Early in my career, I had the opportunity to be an Enterprise Sales Rep for an early-stage company (80-ish employees) that was built for retailers who were struggling in the eComm space. It was a fun product to sell and talk about, and I was doing pretty well.
One night I sat back and looked at what had been working in some of my closed/won deals. I noticed a pattern of drastically shorter sales cycles and drastically higher win rates when I invited the founder of the company, Angel Morales, into my deals.
Calling Angel a “subject matter expert” almost seems insulting. He was an evangelist. He was captivating. He was, most importantly, an entertainer. He’d come into offices with me with these incredibly recognizable brands and sit across from their CEO or CMO and he would captivate them and entertain them. He was energetic and he was brilliant.
That evening I decided if I could just be as captivating, brilliant, and entertaining as Angel, I would close more deals and make WAY more money. The problem was (and still is): I am not Angel. Nobody is. So I settled with the idea that I would only be as effective as Angel’s schedule allowed me to be -- a schedule that was completely consumed by other reps who had also concluded that Angel was the key to more sales.
This isn’t unique.
The Importance of Subject Matter Experts
Leveraging a founder, subject matter expert, or an otherwise brilliant, one-of-a-kind thinker to accelerate sales or build trust is an age-old sales play. After all, they know the industry the best. After all, they know the industry the best. But they’re only one person. How do you stretch one person across a growing sales team? You can’t.
So, I hope you’re now thinking, “what the absolute hell does this have to do with podcasts!?”
Podcasts are the content medium where leveraging these individuals becomes feasible. I know and love Angel, but getting him to write a blog post back then was almost laughable. Plus, by the time it was edited and published, his voice would be gone. There’s only so many times you can write the “f word” in a blog...
So imagine a growing sales team leveraging their founders, thinkers, and entertainers AT SCALE. This ability to broadcast innovative brilliance en masse is exactly how you spread knowledge and allow your account execs and SDRs to speed up sales cycles and increase close rates.
I use this in practice almost daily. Even at Casted, where I am a founder, I am not the de-facto B2B Podcast expert. That’s Lindsay’s forte, and Lindsay is just one woman who I can’t bring into every single sales cycle, but I don’t have to. I get to leverage her years of experience and even get to couple it with other B2B Podcast badasses like Heike Young. So when I am sitting here and listening to Lindsay and Heike casually talk about something that I have no expertise in and they do it with clarity and ease I get to think about all of the prospects that need to hear some of these gems of wisdom.
After listening to this, I can share the most poignant pieces of their conversation with prospects. I am buying a prospect’s time with someone else’s expertise.
And best of all, this came straight from the marketing team. They provided me with content that appeals to our entire audience but in a format that allows me to personalize for prospects.
That’s how it should work. The job of marketing is to sell to the masses. The job of sales is to sell to the individual. Yet there has always been a disconnect between the two regarding how and when marketing content should be used. I’m happy to say that for the first time in my career, I finally feel the effects of my marketing team’s amazing work, and I’m equipped with the tools to use it.
This isn’t a crazy concept that I am pitching to you. I am asking you to have a conversation with your most passionate leader about the thing they know the most about… I am asking you to record it and share it. Then I am asking you to count the money.
Welcome to thought evangelism at scale. Welcome to relieved and enthusiastic sales reps. Welcome to Casted.
