Marketing: How to Move the Needle with Cindy Zuelsdorf

Link to podcast: HERE

Podcast Transcript below:

Bill : Hi everybody and welcome to the next episode of belly2belly. And we’re just totally excited today to have Cindy Zuelsdorf. I’m sorry, I said that wrong. Cindy Zuelsdorf with us today from Kokoro Marketing and it’s really great to have you well good and you’re also the author of the book seven marketing basics. Welcome, Cindy.

Cindy : Hey, Bill. Thank you. Great to be here.

Bill : Fantastic. Well, cool. So, you know, it’s, um, you know, we have the opportunity, I think, to really dig into some things that are vexing problems for companies when they’re marketing and trying to get it right. But before we kind of dive into the meat there, do you want to tell us just a little bit about your background and your company just so we have a little context for comments?

Absolutely. Thank you. So I get to work with companies who want to get their story out there. But the people running those companies are maybe either feeling just overwhelmed and don’t know what to do in their marketing. Or they’re busy doing other things in their company like running it and inventing new products and services and working with customers and they know they need to do marketing, but they don’t want to do it themselves. So we kind of end up working with two groups of folks like that. And the My background is I spent a long time selling equipment to TV stations, which meant I’d put stuff in a suitcase and get on a plane and go to any country or any city and take that stuff out of the suitcase and show it to the Engineer at the TV station. So very b2b situation at that point and demonstrate equipment and do the sales and then also did some marketing around that as well. And fast forward to now I left that behind and started a new company helping people with their marketing so they can be more successful.

Bill : That’s so cool. And obviously that journey has led you to writing your book seven marketing basics. Can you tell us a little bit about that? We certainly want people to buy it. So don’t tell us everything about it. But but give us you know sort of what caused you to do it and what might somebody hope to learn when they read it?

Cindy : Absolutely. Okay, here’s what caused me to write it. The phone would ring and people would say can you help me real quick with this marketing thing? Can you help me real quick put this show promo together? Or, Hey, I’m doing a show in another country and I’ve never been there before. What should I do? Anyways, the questions just came wide and often and you know, on so many topics. And the one question that came up over and over again was sort of what’s working and what should I do? Because I feel like there’s too many things to do and what’s working so that came a lot. And after having my own business for a couple of years, at this point, almost six years. I just sat down one day and was like, Okay, what are we doing with our clients and I took out some sticky notes. And I started writing down all the sort of services and things in marketing and marketing automation and the important stuff. And I made a stack of all the important things and try to categorize them and I hit on seven eventually, hence seven marketing basics. And the book I really just lay out what we’re doing with our clients that works right now. And this is in response to people phoning me up and saying, Can you help me with this? And what’s working right now and I put it down in a book so I could share with everybody so you can take what we’re doing with our clients and use it for yourself.

Bill : That’s really cool. So are there you know, when you look at strategies, you know, audience are primarily international b2b companies that are coming into the US market. Are there some things in particular that sort of jump off the page is important for companies coming into the US?

Cindy : Yes, 100%. Yes. Can I just share an experience?

Bill : Please? Yes, please.

Cindy : So I was talking with a company in Korea. And they were coming to the US to do their very first trade show and show their cameras at a particular trade show in Vegas, right? And they were asking me like, Well, what do I do? I’ve been staying up till 3am. They were telling me that they stayed up till 3am responding to people’s emails, and they didn’t know how to manage that influx of leads at the show. And I went and saw the person at the show and talked to them and they were just crazy. So I talked to them before the show and at the show in person. So one thing that a person can do is have a system in place for a quick response to someone who’s interested in a product, right? And so in this case, really, really easy. We just talked through a strategy for lead follow up to where if someone’s interested in your camera, going to have in your email system, whether that’s an automated system or whatever, you’re using a simple way to click a button and send the top like five questions people have about that camera. And maybe in that email is a link to a booking, booking a meeting, booking a demo, whatever the thing is, so there’s info and then call to action to take the next step, whatever that looks like, a small call to action that like Hey, I mean, if if you want it to be by, that’s awesome, too. But if there’s an intermediary step, here’s info here’s the next step to take and have that set up as a system. It doesn’t take very long to set up but once she and I talked about that seems obvious, but we all are scrambling and don’t set those things up make a world of difference in the success of a business.

Bill : Follow up follow up follow up right it’s it’s the golden rule. That’s so cool. So you know into that sort of end up follow up, you know, the one thing I hear quite often is sometimes international companies not having a US address or contact information. And so when they go to the whatever show whether they’re from Korea or somewhere else, not necessarily being convenient for the customer in terms of contact info. What’s your experience there? What would you suggest that?

Cindy : Oh, yeah. A couple things come to mind for me and see if this resonates with you. Once. It’s a pretty international world, people are pretty good. That particular company I mentioned from Korea, they were worried about their English so all the more reason to have a little response that can go out to somebody that’s really comfortable and you can proofread that in advance. It takes the pressure off felt like ooh, they don’t seem like a US company. If if just get someone like you bill to look over that email and make sure the English sounds comfortable and natural. So that can take some pressure off that like I need a US address if the communication is flowing and easy, right? So some of those things in place. A second thing and and you probably do this all the time is get a partner in the US if you can, if you can get a sales rep or just somebody who can help you here in the US and maybe just help with the cultural bit help with fielding questions during business hours at work for everybody. Having a partner is awesome.

Bill : That makes total sense is now when you look at sort of setting up that follow up, would you also recommend developing a drip of some kind that maybe a series of two or three or four emails to build on your story? Cause more intimacy with various prospects.

Cindy : I feel like you read my book a little bit because we are so on the same page dude. Love it.

Bill : Just just skim so far, but I’m diving in.

Cindy : So one of the seven marketing basics is having your lead follow up setup, I call it best lead follow up, right and so your best lead follow up is doing exactly what you just said, setting up a drip or an automated campaign that’s going to answer people’s top questions. And so when we set that up, we’re gonna think about okay, what are the top, you know, three, four, ten questions that I get on a regular basis. We all know that stuff. Because we’ll say, Oh, everybody asked me that. So when you hear everybody asked me that, that’s a question to put into your marketing and into that drip sequence. And other things that you can put in there could be a little video about how to use stuff and everything in there. If possible, if you can make it really I like to call it what’s in it for me. And I don’t mean me. I mean the customer, really what they care about. Instead of it’s really easy to say this is my product, and I’m great and I know how to do this. We all fall into that a little bit. And so if we can just turn that and pivot that to, here’s this product or service and here’s why it will help you and solve your issue and everything that you need. If that can be a piece, you know the dominant bit of your best lead follow up. That’s the way to go. And always giving them more info and an easy next step to take toward purchasing or working with you.

Bill : Oh, I always think you know, I think you bring up a super point about the width or what’s in it for me. idea in the I always think of I only speak English so when I travel internationally and I go to a you know, restaurant, let’s say I’m ordering a meal. And I you know I try to articulate what I want in English, my one language and the person doesn’t understand me. You know, I immediately reveal my ignorance by speaking louder thinking that that suppose my problem and and I guess my sort of lizard brain says that seems to be the way a lot of marketing works today is when we don’t think the customers hearing us. We just sort of we just hit them with more stuff. And it guess what I was thinking about when you were mentioning what you did is the idea that I guess I see a lot of companies come in and they’re talking because quite often it’s technologies and whatnot. So they’re talking technically about the features of a product and I guess what I heard you talk about was instead talk about the benefits. What’s what, what’s the value proposition for this customer? I think value proposition for a lot of people when they articulate it is from their own point of view as opposed to the customer’s point of view, which seems like a huge disconnect. And I guess what are your thoughts there? Woody?

Cindy : Yes, my thoughts are Yes. We want to talk about why they want our product or service, not what it is. So it’s easy for us, especially when we maybe don’t know our end customer and user as well as we might. We’ll often revert to well just talk about the specs or the features and stuff and that’s a really comfortable place to fall back to. That said, if we can get a picture in mind of who are perfect customers and in this can be tricky when coming into another country or going to another country who’s my perfect customer. So if your perfect customer is the sales channel that you’re looking for dealers to sell your product. Then we want to think about who’s that person? What do they care about? If it’s a sales channel they care about selling and they want to know how quickly they can sell and make money like that’s what’s interesting to them. They don’t care about the specs as much as they might. They’re gonna care about how they can close the deal. Right and how they can get more stuff sold. And so any kind of help that you can give them to doing that. That’s what they care about. Now. If it’s the end user, they’re going to care about what problem it solves for them. And so in my case, I have a book that is helping people solve their marketing issues or in the case of the camera company from Korea. It’s helping people get shots up in the air or on moving vehicles in their case. So instead of talking about the camera specs, which are important and stuff, they’re maybe instead gonna say if you’re out on your skateboard or in your helicopter and you need a gimbal and want to be sure you you know, whatever the thing is, right? You’re going to talk about that their experience and what it’s solving instead of the specs of the device. So if that. Is that what you’re talking about? Tell me if that’s

Cindy : No yeah, exactly. Right. Yeah, the but the idea is that looking at the benefits from the customer’s eyes as opposed to going down the features or the feature center all the tech, what is the customer solving and how will this? How will this product or service solve?

Cindy : You know, and if I can say I’m not against the tech I’m, I work primarily with engineers and so I love the tech and the tech is good. It’s just that it needs to get tied into what does it solve? Right? And so that’s the that’s the piece so not to misunderstand that we don’t like tech or we don’t like the specs. We love that. We want to say that oh the reason we care that it’s 64 channel is then you can support all the different languages or whatever so that we wanted to give the reason or what is itself in there as well.

Bill : Yes, but it makes me sort of maybe what Dale Carnegie said about 100 years ago, which was you know, you’ll make more friends in two weeks by being interested other people than you will in two years by trying to get other other people interested in you and I guess, sometimes a lot of the sort of feature selling sounds like we’re trying to get people interested now. So as opposed to trying to actually solve something that’s meaningful for them. But so when you think of the biggest challenge I had a great reference to the Korean company. But is there a biggest challenge that you can think of for international companies coming into the US what would be at the top of the list?

Cindy : Ooh, I’ve got to. Can I share two thoughts about that? 

Bill : Go for it. 

Cindy : Yeah, so one is trying to do too many things. It feels like I’ve got 100 things to do. And really just picking the things that work. I know that just sounds so over simplified and easy. But if you know that you get people asking the same question over and over again, that question, turn that into your marketing. You’re going to do a video about it, some social posts about it. Maybe a checklist about it a guide on that topic. We know that they care about that. And so take that and leverage it into everything. You don’t have to do all things because I feel like that happens marketing overwhelm happens for everybody and especially when somebody’s going to a different country. It feels like oh my gosh, I have to do 1000 things. Just pick the things that you know that are working and then bright spot. I like to call it a bright spot and repeat it and do those over and over. So once one thing’s working, leverage it, expand it. Keep going with that. Does that make sense? At all?

Bill : Yes, completely. Absolutely. 

Cindy : Okay, the second thing and I think this is so interesting for everybody is not staying in touch with the end customer is a challenge for so many people and especially when I’m in a different time zone. So when I’m working with somebody, I was working with someone yesterday in the UK, okay, it’s great. Actually, this morning, I had another call with someone we work with in the UK. So there we’ve got language in common. I’m sure there’s a joke there somewhere but we have language in common. But we’ve got timezone challenges a little bit so that’s okay. There’s some cultural differences there. But nonetheless, I need to stay in touch with my end customer and understand that now from working with someone. I don’t know in Singapore, I still have language in common but now I have a whole different set of culture and stuff like that going on. And so it’s easy to just get a little lazy and not think about my end customer and what they’re doing. And I can just be like, Oh, I made the sale. How are they using the product or the service? I don’t even know okay, if if I ever say that then I know I really need to stay in touch with the end customer because when we know who’s using our product, we can sell more, make more or service and understand them and then be of service and keep growing our business. And what I see with so many companies, b2b and especially when working in different time zones or different countries. It’s so easy to get a little bit lacks not know who that and customers not understand their problems and then things start to slip after that. Does. Does that sound like something you’ve experienced?

Bill : Yes, quite a bit. So yeah, what I’m hearing is sort of number one is focus and sort of narrow down you know, whether it’s the target persona, the geography or whatnot, but really come down to a finer point and then, and then also dealing with the idea. I’m sorry, the second point was, it was right there.

Cindy : Too many things to do and then staying in touch with the end customer. came to my challenge. Yeah,

Bill : Yeah, totally. And yeah, well, I was certainly you see this UK I was actually talking to a client in Austria this morning. And yeah, I mean, they’re just coming in. And the idea of the US population is like 20 times Australia’s population. So and the consumer market is it’s just, yeah, quantum Lee Becker. And so, yeah, having that focus, you know, they could just aim at one state and the, you know, have a business equal to what they have, you know, country. So, having both that sort of focus and also the client intimacy or customer intimacy just makes so much sense.

Cindy : Yeah, and some of the customers that we end up working with some of the clients we end up working with one of the first things I love to do a say, Can I just talk to a couple of your clients, because if we’re doing marketing with some I want to understand it and I can talk to the product marketing manager or sales person or whatever, and that’s good. When I talk to the customer, and it’s really interesting. And so I find that is such a useful thing, and it works for my own business too. And it can work for your business too. So if you’re thinking about oh my gosh, it’s a big country. Okay. Do you have a couple customers in the US? Just jump on the phone with them for 10 minutes, and have a quick conversation. Most people will be so happy to help you and talk with you and that’s for any size company, you can be a little company, big company, if we understand our end customers. It just changes everything and how we do our sales and marketing.

Bill : So just a quick anecdote so i speak well, pre COVID. I used to speak probably about once a month on business network, and usually to audiences of business owners. And the sort of normal question or one of them that I would ask any room of business owners are where do your best referrals? Excuse me, we’re blending here. Are we raise this up a little bit? So the question I would ask is, where do your best referrals come from? And 95% of any room of business owners? I’d say their best referrals come from current or past clients, and not from an industry friend or not from aligned business in any form, but from their current or past clients. So for me anyway, that’s, that’s really all I need to know to say. You’re absolutely right. This is about how do we develop much greater intimacy with our clients? Build more value for them, continue to be aligned with them because they’re not only critical for our current revenue, but they’re the ones who are going to help us grow in the future and help if we if we can continue to evolve in and serve them. It just gets really really folk good for them and good for us. So let’s talk a little bit about heroes. You know, they’re, you know, we often spend so much time talking about, you know, what are people doing wrong? It might be nice to you know, if there’s a company that you’re thinking of that gets it right and and, you know, might be our North Star to help sort of guide us a little bit but is there a company whether you’ve worked with them or not, but a company that you look at as one that that really does it right?

Cindy : That’s so good. I’m really glad you brought this up, because it’s got me thinking about who that is, and I feel like I should have a great answer for this. So I’ll tell you the top two things that popped to mind and whatever you can, you can take it or leave it. So one is I thought about LinkedIn. I really liked this podcast called masters of scale, and they do such a good job at sharing information. And one thing they really nail there is they’re sharing good information. That helps me and so when I listen to that, I go, whoo, I like these people. And it makes me feel good about LinkedIn, because they’re giving me good information and it’s not pitchy, it’s not a sales pitch. So that’s the first thing that popped to mind. Okay, and then the second thing that popped to mind is someone I work with, so I don’t know if that’s a good example or not, but they’re really good at following up on their software trial. So this is a company in the UK and they’ve got this really cool software that gets used for audio. And, we’ve worked with them for a long time. But one of the things they’re so so good at is once someone downloads their software trial is some automated stuff goes to them, but then they pick up the phone and call and ask like how’s it going? Do you need any help setting it up? And that is another company. They’re called emotion systems that does such a good job and they’re small, you know, we’re talking like sub 10 people, whereas LinkedIn, massive so those are two opposite ends of the scale that popped to mind for me, but what about you, I want to know what you think are heroes?

Bill : Oh, gosh, that’s a great question. The you’re not supposed to turn the tables on me. This is not this is not fair.

Cindy : You said it was a conversation.

Bill : That’s, that’s, yeah, don’t believe everything you read are sure. No, but yeah, I think there’s a company that we’ve been working with for a while. And, you know, I guess I would say that, you know, they I think I would echo some of the things that you talked about in terms of their interest in the customer success. And sort of aligning the way they communicate to that and and I guess, you know, it actually leads me into kind of a next area that I want to ask you about, which was ego, right? So how how much is do you think or do you observe that that ego either helps or hinders a company’s ability to market effectively?

Cindy : Oh, that’s so interesting. Do you know that book story brand, the Donald Miller book if you get I definitely like it, so he’s got this take on marketing that has to do with storytelling. And so when you talk about ego, I had a couple of things pop up for me and one is in Donald Miller, he talks about, we want to be the guide, not the hero. So if we think about a movie, your book or something like that, where there’s the hero in it, that should be our customer, not us. We should be the guide, we should be the best friend, we should be that Yoda that comes in or whatever. With the info. We want to be the guide because the customer needs to feel like they’re the hero and I have worked with a couple of companies that they’re just all about. We did this and we get this award and it’s hard, man. It feels like a slog to get through with that. So I would say in that case, that can be a little bit tricky. And then the other flip side of that though, too. Is sometimes especially working with smaller companies or entrepreneurs, there’ll be this feeling of like imposter syndrome, where they’re like, Well, I don’t know if I’m good enough. I don’t know. I don’t know if I should do that. I don’t know if I should go to that trade show in that country because I feel like maybe I’m not good enough. And then you start talking you’re like hey, but you’ve done all these great things and people love you and you clearly have a good service or product. Chillax you’re good. Just show up and share. You don’t have to feel like you’re like the the top number one. You’re helping people just get that imposter syndrome out of the way and get out there. And share. So those are two different things up when I think of ego.

Bill : I think that there’s a great observations, I guess the you know, maybe even adding a little bit to it because yeah, that’s kind of the last year I want to talk about where it’s really very metrics and measuring. And, obviously, yeah, there may be say, I guess, in what I see is almost similar to follow up in a lot of ways and that many companies really fail and follow up. I think. I would also say a lot of companies really fail in not just measuring but actually using the data to evolve and shift and, and I guess you know, go back to the first point, you know that the ego seems like it plays such an important role in the process right. As you wouldn’t start a company or internationalize a company. If you did have some ego so it’s a really important attribute. On the other hand, it seems like we can ego can keep us from listening or wanting to hear and AND and OR evolving and I guess it’s yeah, I’m not. I’m not a psychologist or a psychiatrist or any mental health professional. So I have no expertise in this other than this as an observation. And I think US companies fail at this as much as international companies coming in but that wisdom to both care to ask the question, but then also to listen to the answer and internalize it. Just seem like it’s a massive, massive opportunity. And I guess I’d asked you about sort of metrics and maybe leading us into that as to, you know, how the companies best measure what’s working and I love where you use the plate overall, in your book, the 80 20 rule and for those who don’t know it, is that 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts and 20% of your efforts. I’m sorry, and 20% of your results come from 80% of your efforts so that obviously you want to invest more in what works and there’s another marketing, I believe, that says something like this: a marketing executive reporting to his Chairman, we know that 50% of our marketing dollars are wasted. We just don’t know which 50% But with that, you want to talk about metrics and what tools we might look at for that.

Cindy : Yes, yes. I love that. So metrics on key performance indicators, KPIs. I think they’re so helpful, especially when they inform us so what you were saying is like, well, I can get all these metrics, but do I do anything with them? So we can collect metrics, but if they’re not informing us and helping us take a next step, or improve a little bit, who cares that those are just ego metrics at that point, you were talking about ego that Yeah, so I like to pick metrics that actually mean something and we kind of know what they are. So maybe, especially for smaller companies, we might know I need to have X number of prospect calls per week. I want to have X number of people join my free Facebook group every week or a month when I go to a trade show. Now this is tricky. I want to have X number of visitors in my booth. That could be a good metric, or that could be just like a vanity metric. Because if you’re just grabbing every random person who walks by, but I want to have X number of legit sales conversations in my booth. Or in my stand at the show. So just we kind of know what those are already. What do we care about is just now getting serious about writing them down. And so I think that taking just a few key metrics and getting started is great and so for example, when we’re sending out emails, it’s interesting to see how many opens we have, but that metric may or may not be accurate. What’s more interesting to me, is how many people clicked through to watch the replay of the video, or downloaded the checklist. Or guide because now if someone downloads a guide on a topic, especially if it’s kind of very niche, you’re super techie. That person just self qualified as a prospect. You know, if I download a paper on tires for my Toyota Camry, probably a pretty good prospect because nobody would download a checklist on tires for a particular car unless they probably have that car interested in it. Right. And so, someone taking action, those are metrics that are very interesting and I think can inform, to get hung up on a call right before this, where we were looking at how many people signed up for a seminar. How many people watch the replay, and how many people actually attended? Those are all three really interesting metrics and even though I have a nice dashboard set up, one of the salespeople said, Could you send that to me as an Excel spreadsheet? Yes, of course I can. Because that’s how he functions and work. So people might want the metrics of the data in different ways so they can take action on it. But that’s a great metric the number of people but now the salespeople can go ahead and look over that list and now we use our human judgment to decide are we going to follow up. We have automated follow up already happening. And now we can take that to the next level with the salespeople. They can maybe use lead score or just use their human judgment to decide what they’re going to do with it. So those are some metrics and KPIs that I look at, day in and day out. Is that the kind of thing you’re wondering about?

Cindy : Yes, yes. I love that. So metrics are key performance indicators, KPIs. I think they’re so helpful, especially when they inform us so what you’re saying is like, well, I can get all these metrics, but do I do anything with them? So we can collect metrics, but if they’re not informing us and helping us take a next step, or improve a little bit, who cares that those are just ego metrics at that point? You were talking about ego that? Yeah, so I like to pick metrics that actually mean something and we kind of know what they are. So maybe, especially for smaller companies, we might know I need to have X number of prospect calls per week. I want to have X number of people join my free Facebook group every week or a month when I go to a trade show. Now this is tricky. I want to have X number of visitors in my booth. That could be a good metric, or that could be just like a vanity metric. Because if you’re just grabbing every random person who walks by, I want to have X number of legit sales conversations in my booth. Or in my stand at the show, so just we kind of know what those are already. What do we care about? It’s just now getting serious about writing them down. And so I think that taking just a few key metrics and getting started is great and so for example, when we’re sending out emails, it’s interesting to see how many opens we have, but that metric may or may not be accurate. What’s more interesting to me, is how many people click through to watch the replay of the video, or download the checklist. Or guide because now, if someone downloads a guide on a topic, especially if it’s kind of very niche II or super techie, that person just self qualified as a prospect. You know, if I download a paper on tires for my Toyota Camry, I probably a pretty good prospect because nobody would download a checklist on tires for a particular car unless they probably have that car interested in it. Right. And so, someone taking action, those are metrics that are very interesting. And I think can inform. I just hung up on a call right before this, where we were looking at how many people signed up for a seminar. How many people watch the replay, and how many people actually attended? Those are all three really interesting metrics and even though I have a nice dashboard set up, one of the salespeople said, Could you send that to me as an Excel spreadsheet? Yes, of course I can. Because that’s how he functions and work. So people might want the metrics of the data in different ways so they can take action on it. But that’s a great metric the number of people but now the salespeople can go ahead and look over that list and now we use our human judgment to decide are we going to follow up. We have automated follow up already happening. And now we can take that to the next level with the salespeople. They can maybe use lead score or just use their human judgment to decide what they’re going to do with it. So those are some metrics and KPIs that I look at, day in and day out. Is that the kind of thing you’re wondering about?

Bill : Oh, yeah, for sure. And then I guess the other question is, are there you talked about sort of the engagement, I guess, I’d say Do you also look at conversion metrics? Are there some sort of key and I know you mentioned trade shows, which is certainly a lot of our audience are interested in in person marketing. But you know, in probably revenue generated for b2b companies, it’s a long way off and not really meaningful for trying to adjust our strategy, but are there some intermediate types of indicators that you look at to judge conversion and whatnot?

Cindy : There are and so one of the things I love to do is just think about a typical sale and we can all think about the outliers. Well, there’s that one time when this person took five years to buy Okay, that’s fine. Let’s not think about that. So 80-20 rule what typically do people do, okay? They they right before they buy so I like to think of bottom of the funnel right before they buy they do X they download a trial, they book a meeting with me, they, they sample something, they fill out a form, whatever the thing is, okay, so we know that right before they buy they do that. Excellent. So that’s one data point we can look at. And then what do they do right before that, oh, they need to understand about this technology, or they meet with us or we get on a phone call, like you know your process. And again, we can all think about the outlier and what’s different, but just for the sake of argument, let’s put a typical one in place like what do they do? And so, then maybe how do they generally meet you will just pick three data points, will they generally meet me at the trade show? At an event, they come to my website and fill out a form, whatever the things are? So now we’ve got three data points: trade shows, social media website forum, the middle stage of the funnel. If you will, they get on a phone call, they go to my website, they do something. And then the final thing they do right before they buy, they download a trial, they book a sample, whatever the thing is, and so I would totally be checking the numbers at those three points. All the time. And then if you want to do attribution and go okay, yeah, these many people who purchase this year went to this trade show. That’s awesome. And you can do that manually. You can do it with an automated system. I worked with this company in Spain where they said, you know, we just do it manually. There’s a ton of us in this company. And we just get a spreadsheet out and Quarterly, we talk through each sale. Now that’s not scalable, like doesn’t make sense for a gajillion people in a company. At that point. You need to be tracking that in your CRM or whatever system you’re using. But it doesn’t mean you can do it at any size, right. And so yes, those are some of the metrics that I like to track.

Bill : That’s really cool. Yeah, just the intermediate stuff. So thanks so much. My goodness, this has been a delightful conversation. So when you are there any sort of parting words or anything, you know, when you really get? Is there any encouragement that you have for particularly companies coming into the US in terms of, I guess, eating the elephant one bite at a time or something?

Cindy : The frogs that, hey, I have a free resource that I wanted to offer up to your listeners if that’s okay. So, my free resource is a marketing master plan. It’s my marketing master plan that I want to give to you and so you can get it by texting the word belly the name of your show belly text the word belly to me at + 1-530-203-5703 and you’re going to get an automatically get a PDF. That’s my marketing master plan. And what it does is it helps you identify what steps to take in your business next. And so it’s a free resource. It’s what we use with our clients all the time and you can take it and use it, but we’ll help you see what step to take in your business next, so I would say whoever is listening to this, take advantage of this. You will you’ll love it. People love it. And it helps you know what to do next in your business. I think you’re muted. I totally want to hear what you’re saying. I do. 

Bill : Oh my goodness. I hate when that happens. It is absolutely. So yeah, no, we’ll put a note in the description with that information. So it was great. But this has been wonderful. Cindy, I really appreciate you taking the time today. That information you shared was fantastic. I think you know real real timely. Especially as we kind of well. Some are coming out of COVID quicker than others. But, you know, I think the world is beginning to re engage we’re certainly seeing the economy tick up which is awesome. It was great to chat with you today.

Cindy : It’s so good to chat with you. I just did a blog post yesterday on getting back to in person trade shows actually, where we’re talking all about the things you said so yes, right.

Bill : That’s cool. Yeah, we had our first in person trade show last week actually. So yeah, no amazing 250 exhibitors you know, just like it never happened. Yeah, truly Well, thank you, and thank you to our listeners, please like and subscribe and do all the cool things that allow you to see what’s coming next. And, again, I really appreciate y’all spending time with us today. And again, thank you Cindy.

Cindy : Thank you Bill.

Bill : Alright, bye now.