Latest / The Relentless Pursuit of Winning Podcast / From Commodity to Choice: Why Your Business Needs a Communications Strategy | Joshua Altman

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From Commodity to Choice: Why Your Business Needs a Communications Strategy | Joshua Altman · The Relentless Pursuit of Winning Podcast

• 0:00
  Every purchase from big to small is a trust-based purchase.
• 0:04
  With the high amount of AI slop out there,
• 0:08
  people are very attuned to is this real?
• 0:14
  Or
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  am I being lied to?
• 0:16
  Make sure everything is useful and focused on building trust.
• 0:21
  There are a lot of social channels out there.
• 0:24
  You can't engage equally on all of them unless you have a Coca-Cola sized team
• 0:30
  behind you to do it.
• 0:31
  Put your effort where you know you're going to get the most
• 0:35
  Bang for your buck.
• 0:51
  Hey folks, welcome to another episode of the Relentless Pursuit of Winning podcast.
• 0:55
  My name is Rick Meekins. I'm gonna be your host as usual in our studio.
• 0:59
  We have Joshua Altman. How are you today,
• 1:01
  sir?
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  I'm good. How are you?
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  Obviously, I'm a little bit more excited than you.
• 1:07
  Hey
• 1:08
  Ha ha ha.
• 1:10
  folks, thank you so much for watching and listening to another episode.
• 1:13
  If you haven't done it already,
• 1:14
  please like, subscribe, and hit the bell so that you can get updates every time
• 1:18
  we drop a new episode. And without further ado,
• 1:20
  let's get to it. Joshua, we're gonna talk about comms.
• 1:24
  This is gonna be an amazing show.
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  Give our audience a little bit of a background on who you are,
• 1:28
  what you do, and why you do what you do.
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  I am a fractional chief communications officer.
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  My personal background is I started as a journalist.
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  I went to journalism school before that.
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  I thought I would be a journalist for my career.
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  I did that for a little bit. I left the newsroom thinking I'd
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  be a freelance reporter and then go back to a newsroom.
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  And I never went back to a newsroom.
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  I, while looking for those freelance reporting jobs,
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  was also taking on corporate jobs.
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  And I found that there were a lot of small and medium businesses,
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  a lot of growing startups that had a need for a communications function,
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  but not the budget for a $50,000 per month agency retainer,
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  Mm, mm-hmm.
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  where they needed the work done,
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  but weren't sure how to do it.
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  Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
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  And
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  that is the gap we now fill for small businesses,
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  startups, mid stage companies,
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  anyone from solopreneur up to about two hundred fifty employees.
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  Mm-hmm.
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  You know, it's it's it's interesting.
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  When I you know, I've I've run companies,
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  I don't know, about thirty, thirty odd years,
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  something like that. And, you know,
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  a a comms manager hasn't ever come into the conversation.
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  You know, we've talked about marketing,
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  we've talked about PR, we talk about,
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  Right.
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  you
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  know, sales organizations, et cetera,
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  et cetera, but not comms. And I feel like obvious obviously there's a need
• 2:51
  for what you do, but you know,
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  there's it's it's a little bit of a black box.
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  I mean, give tell us what it what is this?
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  What is it that you do?
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  So the fractional chief communications officer has two big focuses.
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  The first is shaping perception.
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  The second is build and maintain trust.
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  So what we do is we take that integrated big picture view into
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  how all your messaging impacts reputation,
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  growth, and stakeholder confidence.
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  You mentioned that people think about marketing,
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  they think about PR. Those both are falling into
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  What a chief communications officer does.
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  Those are both part of communications.
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  Mm-hmm.
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  Marketing is strategies to build awareness of your company's products and services.
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  Branding, part of market that's very similar.
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  They're closely related. That's protecting and promoting the brand.
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  But every message about your company is going to be part of marketing.
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  PR, public relations, a lot of people think of that as one very particular thing,
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  you know, press, news, that's a media relations.
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  Public
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  Right.
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  relations is the way and methods that a entity,
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  a company, a nonprofit, some organization,
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  a candidate
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  communicates with its publics.
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  Think publics are stakeholders,
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  which is pretty much all forms of your business's communications
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  are gonna fall under that umbrella.
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  So
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  Okay. Okay.
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  we take it and we like other chief communications officers bring it
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  all into one unified department.
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  Internal, external, marketing,
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  PR, media relations
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  to make sure that all these different instruments are playing the same song
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  in the orchestra.
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  Okay. Okay. I'm I'm I'm not I'm I think I'm understanding it,
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  but give me an example of what that would look like and do it from your perspective
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  as as a as a fractional because you know it's like one thing to have a department,
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  but something else entirely to work with someone like yourself working with,
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  you know, our our target audience.
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  We come in and the companies that we work with,
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  they tend to call us in when they might have already hired a social media manager,
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  they might have hired a marketing assistant,
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  they may already have a Google AdWords agency,
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  they might have these things sort of fragmented.
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  Yeah.
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  But no one's really thought about how this all gets put together because they don't
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  have someone in that leadership role.
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  Who's organizing it? Who's making it a priority?
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  You might have it usually will fall under a CEO.
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  It sometimes falls under a COO or director of operations.
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  Oftentimes
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  Mm-hmm.
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  your CTO owns this because
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  Mm-hmm.
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  that's the person who built the website whenever your company built the website.
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  And they've just been managing it ever since,
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  even though that's really not their job as the CTO.
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  But there's no
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  Right.
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  one else.
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  to own that. So we come in, we figure out what you the parts that you have are.
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  So
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  Okay.
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  if you have all these different components,
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  if you like them, we keep them.
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  Being fractional, we're just like they're less than 40 hours a week,
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  but we are fully integrated into your team.
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  That's the big thing with us is it is fully part of your team.
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  So if you have an in-house social media assistant,
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  they can be part of
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  Someone who reports to your fractional CCO.
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  Okay.
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  And then it's owning all those external relationships.
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  So if you have a PR firm already,
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  it's working with them. If you have a Facebook or Google Ads firm that's handling
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  that for you, or an SEO firm, we handle that.
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  And make sure that those things are working together.
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  So when you're putting out messaging through press,
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  if that's something you're doing.
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  Mm-hmm.
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  It's also going back to your message on your website.
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  So when people are searching, that might show up the same.
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  That's really important now with a lot of the AI search because it looks for,
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  and we've done some newsletters about this,
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  it looks for those first party answers.
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  So things you put out yourself.
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  Mm-hmm.
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  But it also relies heavily on third-party validation for those same keywords
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  and answers. So that's
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  Anything that could be an award you won from a local chamber,
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  it could be local or national press,
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  something else it can find that validates what you're putting out
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  on the website that you own. You need both of those.
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  And that it was always important,
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  but AI is really bringing those together in how it returns answers.
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  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we've we've been thinking about that with with regard
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  to the podcast even. So it's like,
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  you know, we produce an episode and then there are a number of pieces,
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  another of a number of assets that we're creating around each episode that we do.
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  And of course the podcast itself has its own its own ecosystem.
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  So if you were our comms manager,
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  for example, or our comms you know,
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  for the podcast, I mean, what would that what would that look like just in terms of,
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  you know, not
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  When I so let me let me be clear.
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  So when I think about comms, you know,
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  I think about, you know, the standard messaging,
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  creation of the standard messaging that we're going to use across platforms.
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  But what you've presented is more of a leadership role where you're
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  I'm I'm thinking you're taking a more strategic approach to making sure that
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  our message, our communications are getting out there.
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  So what what would that look like
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  It is.
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  if you were, you know, managing a podcast,
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  for example?
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  A podcast is gonna be different from one of your listeners' businesses because
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  you have new guests all the time.
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  huh.
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  Which means you're always putting out something a little bit different.
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  It's not a product. The podcast is that one unified product.
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  They all come in, you have the things that we come on and talk about,
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  that's fairly consistent. But you're always putting out new information about
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  a new guest, which gives you access each week to a whole new untapped
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  social network. Probably some overlap.
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  But each week that's different from the the week before,
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  the release before that, the next one,
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  which gives you a lot of opportunities.
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  Also, when I said people are you know,
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  those AI tools are looking for that third party validation for you.
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  It's gonna be finding ways to get the podcast out there.
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  That's also you being a guest.
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  Mm-hmm.
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  on
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  podcasts to cross promote it. It's going to be going to the podcast conventions
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  and getting podcasting awards and having a newsletter or guest articles
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  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
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  about your podcast, the industry generally,
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  even things where you could do here's the list here's our tech stack.
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  This is what we use. Here's the microphone.
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  We're on riverside. This is the camera we like.
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  We have these three lights. Whatever it is.
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  That's something that can be out there that's evergreen.
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  And then, of course, promoting every week across
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  Mm.
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  your social channels. And I say this if you're a podcast,
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  if you're a business, we run into the same problem.
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  There are a lot of social channels out there.
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  And it's incredibly overwhelming for most businesses because they think,
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  where do I post? How much can I engage on them all?
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  You can't engage equally on all of them unless you have a Coca-Cola sized team
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  behind you to do it. It it requires a lot of resources.
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  But some podcasts and some businesses will find they do really well on YouTube.
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  YouTube
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  Mm-hmm.
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  and LinkedIn are their one too.
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  Someone else
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  Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
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  might find they do really well in direct downloads.
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  That's their one. Someone else might find,
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  you know.
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  We really do our best on Instagram,
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  TikTok, LinkedIn. And they post they post across them all using tools that
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  get you that capability easy.
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  But also when they're commenting,
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  when they're putting their effort in,
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  it's where they know that audience is.
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  So one thing I would tell you is think about all of them,
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  Mm-hmm.
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  but Put your effort where you know you're going to get the most
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  Bang for your buck.
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  Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what's what's the I guess the other side of that
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  is like when I think about strategy,
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  I th I think, you know, I've I've worked with companies with strategic planning
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  and we say, okay, you know, we're gonna hit,
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  you X goal, you know, whether it's a revenue goal or size goal or
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  wh whatever that is. When looking at strategy from a comms perspective,
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  what does that look like? And then what is kind of that that what what we
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  do is we work backwards, you know,
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  with the end in mind, so to speak.
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  So what does that look like from a comms perspective?
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  We focus on two big things I mentioned before.
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  Shape perception, build and maintain trust.
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  Our objective is to build up trust and maintain that trust.
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  So what what does that look like practically?
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  Now just to go back a little bit,
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  you said how do you what's the end goal?
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  Like how do you see it? hopefully you never do.
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  Because if you have to measure trust,
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  something has gone wrong.
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  Okay.
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  And you're dipping into that well that you built.
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  So you the hope is you never have to actually measure if all this works.
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  Because
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  Okay.
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  the only way to test it, really,
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  because you can't tie it to revenue directly,
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  is when something happens. Now you can tie it to revenue indirectly because Every
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  purchase from big to small is a trust-based purchase.
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  Think about any purchase you make.
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  There's some level of trust that goes in there.
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  Some high level of trust, some are much lower.
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  Mm-hmm.
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  If your revenue is going up, if your sales are going up,
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  people are trusting you. If it's going down,
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  you gotta do something to fix that.
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  And you have to build that up.
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  Mm. Mm-hmm.
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  And we look
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  at where you've done well before.
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  We look at what's doing well now and where
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  we can add opportunities to build trust.
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  And right now, one of the biggest ways to do it is authenticity.
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  Mm-hmm.
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  Be authentic
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  in your content. You have to create a lot of it.
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  Big business, small business, podcast,
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  especially. You have to create a lot of content.
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  Because that's what everything is.
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  You mean you're a podcaster, you know you have to be putting out clips
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  and promos and reels and highlights.
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  There's just a lot to do.
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  Mm-hmm.
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  Even if you're a business that
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  Isn't content based like a podcast,
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  you still have to be putting all that out.
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  Do it authentically.
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  Mm, mm, mm.
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  Inauthentic content erodes trust.
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  And With the high amount of AI slop out there,
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  with how easy it is to produce a lot of content quickly,
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  people are very attuned to is this real?
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  Mm-hmm.
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  Or am I being lied to? And the tolerance
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  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
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  for it depends on the person, depends on the industry.
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  But
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  Mm.
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  in a lot of cases, if you can be more authentic,
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  That's going to be a huge, huge driver.
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  It it it makes me think, you know,
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  it kind of helps me makes me like reframe marketing,
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  you know, just in it just in a general sense.
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  And it's it's about creating trust,
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  you know, not just not just generating leads,
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  generating generating leads becomes the output of generating that trust with your
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  potential customer base. Is that kind of what you're saying?
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  It is.
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  Communications and marketing, this is something that comes up a lot.
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  People tie marketing very closely with sales.
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  Sometimes marketing reports to a head of sales,
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  a chief revenue
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  Mm-hmm.
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  officer. Marketing, communications,
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  these are not those revenue generating functions.
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  Because when
• 15:02
  ~ yeah.
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  you think about like you just said,
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  the sales the end goal, obviously,
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  but
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  Mm-hmm.
• 15:08
  a lot goes into that.
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  It would be like having IT be a rev can think of that as
• 15:15
  a revenue generating function.
• 15:16
  It's not. Your business runs on IT because
• 15:19
  Mm-hmm.
• 15:20
  it's twenty twenty six. Every business is running off of IT.
• 15:25
  We're all technology businesses now,
• 15:27
  whether we
• 15:27
  Mm-hmm.
• 15:27
  wanna be or not.
• 15:29
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 15:30
  Think of communications the
• 15:31
  same way. Your entire business from internal emails to Super Bowl
• 15:36
  ads is running from your communications team.
• 15:40
  It is running on that trust that you build.
• 15:44
  Mm. Mhm. Mm. That's that's what what about the sales side of things?
• 15:49
  I mean the sales has to still has to be aligned with with
• 15:52
  It is. It's one hundred
• 15:53
  percent aligned. And you know,
• 15:55
  communications, those marketing teams,
• 15:57
  those branding teams are creating the things that
• 15:59
  Mm-hmm.
• 16:00
  sales team uses. They're creating collateral.
• 16:04
  Mm-hmm.
• 16:04
  We do it all the time. We're in the room with the CRO.
• 16:08
  That's why having this chief communications officer will in that C-suite,
• 16:13
  part of those strategic planning conversations,
• 16:16
  knowing your product roadmap, knowing what your sales team is working on.
• 16:20
  So they are building trust for that.
• 16:22
  If you're coming out with a new product and you know that two years down
• 16:26
  the line this is coming out,
• 16:28
  Mm-hmm.
• 16:28
  but you tell and your communications team six months down the line when you're
• 16:34
  closer or thirty days, they're behind.
• 16:37
  Your sales team is going to be behind.
• 16:39
  But
• 16:40
  Mm-hmm.
• 16:40
  if they can start prepping for this and laying the groundwork with your audiences
• 16:46
  in advance.
• 16:47
  Mm.
• 16:48
  And of course, that doesn't say,
• 16:49
  hey, be ready for a cool product announcement in two years from now.
• 16:53
  Right.
• 16:53
  It's talking about the features,
• 16:55
  talking about roadmaps. A lot of customers get into that depending on your product.
• 17:00
  They want to know. If you're a mid sized startup,
• 17:03
  you have a community of people,
• 17:06
  your customer success managers,
• 17:08
  they are fielding emails from people.
• 17:11
  They know what these requests are.
• 17:13
  Yeah.
• 17:14
  So if you're communicating that publicly.
• 17:16
  and you are either keeping to it or being transparent about where
• 17:23
  you can't, which happens. Things change.
• 17:26
  Yeah, yeah.
• 17:28
  You are going a long way in building trust.
• 17:31
  And again, that is through authenticity and just putting stuff out there.
• 17:34
  Because that's what people are really looking for.
• 17:37
  Mm hmm. Well w one thing that comes to mind,
• 17:41
  I guess is kind of adjacent to this,
• 17:43
  is is the bots that a lot of companies are are developing,
• 17:46
  whether they're internal
• 17:47
  Yeah.
• 17:47
  support bots or they're, you know,
• 17:49
  first line of defense, so to speak,
• 17:51
  sales bots on people's websites.
• 17:53
  That sounds like like a a huge place where comms teams need to be involved.
• 17:59
  Can you s can you speak to that at all?
• 18:01
  You've listened to those chatbots,
• 18:02
  that you know, that first line chatbot.
• 18:03
  I've worked with this chat bot.
• 18:05
  Still my computer out the window,
• 18:05
  Yeah. We've all worked with those chatbots.
• 18:07
  yeah.
• 18:08
  We've
• 18:10
  been the recipient on the consumer end of those chatbots.
• 18:13
  Mm-hmm.
• 18:14
  We all hate those chatbots. And even when we're building them and using them,
• 18:18
  we know the consumer isn't happy with it.
• 18:21
  And when we try to make it better,
• 18:23
  we're just thinking about it from we can do this,
• 18:26
  and we saw fewer.
• 18:28
  things by people by putting more on the AI.
• 18:31
  That's great, but sometimes you're just angering your customer
• 18:35
  and eroding that trust.
• 18:37
  Yeah.
• 18:37
  There are a lot of opportunities for making that more human.
• 18:42
  And some companies now even say,
• 18:45
  hi, I'm a bot.
• 18:47
  Yeah.
• 18:48
  Hi, I'm your artificial intelligence support agent.
• 18:51
  They're being very transparent about it because people felt deceived
• 18:58
  when they thought they were talking to a person,
• 19:01
  and it turns out it wasn't. When they thought the name that someone made
• 19:05
  up in a marketing department with the AI generated photo that they
• 19:10
  had from some website wasn't real.
• 19:12
  Mm-hmm, mhm,
• 19:13
  They felt really deceived.
• 19:16
  mhm.
• 19:16
  And I've
• 19:16
  been on that customer side of it.
• 19:18
  I'm sure you've been on that customer side of it.
• 19:19
  Your listeners have been on the customer side of that.
• 19:21
  We don't want to be lied to. And that
• 19:21
  Mm-hmm, mm hmm. Right,
• 19:24
  right, right.
• 19:25
  goes right to eroding trust. That's an easy way to lose a sale before you've ever
• 19:31
  even had a chance. If someone's going into the sales pipeline.
• 19:35
  If you get them with a person where you're even transparent about I'm
• 19:40
  the bot to help direct you to the right person,
• 19:43
  that goes a long way.
• 19:45
  What what about building the bot though?
• 19:47
  I mean, there's the you know, all of all of the prompts that go into you know,
• 19:50
  this bot's communication because,
• 19:52
  you know, I mean, I I I feel like a lot of the bots that are created,
• 19:56
  I mean, they just you know, somebody just takes their knowledge base,
• 19:58
  you know, plugs into the back of,
• 19:59
  Yeah.
• 19:59
  you know, a system and it, you know,
• 20:01
  it kinda works. But I I feel like there's a real opportunity there because,
• 20:06
  you know, in the you know, two o'clock in the morning,
• 20:07
  you're up, you're doom scrolling,
• 20:09
  you know, you find an ad that you like,
• 20:11
  you want to go, you know, chat about it.
• 20:12
  Nobody's up. Nobody
• 20:12
  Mm-hmm.
• 20:14
  Yeah.
• 20:15
  Let's let's leave it there. Nobody's up to ~
• 20:16
  Ha ha ha.
• 20:18
  to to answer that. And it would be great to be able to just go in and and talk
• 20:22
  to an effective bot, knowing that I'm talking to a bot,
• 20:26
  you know, and and get the information I'm looking for,
• 20:27
  Yeah. Well
• 20:28
  be able to do the research,
• 20:29
  ask the questions, et cetera, et cetera.
• 20:32
  Say that some companies don't even put their whole knowledge base into the bot.
• 20:35
  I had one that I was talking, you know,
• 20:38
  I knew it was a bot.
• 20:39
  Mm-hmm.
• 20:40
  And you know, it was a very basic where is this function that was recently added
• 20:45
  Yeah.
• 20:45
  or moved or something like that.
• 20:47
  And it said, I can't do that. It was in the product announcement last week.
• 20:51
  And I am 100%
• 20:52
  Yes.
• 20:54
  confident that this is in your product because you just told me it's
• 20:57
  in your product.
• 20:58
  Yes, yes.
• 20:59
  And
• 21:00
  It wasn't even there in the bot yet.
• 21:02
  So date some companies don't even go as far as putting in all their documentation.
• 21:07
  I wish
• 21:07
  Yeah.
• 21:08
  every company at least did that much.
• 21:10
  One way is
• 21:10
  out of out
• 21:10
  of date information is just as bad.
• 21:12
  You know, it's just like there there's been
• 21:13
  Yeah.
• 21:14
  an update since this. What's the new information,
• 21:16
  please?
• 21:16
  Yeah, because it's one of those things that you make and then you think it's there
• 21:20
  and no one keeps training it. And that's really the answer to your question
• 21:25
  is continuous improvement. Put
• 21:27
  Yeah.
• 21:28
  let it learn off of the chats that people have.
• 21:31
  Where do people start getting angry in the chat?
• 21:35
  Where do they
• 21:35
  Yeah.
• 21:36
  start typing human? I want to talk with a person.
• 21:39
  Give me a real person. Those are the frustrating points.
• 21:42
  That's where you need to either A get them to a person right away.
• 21:46
  Because if you're trying to make a sale and they can't reach a real person,
• 21:49
  odds are they're gone. I know I'd be gone at that point.
• 21:53
  You'd probably be gone at that point.
• 21:54
  Okay. Okay.
• 21:55
  Yeah. Like,
• 21:56
  okay, this company's just not putting in the thing for me,
• 21:59
  so I'm out. And how it
• 22:01
  But that seems like a great
• 22:02
  opportunity for a comms, you know,
• 22:04
  comms director to to jump in and and really manage that.
• 22:05
  Yeah. It's something that we take on when companies
• 22:08
  Yeah.
• 22:09
  use it. A lot of the companies we work with,
• 22:12
  you know, our first thing is use it for the simple stuff.
• 22:15
  Mm-hmm.
• 22:16
  But anything beyond that, well trained people are going to be better
• 22:21
  Just human and the loop.
• 22:22
  because that is the opportunity to sell someone for the first time,
• 22:29
  retain
• 22:29
  Mm-hmm.
• 22:30
  a customer, keep them from leaving if they're frustrated.
• 22:34
  People
• 22:34
  Yeah.
• 22:35
  do that all the time. They just get frustrated with the bots and are like,
• 22:39
  okay, I can't figure it out. It's not working for me.
• 22:41
  Cancel. Done. Yep.
• 22:42
  Guilty.
• 22:44
  I I've I've done it. That's an opportunity.
• 22:47
  It's an opportunity to move them maybe to a higher tier because what they really
• 22:50
  need is that next tier. That has the feature they're looking for.
• 22:55
  Yeah.
• 22:55
  But the bot doesn't actually understand what they're looking for.
• 22:59
  It doesn't know how to probe for those questions.
• 23:02
  It doesn't understand the solution because the person doesn't know what's missing
• 23:07
  necessarily.
• 23:08
  Mm-hmm.
• 23:09
  And we get this as people because this is just called having a conversation.
• 23:13
  Mm, mhm.
• 23:13
  We do this our whole lives basically.
• 23:15
  That's just
• 23:17
  being a person, but the bot doesn't know that.
• 23:19
  So having the human in the loop,
• 23:21
  making sure that those bots aren't hurting you.
• 23:26
  Because it's really easy to see the drop off or the success rate or
• 23:31
  the number of times it says resolved,
• 23:33
  or if the person disappears, you could say,
• 23:35
  Well, that must mean resolved.
• 23:36
  They got their problem solved.
• 23:38
  They just didn't respond.
• 23:39
  Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
• 23:39
  Or it just means they gave up.
• 23:41
  It could mean either. It could just
• 23:42
  Exact
• 23:44
  mean they gave up. Or it's two AM and they got tired and fell asleep.
• 23:47
  Like there are a lot of things that could mean.
• 23:50
  So you have to really be thinking about that.
• 23:52
  But we tell you, you know, everyone,
• 23:54
  great for the basic stuff, like
• 23:56
  Mm-hmm.
• 23:57
  searching your documentation, assuming you've updated your documentation
• 24:01
  in the AI and it knows what those new features were.
• 24:05
  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
• 24:06
  It's great for getting basic information if your next step is calling with
• 24:13
  a sales rep.
• 24:14
  Mm-hmm.
• 24:15
  It's really bad for solving problems in this regard.
• 24:18
  Do do you guys get into like the act the actual process?
• 24:21
  So it's just like, you know, users gonna do,
• 24:24
  you know, these five steps and you know,
• 24:26
  you know, go into whatever spin offs.
• 24:27
  We we're not the developers in that if that
• 24:27
  No, not not saying
• 24:30
  you're the developers, just the kind of the designers.
• 24:33
  It's like, okay, these things need to
• 24:34
  Yeah.
• 24:34
  happen and
• 24:35
  We communication should be woven into every part of your business.
• 24:39
  So in terms of your customer conversations,
• 24:43
  either in person or via chat, we're gonna figure out where that is and what
• 24:49
  is that journey, what is this life cycle that people are going through.
• 24:55
  And where are they either succeeding?
• 24:59
  And where are they failing? Because you might be finding you know
• 25:02
  all these calls are recorded now,
• 25:04
  all these chats are recorded, they are maybe too easy to analyze because
• 25:08
  you get a lot of data which has a lot of noise in it in a lot of cases.
• 25:12
  But you could usually pull out what problems people aren't getting solved.
• 25:17
  Maybe what are they saying before it disconnects
• 25:22
  Mm-hmm.
• 25:23
  and use that
• 25:24
  To find the next spot. You know,
• 25:27
  we've worked on things as you know cl you know for that sales process like naming
• 25:32
  your sales tiers. What you name those tiers
• 25:35
  Mm-hmm.
• 25:35
  can have a huge impact on what people buy.
• 25:40
  wow.
• 25:40
  If you just if you name it, you know,
• 25:42
  low, medium, high
• 25:43
  Uh-huh.
• 25:44
  versus you see a lot of say bronze,
• 25:48
  silver, gold, platinum.
• 25:49
  Yeah.
• 25:50
  versus something that's a little more industry specific.
• 25:54
  you'll get a different response.
• 25:56
  And you could A/B test on your website to see how people react
• 26:01
  to these different things. You know,
• 26:03
  Yeah, yeah.
• 26:04
  we all there's a lot of psychology behind
• 26:06
  where you you've seen it again as a customer,
• 26:08
  I'm sure. You see those tiers lined up and it says most popular,
• 26:12
  best deal, you know, preferred,
• 26:15
  where
• 26:15
  Mm-hmm.
• 26:16
  it clicks you to the preview price is actually the yearly price,
• 26:20
  not the monthly price. So
• 26:21
  Mm-hmm.
• 26:23
  People feel deceived by that.
• 26:24
  Mm-hmm.
• 26:26
  We've seen in those chats where people said,
• 26:30
  I thought I was paying this much and it's actually twice that.
• 26:33
  Why? And like, you have to click
• 26:35
  Yeah, yeah.
• 26:36
  the button for monthly. It starts on the yearly price.
• 26:39
  I wasn't ready to commit to a year.
• 26:41
  Exactly. Exactly.
• 26:43
  And
• 26:43
  people feel deceived. That's a breach of that trust when you're still working really
• 26:48
  hard to earn it.
• 26:49
  Yeah, those details.
• 26:50
  So fine print like that
• 26:52
  Mm-hmm.
• 26:52
  can work against you in a lot
• 26:55
  Mm-hmm.
• 26:56
  of ways. So that's the things that we work on.
• 26:58
  And like I said, we A-B test the websites because that's one way to find out.
• 27:05
  Yes, look at the chat logs, look at the conversations people are having when
• 27:10
  you record them, but also
• 27:12
  See how it works in real life.
• 27:14
  That makes sense. That makes sense.
• 27:15
  That makes sense. One of the one one of the other things I see a lot is like
• 27:21
  I don't know, almost, you know,
• 27:23
  businesses looking like commodities.
• 27:24
  You know, it's like every electrician
• 27:25
  huh.
• 27:26
  in town, they've got, you know,
• 27:27
  a different name, but it's the same,
• 27:29
  you know, product over and over again.
• 27:31
  And I I think that this is one of the challenges that I would love to hear
• 27:35
  how a comms manager would would would manage.
• 27:39
  Because, you know, in order to be able to command the pricing that you want,
• 27:43
  et cetera, et cetera, in order to get the market share that you want,
• 27:46
  you've got to have a, you know,
• 27:48
  good, clear differentiator. So what what would be your approach?
• 27:51
  We have two main frameworks that we use.
• 27:53
  The first one is our story narrative brand framework.
• 27:58
  People call us in at brand. Think of it like a pyramid.
• 28:02
  That's where people call us in at the top.
• 28:04
  Okay.
• 28:05
  Because it's really easy to do.
• 28:06
  Story is the stuff that happened.
• 28:09
  It's the beginning, the middle,
• 28:11
  the present, it's the major events.
• 28:13
  It's how you tell your friends at a bar what's going on and then
• 28:17
  you order another beer. That's story.
• 28:20
  Narrative answers questions. It connects the dots between the interlocking stories.
• 28:25
  It tells people what we want to think about those stories,
• 28:30
  what we want them to conclude about those stories.
• 28:33
  Mm-hmm.
• 28:35
  And then brand is the swag. It's all the stuff.
• 28:38
  It's everything that people use to interact with your business.
• 28:43
  And yeah, of course, that's the website.
• 28:46
  That's your logo, that's pens,
• 28:48
  but it's also your chat bot.
• 28:50
  Okay.
• 28:50
  That's
• 28:51
  a big one. It's print collateral.
• 28:53
  If you go to conferences and maybe you have a table there,
• 28:57
  that's part of it. It's hold music is part of it.
• 29:02
  Everything people connect with your brand.
• 29:04
  Because if your whole music is say classical and but you're trying to sell that
• 29:09
  you are a modern
• 29:12
  high tech, innovative company,
• 29:14
  that's a disconnect.
• 29:16
  Mm-hmm.
• 29:16
  That might throw people off. And it's not something they think about consciously.
• 29:22
  Yeah.
• 29:23
  But it does happen. So all of those things,
• 29:26
  little things, big things, are part of the brand.
• 29:28
  So the way we think about if you have a hundred electricians in town
• 29:34
  is we go, what is the story? What are the things that happened?
• 29:38
  What do we want people to conclude?
• 29:41
  And what is the brand?
• 29:43
  You're the high end electrician,
• 29:45
  you're the affordable electrician,
• 29:46
  you do this, you have that skill,
• 29:48
  whatever it is.
• 29:49
  Mm-hmm.
• 29:50
  It's how do we tell that in a way that connects and how do we share that across
• 29:54
  all your content? Because
• 29:55
  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
• 29:57
  if you're an electrician, you gotta put out a lot of content to get on that
• 30:01
  top of the Google search now.
• 30:03
  Yeah.
• 30:04
  A lot you have to have stuff for people to find.
• 30:07
  And people in those, you know,
• 30:09
  home services businesses think,
• 30:11
  well, I don't have content, I'm a plumber,
• 30:15
  Mm.
• 30:16
  I'm an electrician.
• 30:17
  What is the first thing a lot of people do when they have a leak?
• 30:19
  They go to YouTube, fix leak under sink
• 30:21
  Mm-hmm.
• 30:22
  Right? And then they follow the instructions on YouTube or they think they did,
• 30:27
  and then they call a plumber, because
• 30:28
  Mm-hmm.
• 30:30
  that's what we all do. Well, you want to be that video people find,
• 30:34
  so they call you.
• 30:36
  So they show up when they search TikTok or search Google and they
• 30:39
  Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
• 30:40
  see the video results, you can be found
• 30:43
  Mm-hmm.
• 30:45
  solving that problem.
• 30:46
  And that is like something even you know any home services business can do.
• 30:50
  So if you think you don't have content or that it's too technical or
• 30:55
  Mm-hmm.
• 30:55
  too boring or you can't explain it in a t in a tweet or a video,
• 31:00
  there's always, always something.
• 31:03
  And we use our other big framework to help build content a lot more.
• 31:08
  And that's our four languages model,
• 31:10
  where people read, see, hear and experience.
• 31:14
  Read people kind intuitively get is what you read.
• 31:17
  Mm-hmm.
• 31:18
  A lot of that is stuff you see,
• 31:20
  but you're also seeing videos.
• 31:22
  You see photos, you see graphics,
• 31:24
  you see schematics, you see instructions.
• 31:27
  Here, if you're listening to this podcast,
• 31:32
  you're hearing it. But a lot of people are also hopefully watching.
• 31:36
  They make an appointment viewing.
• 31:38
  Some people are going to watch,
• 31:39
  some people are going to listen.
• 31:41
  Those
• 31:41
  Mm-hmm.
• 31:41
  are two very different experiences.
• 31:43
  If you're on desktop or mobile,
• 31:46
  especially if you're trying to follow that YouTube plumbing video,
• 31:48
  you're going to need some details that might be a little harder to see
• 31:52
  on a small screen. But
• 31:54
  Mm.
• 31:55
  that's what you could have under the sink with you.
• 31:57
  Mm.
• 31:58
  And then experience, people tend to think about that as big experiential things.
• 32:03
  The pop-ups, the conferences, and that's half of it.
• 32:06
  The other half is how people experience what they read,
• 32:09
  see, and hear. So
• 32:10
  Mm-hmm.
• 32:11
  desktop versus mobile, watching the podcast when you're appointment viewing versus
• 32:16
  if you're someone like me, listening while you drive or while you walk the dog.
• 32:20
  Mm-hmm.
• 32:22
  That's how most people engage with podcasts.
• 32:24
  Mm-hmm.
• 32:24
  Is when they are
• 32:26
  Doing something else.
• 32:28
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 32:30
  We look at all of that and we look at who your audiences are,
• 32:33
  and then we figure out how can we connect with them using these four languages.
• 32:38
  And it's not this is a post about read,
• 32:41
  this is a read post, this is a C post.
• 32:44
  No. You are always using all of them to different degrees.
• 32:49
  Mm-hmm.
• 32:50
  And
• 32:51
  you're always amplifying each one with the other.
• 32:54
  And sometimes what people might be hearing,
• 32:58
  for example, is out of their control.
• 33:01
  They might be reading your post,
• 33:03
  but they've got their kids in the background that they're hearing.
• 33:07
  Mm-hmm.
• 33:08
  Well, that's part of their experience.
• 33:11
  And you have to factor in that they might watch your video with sound,
• 33:16
  but if their
• 33:16
  Mm-hmm.
• 33:17
  kids are in the background playing and they can't listen to the video,
• 33:20
  They might have to read captions.
• 33:22
  Mm. Mm.
• 33:24
  two different experiences, same piece of content.
• 33:27
  So we're always looking at that as our way to create stuff and
• 33:33
  Mm.
• 33:33
  make it useful.
• 33:35
  That that sounds I I mean, just being frank,
• 33:38
  I mean, that sounds incredibly complicated.
• 33:40
  I mean, you you've talked about
• 33:41
  Ha.
• 33:41
  the entire organization, you talked about multiple channels,
• 33:44
  I mean, you know, story, narrative,
• 33:46
  you know, it's I mean it's it's it's an incredible I mean,
• 33:50
  what is it? You know, it's I th I think sometimes when we look
• 33:54
  at certain initiatives
• 33:57
  You know, we kind of shy I'm saying,
• 33:58
  like as a business owner, you know,
• 34:00
  you know, we tend to back up, which tend to shy away,
• 34:02
  say, you know what, that's that's too much.
• 34:03
  And then the quite because the statement is,
• 34:06
  wow, that's gonna cost an awful lot.
• 34:08
  You know, I th I think it would be helpful to have like a reality check.
• 34:13
  It's like, what is it what is it really what is that experience working with
• 34:18
  you really look like? You know,
• 34:19
  is it, you know, you've already said that you're fractional.
• 34:21
  Is it, you you're gonna come in for the first,
• 34:23
  you know, sixty days and you're gonna work forty hours a week,
• 34:25
  you know, every day and you're gonna
• 34:27
  You know, have this huge bu I mean,
• 34:28
  what what does it really look like?
• 34:30
  It can depend. So some projects need five hours a month,
• 34:33
  some need twenty hours a week.
• 34:35
  Depending
• 34:37
  Mm-hmm.
• 34:37
  on where you are. I said before,
• 34:39
  people tend to call us in at the brand stage.
• 34:41
  There are two reasons for that.
• 34:42
  One, that's where they start thinking about this and thinking maybe
• 34:45
  we need some help. Two is that's where they think they can afford it because
• 34:49
  Mm-hmm.
• 34:50
  they're used to the fifty thousand dollar a month PR agency model.
• 34:54
  Mm-hmm.
• 34:55
  We're not charging you $50,000 a month retainer.
• 34:57
  We set our model to be accessible to the people specifically who can't afford that.
• 35:03
  The first 30 or 60 days might be a little bit more.
• 35:09
  But if you are an earlier stage,
• 35:12
  it might be less. Because all we're doing at that stage is laying the groundwork.
• 35:17
  Because
• 35:18
  Mm-hmm.
• 35:19
  maybe you are a 10-person company.
• 35:22
  mostly engineers, but you know you have to get these chatbots working.
• 35:26
  You know you need a website that people can navigate from a sales perspective.
• 35:31
  Your CTO, your CEO,
• 35:34
  they go to conferences. They give speeches to technical audiences,
• 35:38
  but also non-technical audiences.
• 35:40
  You know you have to be doing pitch decks.
• 35:43
  Mm-hmm.
• 35:44
  And your CTO might be an engineer and not making that in a way that's great
• 35:49
  for non-engineers.
• 35:51
  might be giving that presentation in a very technical way.
• 35:54
  And it's great for people who are technical,
• 35:57
  but
• 35:57
  Mm-hmm.
• 35:59
  investors in the room might not have that technical background.
• 36:03
  So you have to speak to that audience.
• 36:05
  So there might be a lot less in those first sixty days or even the first year.
• 36:12
  Because
• 36:12
  Mm-hmm.
• 36:13
  you know your R Series A target date is you know one year in the future,
• 36:19
  eighteen months in the future with
• 36:20
  starting to do the presentations in six months.
• 36:24
  So we are building the foundation for that.
• 36:27
  Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Do you do you do you have an example?
• 36:29
  Which is why sometimes there's more,
• 36:31
  sometimes there's less.
• 36:33
  Do you do you have an example of an organization that maybe you started working with
• 36:36
  that maybe, you know, even one that was reluctant and then perhaps at the
• 36:40
  end or you know, perhaps you're still working with them where they're just like,
• 36:44
  my gosh, this is the best thing I've ever done.
• 36:46
  one organization we worked with,
• 36:47
  they weren't the most sure at first.
• 36:51
  They're an IT company. They were an IT company.
• 36:53
  We no longer work with them and I'll explain why in a second.
• 36:56
  They weren't sure where they were taking the business.
• 36:59
  They weren't sure if this was the right investment at the time.
• 37:01
  They weren't sure the growth strategy.
• 37:03
  There were just a lot of changes going on at that stage.
• 37:06
  And if you've worked with businesses for thirty years,
• 37:08
  if you worked in businesses for thirty minutes,
• 37:10
  you'll know that's not atypical.
• 37:12
  Mm-hmm.
• 37:13
  We came in with them and we started doing a lot of content.
• 37:16
  We started producing stuff with them,
• 37:19
  creating all these different things so that we focused on trust.
• 37:25
  Ultimately, what they decided was to sell and retire.
• 37:29
  And they sold to another business in the re region that
• 37:33
  Mm-hmm.
• 37:33
  was similar, that was looking to expand.
• 37:35
  Mm-hmm.
• 37:37
  We were able to help them with that transition.
• 37:39
  Nice.
• 37:40
  Because those transitions are always periods for internal
• 37:43
  and external communications where you need to do a lot.
• 37:46
  You need to explain this to clients.
• 37:48
  You
• 37:49
  Mm.
• 37:49
  need to explain what's leaving.
• 37:50
  You need to explain what's coming in,
• 37:52
  that what's changing and
• 37:54
  What is it?
• 37:55
  And we were able to help them with that so they were able to hit their dream,
• 37:59
  which is sell. The other company was able to get their dream of expanding.
• 38:04
  Mm-hmm.
• 38:05
  And these guys got to retire, which was
• 38:06
  Amazing.
• 38:07
  what they wanted.
• 38:08
  Amazing. That's fantastic. That's fantastic.
• 38:10
  Beautiful. Beautiful. what is that message that you want to give to our audience?
• 38:14
  Everything you put out should be useful.
• 38:17
  Don't make a billboard as a Google ad.
• 38:20
  That's not helping people. That's not building trust.
• 38:24
  If you have content on your website that helps people,
• 38:28
  you have those articles, turn those into ads,
• 38:32
  turn those into Instagram posts.
• 38:34
  Make sure everything is useful and focused on building trust.
• 38:39
  Don't spam people.
• 38:41
  Mm-mm. That's smart. That's smart.
• 38:43
  I like that. I like that. I know that you have a giveaway,
• 38:45
  but I have a I have a question for you that I asked
• 38:47
  Yeah.
• 38:47
  all of my guests. so the name of the show obviously is the Relentless Pursuit
• 38:50
  of Winning podcast. winning is something that we're typically able,
• 38:54
  able to figure out, you know, exactly what we want to do.
• 38:57
  The hard part sometimes is maintaining that relentless pursuit.
• 39:00
  So my question for you is what would you recommend or how would
• 39:03
  you advise our audience to maintain that relentless pursuit?
• 39:08
  Take breaks.
• 39:10
  Take breaks.
• 39:12
  There's a lot of science behind that breaks give your mind the chance to reset.
• 39:17
  Mm-hmm.
• 39:18
  They help you solve problems. Working in forty-five,
• 39:21
  fifteen, so forty-five on, fifteen off,
• 39:24
  can be more productive
• 39:27
  Mm.
• 39:27
  than working nonstop because it gives your brain that chance to reset.
• 39:33
  It gives you perspective. And
• 39:33
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 39:35
  the other is have something that isn't work.
• 39:38
  It's coaching your kids' soccer team.
• 39:40
  It's gardening, it's whatever it is.
• 39:42
  Something else.
• 39:44
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 39:45
  Because
• 39:46
  that's another opportunity for your brain and mind to reset.
• 39:50
  Because if all you're doing is focused on that relentless pursuit,
• 39:53
  it will be tiring. You will
• 39:55
  Mm-hmm.
• 39:56
  burn out. I'm sure you've seen people burn out.
• 39:59
  I've seen your audience has seen people burn out.
• 40:01
  They've burnt out themselves. You need
• 40:03
  Mm-hmm.
• 40:03
  to prevent that. And the breaks are what helps achieve actually being able
• 40:10
  to get from A to B.
• 40:12
  Mm, mm, mm, pacing yourself in in in in other words,
• 40:15
  pacing yourself. I like that. I I've actually started started doing that.
• 40:18
  I was doing like fifty minutes,
• 40:19
  fifty on, ten minutes off. And I and I
• 40:21
  Yeah.
• 40:21
  like it. I like it a lot. I like it a lot.
• 40:23
  I felt guilty initially. I should be working.
• 40:25
  You d yeah, because we're always all
• 40:27
  like we should be putting this time in.
• 40:28
  But when
• 40:29
  Yes, exactly.
• 40:30
  you come back, you know, you take those ten to fifteen minutes to stretch,
• 40:33
  to walk around, to do whatever,
• 40:35
  Uh-huh. Yep.
• 40:36
  you're
• 40:36
  you're you're refreshed. Your mind is able to focus on the task
• 40:41
  Yeah.
• 40:41
  better.
• 40:42
  Yeah, a hundred percent, hundred percent.
• 40:44
  Well, thank you for that. Thank you for that.
• 40:45
  And you have a giveaway, you want to talk about that?
• 40:47
  Yeah, so we are offering a free strategy session for all the listeners.
• 40:53
  You have the discount code, it'll be in the show notes.
• 40:57
  So
• 40:57
  Mm-hmm. It's a winning one hundred.
• 41:00
  yeah. So please take advantage,
• 41:03
  WINNING100 and visit our website,
• 41:05
  it's
• 41:05
  beltway.media.
• 41:07
  If you go to book a time with us,
• 41:09
  there'll be an opportunity to put in that code.
• 41:11
  And you will have the full strategy session with us.
• 41:16
  Amazing. Amazing. Thank you so much for that.
• 41:18
  And as you said, I'll put all the information on the show notes.
• 41:20
  are you on LinkedIn? Are you available to connect?
• 41:22
  I am.
• 41:23
  Connect with me on LinkedIn, Joshua I.
• 41:25
  Altman. You can also connect with me by email,
• 41:28
  J Altman at Beltway.media dot com.
• 41:31
  We are on most social channels as @thecommschief.
• 41:35
  That's smart. I like that. Joshua,
• 41:37
  thank you so much. I have really enjoyed our conversation.
• 41:40
  Thanks for having me.
• 41:41
  Absolutely, absolutely.
• 41:42
  And folks, thank you so much for watching or listening to another episode
• 41:45
  of the Relentless Pursuit of Winning podcast.
• 41:47
  We'll catch you next time.