In light of what has been going on because of COVID, we find ourselves not going face-to-face and having that personal interaction with people as often as we normally have been. The question then is, how do we communicate, build relationships, and enable conversations to happen and trust to be built when we can’t shake hands and look at each other eye to eye? On today’s show, Ben Baker brings on Mark Mitchell from Whizard Strategy to talk about communication in a digital age, especially in terms of conducting meetings, managing clients, and building business relationships. Mark is a sales and marketing growth consultant and the lead strategist behind Whizard Strategy.
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Listen to the podcast here:
Communicating Successfully In A Digital Age With Mark Mitchell
Thank you for joining me. We have a great conversation. We always have great guests. I try to sit there and say, “What can we learn from people?” It’s not about what they do. It’s about how they do it. It’s about sitting there going, “What are the things that we can learn together? What are the things that we can gain some insights into and be able to make sure that we walk away from this a little bit smarter?” I have a great guest, Mark Mitchell from Whizard Strategy. I first got introduced through a great four-part conversation that we had online. Mark and I will talk about it together. We came across this thing. We had a lot of fun together. Allison DeFord brought us all together. Mark, welcome to the show. Let’s get into this.
Ben, I’m glad that Allison introduced us. I like your philosophy and your message. From having those conversations, I learned so much from you and the other speakers. That’s what I’m all about is continuing to learn and not assume that I’ve got all the answers. It was a great experience.
As I tell people, even Google doesn’t have all the answers. Every once in a while, I go, “This does not compute.” It doesn’t happen often, but we are all better off when we listen to each other. We understand each other. We value each other. We all realized that there are things that we know and there are things that we don’t know. The more we can be open to sit there and go, “I don’t know about this, but Mark, Allison, Ray, or Chris, or whoever does.”
Be able to sit there, go, “I’ve got people in my network that are way smarter than I am in a number of issues.” My guests every week blow my doors, the stuff that they’re experts on. For me, it’s leading a master class every week. Just sit at the back and like, “Give me your area of expertise and let me soak it all in. Let’s start with the conversation that we had on there. Let people know a little bit about you and we’re going to get into a great conversation.
I started my career out working for my father, who had a small advertising agency. I discovered that I preferred working with business to business clients more than I did business to consumer. It seemed like business to the consumer was largely powered by how big your checkbook was. It’s how much advertising you can afford. Where business to business many times, you could solve the problem with your brain rather than your checkbook. I’ve seen where a client thought they needed to spend a bunch of money on some marketing program. I pointed out to them, “Have you picked up the phone and had a conversation with this customer? Did you share this with them? Why do we need to spend $20,000 or whatever on this marketing program when maybe we could solve it with a phone call?”
I love to solve problems. I don’t ever want to assume like, “Here’s a client. They need to spend more money on advertising. That’s the answer.” That would bore me. I left my father, which was a great experience because I had to be the artist, the writer, and everything. I went to a larger firm that specialized in building materials. I found my calling. I loved it. I didn’t know anything about how to build. I’m not the most unhandy person in the world. I loved the thought process where my first client was Owens Corning Fiberglass. They come to me and say, “Mark, we’re going to run this big TV commercial on the Super Bowl with the Pink Panther. It’s going to be great, but we need to sell something. We need you to go out and interview builders right along with our salespeople and figure out what do we need to do to get builders to put more insulation in their homes.”
I ate it up. I decided early in my career to stay focused in the area of building materials because there was every day, a new problem, a new challenge. I also found that everybody else wanted to go and do commercials for McDonald’s or Nike or do a film in Hollywood. I’m going, “You guys all go there. I’m going to stay here.” It will be easier for me to be successful because all the people smarter than me want to do commercials for Nike. I’m like, “I learned to stay focused.” From there, when I would see friends of mine that had ad agencies, I thought, “You can realistically work with clients within this geographic area unless you have some specialization.” I quickly learned that by focusing, I can easily get a meeting or a call with anybody in the industry because they’ve come to know my expertise. I focus on building materials. The other thing I focus on in building materials, the channel is very important. The architect, the contractor, the dealer distributor, the Home Depot buyer, those are more important than the homeowner, more important than a person that’s buying a home. That’s my area of expertise and where I’ve stayed focused.
I came from the construction industry. I started off pulling wires, drop drywall, watching buildings get erected working for my old man. When I turned 18 or 19 years old, he and I looked at each other. I said, “Dad, I want to grow this business. I want this business to grow as a commercial renovation. I want to be part of this.” My dad said, “Nope, I like the company the way it is.” We agreed to disagree. It was probably one of the pivotal moments for us. It was probably one of the best things for me because it allowed me to go out on my own. It allowed me to realize that maybe it’s not the construction industry, it’s communicating the construction industry.
I took a lot of pivots, a lot of changes. I ended up in high tech and ended up in marketing, but I agree with you, the B2B marketplace may not be as sexy, may not be as well-funded, but it’s far more interesting at least it is to me in terms of how people communicate, build trust, listen to each other, understand each other, value each other, and build these channel relationships to be able to drive value than in the retail market where it seems to be reactive. I’m with you 100% in the marketplace. What I want to get into is what we were talking about. It’s an important conversation because it’s all about communication.
It’s all about how do you communicate. In the world of COVID and everything that goes beyond COVID, I don’t want this conversation to be concentrated on COVID, but it’s a reality. It is what it is, but what it means is beyond COVID, as we move in, we’re not going to be face-to-face, belly-to-belly, nose-to-nose with people as often as we normally have been. We’re not shaking hands. We’re not going to as many trade shows. We’re not having that personal interaction with people. The question is, how do we communicate? How do we build that deal relationship? How do we enable those conversations to happen and that trust to be built when we can’t shake hands and look at each other eye to eye? You had some great thoughts about it, so why don’t we start there?
I saw back in March 2020 two kinds of companies. I saw companies that go, “This is going to lead to a recession. I remember the last recession. I better start hunkering down, laying people off, cutting back, stopping all spending.” I saw other companies say, “This is a new challenge. I’m a leader. We need to deal with this challenge. Maybe we need to pivot to a different market, type of customer, maybe we change the way we communicate. We’re not going to depend on trade shows. We’re not going to be traveling to see customers face-to-face.” We have probably been through four recessions. Everyone is different.
Everyone affects a different part of the marketplace, but people tend to remember the last one. They don’t look and say, “What is this recession going to affect?” They make quick judgments. I saw a couple of companies that made no change. I saw their sales decline. These are some impressive companies laying people off. When I talked to some of their people, they said, “Mark, our head of sales thinks that face-to-face is the only way to sell. He doesn’t see that he has a way to sell. Our sales are declining. He can’t imagine you could do things virtually. You can do things with texts or whatever.”
I saw companies that said, “We’re going to move forward.” Now, what I’m having people say, “I’m getting used to this, but how can I do a better job with the situation we’re facing and what’s the future going to look like?” In my area of building materials, we’ll say depending on the geography where you’re located and how bad COVID is where you are that if it’s not that bad, people are going out on job sites. There’s still construction going on. They’re meeting with customers. Some customers are open to it. Some customers are not.
You have to adapt to what the customer is. What the customer has discovered is that it’s being reinforced to them that they’re overworked and understaffed. Their time is their most valuable asset. If I’m going to have a face-to-face meeting with someone. I’m going to at least use up 30 minutes. In the first minute or two, if this is a new person calling on me, I will know if this meeting is going to have any value or not, just the way the conversation starts. I’m a polite person. I will sit there for 28 more minutes.
Before you say, “Thank you very much. I appreciate your time,” and send them out the door.
Even if I know the person, I’m comfortable, credible, all this other stuff, I’d love to meet with them. I’m very busy. We could handle this by a virtual call and we could do it in 5 or 10 minutes. We can cut the niceties. We can get to what I need to know. I see the customer saying, “There is a time and place for a face-to-face meeting. I now see that I have many other options of how to communicate that make me more efficient.” Even if the salesperson can’t wait to get out on the road again, they’re going to run into customers going, “Whoa.”
Everyone affects a different part of the marketplace, but people tend to remember the last one. Share on X“My time is far too valuable. I don’t have time to slot you in. I’d give you 30 minutes of my time.”
I see what I consider the more successful salespeople. They also value their time. They recognize that the customer needs them, but they’re bringing value. They’re bringing expertise to the right customer. They can help that customer. They’re also starting to say, “Should I fly to Kansas City because I can?” or a person said they’d meet with me, “Is that the best use of my time? If I were talking to people virtually, how many conversations could I have in a day versus if I have to fly to Kansas City, get there the night before, stay at a hotel, get to the meeting, get back to the airport, fly back home?”
Never mind the time, it’s the expense that goes along with it.
The management of these companies is looking and saying, “How much money we’re saving on travel, entertainment, and trade shows. Our sales, in most cases, haven’t dropped off.” The building materials industries have been surprised, but depending on if it’s residential, new construction, residential remodeling, and even parts of commercial construction are booming. As you and I were talking, I think you learned earlier in your career how to make a sales call. You went with somebody who took you under their wing. You then went out and did some yourself and there are certain things that you learned. You went into the restroom beforehand and looked at yourself in the mirror. You made sure you didn’t have bad breath.
You have dressed appropriately. If you had leather shoes on, they were shined. You were ready to go. Just like the ability to make a good live sales presentation, you need to be able to do it virtually. It is a different skill because there isn’t someone to mentor you. The most senior salesperson who helped you early in your career, they don’t know what they’re doing either. I’m on probably three Zoom calls a day. I’m amazed at how people don’t recognize the importance of this. Back when public relations used to be a more important tool than it’s viewed that an executive would have media training. His PR firm would say, “We’re going to have you interviewed at this trade show by these different magazines or whatever. We’re going to train you on how to do that.” They would pay the PR firm and spend it whatever, a day or half a day, get immediate training. Yet, we send everybody out onto doing these virtual calls, whether they’re on Zoom or whatever other apps, and without any training, many times without equipment. The company gives you a laptop company or a cell phone. Now maybe they should be giving you a microphone and at least a webcam, what are your thoughts?
There’s a big thing to unpack there because the one thing I’m hearing behind this whole thing is professionalism. We are of an age that when we first learned how to do sales, you did not go out on your own. You had a mentor that followed you for 3 to 6 months that took you under their wing. They got paid an override on what you did. That taught you how to conduct a meeting, how to manage a client, how to be able to build relationships. You were able to move forward. First of all, that doesn’t happen anymore. Companies give you a set of business cards and a phone and maybe a territory, and that’s it.
They assume, “You’re a salesperson, go for it.” That kills the brand. First of all, I will get back to that. The second thing is we’re in a completely different world. We’re dealing with a situation where we are online. I don’t know about you, but I have two 24-inch monitors in front of me. You’re on the left monitor. On the right monitor is your website up. I’ve got an email. I’ve got social media. Everything it would be in the background. I’ve got a timer going on. There are lots of things going on at the same time that can distract me. My thing is I have it set up so I can have all the information that’s with you, but people don’t know how to do that.
They don’t know how to say, “What are the things to turn off? What are the things to turn on? What are the things that should be concentrated?” You have a very professional background. You have your books on one side, it’s clean, and it’s not cluttered. You’re presentable. You’re wearing a nice shirt. You have all that. People don’t understand to make sure that their background is not all cluttered. They don’t have a bunch of boxes lined up inside that looks terrible. We talked about lighting. We can get into that a little bit more. We can talk about mics. We could talk about proper headphones so we don’t have echo and feedback, all of those technical things that most people are not learning.
Nobody’s teaching them because nobody knows. Everybody said, “Just jump on Zoom or GoToMeeting,” without anybody training them, “This is how you use this software properly.” I don’t know about you. I’ve been on GoToMeeting. I’ve been on a WebinarJam. I’ve been on Zoom. I’ve been on Teams. I’ve been on fifteen other platforms. Each one of them is a little different. As a presenter, you’re fumbling around a little bit going, “How do I share a screen? How do I make sure that I see who’s got their hand up, making sure that I can control the meeting properly?”
There are all these things that we’re not teaching people because people are not paying attention. This is a new medium. That’s the thing that we need to sit there and look at this as a medium and going, “How do we utilize it properly? How do we make sure that we build trust and effective using this new medium because it’s powerful? We can have ten-minute meetings. We don’t have to go traveling across the city. We don’t have to go traveling across the world. We can have eight meetings in a day that are productive instead of one because you’ve spent all day flying or driving.
There are all these things to go along with it. We need to teach people how to be effective within the situation. You told me a story about a guy that you were talking about who is almost doing it. Tell me that story. Give that as an example because that’s a great way for people to have an idea of what can go well and what can blow the whole situation.
Since March 2020, we all have shifted our viewing habits maybe from network television to things like Netflix, streaming services, and I’ve just become addicted to YouTube. One of the things I enjoy is I see who are good influencers. There’s a guy named Matt Risinger, that’s fantastic. What are companies doing that are smart users of YouTube? Up pops this thing and here is the president of an LED lighting company. He’s done a three-minute video about his company. I thought, “Cheers to you for doing a video. You didn’t go, ‘If I don’t spend $20,000 and have this big professional crew come or whatever, I can’t do it? Cheers for that.’” He looked nice. He had a nice shirt with his company’s logo embroidered on the shirt, the background looked like he was in a nice office with a fern plant in one corner and a bookshelf somewhere else. It looked really good.
The one thing that he blew it, which is the most common problem that I see is his face was not lit. While everything was great except his face, it wasn’t black, but it was a little too dark for me to get to know this person. We’re used to being able to see our faces and go, “Is this someone I would like? Is this someone who’s funny? Is this someone I trust?” Part of that is not just the words you say, but it’s like, “I can read your face.” I’m amazed at how many people I have calls with it. It’s like CEOs of companies.
Their number one mistake is that their face is not lit. It’s because they have some bright background behind them that looks out on some sunny day. The camera’s tried to adjust and have everything correctly lit, which it can’t do. If they would close the drapes, it would fix the problem right away. If they would move to a plain wall background, it will fix the problem. They can improve it. They can always grab a table lamp and put it in front of you. Maybe take the top off or something. You have a bare ball, but you don’t have to go out and get expensive lighting. You can, but having any kind of light source in front of you makes your face lit.
It’s like, “I can’t believe people don’t recognize this.” The next thing to your point is people don’t think about the background. The background can either look as you brought up unprofessional, or the other thing that happens is the background can become distracting. The unprofessional thing, people look at the background and it adds to their definition of who you are. If you’ve got a messy apartment in the background or a messy kitchen, that says, “You’re a messy person maybe,” or it makes a statement.
The other one I find is, I don’t know about you, but I can’t help myself. I’m trying to read the poster over the guy’s shoulder. I’m distracted. I’m not focused on the person. They should be the hero. Using the camera on their laptop and not even cleaning the lens so they look may be foggy or blurry or they’re not sharp or in focus. Even if you took the headset that you have to listen to music at the gym and use that, as opposed to the speakers on your computer, you will hear much better. You have some basic microphone. It doesn’t have to be a big $400 microphone like this, but with some sort of microphone, you will dramatically improve.
Like the ability to make a good live sales presentation, you need to be able to do it virtually. Share on XThe final one is we all suffered a little bit from, “I’m not going to the office. I’m not going to make sales calls so I don’t have to get dressed or shave.” We’ve taken this new degree of casualness. Once again, there’s casual and there’s professional. If you look that casual, is that how it is to do business with you? Maybe I’ll send you in your order. Maybe I’ll check this. Maybe I won’t, whatever, as opposed to someone that looks buttoned up and professional. Those are the basic things. I’ve seen a couple of companies that have taken this without investing in webcams, noise-canceling headphones and headsets for their salespeople and giving them some training.
Even as basic, if you have a co-worker and you say, “Let’s have a call together and I’ll evaluate you and you evaluate me.” In March 2020, I said, “I’m going to be making a lot of calls from home where the heck I can do it from.” I got my wife to give me this teeny little corner in one of the spare bedrooms so I created this little set here. I am crammed in a little corner here. It sits here every time. It didn’t take me much to do, but by having a little time and care, I’m not a creative designer or set designer. I ran it by a couple of people. I called them up and said, “How does this look? They helped me with some suggestions to improve it. It’s like run it by somebody else.
The keyword you used is set. You are on a stage because we’re sitting here going, “This is a two- dimensional version of ourselves.” The more we can present ourselves in a way that people are going to engage with, they’re going to believe. They’re going to trust. They’re going to value. It is because of your original point about the lighting. I’ve got a $5,000 professional light in front of me. I paid less than $100 for it. You could get an O-ring LED light for less money than that. It doesn’t have to be expensive. You don’t have to spend $400 on a mic. The first mic that I use when I started podcasting a few years ago, I paid $69 for it. It doesn’t have to be expensive, but at least what it does is it puts you at that next level.
My pet peeve is the Zoom backgrounds that people back up and all of a sudden, they fade into the background or their hands disappear, whatever. This looks like, “I’m at a beach somewhere. Look at the sand and look at the palm trees.” You’re right. First of all, it’s distracting. Second of all, it’s unprofessional. Third of all, you’re sitting there going, “Why are you doing this?” My thing is the background that I have is a pop-up banner. It’s 7×7. It hides the back of my office because there are things behind me. There are boxes in there. There’s my treadmill. There are all those things, but you’d never know it looking at me because what you’re seeing is a professional logo with my background on it. We’ve created a set. We’ve created a small area that if focused in of who we are telling a story about us, gives a level of professionalism and allows people to not be distracted by the background, and enable us to have those conversations that are meaningful. I love everything that you’ve been saying.
I’m not a big fan of what we’ll call it green screen background where you can drop in things. Many of them, if I move my head or something, it looks fake. You can tell right away. Number two is if you’re going to do that, then create an image, which reinforces your story, a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge or a beach.
This huge office space that everybody knows is not yours. It’s the background.
Why not create something? If you want to use green-screen or your company wants you, then the company should provide you with some imagery that reinforces your story, your products, your products in use, your products being installed. You on a job site if you’re going to do that. I’ve seen a few people make it work, but I’ve seen too many people have a beach scene. I’m like, “What does that have to do with business? Does that say to me, you’d rather not be here? You’d rather be on a beach than doing business.” I don’t know. I’m not a big fan. I’d love to get your feedback.
The two areas I’m wrestling with now. I’m having more of my followers reach out to me. They’re asking two questions. One is in a live meeting, you’re able to read other people’s body. You can read, are they engaged? Are they interested? Are they not believing me? You can read and then you can adjust. You’ll know, “I better go back and repeat this. This is not the right way to do this,” or whatever it is, but you can adjust on the fly when you’re meeting with them. How do you get past that on a virtual call or can you? The second one is it’s hard to keep people engaged. It’s very easy for your viewer to multitask. You think they’re listening to you while they’re checking texts or emails on their phone. In a live meeting, they would be not doing that. They would be paying attention. Do you have any thoughts on the body language and the engagement challenges?
Let’s attack one and then we’ll attack the other. The first thing you’ve got to realize is when you’re dealing with body language and being able to read people, the question is, is it a one-on-one meeting or is it one-to-many meetings? If you’re dealing one-to-one, the suggestion that I have on Zoom or whatever platform that you are in is running speaker mode. Therefore, you have a full-size image of the person on your screen. These two little, 4×4 inch boxes in the background of whatever it is. You have the person who you’re speaking to on the full size of your screen. That’s how I’ve got you right now. I’m up in the top right-hand quarter. You take up the entire screen. When I’m looking at it, I’m looking above your head, below your camera. Therefore, I’m looking into your eyes as best I can. It doesn’t happen all the time, but it’s important to do that.
Therefore, there’s that connection there. Second of all, because you have that person in speaker mode, you have a far better chance of being able to read them. It’s a lot easier. The larger the image, the better chance because they’re 90% size instead of being 30% size. You can see more of the gestures. You can see more of the eye movement. You could see more of the body language. You can have that engagement. It’s not perfect. It’s not phenomenal, but that’s the way it is. When you’re dealing with a one-to-many situation, especially when I’m the one speaking, I insist everybody has their camera on. My attitude is you wouldn’t have your camera off if we’re live, why would you have your camera off if we’re virtual?
People say, “I’m not comfortable being in front of the camera, too bad.” If we’re all going to have a conversation, if we’re all going to be in the same room, if we’re going to get everybody’s opinion involved in this thing, I want to be able to see all of you. I want to be able to sit there. When I’m speaking as a keynote speaker around the world and I’m up on stage, I can see when people get their hands crossed. I can see when people are rolling their eyes. I can see when people are leaning forward, listening, and engaging and who I need to pay more attention to, who’s already drinking the Kool-Aid. It’s a lot harder when it’s two-dimensional.
The more visual cues you can have by having people having their camera on and all engaged is easier engaging them as a completely different story. What I found, what I’m doing keynote addresses, or if I’m delivering workshops, or if I’m doing whatever, is that, first of all, my talks are way shorter. If I was giving a 45-minute to one-hour keynote, my keynote is 25 to 30 minutes at the most. You’re giving a much shorter talk. You’re spending way more time in Q&A. I prefer having the Q&A throughout the talk.
Some people like to have it before, but I always let people know. I said, “It’s going to be a short conversation. There’s going to be lots of time for communication.” The big thing that I do is I have 3 or 4 poll questions throughout the talk and sit there and say, “First of all, where are people from? What do you think about this? Do you believe this? Be able to have the answers come up like a pie diagram or a chart or something like that. People can see not only where their answers come up, but where their answers come up relative to everybody else who’s on the call.
Especially if you’re using software that says, “We’re 92% done. We’re 98% done.” We got everybody’s opinion. Sometimes you’re never going to get 100% opinion. There are going to be people that are not going to answer your poll question. If you can sit there and say, “Ninety-three percent of the people answered this poll question. Other people are listening. Maybe I should pay more attention.” It’s the more you can get people involved, the more you can get people engaged, the more you can get them. They’re part of the conversation. Their questions are being asked and answered. Their thoughts are being polled and that they matter, the more engaged they’re going to be.
If they’re just sitting there and somebody goes blah for an hour, fine, whatever, I’ll hit record. Maybe I’ll watch it later at 1.5 or 2 times speed. If all of a sudden, every few minutes, you’re asking them a question, you’re expecting an answer, and you’re doing Q&A back and forth, the speaker is watching the chatter in the chat room and responding to that as well, you’re going to have a lot more engaged audience. Don’t think it’s easy. Don’t think it’s tough. Sometimes I need to have a second person involved. Somebody who’s watching the chat while I’m having the conversation. Maybe a third person who’s handling the technology. Depending on the size of the room and the number of people involved, it’s all doable, but you’ve got to make sure that it happens in a concert situation.
Another one that I’ve learned to keep people engaged is let’s say there’s myself and we’ll say ten people on the call. One person is the most important person in that group. One person is the president, the CEO, whatever they are. There may be another person that’s a close second place. What frequently happens is the conversation, if I’m one of the other participants, all of a sudden, the conversation goes into I am talking to those two people. Those other people might as well not even be in the room. They have to stay because they’re invited. What I do is I have a notepad that has everybody’s name written down and I will throw out questions to the lesser important people.
Having that relationship with the customer is to let the customer dictate or lead how they want to be communicated with. Share on XIt also keeps you on your toes. I know Mark is going to ask the president about this and about that. He’s asking other people what they think. He might ask me. All of a sudden, I have to stop multitasking because I don’t want to look stupid in front of the boss. I love your polling idea. I love the chat room idea. If I’m trying just to do this as a one-man band. I found it distracting for me to try to stay focused on the conversation and manage the chat room. I’ve occasionally had a person whose job is to manage the chat room. They’re sitting close by. They’ll write something on a piece of paper and put it in front of me. I can quickly look at and address that issue. We’ve got three great ideas about keeping people engaged. I like your idea for the body language on a one-on-one. When you have a group, you’re going to have to replace body language by asking leading questions and then gauging the answer or response that you get from that too. It’s a different way of body language would be my thought.
The more we can get people engaged and realize that having that checklist and getting more people engaged, the better it is. I’ve got one question to ask you. We could talk forever. We’ll have more conversations and maybe do a repeat on this. I ask this question to everybody. When you leave a meeting and get in your car and you drive away or get off Zoom and say, “Thank you very much,” and head off into the sunset, what’s the one thing you want people to think about you when you’re not in the room?
I think about the term trust an advisor. You should want the person to say, “This person is knowledgeable. They have my best interests at heart.” I’d like to be thought of as someone that if they had a question, they would reach out to me with the knowledge that I would try to help them answer the question, not turn it into, “I’m going to sell you something.” Some people are diehard, aggressive salespeople, and always be closing. That works for some people and that’s fine, but the customer is going to be reluctant to pick up the phone unless they’re sure they’re ready to buy your product. I would rather have them reach out to me when they’re trying to answer a question in which my product may or may not be the best solution for them and that I would candidly tell them.
We should all strive to be trusted advisors. We should all trust to be someone that people trust that can pick up a phone and they realize that if you don’t know the answer, you’re going to help them get the answer. That’s an important thing. Nobody wants to be sold. Nobody wants to always feel that someone’s reaching into their pocket. If we can be the people that people trust, people who want to do business with, and people know that they’re going to get great value every time they pick up the phone with us, that’s where they’re going to spend their money. Mark, thank you for being part of the show. Thank you for being such a wonderful guest. I enjoyed the conversation immensely.
I’ve got one more thing I want to add to your point. That is a part of being, having that relationship with the customer is to let the customer also dictate or lead how they want to be communicated with. It may be a Zoom call. It may be a phone call. It may be an in-person meeting. It may be a text message. It may be a message on LinkedIn. You have to let the customer lead that as opposed to making an assumption or forcing your way on them.
I couldn’t agree more.
I enjoyed this.
Thanks for being a great guest.
Important Links:
- Whizard Strategy
- Matt Risinger
- Blog page – Whizard Strategy
- LinkedIn – Mark Mitchell
- Twitter – Mark Mitchell
- YouTube – Game Changers Week 1: Marketing that is Seen, Heard and Felt
- YouTube – Whizard Strategy Consulting
About Mark Mitchell
Author of Building Materialsl Channel Marketing and the lead strategist behind Whizard Strategy, helping the building materials industry solve tough sales and marketing problems. Whizard Strategy is changing the way building materials companies market their products and services—it’s less about the checkbook and more about the strategy.
As a dynamic speaker, business strategist and marketing expert, I bring ideas that create change, increase sales and stop spending for the sake of spending. Your marketing should support your business and drive revenue, not deplete your resources!
Recognized as Top 10 Thought Leader in Building Material Channel Marketing by Channel Instincts.
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