How to Win Big Enterprise Logos | Ep. 3041

I want to actually flip back over because we're here and you were at that big enterprise meeting a couple of days ago and you and I were just talking about how to win big enterprise logos and what kind of the secret sauce is. So whatever you're willing to share, do you remember that conversation?

Yeah, I remember that conversation because Eric and I were talking about how we generate leads and RFPs. Eric mentioned that you get, what, a few a month? RFPs?

Yeah.

But you don't really participate in them because of the—

We don't participate and we don't go after them. Whereas you guys are very active and you guys participate.

Uh-huh, and we try to go after them as well. And it's interesting to say this because as a marketing agency, and we even have data and analytics, you know, everyone's just like, oh, your tracking is going to be spot on and you know where every single customer is coming from. And it doesn't really work that way with enterprise. I wish I would, I could say our tracking and everything is perfect, but with enterprise, a lot of business comes from a few different areas. Yes, you have website leads, which, you know, everyone knows about. We get a lot of revenue from employees of corporations that we worked with moving around. We get revenue from employees of ours.

Okay.

Or coming from other corporations and other corporations, meaning more specifically other ad agencies. And people had a delightful experience working with them years ago. So they're like, oh, you moved to new agencies, I want to work with you. What ad agency are you with right now? Right? RFPs are another one. And when we ask people how we got included in the RFP, no joke, most of the time they have no idea how they included us. Okay, so like we'll talk to people, like there was a company that generates over $100 billion a year. Like, how'd you get included on OfferPaid? They told us, oh, my boss asked ChatGPT and ChatGPT recommended you guys as one of the agencies in Latin America. All right. Flip side, there's this other company that's one of the biggest companies in the world. Everyone knows their logo globally and They emailed or they messaged one of our team members on LinkedIn. Okay. And when we asked them how they learned about us, they're like, I don't know. Someone told me to message you guys. And then, so when you think about it from that perspective, it's really hard to track how every single RFP is coming when people don't even know how they learned about you. And the main one that I want to talk about, or there's actually a few more and then I'll go into the main one. Another one is when you've just been in the space for a long time, you have relationships and you just work on your relationships. But, and that actually leads into the main one. One thing that I do and a lot of my team does is, you've been working on outbound, right?

Mm-hmm.

Like with the gift card stuff that we talked about in the last episode. One thing that we do is when we're traveling, We just reach out to people in our network, whether we know them really well or somewhat well, and we just connect with them and stay in touch. And a lot of these people work at large corporations and it generates revenue.

Yeah.

Now, for example, in, you know, I'm here in San Francisco, I connected with someone who works at a large corporation. I had quite a few meetings here. And this person I've known for over 10 years, I haven't seen him in probably since COVID I just said, what's up? And we text every once in a while. When I say every once in a while, Maybe a few times a year. I just reached out to him for the sake of just saying hi. There was no business intention. And they're a really good friend, even though I haven't seen them as much or talked to them as much. And they started talking in business with me. I never brought up business. I was just finding out how they're doing, their family's doing, et cetera. Like I've met their family, I've had Thanksgiving with them at their house. You know, I've met their siblings. And the point I'm getting at here is we maintain relationships. We don't always try to say, hey, what can we help you with? It's just more so keeping in touch. And a lot of times that generates us a lot of revenue, especially on the enterprise end.

Yeah. And similarly, so I want to go a little deeper here because what we're really getting at here is it's ultimately people. You can't just sit in a cave in your boxers and work like as much as I like to do that.

It's not AI replaceable.

No, no, no. My opinion, it's relationships are always going to drive the world. It's creativity. You know, I think it's connections, creativity, connections. Someone put, someone put the other day, oh yeah, it's really empathy. But I look at empathy, I'm like, man, you and I don't necessarily score the highest on empathy on these personality tests. And I know a lot of entrepreneurs that don't. I'm like, it's still connection and creativity. But anyway, I want to go a little deeper here. So yesterday I met up with somebody. This guy referred to us Snapchat for Carrot. Okay.

Okay.

He referred a couple of— and how did he hear about Carrot? Oh, it was from another Carrot customer. And this is a, this This is a company that's owned by, let's just say, a top 15 company in the world.

Okay.

Yeah. And I was like, okay, well, hey, like, why don't we— I was— this is my first time meeting him, but I was like, hey, like, we're talking about his family. He's married, how he moved over here from New York and everything. And even, even I was like, oh man, like, I even know someone at your company that he was talking about how he might be getting bored. I was like, okay, well, I know someone higher up at your company. Maybe he can move you into this division and move you around. Okay, great. That's not me necessarily talking about business, but just trying to be helpful, right? Ultimately, where this got to was, oh, you actually gave me the idea on how you can throw events at these larger companies, right?

Right.

So that's one thing. But the other piece, so thank you for that. But the other piece is he actually, we came up with, I was like, oh, like, why don't we just like, dude, you're referring all these to us. Like, I want to make sure that you're taken care of as well. So this is like our first Caret affiliate program thing. And he's like, oh, I know a bunch of other B2B people at my company that would love to like push this. So I was like, sounds fantastic. Okay. But that starts from in-person, like a couple of threads we were able to pull there. And we're just— we were talking about this, like when we meet in person, when we meet in person, this is, this is now a relationship. It's not a transaction anymore.

Yeah.

And he was like, dude, I know someone that works at like the New York office, for example. He works remotely and he needs connection. So he Zooms me all the time. He's like, dude, I don't want to Zoom with you. And then he's like, whereas I am sitting in the San Francisco office and I'm building relationships with everyone, but My point of saying this is that everything comes down to the in-person aspect, the relationships. And sometimes you just have to go out there. You have to— sometimes what I do is I just throw a dinner with all the people I want to meet and then it's all taken care of there. Sometimes one-on-one goes a long way too, but you have to get out there. You have to get on a plane. Oftentimes when you get on a plane, that's how you win those enterprise deals too. If you're in B2B, here's the deal. LinkedIn account-based marketing sucks, but it doesn't have to. With Carrot, it allows you to create personalized ads towards your customers and also personalized landing pages that align with the ads. So you're going to have higher conversions and influence pipeline reporting to prove that your ABM works. So if you want to learn more, just go to karrot.ai and you can join the waitlist. Again, it's karrot.ai and we'll see you on the other side. Yeah.

So, you know, the friend I met up with yesterday, right? At night after—

Yeah. After we ate.

Meeting. Yeah. So I met up with them and we were talking about this company that is publicly traded. I won't name the name. And we were talking about it. I'm like, yeah, dude, we did all the marketing for him. He's like, you guys helped him? And I'm like, yeah. And he knows I didn't buy anything because I can't buy or talk about it because, you know, that would start becoming insider trading or whatever it is called. So we stay clear. And I've known this person for ages, really good friend. He's like, dude, he's like, The company I work at is publicly traded. I'm like, yeah, I know. He's just like, we have budgets for the same thing. How much did you charge him? So I'm telling him roughly, you know, what it costs. And he's like, he's like, we should work together. Just met up with him for drinks, even though I just drink water. And, you know, it could be another client that spends 7 figures a year, all from just continually meeting and networking.

And you've helped this person before too.

Yeah, like they currently— I was the one who introduced them to get them their current job.

Yeah.

And they've been there for years. Never once tried to ask them for marketing, never pitched them on it. They're the ones who are just like, you just helped out someone in a very similar space. Yeah, why don't we work together? I was like, I never thought about it.

But not only that, you help them professionally get the job, right? And make introductions, right? But you've also helped them personally too.

Yes, but they also figured it out on their own.

Yeah, they're great. I'm not saying you did everything for them. I'm saying, but you're just like a helpful nudge, right? But like you never want anything back. And that's the key. to these relationships. You're always just trying to be helpful. That's what it is.

Yeah.

Yep. So, okay. That, that, that's why I wanted to talk about how to win big enterprise logos. But, um, and, but the other piece I had here—

But going back to the enterprise logos, and you're a prime example of this. If, and, and I don't know this for a fact, but I'm going to make an assumption here and you can correct me if I'm right or wrong. Okay. You have Carrot. You're, Overall goal is to focus on enterprises. That's where the money is. I bet you right now, majority of your customers are not paying you enterprise pricing, right? But you're building up the relationships and you're going down that route and you got to start somewhere. And I think this is where most marketers get it wrong. They want the enterprise logos and they want the enterprise dollars that come with it.

Can't do that.

Those 2 don't happen right away. You can tend to get the enterprise logos and you have to start small and you got to land and expand.

Yep.

And even us, when we get these enterprise contracts, a lot of them don't start large, but they grow into being really large quickly if you can provide results at a rapid rate because large enterprises are very risk-averse. And with Eric, his model, and this was, I thought was a really smart move. Marketo did this back in the day, which I believe is now owned by Adobe. So Marketo back in the day when they were private had this model where they went to all the Salesforce sales reps, all right? The Salesforce sales reps had their ideal customer because anyone on Salesforce would be a great Marketo customer. So what they did was they partnered with the sales reps, not Salesforce the organization, but the sales reps at Salesforce. They supposedly, from all the rumors that I heard and people I talked to in the organization, kicked money to some of these sales reps every time they referred business. It didn't take anything away from the Salesforce sales reps. The clients were actually happier because there was like, oh cool, you helped us in other ways and solved problems that were not Salesforce related. So the clients were more loyal to Salesforce because of it. And Marketo made revenue and the Salesforce sales reps made extra money on the side. It was a win-win-win situation.

Triple W, www.

That's right.

Yeah. And, and by the way, So that's like a partnership type of thing, right? But also we just released a $500 a month plan and that's actually targeted at more agencies because we actually talked to a Turkish agency. They're like, oh yeah, one of our logos is Turkish Airlines. I'm like, yeah, you guys, you guys have all the logos. It's like, okay, well let's figure out a way to also, because HubSpot does well with their agency program. It's like an affiliate tier type of thing, right?

But do you want to know why all these people do so well with agency programs?

Go ahead.

Most of them, HubSpot has a really big brand, but most don't have that kind of brand, right? They're like a $20, $30 billion company. Most agency programs are white-labeled. And you know, what's the biggest issue as an agency owner when you get a customer?

The fulfillment quality.

Okay, fulfillment quality. But let's say you get customers. What's the hardest part about growing an agency? You get customers—

Is to hire more people.

You got to hire more people, but it's hard to get customers. And what's even harder than getting a customer?

Retaining a customer.

Bingo. You got it right.

Right?

Because most agencies don't have a long LTV. You agree with this statement? So the more software solutions they provide and the more services they provide, usually the higher the LTV is. So agencies love partnering with marketing software, especially if they can white label it because it's another value add.

They have their tech.

Uh-huh. And then their clients stay for longer and you get your money. So then if you just let all these people white label it, they'll sell the crap out of it. You charge them per customer. And then you'll make a ton of money from it.

So guys, that's 2 WWWs that we just gave you. Win, win, win times 2. That's what it is. But, but, but going back to what we're saying, this is why in-person has to be in your marketing mix. Like we used to think that when we started digital marketing, at least for me, that I didn't have to interact with people. Maybe you thought like that in the beginning. I don't know if you did, but in-person must be in your marketing mix, right? Like Jason Lemkin likes to talk about the steak dinners. The steak dinners got to be in there. Throw your events, even if you're throwing online events, webinars, like you're throwing like a summit, which we should talk about in a moment too, whether it's webinars, summits. It's, it's one-on-one, you know, just like I got tea with this guy, or it's dinners, or it's larger events, and you're partnering up, or you're partnering up with larger companies and throwing events at their, at their, at their company locations. In-person has to be in your marketing mix, especially if you want to win bigger deals, especially if you want to retain people for longer.

Yes.

Yeah.

But speaking of events, whether you do a steak dinner, Or a virtual summit like we are, I don't think it matters which one you're doing. I think you just got to figure out what's right for you because like I don't do a lot of those steak dinners. Are you talking about a group steak dinner or just one?

Yeah, it's the type of dinners that I've hosted that you've been at.

Yeah, so like Eric knows this, I don't ever host any of those kind of dinners. It's just not for me. My way of getting enterprises speak at events, hire people who have already worked with a lot of enterprises and have the network, and then me, all this network. Like a great example of this is I'm going to Brazil soon. So there's this lady that I know who's a CMO of a large global company worth over $100 billion. She's a CMO of Latin America, not just Brazil. And we got a contract for one division because enterprises usually have a lot of divisions for one service item. So with not just one division, but one division, you're only doing one type of marketing for that division when they need multiple types of marketing, but other people have the contracts. When I go to Brazil, São Paulo, I'm doing dinner with her. Just, you know, me, a few executives on my end, take her a nice dinner. Not to try to wine and dine, but just to get to know her more, build a relationship because I want eventually, as we show more results, I want not only more divisions, which she said she has way bigger budgets, but I want the rest of Latin America.

Yeah.

And then I'll bring the person on my end who deals with all the Spanish side of Latin America and then do the introduction, get to know them, and then slowly work our way into all the other countries outside of Brazil.

Yeah. But also what Neil was saying too is, is look, it's still a people thing when you talk about the people that you hire that are really good that end up, you know, having clients follow them around. That's what people think. This, you're saying not wine and dine, but kind of wine and dine.

Yeah.

With larger deals, right? But even having global, having a global presence, that's still like everything comes down to people at the end of the day. We can talk about product all day, but it's the people that make the product happen, whether it's a product or a service. So I don't want that to go. I feel like that gets more underappreciated today. You and I talk, especially me, I talk a lot about AI, but I actually still, people are still number one. I just want you know, higher quality people as we continue to advance.

Yeah. And most of the stuff that Eric does with AI is experimentation. It actually does not generate him tons of revenue right now.

Exactly. Anyway, we'll catch you later, guys.