Latest / What is Business Development? / Episode 121: Top 3 Takeaways from "Be a Sequoia, Not a Bonsai" with Nicolas Darveau-Garneau

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Episode 121: Top 3 Takeaways from "Be a Sequoia, Not a Bonsai" with Nicolas Darveau-Garneau · What is Business Development?

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Business Development podcast, brought to you by
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: the Global Business Development Association, delivering the strategies and tactics
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: to boost your career and corporate growth.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: Hello BD pros, and welcome to the Global Business Development
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: Association podcast called What is Business Development Now? If you're
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: a business development leader or just a business development professional
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: and you're pouring your efforts into efficiency metrics like customer
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: acquisition costs or return on AdSpend, well, instead of trying
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: to optimize profits, your method is unsustainable. In the age
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: of AI, Optimizing the wrong key performance indicators can be catastrophic. Well,
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: if you'd like to avoid that catastrophe and you want
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: to focus on the right KPIs for growth and success, well,
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: hang in there, because we're going to bring a great
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: book author to the show who's going to tell us
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  Speaker 2: all about it in his newest book. But before we
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: get to that book, let's talk about another book that's
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: packed with a bunch of business development KPIs we all
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: like to learn about, and that's the Business Development Body
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: of Knowledge. It's available on the Global Business Development Association website,
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: that's Gbdassociation dot org. And then when you're done reading
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: the book. You can take your Business Development Professional certification
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: online at the Gbdassociation dot org website. Okay, folks, let's
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: jump into this new book and it's called Ba Sequoia
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: not a Bonzi The seven Growth Secrets of the World's
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: most successful Companies. And a little bit about the book.
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: You know, if you're wondering about those KPIs well, whether
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: you work in a fortune five hundred giant, a startup
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: or a nonprofit, be a Sequoia not a Bondzaye gives
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  Speaker 2: you a growth playbook that will help you correctly prioritize
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: sustainability over a short term efficiency. With step by step
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: guides and hundreds of case studies, the author walks you
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: through how you measure marketing success and business development success
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: by teaching you how to maximize profitable growth by tracking
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: all the right metrics. And our guest author today is
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: Nicholas d'arvaux Garneaut and Nicholas, he's an experienced growth and
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: strategy executive with deep knowledge of digital marketing, digital transformation,
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  Speaker 2: artificial intelligence, and customer experience. So I can't wait to
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: get into this book with our guest author today. So Nicholas,
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: please tell us all about these KPIs that we can
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  Speaker 2: leverage for maximum growth.
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  Speaker 3: Hey, Tony, thanks for having me. And I love the
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: BD community. I was a BD person myself, and I
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: started four companies and cut over one hundred and fifty
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: to fifty deals and raised a bunch of money. And
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  Speaker 3: I was the sales and marketing executive at a one
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  Speaker 3: hundred million dollar AI company. So really thrilled to be here.
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: BD is the engine of growth for most companies. So
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: thrilled to be here. And so the origin story of
• 3:36
  Speaker 3: the book is that I was Google's chief evangelists and
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: met over a thousand companies. They would come to Mountain
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: View and kind of seek our advice and what they
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: could do better. And so what an extraordinary opportunity to
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: meet a thousand CEOs and cmos and heads of sales
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: and BD and CFOs. And I just, you know, after
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: the fact, right, you know, looking back, you know, over
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: the last five years, I grew will I'm just going
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: to discover that there's seven things that really were different
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: between the companies that were crushing it and the companies
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: that were really struggling. And the first one is this,
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  Speaker 3: like the KEPI ninety percent of companies are working really
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: hard on the wrong things, right, They're just absolutely heading
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: in the wrong direction, and only about ten percent of
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: companies are focusing on what really matters. So let's think
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: a BD example, right. Let's say you know, I'm a
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: B to B company and I'm trying to grow, and
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  Speaker 3: I've got my marketing team and my sales team working
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: together to do business development. Well, if you look at
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: the dashboards of ninety percent of these companies, it's going
• 4:35
  Speaker 3: to be like number of leads today and the cost
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: per lead, right, and the marketing team is trying to
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: get as many leads as possible for the lowest cost
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: per leaders possible. And what that typically, you know, drives
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: is a lot of really bad leads, right. And you
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: have the sales executives like, hey, look, marketing, you give
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: me all these bad leads. You'll have the marketing people
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: point their fingers at sales saying like, well you can't close.
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  Speaker 3: So this happens all the time, right, And so why
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  Speaker 3: the whole system is focusing on the wrong stuff. Who
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  Speaker 3: cares how many leads you got? Who cares the cost
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  Speaker 3: per lead? Right? What you really want is what is
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  Speaker 3: the value of these leads. How much money am I
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  Speaker 3: going to make going forward? So the top ten percent
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  Speaker 3: of B to B companies, who do you know a
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  Speaker 3: lot of lead generation don't care how many leads to get.
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  Speaker 3: They don't care the cost per lead. They forecast the
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  Speaker 3: customer lifetime value of each lead, Like, hey, if I
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  Speaker 3: get if this lead turns it to a customer, how
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  Speaker 3: much money am I going to make it the next
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  Speaker 3: ten years?
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  Speaker 2: Right?
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  Speaker 3: And you can I do the discounted cash flow analysis? Right, Hey,
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  Speaker 3: I'm going to make a one hundred thousand bucks a
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: year for ten years. That's worth about nine hundred and
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  Speaker 3: fifty thousand dollars. And you know what are the odds
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  Speaker 3: of this lead turning to customer? Ten percent? So this
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: lead is worth ninety five thousand bucks, right, And so
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  Speaker 3: as long as I pay somewhere you know, a lot
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  Speaker 3: less than that to require that lead, I'm going to
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  Speaker 3: be profitable over time. So what is the kind of
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: a maximum some of the customer lifetime value of these
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  Speaker 3: leads minus my marketing investment? And so very very very
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  Speaker 3: few companies look at the world this way, and the
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  Speaker 3: ones who do get you know, the majority of all
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  Speaker 3: the great leads.
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  Speaker 2: Wow, That's that's very powerful is focusing on what's important,
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  Speaker 2: and it really is the customer lifetime value metric overall. Right,
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  Speaker 2: that's the overarching strategic viewpoint is focus on this one
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  Speaker 2: important metric. But of course there are plenty of other
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  Speaker 2: metrics that you're addressing in the book and key concepts
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: from the book. So Nicholas, could we dive into your
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  Speaker 2: top three takeaways from the book and start with key
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  Speaker 2: takeaway number one? Please?
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah. The first one is the one I'll mention just now,
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  Speaker 3: which is ninety percent of companies focus on their own things, right.
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  Speaker 3: They're focused on efficiency metrics like cost per lead or
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: return on ad span or or anything like that. Right,
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: They're just trying to lower something, right, I want to
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: lower the cost of doing X, where it's not important
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  Speaker 3: at all. Right, what really matters is the quality of
• 7:00
  Speaker 3: the work that you're doing. So the number one advice
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  Speaker 3: I have for business development executives you know, sales and marketing,
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  Speaker 3: is just work together to get to one unified KPI,
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  Speaker 3: and a KPI should be something around profitability and ideally,
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: you know, long term profits. I'll just give you a
• 7:18
  Speaker 3: quick example. I was working with Saint Jude's children's hospital.
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: Right that the number one children's hospital in the world.
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  Speaker 3: They're the most respected organization in the US. By the way,
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  Speaker 3: they're also the number one destination where college graduates want
• 7:32
  Speaker 3: to work. So an extraordinary organization. And when I met
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  Speaker 3: them seven years ago, they were raising about a billion
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: dollars a year, right, and most of that from small donors.
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  Speaker 3: You see an out on Facebook or Google, click on
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  Speaker 3: it and donate on the website, crushing it, right, a
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  Speaker 3: billion dollars raising a billion dollars a year. Amazing. But
• 7:52
  Speaker 3: you know, when I met them, the way they were
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: thinking about this was like really a kind of an
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  Speaker 3: efficiency mindset, like as long as we get three dollars
• 7:59
  Speaker 3: or four dollar dollars or five dollars for every dollar
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  Speaker 3: we invests, you know, whether it's in marketing or content creation,
• 8:05
  Speaker 3: whatever it is, we're good. We're making money. So we're
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: going to do more of that. So it's going to
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: have this idea of this return on ad spend, Right,
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: I want three to one or four to one or
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  Speaker 3: five to one. If you have a dashboard that looks
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  Speaker 3: like this almost always, the team is responsible to make
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: this dashboard better, is going to try to improve this return. Right,
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  Speaker 3: I used to make three dollars for every dollar investment.
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  Speaker 3: Now I want to make four. Now I want to
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  Speaker 3: make five. Well, so my sense was that that's not
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  Speaker 3: the right way to think about this. What each charity
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  Speaker 3: should want is to raise as many donations as possible
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  Speaker 3: after they've paid for all their costs, right, and so
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  Speaker 3: the donations minus the Google investment and a Facebook investment,
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  Speaker 3: or what I call net donations. So you know, imagine
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  Speaker 3: changing its KPI from this return on ad spend to
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: net donations. How much money we've raised after we've paid Google.
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  Speaker 3: And next thing, you know, within the year, Saint Jus
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  Speaker 3: that raised forty six percent more money. They've done some
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: other things. It wasn't only that they did, but that
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: was a big part of what they did. And so
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  Speaker 3: in my experience, whenever a company goes from this efficiency
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  Speaker 3: kind of bonds eye mindset to this growth maximum growth
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  Speaker 3: sequoia mindset, they can get forty fifty, one hundred percent better,
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  Speaker 3: you know, within a year. So that's the most important
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  Speaker 3: takeaway is just the odds are that if you look
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  Speaker 3: at what your sales team is doing, what your marketing
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  Speaker 3: team is doing. How the CFO thinks they're probably thinking
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  Speaker 3: about efficiency, not maximum profitable growth.
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  Speaker 2: So okay, you're shifting the focus from the return on
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: edspin to customer lifetime value, the probability of high customer
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  Speaker 2: lifetime value. What is actually taking place underneath that metric
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  Speaker 2: when you shift that mindset? What takes place in say
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  Speaker 2: the business development when you're bringing leads in from marketing
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  Speaker 2: into the activation phase where you have business developers involved
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  Speaker 2: nurturing those leads to conversion where you have salespeople closing
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  Speaker 2: and converting from prospect into customers. What is what what
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: is the trickle down effect of that mind shift?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, typically you'll see a lot fewer leads and the
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  Speaker 3: cost really it will be a lot higher, which is
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: like boom, that's not a good idea, right, But but
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: it is like as long as these leads close and
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: now the bad team has a lot more time to
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  Speaker 3: devote to each lead, right, and the leads are more
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  Speaker 3: likely to be you know, in the ICP as opposed.
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  Speaker 3: So the trickle down effect is massive, Right, A lot
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: fewer leads to manage, so you need fewer BD people.
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: They can spend a lot more time on each lead,
• 10:43
  Speaker 3: so you can do real ABM, right, really kind of
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: understand as opposed to just going to sending an email,
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: Hey can I talk to you? Can I show you
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: a demo? Right, and so really kind of understand the
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: lead and understand their before you reach out to them.
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: Do a really kind of personalized demo as opposed to
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: generic demo. The cost structure is a lot less, and
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: then it has downstream impact on the customer success team
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: as well. Right, if the leads are really good and
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: they're within the ICP, that you don't have to like
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: change the software a lot for customers and demands, so
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: the engineering team can really stay focused on what really matters,
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: and the customer success team is dealing with customers who
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: are very similar problems as opposed to the very diverse
• 11:24
  Speaker 3: types of problems. So the alignment goes from beginning right
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: from the marketing, the content creation, the BD, the sales,
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: the product development, the customer success all the way down,
• 11:36
  Speaker 3: and you're just focusing on the right customers, and you're
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: focusing on the right customers or the right ICP, And
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: you're focusing on the customers who not only by the way,
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: most likely to close, but also most likely to stay
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: because the customer lifetime value is the kind of the
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: combination of you know, the annual profit you make from
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: each of these leads, times the likelihood the lead is
• 11:59
  Speaker 3: going to close, times you know, the net retention rate,
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: like how likely there it is stay, So churing goes down.
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: You know, you can cross sell and upsell them more
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: to these kinds of leads. So if you get to
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: a really sophisticated level here you can teach you know,
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: the AI on Google and Facebook exactly what kind of
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: customer you want and feedback to the algorithm on Google
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: and Facebook like, hey, look, this customer is great, but
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: I'm gonna make a lot of money in the short term,
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: and they're likely to churn because they're not exactly in
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: the ICP. So the customer lifetime value is medium, this
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: one is not likely to close. Customer lifetime metuel is low.
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: This one is likely to close. We're gonna make a
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: lot of money per year and they're going to stick
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: around for fifteen years. Customer lifetime value is very very high.
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: And so next thing you know, that Google and Facebook
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: algorithm start to learn what kind of leads you want,
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: and he starts sending you more leads like that.
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: Okay, great, and I like what you said too about
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: it really shifts the mindset about ICP, your ideal customer profile,
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: where oftentimes people say, oh, well, our ICP is this
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: type of demographic, you know, with this age group, This
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: is where they engage in community discussion, things of that nature.
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: But oftentimes they when you're defining ICP, a lot of
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: folks don't think about what's the customer lifetime value of
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: these individual ic and paint a very clear picture of
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: which ICP will deliver the highest CLV. And when you
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: do that, it allows you to reallocate your resources in
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: the nurturing brand activation phase where you have BD investing
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: in ABM account based marketing, where you're really economizing now
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: not only investing more time and resources, but you're focusing
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: on those with the highest probability of success in CLV,
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: and so very powerful mechanism with just this one simple
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: mind shift, Nicholas, So, let's talk about key takeaway number
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: two from your book.
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: Please, Yeah. Key take a number two is you know, obviously,
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: in the entire cycle of lead generation and the lead nurturing,
• 14:06
  Speaker 3: there are a lot of touch points, right, There's a website,
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: there's bunch of emails, there's a whole bunch of you know,
• 14:10
  Speaker 3: chat bots. The book suggests that almost every company is
• 14:16
  Speaker 3: designing these things the wrong way, right, because the same
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: mistake is being made. Or so you're like, if you're
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: doing a test, like here's page number A, U's page
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: number B, and I'm trying to, you know, figure out
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: which page is better. You know, in my kind of
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: my funnel, what is the metric we typically use to,
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: you know, to pick a winner is conversion rate? Which
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: page gives me the most leads? Right, It's like, well,
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: who cares. I don't. I don't want to page it
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: gives me, like the most leads. I want to page
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: it gives me the best leads. And so imagine changing
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: the entire testing protocol in the business development cycle to
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: the same thing, which is, hey, like, here's you know,
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: four pages of testing, or four different chat bots or
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: four different emails. I don't care about the open rate
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: of the email. I don't care about the conversion rate
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: of the email. What I care about is the projected
• 15:05
  Speaker 3: lifetime value of each of the different emails. So I
• 15:08
  Speaker 3: got four emails, I'm testing, I'm sending out the four emails, right,
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: and then you know, maybe email A has the highest
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: open rate, B has maybe the highest click rate. C
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: is the highest conversion rate. But D is the one
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: that doesn't open that much. It doesn't people don't click
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: on it, Debt Mutch. People don't necessarily, you know, fill
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: out a form that much. But the people who fill
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: out the form like always become customers. And so same thing,
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: right that the entire kind of thinking around how we
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: design our customer experiences should be based on customer lifetime value,
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: the quality of these customers, not the quantity nor the costs.
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: And so that if you shift these two mindsets together
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: like that, the inventing the entire system is based on, Hey,
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: I'm trying to get the best possible leads in my ICP.
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: You're going to give you the most amount of profit
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: for the longest possible time. And therefore the experience will
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: be designed for customers like that, not for the average click.
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: The average click is irrelevant. What really matters is am
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: I designing an experience that is bringing in extraordinary customers
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: who are really highly profitable, will love me, We'll talk
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: about me to their friends. I get business for free.
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: So the entire system is designed the wrong way for
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: ninety nine percent of companies.
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know this now shifts the discussion that
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: your chief growth officer has with the chief financial officer,
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: doesn't it Because now it's not getting into the details
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: of well, what has the highest return on itspend, what
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: has the highest click rate? No, you can actually show
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: the return on investment over the entire customer lifetime value.
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: So and what that does is shifts the mindset and
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: your business development go to market team that says, Okay,
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: we're not optimizing for clicks, we're not optimizing for engagement.
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: We're optimizing for the open rate and engagement and follow
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: through in conversion of those highest value customer lifetime value prospects.
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: That's our mindset, that's our shift. And so this also
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: is really fascinating because it helps drive what so many
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: go to market teams often seek is you know alignment
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: that we talk about alignment between marketing, b D and
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: sales so many times, and oftentimes you know they're they're
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: they're working in different silos with one another. And what
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: this forces is marketing to really understand and pay attention
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: to the entire prospect journey from the lead to the
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: nurturing and business development to the conversion because you have
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: to have that follow through in conversion to understand, okay, well,
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: which one's actually converted. And then on top of that, right, Nicholas,
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: you even need to be engaged as a marketer and
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: understanding the customer success phase, which ones are not churning,
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: which ones are staying with us, and even into the
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: customer growth phase, right, which is which ones become our
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: raving fans and they're sending referrals to us, those are
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: the ones we want, and you have to monitor that
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: data across the entire customer journey. So this is this
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: is really powerful, Okay, Nicholas, Let's move on to key
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: takeaway number three from the book.
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: Please, Yeah, this one will be interesting, I think because
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: it's not something we discuss a lot in MBD, but
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: building a brand, right, Like, imagine how life would be
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: different if you're in the BD space and you work
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: for a company whose brand is twice as respected as
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: the one you're currently working for. Right, you get more
• 18:51
  Speaker 3: high quality leads point one, and then you close rate
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: goes up a lot, and then you can charge more
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: and do do dot right. So it's just working for
• 18:58
  Speaker 3: a better brand is amazing and brands are typically built
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: obviously by having great products, great customer service. It's built
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: over time, right, so there's no shortcuts typically. But having
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: said that, you can take your brand to a whole
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: new level using paid marketing, right by just doing brand advertising.
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: But most you know, lead gen companies are really going
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: to bottom funnel marketers, right, we're just like, please become
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: a lead nop, please buy no please now n out right,
• 19:29
  Speaker 3: as opposed to, Hey, I'm going to invest the money
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: in advertising, and that money is going to build my
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: brain over time. And that's much scarier because you're putting
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: money down that doesn't necessarily pay back for itself right away.
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: You're you're playing the long game, right. So you know,
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: in the past, if you were doing this and you
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: were you know, buying TV ads or even you know,
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: plunking down a half a million dollars to buy a
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: bunch of YouTube ads, the odds of success were very low,
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: Like eighty eight percent of branding on TV are unsuccessful,
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: that they're unprofitable. Right, So the book talks about a
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: new kind of modern way of doing scientific branding that
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: is almost guaranteed to be profitable. And so I'll just
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: kind of briefly take you through it. And by the way,
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: the book goes through the first two takeaways in great detail,
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: like exactly how to build a lead scoring system and
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: then to plug it into Google and they get the
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: best leads. Exactly how to do testing for your website
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: or your app using customer lifetime value, And the third
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: one like how would you build a brand? Like if
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: you don't want to invest a lot of money and
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: take a lot of risk, while you would use AI
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: to create you know, a six second YouTube ad or
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: a thirty second YouTube ad and it's not perfect today,
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: but you know, very soon these aids are going to
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: be pretty extraordinary. And so that's not very expensive. Right,
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: you have to have a good creative mind and you have
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: to think it through. But you can create you know,
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: these ads very inexpensively. Now from hundreds one thousands of
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: dollars down to you know, five hundred bucks to create
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: an ad, and then you can create ten to fifteen,
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: twenty different versions of the ad. You can put them
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: on YouTube in a very small location. Right, you go
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: to Iowa, you get a New Hampshire and you spend
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: a couple thousand dollars putting these ads up. And then
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: you're trying to see if any of these ads are
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: changing the behavior of the people who see them, and
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: they you know, and the tailtale sign is that they're
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: much more likely to search for your brand. This is
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: something you can see directly on a YouTube dashboard, right.
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: So if you have fifteen ads that are running, fourteen
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: are not working, but one is like, well look at
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: this ad. People who see the ads are ten times
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: more likely to search for my brand and the ones
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: who don't see the ad. And again, YouTube can measure
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: that automatically. So now you're like, WHOA, Like, this is amazinging.
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: So let's take this ad and then you can do
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: a whole bunch of things to it. You can personalize
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: it based on a different you know, segments of customers
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: and so on and so forth. But you take this ad,
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: you put it on YouTube, and now you start investing
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: money in Iowa in this one you know place, and
• 21:50
  Speaker 3: you're trying to change your brand in Iowa, like, hey,
• 21:53
  Speaker 3: there's a number of searches for my brain in Iowa
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: are really going up across the board, right, And typically
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: you'll see that. So we've done this over and over again,
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: we double the number of searchers for a brand in
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: one small state, again for not a lot of money. Right,
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: So you do this and you're like, well, look at
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: this in Iowa, I've doubled, you know, people searches for
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: my brand by brand by the way you can mean
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: like you just one person's you know, if you're like
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: a solo entrepreneur and you do your own BD and
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: you're looking for leads, this all applies to you as
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: well if you're a fortune five hundred, same things, the
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: same concept. So this is really democratic if you're in
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: the smallest you know, companies can now do branding. And
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: so you've tested this in Iowa, you've seen the number
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: of searches for your brand as doubled. And then you wait,
• 22:37
  Speaker 3: you know, a couple of months, like am I getting
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: more leads? Are these leads high quality? Like is this
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: branding thing translating to more down funnel things?
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: Is it actually started to beat me money? And then
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: you keep testing this for a while and eventually you're like, yeah,
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: like I'm crushing it in Iowa, Like something is special
• 22:52
  Speaker 3: as happening in Iowa and it's obviously because of all
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: the branding I did. So once you have enough confidence
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: that this money that you're investing in upper funnel branding
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: translates to something magical, I know, in the bottom funnel
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: in your finances, then you can scale it across the
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: whole country and in the whole world, right, So you're
• 23:11
  Speaker 3: only really investing big money when you know it's going
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: to work. So this kind of you know, brand building,
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: and I've seen so many examples in the book. There's
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: an example of in Visiligne and the visilign just double
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: the searches for its brand across the entire US, and
• 23:25
  Speaker 3: their sales went up by twenty six percent, and you know,
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: the market cap went up by eight billion dollars. And
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: so if you can take a brand from wareness today
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: to doubling it right in terms of people's awareness of
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: it or consideration for that brand, you can change the
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: trajectory of the entire company. So it's funny, right. I'm
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: a typically a performance marketer, like on a down funnel,
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: you know, measure everything kind of marketer. And I didn't
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: do a lot of branding when I had my four companies.
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: It was a tragic mistake. And now you can apply
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: real science to brand and you know, it's very similar
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: to how we apply science to lead generation, and again
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: the same thing. Right in the branding phase, what you
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: want to do is you want to target your ICP.
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: You don't really care if you know the number of
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: searches for your brand doubles in the state on average.
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: You really want to spend your money on customers who
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: are much more likely to become buyers, and buyers who
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: are much more likely to stay for a long time
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: and give you a lot of money. So your laser
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: focus your branding on five percent of the population that
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: really matters, and that way every dollar you invest is
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: worth a lot more. So the book details all of that.
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: I would actually argue that this is the most powerful
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: principle in many ways because most of us. You know,
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: I've worked or something. I work at Google, right, I
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: had this amazing brand behind me. That's how I get
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: to meet a thousand CEOs. Now that I've got my
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: own consulting firm, I still need a lot of CEOs.
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: But I'm not Google, right, It's just a lot harder,
• 24:56
  Speaker 3: it's a lot more work. So the more powerful your
• 24:59
  Speaker 3: brain is, the more recognized and trusted it is, the
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: easier everything else you do, Like you get more leads,
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: the quality of the leads gets better. Right, the close
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: rate gets better, you can charge more, so it just
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: kind of greases the entire system. Now, the hard part
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: is that you really couldn't do it in the past.
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: Now it's very, very doable to build a brand for
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: anybody who follows these steps.
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, it's very powerful what you're talking about here,
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: which is boosting the brand saliens, not so much the
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: brand recognition other brand awareness, but the brand saliens the
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: value it brings to the individual in the minds of
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: individual consumers, your ICP. And when you do that, you're
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: adding when you add to top of funnel, you're adding
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: to top of line in revenue. When you do it
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: effectively by this mind shift from return on AdSpend to
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: customer lifetime value. So, Nicholas, let me summarize the top
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: three takeaways from the book. Jump in please if I
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: happen to miss anything, But folks, we're talking about again
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: this newest book out on Amazon. It's be a Sequoia,
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: not a Bondzi. The seven Growth Secrets of the World's
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: most successful Companies, with the author at Nicholas Dalvot, gal
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: Knu and so Nicholas, let me run through these top
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: three takeaways here. Number one is this shift from this
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: fundamental shift from return on ad spend and focusing on
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: each little KPI associated with advertising, and now focusing on
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: this high level strategic north star of customer lifetime value.
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: And when you do that, that rolls into key takeaway
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: number two. It is has this trickle down effect to
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: the rest of your go to market team's measurements. Now
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: we're focusing on okay, which lead takes us to the
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: ICP that gives us the highest customer lifetime value. And
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: when we're doing that, it forces us to measure all
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: all of the valuable metrics across the entire customer journey,
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: not just from the nurture phase and activation, not just conversion,
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: which so many companies just stop right there, but it's
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: looking at the customer success phase. Are we reducing churn
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: for these high value prospects, and then in the growth
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: phase are they becoming our raving fans and referring other
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: prospects to us that are also high value ICP, high
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: customer lifetime value prospects. And then finally, you know, key
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: takeaway number three is when you do that when you
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: follow all the way through the entire customer journey and
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: you have this laser focus on customer lifetime value. Now
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: what you're doing is you're boosting not customer brand awareness
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: or customer brand recognition. You're focusing on customer brand salients.
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: How much value do they assign to your brand? And
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: when you do that, it makes a life a lot
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: easier for your business developers. Doors open a lot easier.
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: I've been in situations like that myself. I know you
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: did too at Google. Nicholas, when you have that logo
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: on your business card, folks, you have instant credibility, you
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: have instant trust, and it makes the sales process, the
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: business development process a lot easier. So, folks, if you
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: want to make your business development process a lot easier,
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: run out, grab yourself a copy of Nicholas's book. It
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: just came out on Amazon again. It's be a sequoia,
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: not a bondzi. Nicholas. Did I miss anything any Tony?
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: You pronounced my name perfectly and you didn't miss anything.
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: That was amazing.
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: Well, I hope I've made my French mother proud with
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: the pronunciation of your last name. I'll do it one
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: more time just to impress folks. Nicholas Dalvo Galno, sir,
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: thank you so much for all your contributions to the
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: business development profession.
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: You're welcome.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Thank you, Thank you for listening
• 29:00
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• 29:05
  Speaker 1: corporate partners and business development professionals advancing the art, science,
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: and ethics of the business development profession at Gbdassociation dot org.