The Power of establishing thought Leadership with Steve MacDonald

The CRO Spotlight Podcast, powered by the Growth Firm Production. Hi, I'm Warren Zenna, Founder and CEO of the CRO Collective and welcome to the CRO Spotlight Podcast. This show is focused exclusively on the success of Chief Revenue Officers. Each week we have an open, frank.

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Now let's go mix it up. So welcome to this episode of the Sierra Spotlight Podcast. This is Warren Zenna. I'm the first founder and CEO of the CRO Collective and I've been having a lot of really great conversations with more marketing people lately simply because I feel it's an important component to think about when a Chief Revenue Officer is managing their overall revenue operation and how marketing gets integrated. And I had the benefit of meeting some really super smart individual, Steve McDonald, whom he and I met at a conference I spoke at a couple months back and we really connected and we're considering doing some work together. And I thought you, you know, Steve, let's, let's trade off. And you know, he invited me to be on his podcast and now he's going to be on mine. So to that I want to introduce Steve McDonald. Steve is the founder of a great company called Content Strategies, which is a B2B content marketing focused sales and marketing consultancy which provides primary research and core brand messaging that fuels full funnel content development, promotion and tracking. In short, what Steve does is he helps companies, B2B companies develop thought leadership strategies, which is critically important and it's something that's near and dear to my heart. And Steve and I have really good conversation about this. So Steve, welcome and thank you so much for being here today.

Well, hey, fantastic to be here. And yeah, ever since we, we met a couple of months ago, we've just had non stop fantastic conversations that just spark all kinds of new ways of thinking and talking about, you know, what we do in the marketplace and what we learn every day from the people that we're talking and serving. And so I'm very honored to be on and part of this conversation here and take it out to the community of the C Suite that's listening.

Thank you.

If you don't mind, first why don't.

You just tell me a bit about your business, like what is it that you do for clients like, why are they hiring you? What's the solution that you're providing them with?

So the solution is that they don't have that level of thought leadership content. So they don't have the brand, the trusted advisor status, they don't have the ability to create conversations. They focus mostly on product marketing. And so they're having difficulty in terms of getting earlier in the buyer's process. Their, their revenue generation or demand generation campaigns aren't performing as well as they should because the level of content that fuels those campaigns isn't of the level of quality that it needs to be. So from demand gen to building their brand, their expertise, fueling their ABM sales process, where the guys can't just keep selling, selling, selling, but they actually need to have something that's of value enough that gets the curiosity and sparks another conversation in that ABM process. It's really the fuel for all that is content as we've talked about, and they don't have high quality content.

So I want to unpack this because this is something is obviously really interesting and important to me too. I guess the first question I have is, I mean, do people know that they need to have thought leadership? How important is it to them? How much of your work is educating them about that this is something that they need to be doing? And how much of it is they know they need to be doing it, but they're just not able to this.

Second they know they need to be doing it. So there's a question that I, I think we, I asked it of you in the podcast too, and I ask of all the, all the guests is, you know, on a scale of 1 to 10, how important is thought leadership content in terms of the overall growth and success of the business? And I never have anybody going below 9. That's maybe 3% of the time they do that, but they're at 10 or they break the scale. They're at 12, they're at 15, they're at 25 because of the importance of it. But they're stuck in the realm of, they don't have subject matter experts in house that can truly represent their icp, their industry, the trends, the true innovations that are happening throughout the industry. They don't have the voice of the industry and they don't have the voice of their icp. So when you go to in inside subject matter experts, you as a company are the sellers. So anybody inside the company is a seller. Right. So what they say has significant meaning, but if it's validated from the outside, by the peer community of who they're trying to sell into. Then all of a sudden what makes sense and what they're saying goes in important from here to here. So that's the biggest thing is they don't have an outside voice, they don't have the customer leading the conversation, they don't have validation. So they're working. Everything that they do, they're having to work four or five times harder at because it's just them saying it. And what they're saying is usually very product focused.

Yeah, I completely agree. I think that what I see is I speak to a lot of businesses that are in, let's say, commoditized spaces, right. They offer a product that there's seven or eight different alternatives for the same thing, just a different company. I mean, there's a lot of them, particularly when you're looking at a lot of advertising and marketing technologies. There's a plethora of tools that you can like, you know, think about productivity tools. How many are there? There's like 10 of them you can get, right. Calendar tools, DSPs. Right. And there's so many. So the issue that, that a lot of these companies I talk to have is the only differentiator they really have is their price. Or maybe they have like a feature that they do or maybe they've invested in some strategic partner that they have an exclusive thing on that gives them a certain leg up or they've got some sort of an integration that no one else can get. But it's very product driven. And that's the way that they go to market is by those things. And trying to find a way to have a thought, leadership perspective on an industry that's overloaded as a commodity is really hard. Like how do you, how does a company do that? So I'm going to be more specific. So let's say I'm, let's say I'm the CRO of a, let's say a platform, a product that offers a productivity tool, a way to manage your, you know, day to day productivity. Competing with like Monday and Trello and those guys. Let's just say it's a fictitious version of that. So I know if I'm going to market that I'm competing with all these people whom already have users and like that platform. And I'm trying to steal them away or maybe find people that haven't adopted a product, I mean a productivity tool. And I want them to choose mine. So the way I'm going to do it is I'M going to say, hey, you know, we're, we're really fast, really easy to use. You know, we have this feature or we're cheaper or it's easier to buy it from us or something like that. But there isn't much in the way of any provocative thought leadership in relation to any of those triggers for me to want to consider them. You know, it'll probably be more like I'll just go online and I'll test all four of them out. I'll pick the one that I like the best, you know, how does a company like that approach differentiating themselves in the manner that you're saying without sounding just like everybody else?

Well, I mean, first and foremost, you have to speak beyond your tech, right? You have to speak beyond the physical product that you provide. And there's this notion of the product before the product. And what it really comes down to is, and this comes out of studies as well, this is factual, that just a sense of connection to your brand is as important as what it is that you do as a company. So first and foremost, somebody, people don't want to be sold to buyers. They don't want to be sold to. They want to be advised, they want to be educated.

Right.

They want to get perspectives that maybe they don't have on their own that are going to help them solve problems in ways that they haven't quite thought of before. So all those companies, Asana Monday, Trello, you know, they, they're, they're very good at what they do. But there is a level before you get to the kick the tire, before buyers get to the point where they're saying, okay, where does my consideration set?

Right.

There's redefining the problem and redefining the problem where the impact on that buyer is actually greater than maybe they're even considering at the moment themselves. And if you can do that, then a, you, you have taught, you have advised, you've educated, but you've also positioned yourself in a way that your services are obviously in alignment with that problem and how it impacts the overall organization. So it accelerates the entire sales process because you're adding urgency in a way that hasn't been done before. And we can't just go out there and say the same things everybody else.

Right.

Forbes talks about having a unique point of view in the marketplace. They talk about it has to have a little bit of a healthy dose of controversy. And I know you believe in that, right?

Sure.

Do you?

Absolutely. So what it does, though, is it says it, it puts you back just a half a step and makes you rethink the reality that you were previously in. And if you can do that in a good and healthy way, then what you're doing is you're restructuring the conversation.

Right?

You're restructuring the way that your buyers are actually approaching and thinking about solving their problems. You've now become an advisor, not a seller. And as soon as you do that, then you put yourself into a position where you're trusted.

Right?

You have authenticity, your voice, your message means something more than just I have technology, I have a product that will solve your problem. Because most of us live in a world where there are a number of different competitors that can solve problems. So if you can rise above the I'm going to solve a problem specific that you have, the same way that that problem is defined and solved by most everybody else, then you're just putting yourself in the middle of. You know that that book Blue Ocean came out a couple decades ago, but it's fake, right?

Yeah.

The red ocean is the is read from the battle of competition.

Yep.

We have to define a bluer ocean where there isn't as much competition because of the way that we are uniquely solving their problem. Defining and solving their problem. So if we focus 90% of the effort in doing that, then we're going to not have as much competition as we have right now.

Thank you so much again for listening to the Zero Spotlight podcast. This podcast is an important plank in the Sierra Collective communication strategy and we're really thrilled to have such great guests on here. So listening and sharing the podcast with.

Other people is really vital because we.

Want to get as many people listening.

To this great stuff as possible.

A couple things to note. If you're a aspiring CRO or a recently hired CRO or even a old salty CRO and you're looking to either become a Chief Revenue officer or improve your chops and gain some more insights and improve your competencies as a Chief Revenue officer. We offer the CRO Accelerator course. It's five years now. It's the first CRO focused course that was out there. It's a 15 week course that is populated by aspiring Chief revenue officers and CROs. We're pretty selective in terms of who can be a member of the CRO Accelerator course. It's people who are probably like more like ready to be a CRO right now. They have number of years under their belt as a revenue leader, whether it.

Be a sales leader or a marketing.

Leader, or even rev ops leader and they either want to move into the C suite or they're CROs that want to just make sure that they win in the role. The Serial Accelerator course, we kick off the next one in May, mid May 2025. So if you are interested in being a member of the next cohort, please just write me a note on LinkedIn. Just DM me CRO accelerator and we'll set up a time to talk and then I can send you more information to give you a. A brochure, of course. So again, CRO accelerator course, 15 week program for aspiring and newly hired CROs. Take advantage of it. It's been great. And you'll see some more information about.

It on the website. Thanks. Yeah, I. Look, I agree with this 100%. You know, I do. I guess there's some things I see that happens.

Okay.

This is one of the challenges. I think you're right that there's certainly a capability issue. Like, okay, so you'd be correct to say it would be difficult to find somebody who doesn't agree with this general premise that we need to get out there and differentiate ourselves. Right. I think everyone would agree. And the other part, part you're talking about solving is, well, we don't have the ability to do that. I don't have the team or the expertise or the machinery to build content. And you know, before that, you know, there's a strategy which you just sort of alluded to, like what's your approach and all that coming up. That's a creative process, but I see as a different issue and that is the way that companies are managed, particularly product driven companies, which I think are probably guiltier of this than other ones are because they rely so much on their products to begin with. It's just not perceived by, let's say leadership or let's Even, you know, VCs or boards, as it doesn't have enough of an immediate roi. Right. They look at it and they go, oh, we're going to crank out another one of these podcasts and another one of these blogs and oh boy, you know, how do we know if that's working or not? I'd rather you just get on the damn phone and call customers up and get more demos. You know, I can account on a demo more and you're talking to a customer. So I'm going to move the money from developing all this leadership stuff and fluffy crap and I'm going to have a bunch of SDRs hired instead and I'm going to get them out there making phone calls to people and talk to them. On the phone and getting them in front of a demo because, because that's where the product is sold. That's how I make my money. And so there's a battle that goes on in the creative suite, let's say the CMO fighting for credibility in this strategy and being given the amount of time needed for it to seed itself and make it work. And I just don't see enough companies have the intestinal fortitude to allow these thought leadership initiatives to take root long enough to have them make a difference. And I see them being a lot of them, the plug is pulled on them like, ah, this isn't working because they have, you know, a misunderstanding of what the outcomes and expectations are supposed to be. What are your thoughts on that?

So I think that is solely on the shoulders of the cmo. To connect the dots, thought leadership does have a wrap of being branding kind of disconnected from sales. Long term, yes, we need to do that. That's good. But hey, I've got, I've got a quota. I'm CRO, I got a quota this quarter. I got to fill. I'm very short term focused. And the same time there's a lot of CEOs that are, that are very sales centric.

Right.

And they have to be. However, there's two things that CMO hasn't done. If there is a disconnect within the C suite on this, this level of thought leadership, the first thing is they haven't connected it to day to day sales. So, you know, I had a wonderful conversation with a three time B2B SaaS CMO and she said, one of the very first things that we did when we came in is we started an interview process. They did webinars, they did podcasts, they did everything to get to their ICP on a regular basis so that they had a, a regular steady stream of highly valuable, highly valuable content coming directly from the rcp. What they did is they took that and they made it, they cut it up into, you know, content pieces, shared it onto social. They made it highly actionable for the sales team. So now on a day to day basis, their entire sales force has added value, thought leadership content that they can share. And they have to do that like we said earlier. Right. You can't just keep selling in an ABM process.

Yep.

And you have to have something to share that's of, that's of value.

Right.

Otherwise you're going to start sharing stuff and, and you're going to start getting, you know, nothing but closed doors and unopened Emails. So thought leadership has a day to day active sales component to it. There's no doubt about it. And then the other things that we talked about earlier on, right? So if we're connecting thought leadership to what's happening, to fulfilling quota this month, this quarter, then we've made a significant stride now on the other side, building brand. If there's, there's so many studies that are out there now that you can talk to your CRO, your CRO and say, look, we have to be trusted advisors and not just because the studies say we'd have to, not just because we know we have to earn trust and you know, credibility and authenticity. We all know that.

Right?

But if we do that, we are going to take cycles away from every single salesperson that we have because if we haven't built up that trust, we haven't built up that trusted advisor status. And guess what? We're putting on the shoulders of every single one of our salespeople. They have to build trust. So not only did that come from a conversation that I had with the CMO recently, but I put that out in front of the CRO of the year, another enterprise CRO. And they're like, Steve, that is so true. We spend so much time trying to build the relationship right in our sales process and earning that trust. But if we come in as a company that's already done a lot, that's already paved the road, then we are, you are taking sales cycles away. So once again it comes back to how does it impact the sales process every single day? And if everyone can agree that there's a tremendous impact and without it there is a void, then all of a sudden it's not the traditional, oh yeah, let's just hire more SDRs, let's just do outbound calls. All of a sudden that kind of starts to pale in comparison in terms of a strategy to grow the business.

Yeah. So that's great. And you know how close to my heart integration and alignment is between the functions. So let's talk about that. So I think you're right. There's a degree of campaigning and sloganeering that has to go on with the CMO to make the case that this helps sales and that probably a good way to get in. Right. If everyone agrees that it's going to help sales and it's, they're going to get the ear of people who are worried about pipeline growth. So I think that's clearly a good strategy. But the other part of it too is making sure that the CMO and the Marketing organization not only makes that connection, but actually pull sales into the process itself. Because I think there's a mine of really amazing information among salespeople. I mean, they speak to customers all the time. They're getting rejected a lot, you know, and they're getting all the information from direct conversations and email responses that should be, you know, used as fodder for all this stuff and insights that marketing should be utilizing so that when they give stuff to sales, sales says, wow, this is really good. This really is in line with what it is that I'm doing every day, which doesn't happen most of the time. What happens is marketing throws crap over the transom. And I don't mean any disrespect the marketing. I think it's because they're just not talking to each other enough. Marketing is doing their job. They're putting together nice things. Sales looks at and goes, this really isn't very useful for me. I mean, it's nice, but I really wish it said this or that. And I hear this a lot because I have conversations with my clients about this a lot. And I think setting up processes where when the marketing organization is putting together content that sales is included and that they actually have them in the room and they're talking to them about it. They're saying, what does this make sense? Or how is this what customers are saying? Or talk to us through your process and what are you finding is happening when you're talking to customers? Customers. And you know, when you say you need this thing? Because a lot of times salespeople can be kind of vague. I know they have a problem. They'll say to marketing, I need more stuff. You know, what's that mean? What's stuff mean? You know, PowerPoint presentations or, you know, demo videos? No, like, you know, stuff, you know, I think there needs to be a bit more teased out so that marketing and sales have a really strong understanding of exactly what types of things are going to move the needle. And that's, I think, where the rubber hits the road, is that when you see marketing and sales leaders working together on these things, not only is the content better, it's obviously going to get better, but it becomes more valued across the entire organization because they see a collaboration taking place. And there's a stronger likelihood now that that connection is going to justify doing it on a bigger basis because there seems to be something a little bit more interesting happening here than just one siloed organization within the organization producing stuff in a factory and hoping that some of it works. And I think that's a big connection missing. And I think that the Chief Revenue Officer's job to maintain a bit some consistency with, you know, the focus of this podcast is to build that and orchestrate that collaboration and make sure that it's happening because sometimes won't happen on its own. A lot of the time, you know, we see marketing people and sales organizations sort of standing in their own respective corners, right. And waiting for the other one to come over and be the want to bring the flowers. And if you don't bring me flowers, I'm not going to come over to your house. You don't bring you flowers, I'm not going over your house. And they just sort of stay on the other side of the room for like three years before they finally talk to each other. So I think there is a process here and I don't know if this is something you're familiar with specifically, but generally like when you talk about this, what are some ways, aside from making the case about sales and usefulness to sales, what are some ways that a process can be created so that CMOs actually build in a, operationalize this thing with the organization? And I think frankly, we didn't mention customer success, which is another whole amazingly great minefield of amazing information. I mean, if I'm marketing, I'm going to be talking to every customer that's renewed, that hasn't renewed or just or quit or decided to bail because all the insights from there are going to be really good for stuff as well. So with that in thought in mind, I'm interested in hearing what you have to say about it.

Yeah, So I think fundamentally the process is broken in how typically marketing gets input for content and how they typically do it is they turn internally.

Right.

So literally was on phone yesterday, CMO, been in the business for 25 years. How do you get your, your content and specifically your thought leadership content? Oh, well, you know, we hired a writer and that writer has to learn and you know, so we said sit down with our chief product officer every week for about an hour and just pick her brain and pick her brain, right? And sit down with sales and listen to the gong calls, right? And hear what's happening. Get into the sales meetings and where are people getting stuck, you know, buyers stuck, learn from what's happening. So what ends up happening is you get a writer that's a hundred percent has the perspective of the internal operations and point of view of the company, where when you're doing things that are constantly, we have to constantly we all know that the highest voice of authority in any company is the customer, right? So if the input for content and marketing doesn't come directly from the customer, directly from prospects, then what we're doing is like that, you know, the game where, you know, you kind of pass around the campfire, right? And by the time the message gets back to you, it's changed dramatically. We need to be in connection directly with customers. And so that's why we recommend so heavily doing podcasts, because it gets us into a conversation or any company into a conversation with the icp, with the customer, the prospect, directly every single week. And when you're doing that with customers that are in the pipeline, guess what happens with, when you, you mentioned it, right? That marketing looks at the, the content coming over the transom, over the wall for marketing, and they don't think it's any good.

Right.

And that's, that's proven over 60% of content that comes from marketing in the B2B world, sales looks at and says there's no value. Yeah, What a tremendous waste, right? But now if that content is coming from prospects, if that content is coming directly from the highest revenue gen customer prospects, if it's coming, or you know, customers that are prospects to increase revenue, if it's coming from companies that the sales people haven't been able to crack the door open on, but now they're on the podcast, there is absolutely zero resistance to that content. That is content that is created directly from their prospects, directly from the people that they're trying to sell to. So it's not, it's no longer what is marketing doing and then kind of give to us, right? It's marketing is getting information from the very same people that we're talking to on a regular basis. How could that be wrong? That's a process that actually tears down walls, right? And you know, I've talked to CMOs, literally, that say we run contests with sales to make sure that they're just reading the content that we create. That shows right then and there how little value is coming that is perceived to be coming into the sales department from marketing if it's not even worth their time to read.

Right?

So that's just. I look at that in the same way our, in marketing, our internal customers are sales, right. If their perception is not worth their time to read, then we're not doing our job. Right. Just as in terms of creating content for external buyers, we have to create content that's worthy. That to reach the level of this is important enough that I need to spend some time with this.

Right?

And that's our. That's our job. That's we're supposed to be doing. So if we can't do it with our own sales team, first and foremost, and we're probably going to have a hard time getting it out to our customers, too, or our prospects. So why not just take that world of buyers and prospects and our customers and our sales team and look at that as kind of one unit, right? Our sales team. We're talking to people right now. We should be talking to those same people. Our customer success team is talking to customers right now who are our biggest revenue gen targets.

We.

Why aren't those the people that we're talking to? Then all of a sudden it's a process that just. Yeah. Takes down all those barriers. Nobody. Nobody has a question on why is this good content or not. Never happened.

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I wanted to share information about a program that we offer called the CRO Masters Council. The CRO Masters Council is a bimonthly group of six seasoned Chief Revenue Officers who are looking for a Chief Revenue Officer Board of Directors, so to speak, that they could share what's going on with them, collaborate with ideas, get some feedback on what's going on in their current role. And these are great conversations. I facilitate them. The CRO Master's Councils, again, they're twice a month and they last for at least six months to a year. So if you're interested in having your own CRO suite, your own Board of Directors of Chief Revenue Officers. It's a private, confidential conversation that we have.

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So that's why we created this program.

So if you're interested in being a member of the next CRO Masters Council, which we have a number of them being put together right now, just go to my LinkedIn and DM me masters or master's Council, and I'll follow up with you and set up a call or send you some more information about it. Looking forward to seeing you there, and thank you.

That's great. So let's talk a bit about podcasts. I mean, we're on one now. I have one. I enjoy it. I'm surprised, okay, I am. I'm surprised at how many people have wrote me and said they listened to it. And, you know, sometimes if I have a lag in between episodes, I occasionally get a note saying, hey, when's the next episode? A lot of more people now than have seen before in the last couple months have wrote me specifically because they listened to an episode. Now you talk a lot about. I guess there's two things I want to talk about. One is just. Is it podcast overload at this point? I mean, you know, my grandmother has a podcast. You know, like, everyone's got a podcast. You know, it seems like just there's another podcast around, and what's the way in which that can be a problem? Or what do you look at? How do you look at that world as it becomes more and more popular? Just an overload of content and so easy to make podcasts. Now you can just go to Spotify for podcasters and just download the thing. Boom. You can create one and have someone produce it for you. I can go to Fiverr and get somebody to edit for me, and I can post it. So it's the friction to get a podcast up, which. Which originally, like four or five years ago was like a huge production. It'd be like Disney to create a podcast. Now it's like, you know, Bob Stevenson in his. In his. In his basement can do it, which is me, basically. So, first, what's your thought on that? And the second one is, what's the sort of approach to podcasting that you find works when you recommend a podcast as a strategy for thought leadership? You know, there's got to be ways you have thought about that, how to do it in ways that make a bigger difference than maybe others are thinking about? So I'd be curious to know your thoughts on those two topics related to podcasting.

Well, I mean, first and foremost, I don't look at. To me, podcasting is a tactic, right? What we're just trying to do is we're just having. Trying to have meaningful conversations with the right people. And the lucky strike extra is that podcasts now are tied for the number one source of research that B2B buyers go to. So it's not like, oh, this is a trend, we should jump on it in years to come. We're going to be really glad that we did that. It's actually a channel that is recognized by our buying community. So first and foremost, it's. It's important, right? Secondly, I don't really care what way we do it, just as long as we're having conversations with the right people. And the thing is, podcasts are one of the easiest ways to have that conversation. You can't call somebody up and say, hey, you know, I'd like to interview you because I'm creating content for my company and I think it'd be pretty good, right? But what a podcast does is it says, here's this established thing, this, this major trend, right? And I'm going to do something that's actually good for you because I'm going to put your insights and your point of view up on a platform in front of thousands, 5,000, 8,000 of your peers in your community, right? We're going to give you the platform. That is going to be something that every single one of the people that we invite across all of our clients, everything, they feel a level of indebted because we've done something incredible for them. So not only do people want to be on podcasts, not only does it do they feel like we're doing something to help them, not only does it build the relationship in a non sales, non threatening way, right? They become your best friends after you've had this very insightful conversation, just think about anytime you've been at a cocktail party or anything, right? The people that feel the best about after talking with you are the ones that did all the talking and you did all the listening. So that dynamic is not lost in the world of podcasting and business as well. But I have clients all the time that are asking, Steve, what's our goal in terms of viewers and things like that? And I said, well, our number one goal, number one, KPI, is did we accelerate deals that are in the pipeline right now if we close one more deal or help close one more deal every quarter, right? This is, this is way more than paid for. Just the cost, the effort to produce this, let alone the weekly thought leadership, let alone the enhancement of the brand and the trusted advisor, and taking away cycles in the sales process, let alone empowering the entire sales staff. With added value content they can share on a regular basis.

Right?

Podcasts can be extremely niche. It's about creating that content, creating sales activity, creating lead generation. None of that that I just said had anything to do with the total number of viewers of the show. Now, certainly we want to grow viewership, right? And that's yet again, an additional benefit that comes out of it. But first and foremost, we started this conversation by saying, what was the problem that, you know, overall we needed to solve with thought leadership is the fact that it wasn't being done because it was too hard to get done. Podcasting just simply makes it easy, it makes it efficient, and it makes it scalable. So when you explain that right, to CMOs, to CEOs, to CROs, to. It doesn't take too long for them to see, okay, I get it. I understand it. I have yet to have a second conversation or a question about what is our goal on number of viewers? Because it's actually just way down the list of priorities.

Yep, I'm in agreement there. I never even look at it. I have no idea how many people listen to my podcast, and I don't care. Give me a four people, rate me over a month and say, that was great. Well, good, then I did my job because I want those four people to talk to me. You know, that's really all I care about. This gets into another topic, which is specialization. So I think you'd agree completely with this, that it's much easier to do a thought leadership initiative when you specialize in something because you're an expert at it. You can go deeper in it, right? When you're a generalist, it's bit harder, you know, because you're talking about so many things, you sort of don't know what to talk about because, you know, if I do a bunch of stuff, which I think creative agencies have this problem, they tend to be jack of all trades. You know, we do web development and SEO, we do paid search, and we do email marketing. And it's like, okay, so I'm looking at a menu. Basically, you know, how. How good can your chicken be if you're making steak? You know, I'd rather just go to a steakhouse. And so I think that part of the issue is, you know, when you, when you're in a situation where you specialize. I mean, when you don't specialize, it's harder to come up with a thought leadership platform because your offering is too general. And what I'm finding is when I talk to my clients about this it forces them to reconcile with something that they're already suffering with, which is they sort of know that they aren't specializing and they sort of know that they're just trying to please everybody. And in doing so, they've, you know, diluted the value of what they're doing in the marketplace, because I think people perceive it that way. So I'm just curious what your thoughts are like. Let's say you're working with a client who wants to do a podcast and they do five different things. You know, what's the way in which a company can, I don't know, maybe understand the value of specialization, which, frankly, I think today more than ever is critically important. It's just too much noise. You've got to specialize.

And.

In my view, I think you'll. It's understandable you'd see a parody between really amazing. Thought leadership almost invariably always accompanies specialization.

Right?

You want the expert in something. So what do you do if a client calls you and they're like a jack of all trades type, you know.

So that the very first thing that we do, we sit down and we talk about doesn't matter, you know, how many different areas or what their roadmap looks like on the product, how they're evolving their platform as a company. What's your point of view?

Right?

It goes back to what we said before. What's your point of view? How's it unique? How does it have, you know, a healthy dose of controversy?

Right?

Because if we, if we talk about we have five different products in five different areas that do five different kinds of things, all for the same, then all of a sudden we're back down in that product marketing conversation.

Right?

But if we focus on the point of view, then all of a sudden it's like, okay, if you have a healthy point of view, right. Then that is unique. Then you also have some belief statements in how you think the market is progressing, what the definition of problems are, how they should be solved. And I'm going to give you an example here.

Right?

So my point of view, I ripped off. I ripped off from Forbes article because it was so good.

Oh, good.

Right.

So it was, you know, you and I have had this conversation before. It's content marketing solves problems. Thought leadership sparks conversations.

Yep.

So if thought leadership sparks conversations, then I should have a belief statement in how they spark conversations, shouldn't I?

Right, Yep.

So, you know, part of that is, you know, it gets earlier in the buyer process because we're not talking at that Product level, we're talking at the level of redefining the problem.

Right.

In helping them in their job. That's one way. But one of my ways that I think that it helps spark conversations is that we have conversations on the podcast with people in the pipeline. So like I've said before, it's an actual sales activity. Now when I say that.

Right.

Heads nod.

Right.

But I'm selling that as a service. So when clients come to me, I refrain or I rephrase the conversation. And the question that is asked, how do we take all of this and market it all together? It's not about all of this. It's about what our point of view is and then what our belief statements are about, how we help and address the industry. So what are those belief statements? And then we go out and we instead of just doing podcasts and say, oh, another icp, fantastic. Whatever we get out of that conversation, fantastic. It's going to be good.

Right?

It's the icp. It's a prospect, but we have through lines that we're trying to validate those belief statements. And as much as we can start validating the things that we want our ICP community to understand and accept, all the better.

Right.

So all of a sudden we're not talking about product, we're talking about what are the things that we're going to recommend that we're going to say that really will be the kind of things that our buyers will accept, understand and appreciate that that recommendation, that perspective is coming from us. They will. This is, I love this line. The greater the perception of us as experts with these very specific point of view, guess what? Experts make better products. Right. It's the rising tide lifts all boats. So if I don't know who you are, I don't know your expertise, but you talk about the products and the five different ways that your platform works to help me. You know, there's, there is a ever growing graveyard of companies that are out there that have fantastic tech, fantastic products.

Yeah.

But they never made it to market.

Right.

Successfully.

Right.

So the biggest things we need to do is we need to lay that groundwork that we're somebody that needs to be listened to to begin with. So you just going back to your question, you know, what if they approach you with here, how do we make sense and sell all this together? We never try to do that.

Right.

That's later down the road when all of a sudden we've established ourselves as somebody that's worthy of listening to. And then, and by the way, Then as you're in that conversation, you're like, yeah, no, we actually do something here and we have products that help over here and.

Right.

It's just at the appropriate part of the buyer's journey. But you never lead with.

Yeah.

One thing I hear you're saying it's a very important thematic chord running through this whole thing is it has to be the point of view that they're talking about or that thing that they're going to be attaching themselves to needs to be something related to the problem that they're solving or the area of the world in which they're going to work at. Right. And I excuse those things that are stupid things I got to fix. Is this what. You're probably seeing this a lot and I see this a lot, and frankly, I find it really annoying. Companies whom seem to be, I don't know, I can't get in their heads, but it seems to be that they're substituting expertise as their point of view with like a cause or a purpose of some kind. Like it could be, you know, some, you know, like climate change or, you know, other important, you know, social issues that they attach themselves to as a way to sort of elevate themselves in the marketplace and they go to market that way. Like, they're. I've seen products, messages in the marketplace that seem completely incompatible with their actual product. They align themselves with some value or something as a way to increase their value in the marketplace. And it many times seems really disingenuous or maybe off color, like, I don't know, are people really going to hire a company or work the company just because of their affiliation with a specific cause? I don't know. I mean, they may like the fact that they do it as an add on or as an additional thing, but is that the reason that's going to drive. I think there's some companies that, in fact do think that. I'm curious to know what your thoughts are when maybe someone perhaps is doing this sort of thing and they've come to the conclusion independently before they speak to you, that that's going to be their platform. It's going to be about, you know, I don't know, identity politics or some other issue du jour, as opposed to the industry that we're in or the specific functional problem that we're solving. I'm curious what your thoughts are on that when you think about thought leadership. It gets kind of muddy when I see a lot of that stuff.

The farther away that you get from what you actually do thought leadership has to have a direct line. Line connected back to what you do.

Right.

So because then, then the conversation can go from thought leadership to actually what you specifically offer.

Right.

And, and the farther, the way that that line gets to be a dotted line and then it gets to be a little bit of a blurry line. You know, we're probably, if we had to list 10 companies that are successfully doing cause marketing and things like that right now in the B2B world, we probably have a hard time like creating that list. But you and I could like rattle off a hundred companies, well, 100 companies.

That are trying to do it that way. But I don't know if they're, I don't know if I have any evidence to support that that particular initiative is the thing, that's why they're successful. I mean it could be chicken and egg thing. I mean, you know, I don't, I don't want to purport that any company with a lack of a content strategy just immediately goes to, you know, we stand for peace or something like that. What I'm saying though is that I'm seeing more and more, maybe even a, a fallback is to go to market as someone who stands for some value and that's going to be your platform or a company that's really established, like really established and they decide later on in their growth to sort of align themselves with all these different types of things maybe as a way to, I don't know, maybe mitigate some concern that they may be too big. I mean I can see companies like Salesforce and Amazon suddenly becoming really, you know, focused on those sort of things as a way to temper some issue that they're so huge. It's like what do you guys care about? You know, you just care about market share, obviously. That's why you're a trillion dollar company. Oh no, no. We're, we're, we're also this. But I think smaller organizations because I, I think those are unique cases that you mentioned. I'm talking about smaller companies whom are still in the establishment phase. And look, I want to say I agree with you. I mean you're, what you stand for needs to be tied directly to what you do.

They.

No one would argue this, but I'm just seeing a lot of it not happening. And I'm curious if it's in your view because you do this more often. Is that a misperception that people think that that's a adequate replacement? Is it just a, they're just like not doing it? Correctly, or is it, in fact, maybe something that you're seeing is. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it does work. Like, maybe it's something that people are attracted to, maybe younger people, which that.

Might be the case.

I'm an old stooge here.

Maybe younger people might find that to.

Be really interesting to them. I don't know. Does it attract a younger customer base to think about this from a thought leadership perspective?

Well, let's just put it this way. I think probably you and I have been involved in hundreds and hundreds of meetings about, you know, the brand strategy for a company and, you know, at the core of it, you know, and lots of companies have fantastic mission statements with core values.

A lot of things they stand for are things that are great. I. I'm just suggesting it's not about judging the things, whether or not it's a substitute for their thought leadership platform or not.

I don't think it's a substitute. If there was something that I was going to substitute that they should be thinking about and working on, it would be their own corporate culture. It would be an internal campaign. And what I mean by that is, you know, I don't know, half an hour ago in our conversation, we were talking about alignment between the different departments and, you know, and how departments can operate in silos and things like that. I've had no less than three podcasts in the last two months focused on internal marketing and that the role that marketing can play in creating culture and educating the different company, you know, departments to the point where, and this is something actually that, you know, again, kind of a tie back to podcasting, is that that voice of the customer. We are more and more creating very deliberate internal learning programs out of what we are learning by talking to the customer, customers talking to the prospects. Because one of the things that happens is that you have turnover, right? You have constant turnover in your sales department, in your marketing department, in your customer success department. And none of us are the icp. We're all proxies for it. So this is tying back into, you know, what in thought leadership and in content, you know, what kind of focus. Where should I go? Where should I put my emphasis? You know, I had a phenomenal conversation. One of the best podcasts I've ever had, quite frankly, the CRO of the year of this company and his cmo. And they put, they said, we've reached product market fit, right? There's tons of companies that are product market fit. They said, we attribute over 50% of our success to, to our internal Culture and how we collaborate, how we work together as a team, how we help each other out, how we understand the problems of the others, how they focus on. Part of their culture literally is talking about clients as partners, which then puts a longer term perspective on it. Nobody in sales closes the deal and throws it over at customer success. And I'm onto the, the next. Right, they're, they're still involved. So they, they don't have quotas, they have, they have longer term compensation strategies. This is all just saying it's an all. An internal program, an internal communication strategy, an internal, you know, set of values. And before I would ever go and say I'm going to take on a cause as a way of differentiating, I would first look internally and say how do I differentiate by creating a first and foremost a company culture and internal education programs and rethink my internal compensation programs as a way to impact growth and success of the company long before I would say let's look at cause marketing as a way to do.

Yeah, I agree and I, I do think it's a misstep. I think there's a allure to want to get involved in those things earlier, before you've established your differentiation in the marketplace and it can be a distraction for people. So this has been a great conversation and you and I can probably talk for seven more hours, but we can't because we have to, you know, get back to our every daily program. But talk just if you don't mind, just how do people reach you?

What's the right kind of person you.

Want to talk to? Who is it that you're looking to connect with? How do they think about a good conversation with you that would give them and put them in a position to be able to extract the best value out of what you offer.

I mean our, our core audience are chief marketing officers, but more and more we have conversations with chief revenue officers. It, it surprises me because most of them are living under a quota system, right? Most of them are living under a very short term, you know, compensation structure. So I just didn't think truthfully that there would be as much acceptance of the need for thought leadership content. But I am having literally just as many fantastic conversations with CROs about their need and desire for thought leadership content, content that supports their ABM sales process than I am with as I am with CMOs. And then same thing with CEOs.

Right?

But typically I, you know, you have to kind of lay the, the conversation out and frame it.

Right.

And, but they, there's never a conversation where we leave it, we're saying that's, that's something we want to get to next year, right? That's something we know we need to do. That's in the longer term plan, right. It, it becomes always an immediate need. And so, you know, the C Suite, you know, is really where we start because that's where the decisions ultimately happen. So it's better a top down than a bottom up. We certainly work with all kinds of like VP of marketings and they bring us into the equation. But it's just in, I'm sure in your business, if you can have a conversation directly with the CEO versus coming in with the head of sales and then moving it up to the CRO and to the CEO, right. It loses in translation. So it's just better to have that conversation at the top.

Great. And I assume that aside from LinkedIn, they can also go to your, your website and obviously we know your, your, your company is Content Strategies and you have a Spotify and Apple podcast that your, your, all your podcasts are being distributed. What's the name of your podcast?

Uh, C Suite Marketing Perspectives. And anybody can email me at steveontentstrategiesio as well. But LinkedIn's a fantastic place just to reach out as a starting place.

Great. Okay, good.