same way we've talked about it for the last 20 years, it's going to continue to be unhelpful. So we need to strip away those layers of things. They're just not working right. They're not doing anything for us. And maybe we had a good reason to do them 20 years ago, and maybe we didn't. But regardless, they're not helping anybody anymore. They are not helping our customers build a relationship with us as a company.

Tracy Borreson [00:21:41]:

This is what brand is about. People wanting to do stuff with you, to see you as part of their world. And if what we're doing isn't creating that, we have to do something.

Tim Hughes [00:21:53]:

Different. So. So, Tove, I'd love to come to your comment, but I don't want Adam. It will. It will put Adam into a tailspin. So we. So I'm gonna. I'm gonna.

Tim Hughes [00:22:04]:

So we're gonna put it up, but we're gonna move on to. Okay, so. So my question kind of comes back to you, Tracy, which is the relationship moat, how to build authentic human engagement. The differentiate different you before price ever comes up. Because if we're in the 5% of the 5%, we're not differentiated. The only differentiation we have is.

Adam Gray [00:22:30]:

Price.

Tim Hughes [00:22:31]:

Right? So how. How is it that we build this relationship moat that means that price doesn't come.

Tracy Borreson [00:22:37]:

Up? I mean, again, I feel like all of this is very simple at the beginning of the day, right? It takes effort, and it takes intentional effort, but to build relationships with people all the time. And I think the thing that's interesting, too, for me, I like to use this example because I've had clients where I've had a relationship with them. For like eight years and then they buy something from me. I have relationships with customers or I've had a relationship with you for 30 days and all of a sudden, like, you had a problem. But I didn't build a relationship with you because I knew you had a problem. Right. This coming back to what Adam said about the opportunity to increase your lux surface area is that I'm out in the market building trust with people and helping people, and you're like, oh, this is what I always, or I never knew I always needed. Right.

Tracy Borreson [00:23:35]:

And all of a sudden you have a contract and that's cool. But I don't do that knowingly. I go out and I build relationships with people and then sometimes that happens. Sometimes I get in on that. But then if you're. I didn't, I didn't chase anything. I just was out building. I like to call it building your reputation.

Tracy Borreson [00:23:55]:

What reputation do you want to have in the market? Do you want people to think that you're helpful? Like, for me, this is like, I'm a helpful, authentic person who happens to do marketing. So if you need marketing help, awesome. But I will also be helpful and be authentic in any interaction that you see me with. So that is the brand reputation that I.

Tim Hughes [00:24:17]:

Have. That's your brand.

Tracy Borreson [00:24:17]:

Reputation. And that is, that is also to come back to this like, brand versus people thing. That is a person's. A brand doesn't own a reputation like that. A brand is an amalgamation of reputations. A brand is an amalgamation of the reputations of the individual people have built in the brand relationships. And so if your people again are out in the market building up that reputation, people want to hang out with you, they want to go for coffee, they want to answer your call, they want to read your email, they want to read your social post. Like, this is what makes people want to engage with you.

Tracy Borreson [00:24:57]:

But if we don't give them something to want to engage with, then we can spin our wheels for a very long time, creating content and defining pipelines and like all of these activities that actually don't have anything to do with touching a.

Bertrand Godillot [00:25:14]:

Customer. So how do you make that happen? If you're a big corporate and you've got, you know, your legal department, your. I mean, not, not, not, not to talk about marketing only, which is, I think we well addressed. But things like legal HR, people were scared that if you're too visible on LinkedIn, then you get somebody.

Tim Hughes [00:25:40]:

Else. We were with some people yesterday who worked for Amazon who said, you know, how can, how, how come, how Come a person be bigger than Amazon and if, if, if we would become. We'd soon be.

Tracy Borreson [00:25:54]:

Sh. I mean, I'm not going to pretend that it's easier in a big corporate structure than it is in a small business. This is predominantly why I work with small business, because it's easier to. They don't have a legal department. They have a legal advisor. They don't have an HR department. They have an HR person who's usually still caring about the people instead of caring about protecting the organization. And so there's.

Tracy Borreson [00:26:25]:

Let's, let's look at it this way, right? So let's say you're an individual department head. So maybe you're an individual market marketing head or an individual sales head. And you're like, ah, we keep hitting. We keep missing our targets. We are not hitting our, our sales numbers, okay? And I'm responsible for doing something about that. Personally, I'm a huge fan of asking for forgiveness instead of permission. And so. And again, like, what.

Tracy Borreson [00:26:51]:

What are we breaking here? If I'm going out into the market and helping, right? I got my. I got my podcast. Crazy stuff, Stupid marketing, right? People might be like, oh, that says bad things about the marketing industry. And I'm like, yeah, there's a lot of not great stuff going on in the marketing industry, and I'm here to help fix it, right? This is what we're doing here. I'm showing up as someone who can help fix a thing. Will everybody see it? No. Will everybody like it? No. But I am showing up to help.

Tracy Borreson [00:27:20]:

I'm helping. You cannot tell me that legal is going to be like, oh, dude, shut down. Shut down. We are now out in the marketplace helping people. This is terrible, right? If you're in sales, right? And all of a sudden you're like, okay, so normally we track against all of these KPIs and make you make 125 calls a week or maybe more. This week, we're not gonna. This week we're gonna build relationships, and I'm giving all of you permission to go out in your world and build relationships the way you build relationships. And we're going to see what happens.

Tracy Borreson [00:27:57]:

First of all, if we're already in the scenario where we're chasing everything to close a quarter. We don't have a dependable pipeline. Forget what is showing in our pipeline documentation, right? So I think this is really just about who in the organization is ready to get real about this and say, okay, fine, legal has its place, right? HR has its place, but you are making Us responsible for selling stuff. And in order to sell stuff we need to build relationships with customers. If we don't have any permission to build relationships with customers, you might as well fire the entire sales and marketing team and I don't know, get the lawyers to go sell something. I don't know. Like anyway. Yeah, real talk, real.

Tim Hughes [00:28:43]:

Talk. So yeah, Tova's made the comment about what, what about highly PLG SAS companies? Because if we go back to the, what we were talking about today, which is, you know, in any VC backed SAS company, they will be saying that they were, they're only going to be, they only want the company to spend money on the 5%. I've seen posts from senior people in the VC world saying you're completely, utterly stupid if you're spending money outside the, in the 95% because it's wasted money. And, and, and clearly if they're, if, if, if it's their money that you're spending, you got to do it their way. So, so, so how, so how so so in terms of, there's a kind of two questions here is h, how, how does someone do it in a, in any company? And what happens if we're saying that we're going to be working in the 95% that are not buying? Surely that's wasted.

Adam Gray [00:29:50]:

Effort. Sorry, aren't we saying that we're working in the 100%? So we're working for the, in the 95% but also in the.

Bertrand Godillot [00:30:02]:

5%. So I would say we, we have a job on the.

Adam Gray [00:30:05]:

95%.

Bertrand Godillot [00:30:07]:

Right. And that job pays off because that's a job. And then we play chance on the.

Adam Gray [00:30:12]:

5%. Yeah, absolutely. But I think, you know, a friend of Tim's and mine and yours, Bertrand is, was a very successful corporate sales leader and has now moved into more of a consulting interim role. And this person is choosing the companies that they want to work with based on whether or not these companies are prepared to take a risk and do something or what they may perceive as a risk and do something different. Because their experience of working in corporate was large corporations do not hit their revenue objectives anymore. Mid sized corporations do not hit their revenue objectives anymore. And the way that they grow is by acquisition or by product enhancement. So we've got some new products we can sell to our existing customer base.

Adam Gray [00:31:04]:

New logos just simply doesn't really happen in the real world. And part of that is the fact that the sales process or the sales process which is being employed by these organizations doesn't address the needs of the buyer. For 10 years, we've been told the buyer has changed. The buyer is now more educated than they ever were. The sales process has not changed at all. We're still talking about, oh well, we're going to do more cold calls and hit the phones today. A person that Tim and I kind of obliquely worked with previously, I remember them doing a post about, oh, it's really exciting. You know, we have a, a.

Tim Hughes [00:31:40]:

Phone Monday, a post on social.

Adam Gray [00:31:43]:

Media. Yeah. About how we're gonna have a, where we all come in and we're going to just hit the phones for the day and it's, you know, real team building.

Bertrand Godillot [00:31:50]:

Exercise. That's clearly growth. Growth.

Tim Hughes [00:31:54]:

Hacking. Yeah, of.

Bertrand Godillot [00:31:56]:

Course. It's.

Tim Hughes [00:32:01]:

Hacking. Yeah, yeah. Maybe they come in in 1980s fancy dress as.

Tracy Borreson [00:32:05]:

Well. That would be more.

Adam Gray [00:32:08]:

Fun. Yeah, but, but, but, you know, joking aside, it's like, you know, we are in a place where the, the default behaviors of both sales and marketing simply do not work anymore, evidenced by the fact that the aspirations of the company from a growth perspective are generally not met. Occasionally you'll be the only company in market. You know, we're the only people that do this. Therefore, if the, the buyer perceives they have a need, they've got no choice about where they go. But for the most part, you know, if you're buying a CRM or an ERP or a DPL or whatever, you know, whatever acronym you're, you're about to buy, you are surf it with choice. You know, you have more opportunities to buy stuff then you have time to assess which of those things you're going to buy. That's the world in which most, most sellers find.

Tracy Borreson [00:33:00]:

Themselves. So, and in SaaS in particular, I would say that.

Adam Gray [00:33:05]:

Because. Yeah, but more and more clothes, easy to create holidays. It's like everything, everything where the consumer wants to make a smart choice about what they're buying. Whether or not it's a business consumer or a business personal consumer, they need to make a smart choice about what they're buying because they don't buy this kind of thing very often. So, you know, we've all bought cars. You don't buy a car every week. You know, we've all bought holidays. You don't buy a holiday every week.

Adam Gray [00:33:33]:

So you want to make sure you, you're making a smart decision when you do that. And the challenge is that, that when you, if you, if your default start point is googling something, there's an awful lot of pages to go.

Tracy Borreson [00:33:46]:

Through. Oh, but Adam, you just, you just pay someone A whole bunch of.

Adam Gray [00:33:51]:

Money. SEO. That's how silly it.

Tracy Borreson [00:33:55]:

Is. So you rank on the front page. Don't you know that this is how we do.

Adam Gray [00:33:59]:

It? Yeah, and therein lies the problem, doesn't it? And I think that part of, part of the challenge here is that organizations or departments or functions within these organizations, they, they find something that works and they think that's, that's the shape of the world. So SEO is a good example of that. You know, most of our business comes from search marketing. Therefore we're going to focus on SEO. So you focus on SEO and you get to the top of Google results and then they change the algorithm and all of a sudden you're, you're on the thousandth page and it's like, oh God, the business is going to fall over as a result of this. And it's because you put all your eggs in one basket and, and you are reliant on. I think it was Schaefer who said about the fact rented space in terms of your, your profiles and, and you, you're reliant on Google delivering you as the, the default position. And that's, that's, that's a big risk, isn't.

Tim Hughes [00:35:05]:

It? Whereas if it is, considering they, they, they changed the algorithm because one of our friends, Stephen Sumner, he went to work for a company as a cmo and they'd done all of the, the stuff that you did in those days to basically get on page one, which was like have all the keywords in write letters and, and stuff. And, and, and then they cut him. They cut the company just as he was going into a board meeting. And they had to pay a thousand, a hundred thousand pounds, that's what, $130,000 a month just to buy their way up onto, on, on. Anyway, changing, changing the subject. So if we're in a situation where we're not differentiated, what could we do to differentiate ourselves as a.

Tracy Borreson [00:35:57]:

Company? Be yourself. Okay? So first of all, everybody is inherently different. So even if you're like, there's lots of other marketing consultants out in the world and we can all go out and say, we're all marketing consultants, figure out the difference between.

Tim Hughes [00:36:19]:

Us. Or we could say, hey, okay, let's do it on free. 1, 2, 3. We're all marketing.

Tracy Borreson [00:36:30]:

Consultants. Figure out the difference between us. It's like, good luck. This is where people also, they get overwhelmed with information because there isn't any differentiation. So now I'm trying to choose between SaaS products for a CRM system, and they all sound the Same. Does that make your decision easier or does that make your decision more difficult? It makes it more difficult because I don't know how to tell the difference between you guys. And doesn't matter how many fancy, here's my competitor and here's me and I get checks here and they get X's here, right? Like I. Everybody has that.

Tracy Borreson [00:37:14]:

It's the same. I'm looking at everything that is the same and you're probably product becomes not even part of the equation. Not. Not at all. And this is the thing that like is so confusing for me because we all have inherent uniqueness. Most businesses start, like, go into an industry because there's a gap or they like leave an industry and start a business like DLA Ignite because they're. You're like, there's nobody's doing this new way of selling. People should learn the new way of selling so that they can actually sell stuff.

Tracy Borreson [00:37:51]:

People are generally solving a problem, but as soon as you're like, I saw this problem, I'm going to solve this problem. But I'm going to sound like everybody else solving the problem. I'm not going to tell people why I'm here solving the problem. Like, how is that helping? Does that help you when you're trying to make a decision? Sorry, I am like fired up today about this. No, it doesn't make sense. Sense. There is absolutely no logic behind it. My competitor is SEOing for these keywords, so I'm going to SEO for those keywords so you can look exactly like them and end up in price competition.

Tracy Borreson [00:38:27]:

Like, is this the game we're here to play? Because I'm not.

Adam Gray [00:38:31]:

Interested. So it means that the buyer looks at the marketplace and they either don't think it matters who they choose or they don't care who they choose, either one of which is incredibly damaging to your relationship with them, isn't.

Tracy Borreson [00:38:46]:

It? And this is why we end up with stats like 1 in 400 chance, right? I don't want a 1 in 400 chance. But I'm not doing anything to create opportunities outside of that because I am only doing what makes me look the same. And why? Because looking different is inherently scary. We like have to come back to human behavior on this because from the time most of us are small children, we are being taught to like, stay in the.

Adam Gray [00:39:16]:

Box. Uniform.

Tracy Borreson [00:39:18]:

Right? Wear uniform, only say this, sit still, look pretty, right? Like there's a whole bunch of societal norms and we're still doing it, right? I live in a small town and I see it all the time. And I'm like, wow, we're not past this.

Tim Hughes [00:39:32]:

Yet. What I really love, Tracy, is the way that we've. We've. We've moved on in the way that we dress. So when I started at work, we all wore suits and ties. Then we left, lost the ties, but we wore suits. And then yesterday, all the men look the same. They all have brown shoes on, we all had jeans on, we all had a shirt on, we had a jacket.

Bertrand Godillot [00:39:53]:

On.

Tim Hughes [00:39:54]:

All.

Tracy Borreson [00:39:54]:

Exactly. We've evolved into a new.

Tim Hughes [00:39:57]:

Universe. Down. We were. And how cool we.

Tracy Borreson [00:40:00]:

Were. Well, like, and. And even that, right? Like, and I'm not saying these things are easy to deprogram because they're like human behavior, societal things, right? Like now we've said business casual, right? And we've created a box for business casual. So now what do we do? We all wear business casual, right? We have, like in. In the. In the holidays, right? We might add holiday sweater to business casual. But then that's for everybody, right? That's not just for you. Everybody gets a holiday sweater added to the list for the holidays for that.

Tracy Borreson [00:40:35]:

You want to wear your holiday sweater in January. Weirdo, right? Like, don't. No. Now you're weird.

Bertrand Godillot [00:40:40]:

But. But that also applies to the buyer. I would say it's probably, as we know, we have now a buying group, right? If we're looking for a significant piece of budget. And are you going to choose the one that is different or are you going to play the safe.

Tracy Borreson [00:41:02]:

Side? Well, I know, like always, I feel like we come back to culture a lot on this show because there's people and leadership teams out in the world who actually do believe and live the values of diverse perspectives and the value of diversity. Diverse perspectives. And how can we get that, that generates innovation and all these different types of things? Unfortunately, it's still a small percentage of companies, especially large companies, that are behaving that way. And so. But this is the thing that's also interesting about that. So if I am a service provider and I'm like that, right? Like, you can hopefully get that from me. I don't do things the way the fuddy duddy way. And I'm not going to do it that way just because you are comfortable with that way, because I happen to know that way doesn't work.

Tracy Borreson [00:41:53]:

And so I can pretend to do things the fuddy daddy way so I can align with you who want to buy the fuddy daddy way. But then as soon as you do, one of us is going to feel very unfulfilled either you're going to buy what I have and you're going to feel totally uncomfortable the entire time trying to push you outside of your comfort zone own, or I'm gonna just feel like I'm hitting my head against the wall every day because I technically signed up for this. But unless we're out in the market from a marketing and sales point of view, helping people to see, like, this is what we believe, this is how we do stuff here, we can't. Like, this is where you find actually those people who are like a heck yes. And you just met them because you're out and you're. You say something that they're like, oh, my gosh, I just thought I had to do it this way, but you're telling me I don't have to do it this way. And you're like, no, you don't have to do it that way. They're like, oh, my God, this is again, everything I never knew I always wanted.

Tracy Borreson [00:42:58]:

But it's not because you convinced them. It's because it was already in the brain somewhere and already in their, like, desire. Like, I kind of wish it would. It would be great if we could do business this way. And then someone's like, you can business that way. People are like, really? Oh, yes, please, can I do that? But again, like, if you're pretending to just be one of your competitor, you don't create those opportunities for people. And, like, I'm gonna feel like I'm talking in a circle now on this. But this, like, really comes down to, are we ready to, like, be brave about how we help people and show up and be different enough to say, like, okay, Maybe that works 60 years ago, it doesn't work today.

Tracy Borreson [00:43:41]:

Here's all the data that's showing us that that's true. But we all know people don't make decisions logically. They make decisions with emotions. And so if we're. All we're doing in marketing and sales is all this logic stuff, I'm gonna, I'm gonna hack the algorithm and I'm gonna get to the top of the Google page. All of this is. None of that is relationship building. It doesn't turn to anything emotional with a customer.

Tracy Borreson [00:44:06]:

Whereas you could actually have a five minute conversation with somebody about guitars. And then they're like, oh, that's curious. What do you do? And then they're like, oh, I like this guy Adam. I'm gonna go to the digital download. Like, oh, my God, I just heard Adam, like, getting really angry about why people still do this. And I totally agree with him. Can you come and help my sales team? Like, it can be that easy when we open up the paths, right? When we build relationships, more paths open. When we chase an algorithm, one path is open.

Tracy Borreson [00:44:40]:

So it's a very narrow.

Tim Hughes [00:44:41]:

Path. So, so, Tracy, great, great example there. And something that we heard yesterday was that there was some book that somebody had read about creating. By the way, it's not my book about creating relationships. And, and it was very easy on social because what you do is you go to the person's LinkedIn profile and you see where they went to school and you see whether they did this and did that and what sports team they support and, and do this. And you, you spend hours looking at somebody's. But LinkedIn profile and then craft the perfect connection request with a list of your products and services as well. And, and send it across to them.

Tim Hughes [00:45:28]:

And it wasn't, didn't. It seemed to be taking a long time. So, you know, how do we build relationships fast and at scale? Because I've got to do my number this quarter. Hold on, Adam. And, and, and, and how do we. So how do we do that and do that at.

Tracy Borreson [00:45:44]:

Scale? Talk to people again? I feel like this is not. Okay. So here's, here's the thing about the, like, just to use that example that you.

Bertrand Godillot [00:45:56]:

Gave.

Tracy Borreson [00:45:57]:

Right. Okay. Nicholas is behind my computer waving at everybody just in case I seem distracted. So you have. Let's, let's use. I'm not going to use guitars because I'm not particularly into guitars. Sorry about that. I live by the mountains.

Tracy Borreson [00:46:14]:

It's winter in Canada. Right. Snowy mountains, skiing. There's, there's stuff to talk about. Talk about stuff you care about talking about that's not sales related. So I know we all want to hit our number. You know what? I was actually thinking about this in the shower today. And I was like, authenticity is the thing you would say when no sale is attached to it.

Tracy Borreson [00:46:40]:

That's the thing that if there's no sale attached to a thing, you went and you went to a networking event you're hanging out at. Like, we're having our holiday open house this weekend, right? Like you're hanging out at just a thing. What would you talk about? Would you talk about someone's holiday jumper? Would you talk about your kids? Would you talk about the weather? Right? Like, heaven forbid we actually talk about the weather. It's not that bad, people. I mean, it's minus 23 here right now, so that might sound bad.

Adam Gray [00:47:07]:

But like, that does sound.

Tracy Borreson [00:47:08]:

Bad. That's not even including the windshield. But like when we talk about human stuff, humans connect with human stuff. And then if they like you, they might actually ask you innately, curiously what you do instead of that like pre programmed question. Oh, so what do you do for work where someone asks it to you and you know, they don't really care, but they don't know what other question to ask, so they just ask it and you're like, this is not. I'm not. You don't care, Right? Ask a question about stuff that you care about. So talk to people like a human and ask questions about stuff you care about.

Tracy Borreson [00:47:51]:

You. Like someone's headphones. Say like, hey, I love those headphones also, where did you get those? Like the light headphones that precisely match your headphones, right? Like, and I don't know, that's not the Russian. But like, if you practice asking your questions and just like go out, it's actually faster. It's faster. It saves everybody time. Look at, this is my rule for my clients. You want to reach out to somebody, great.

Tracy Borreson [00:48:18]:

Look at their profile picture. You get a good vibe. You don't get a good vibe. If you get a good vibe, that's permission to send a connection request, right? Like that's all you need. But also if you're going through a list of people who have asked questions about marketing, right? And you see a whole bunch of people that don't have profile pictures. Like, I can't even see who you are as a human. So I'm not going to send you a connection request, right? Like if we create these little simple, simple, authentic rules for you, how would you do that? Right? Would you. The number one thing that you would do in a networking room is go up and talk to the person wearing a mask.

Tracy Borreson [00:48:59]:

Mask. Or you can't see their actual face. Or would you go and talk to someone who has a picture who is like, oh, I like, I like your smile. And they're like, maybe don't say.

Tim Hughes [00:49:08]:

That. You might go up and talk to someone with a mask on in.

Adam Gray [00:49:12]:

Halloween.

Tracy Borreson [00:49:13]:

Tracy. Maybe. But like there's people who would and there's people who won't. This is also the key, authentic authenticity thing, right? Like Nicholas, my seven year old, he will not wear a mask on.

Adam Gray [00:49:26]:

Halloween. He.

Tracy Borreson [00:49:26]:

Won'T. And he just like would rather not. I don't hang out with anybody else wearing masks.

Tim Hughes [00:49:33]:

Okay? So if you, I think, I think they're weird.

Tracy Borreson [00:49:36]:

Things. Like especially that mask that you wear for the Halloween shows. It's.

Adam Gray [00:49:41]:

Creepy. It.

Tim Hughes [00:49:42]:

Was. Yeah, it was. It was. But it was the cheapest mask I could.

Tracy Borreson [00:49:47]:

Find. There you.

Adam Gray [00:49:48]:

Go. No expense.

Tracy Borreson [00:49:50]:

Spent. But, like, the point is that, like, we're so. We get so caught up in this. Like, let's deep dive this. And because I can read what's on your profile, and I'm gonna take an hour, like, I don't even pretend people spend an hour reading my profile. Are you kidding? People have better things to do with their time than that, right? Like, if you're going to do that, would you do that if you weren't trying to sell something? If you wouldn't do that, if you're not trying to sell something, take, take it out of the sales process, right? Replace it with something you would do if you weren't selling. And it will feel easier, it will feel more fun, it will be faster, and the people on the other side of it will actually, I mean, there's maybe not 100 of the time, but it will increase the likelihood that they appreciate what they get from you. And if to tie that back into brand trust, like, the very first thing you get from somebody is that they want to sell you something, the first thing I'm going to say back is, you don't know me.

Tracy Borreson [00:50:56]:

And while you think you can know me from my LinkedIn profile and I'm like, I've actually done a, a lot of work to create a LinkedIn profile that is revealing and authentic, which is not what most people do. Like, you didn't even bother to ask me if I have a problem before thinking you can fix my problem. I will never believe that that's true. And even if you, like, frame it like that, would you. If someone did that to you, would you like it? And if the answer is no, don't do that, do something else. Get into a conversation with the peeps on this show, right? Like, one of the things that I love about the DLA Ignite methodology is that it's like, how would you do that? Right? Like, how would you reach out to people? How would you identify who you want to connect with? How would you send a message? What would you say, right? Like, this is. This is about you doing you. But if we're also, like, going to a sales team, everybody's doing the same thing.

Tracy Borreson [00:51:58]:

We've all received those, right? Where one company trying to sell the same thing. And I got multiple sales reps sending me the exact same messages. And you're like, like, you guys, I can tell. I know I. When I'm getting the same message. I can go back in my history and, like, I just think that.

Adam Gray [00:52:22]:

There'S, I'm just, I'm just bouncing this back to the top of your inbox again.

Tracy Borreson [00:52:26]:

Right? Yes. And here's the thing. When we are doing things that we wouldn't do, the thing that makes that easy is for someone to give me a template. I just spit out that. That's the quote, unquote easiest thing. It's not going to get results, but it feels easy because that's not what I would do. So just give me a template and I'll do that. Right.

Tracy Borreson [00:52:45]:

And I'll, I'll convince myself I've done the activity and, like, I don't have to think about it again. Instead of doing. Yes. It's a little bit more work to say, like, okay, yeah, as a business, as a solution provider, I want to get out in front of people. I want them to see my solution. I don't want to talk about. I have a whole soliloquy I could go on, on product LED growth, which I'm not going to do today. But top.

Tracy Borreson [00:53:07]:

If you want to talk about it, we could talk about it after. I don't believe it's a thing. But, like, what if you. Would you go out and be like, here's my features and benefits. Do you want to date me? Like, no. Nobody would do that, right? So, like, what would you. You do? Take. If you're.

Tracy Borreson [00:53:25]:

Take. If you're going to take an hour to like, deep dive someone's LinkedIn profile, take that hour back and look at what would I do when I go to a. This is my favorite exercise for my clients when, if I go to a farmer's market, what booths attract me. There's certain booths and maybe that's not. Maybe it's not cheese for.

Adam Gray [00:53:47]:

Everybody. Like, no, it is. It is cheese for.

Tracy Borreson [00:53:50]:

Everybody. Tracy, everybody's looking for cheese at the farmer's market. I am always looking at art, right? Like, art is a thing that attracts me. It's not a thing that attracts everybody. But when you look at those types of things, you're like, oh, okay, well, like when the people are like out in front of their booth, like, yelling at you with big hands. Do you want to go in or do you want to run away? Right? Like, okay, like, so you're kind of doing that with this behavior that you're doing. So maybe you don't want to be the wave hands, shouting person. Maybe you want to be the Here's a taste test person, right? Like, what would that look like, and there's like so many opportunities to just use some of that time that we know that is just being flushed down the toilet and look at, like, what would I do? And come up with a couple little easy things Again, this is why social media is great.

Tracy Borreson [00:54:38]:

Go test some stuff. It's.

Tim Hughes [00:54:40]:

Free. If you go to a friend. If you go.

Tracy Borreson [00:54:44]:

To. If you hate it, delete.

Tim Hughes [00:54:45]:

It. The Wild bar Sausage song. Or it will be the new guard where they try some of this and you go, yeah, okay, I'll buy.

Tracy Borreson [00:54:52]:

Some. I mean, for me, it's like, here's cookies. Do you want to try one?

Bertrand Godillot [00:54:58]:

Yes. All right. So that has been really great. And there are two things that.

Tim Hughes [00:55:07]:

By the way, if you like what Tracy.

Bertrand Godillot [00:55:10]:

Says.

Tim Hughes [00:55:11]:

Yeah. Tune in, check her out on on LinkedIn and tune into her podcast. Podcast. And it's the hundredth one next on Wednesday. On Wednesday. And it's called crazy stupid.

Bertrand Godillot [00:55:24]:

Marketing. And you will probably hear again that authenticity is. Is how you behave when there is no sales involved. I love this one. And I also love the fact that if you create relationships, you are freeing up yourself from any change to the algorithm. So that might be also a good way to proceed. So thank you all. This has been really great.

Bertrand Godillot [00:55:51]:

I apologize in advance because I'm going to show our QR code here, so you probably going to have to move. But if you're interested, you can flash that QR code. This is our newsletter or you can visit us on digital download.live/newsletter with that. Thank you all for this great discussion and we'll see you next week. Thank you very.

Adam Gray [00:56:15]:

Much. Bye.

Tracy Borreson [00:56:16]:

Bye. Bye.

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