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Brandon Lee Joins Ultimate Guide to Partnering®
Welcome to an exciting new episode of the Ultimate Guide to Partnering. Today, we dive deep into a topic we have not covered, Modern Selling and the Buyer’s Journey, with special guest Brandon Lee, the Founder of Fist Bump and the Co-Host of Mastering Modern Marketing.
In this engaging discussion, Brandon shares his experience navigating through the oversaturated world of marketing and sales, shedding light on the importance of creating demand rather than simply capturing existing demand.
These insights are complemented by Vince’s perspective on the need for a more cohesive and effective ecosystem for builders, innovators, and leaders in various industries. Join us as we explore the evolving landscape of digital content creation, the changing buying behavior of millennials, and the crucial role of trust in the selling process. Get ready to uncover valuable strategies for leveraging platforms like LinkedIn and revolutionizing marketing and sales approaches in the digital age.
What You’ll Learn
- Modern selling strategies with a focus on partnering. 0:00
- Modern selling approaches and LinkedIn usage. 5:00
- LinkedIn’s evolution and personal branding. 9:42
- Utilizing LinkedIn for networking and building relationships. 16:01
- Modern sales and marketing strategies. 22:56
- B2B marketing strategies and mindset shifts. 28:54
- Digital marketing strategies for businesses. 35:25
- Marketing strategies for B2B companies. 40:20
- Leveraging LinkedIn for business growth and leadership development. 45:40
- Partnering strategies and best practices. 51:30
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Transcription – by Otter.ai – Expect Many Typos
Keywords
linkedin, companies, organisations, people, talk, partner, sellers, podcast, call, email, selling, marketing, conference, customers, sales, mindset, boca raton, work, content, team
Brandon Lee [00:00:02]
What are you doing to help your customers think about what’s coming in 6 months?
Vince Menzione [00:00:05]:
Right.
Brandon Lee [00:00:06]:
How are you helping them think about what the shifts that they should be working on? How are you bringing to them something of value that they really care about? And now it’s even worse that you got sales on one side going, where’s our MQLs? And you got marketing on the other side going, all the MQLs we send you, you guys don’t close. Pull yourself back and really think about why should your customers or your prospects, why would they want
Vince Menzione [00:00:32]:
to talk to you? Welcome back to the ultimate guide to partnering. I’m Vince Menzione, your host, and my mission is to empower each leader and organization to achieve their greatest results through successful partnering. We’re coming to you live from our new studios in Boca Raton, Florida in collaboration with MediaZone, And I’m so excited to bring to you not a partner leader necessarily, although he works with partner leaders, but a sales leader on a quest to empower each of us as we are all sellers and his tools and capabilities around modern selling. Brandon Lee is the CEO of FistBump and the co host of Mastering Modern Selling along with my friend and Microsoft super seller, Carson Hetty and Tom Burton. I’m so excited for this conversation as we dive in to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results through modern selling. Brandon, welcome to the podcast.
Brandon Lee [00:01:26]:
Thanks, Vince. I’m excited to be here. I mean, look at this. Who wouldn’t wanna be here?
Vince Menzione [00:01:29]:
Welcome to South Florida. It’s so good to have you in our new studios here in Boca Raton, Florida. God’s country.
Brandon Lee [00:01:38]:
You know, I gotta tell you, I was it never dawned on me before. Boca Raton, I know, you know, famous in Florida, but it realized I speak Spanish. And so I went, why would you call something the rat’s mouth? Yeah. So I looked it up. That was very interesting.
Vince Menzione [00:01:52]:
Yeah. It would literally I I guess a lot of ships. I like the, the pirate ships and the coral ship. The coral would eat it up. Rat’s mouth. Rat’s mouth. And then I it’s also known for something else. Right? So I’ll share with you.
Vince Menzione [00:02:04]:
Do you know what happened on August 12,
Brandon Lee [00:02:08]:
1981? Partnerships were born. Yeah. Yeah. IBM and, Microsoft. Very good. Very good.
Vince Menzione [00:02:16]:
You’ve been following along. I love it. Yeah. So that was listen to your podcast. So for people who haven’t heard this before. Right? So Bill Gates comes to Boca Raton, Florida. This is the home of the PC, or at least it was back then. Right? They’ve they’ve sold the campus.
Vince Menzione [00:02:30]:
It’s now part of FAU and literally signs an agreement with IBM to license, not sell software, which was the first which was a first at the time. It’s a big deal. It was a big deal and sparked the ecosystem, changed the model. ISVs, right, software licensed software became a thing. PCs were born. Michael Dell starts making PCs in his dorm room. Compaq is the fastest company to a $1,000,000,000. A whole ecosystem of partnerships grows from there.
Vince Menzione [00:03:01]:
So lots of companies came out out of that decision that Bill Gates had.
Vince Menzione [00:03:05]:
Yeah. Incredible. Yeah. $5,000,000,000,000 industry. So, well, this is a unique discussion today, and I’m really excited to have you. Right? We know each other through Carson Hetty. Yep. And Carson’s been a guest on the podcast.
Vince Menzione [00:03:19]:
He was been part of both my digital event and my live event. He is what I refer to as the top social seller at Microsoft. Like, he sets the bar high for sellers to understand. And you 2 are been collaborating for a while now on an incredible podcast that you do, a a LinkedIn live show and podcast. Mastering Modern Selling. Mhmm. And you also have a third partner there, Tom Burton.
Brandon Lee [00:03:46]:
Yes.
Vince Menzione [00:03:46]:
So I was hoping maybe we spend a few moments here about maybe a little bit about your background and the genesis and how we got here.
Brandon Lee [00:03:53]:
Yeah. I mean, we we were talking about it earlier. I mean, my my background it took me a while to realize what my background because, you know, we just had this big, grand word, marketing. And so, because, you know, we just had this big grand word, marketing. And so, yeah. I’ve been doing that. I, in the 90 98, I started my first company. We sold that in 2000.
Brandon Lee [00:04:15]:
I had no idea what I was doing. But built a company at a couple million in revenue. Nice. Someone wanted to buy it. I’m like, okay. And built and sold a few other companies and then played fractional CRO for a while. And in, you know, 18, 19, I started looking at LinkedIn. What’s going on? I was looking at buyer journeys changing.
Brandon Lee [00:04:35]:
I was looking at call out you know, cold outreach declining a little bit. And, like, there’s something going on here. And, that’s when I started looking at, like, what what’s what’s new? What’s modern? What’s going on in the buyer journey? You know, for me, in in 2012 was the first time I looked and said the data was that buyers are doing about 30% of their research before talking to sales. Yeah. And today, it’s almost 80% with a with I think I heard on your show too, 75 percent of millennials want digital only.
Vince Menzione [00:05:08]:
Digital only. They don’t even wanna talk to a human. So our b to b companies
Brandon Lee [00:05:14]:
Yeah. We gotta figure some stuff out quick, and there’s a lot of pain with pipeline. I was spoke to a enterprise sales leader who said, our MQLs are 0. Our pipe our SDRs had a 97% closed loss rate.
Vince Menzione [00:05:32]:
Yeah. So Nobody wants to talk to SDRs either.
Brandon Lee [00:05:35]:
And their account executives, or full cycle account executives, still had about a 36% close rate. The problem is they had no pipeline because the only way they knew how to create pipeline was the same motions the SDRs were doing.
Vince Menzione [00:05:47]:
Right.
Brandon Lee [00:05:48]:
Make calls and send emails. So companies are there there’s a lot going on.
Vince Menzione [00:05:53]:
Yeah. And one of the main reasons why we wanna have this discussion today is I find that all of the tech companies, all the partners out there that I work with, and then you’ve been working with some of these as well, they really don’t do a great job on social selling. Right? They don’t get it. They don’t even do a good job on marketing, in fact, their own products and offerings. And so with this modern marketing, this modern selling approach, I thought we would dive in a little bit here today.
Brandon Lee [00:06:20]:
Let’s do it.
Vince Menzione [00:06:21]:
I wanna talk a little bit more about LinkedIn. You and I were having a discussion earlier about LinkedIn and this evolution that we’ve all seen. Originally, it was just a place to put your resume. And I started to notice we were talking about this earlier. I started to notice the change that was happening. I’d I’d say it was around 18 that sellers were reaching out to me. I was the chief partner officer of a $1,000,000,000 ISV, and they were either reaching out to me because they were looking for their next job, or they were maybe trying to sell me their product, and they wanted to get exclusive access to me that they couldn’t get through an email. And that was the beginning of the genesis.
Vince Menzione [00:06:56]:
And then fast forward to COVID, and when I came back brought the podcast back during COVID, I noticed a shift was happening. And people were paying more attention because we were all locked down and it became a town hall at that point. Right? Would you agree? And then, I think I think we’ve seen the tectonic shifts even more so since then. This evolution is happening even more rapidly. Satya Nadella says 7 years of transformation in 7 months. And so that acceleration just happened through COVID, and our lives have never really quite been the same since then. Would you agree?
Brandon Lee [00:07:33]:
Yeah. And you and I were talking. There a lot of things I’d love to respond to there. So let me see if we can do this one at a time. But, you know, we were talking before we recorded in in 2020. And I think it was about May of 2020. I had a CMO come on my show. This was pre before Carson and Tom and I had Master of Modern Selling.
Brandon Lee [00:07:52]:
I had a show called Digital Influence. And I was just trying to figure out, like, how are we building our influence, our relationships, our network through these digital channels? And I had a a CMO of a company come on, and I can’t remember the exact topic, but it was like, LinkedIn’s getting personal. And she came on, and I said, so you wrote a post the other day that LinkedIn is becoming personal. What do you mean by that? And she goes, personal content is, like, kicking butt on LinkedIn right now.
Vince Menzione [00:08:21]:
Yeah. And I
Brandon Lee [00:08:22]:
said, well, let’s talk about it. And and what we’ve seen is this transformation. And, you know, COVID accelerated for sure. The our culture, our environment now, the work from home, and people don’t wanna go back to the office. And, you know, budgets got tight. We’ve we’ve we’ve had a little bit of headwinds on the financial markets. So budgets are down. People aren’t on as many planes.
Brandon Lee [00:08:44]:
They’re not going as many hotels. They’re not taking clients out to dinner as much. All that stuff’s being pulled back. So what do we do? Right. And we just said the SDR model’s not working. Nobody wants to talk to an
Vince Menzione [00:08:55]:
SDR.
Brandon Lee [00:08:56]:
Nope. And I like to ask this question, especially with C Suite out there. Because C Suite, you know, you said 2 words that I don’t like to use very often. Social selling well, 2 phrases. Social selling or LinkedIn. I don’t like saying them because as soon as people hear social selling, they get these preconceived notions of what it is, and they go, oh, have you ever seen my social selling suck shirt?
Vince Menzione [00:09:17]:
No. Yeah. But tell me what people think it is from your perspective.
Brandon Lee [00:09:20]:
I don’t know. It’s they think it is what they think it is.
Vince Menzione [00:09:24]:
Interesting. So they have preconceived notions about
Brandon Lee [00:09:27]:
what that is. And because it could be Yeah. It’s well, I’m not looking for a job. I mean, I’ve a friend, Mick, who’s a he’s a sales trainer, LinkedIn guy. I see I hate saying the word, but LinkedIn guy in Belgium. And he was a guest on our show a few weeks ago or a month or so ago, and he said he went in this room. He was asked to speak in a CEO roundtable for the day, and he got 30 minutes. And he starts talking, and guy raises his hand.
Brandon Lee [00:09:52]:
He says, None of us are looking for jobs. Why are you talking to us about LinkedIn?
Vince Menzione [00:09:57]:
Wow.
Brandon Lee [00:09:57]:
Wow. Right? So if you say LinkedIn and that’s their mindset, why in the world would they wanna talk to me?
Vince Menzione [00:10:03]:
That’s right.
Brandon Lee [00:10:04]:
And we talk about creating qualified pipeline and growing your revenues, but there’s total disconnect. So social selling, LinkedIn, but, LinkedIn is evolving. LinkedIn became a it’s it’s a professional network.
Vince Menzione [00:10:23]:
Yes.
Brandon Lee [00:10:23]:
The problem is we held on to professional, and we forgot about networking. Yeah. And, you know, we had Facebook at the time. When LinkedIn, Facebook all started to come on, it was like Facebook was for personal and LinkedIn was for professional. But the problem with that mindset was, and it blows me away, is that when was business ever purely professional?
Vince Menzione [00:10:45]:
Never.
Brandon Lee [00:10:46]:
Never.
Vince Menzione [00:10:46]:
Never.
Brandon Lee [00:10:47]:
I mean, we take people out to dinner. We take them out to lunch.
Vince Menzione [00:10:50]:
That’s right.
Brandon Lee [00:10:50]:
We we get tickets to the ball game. We go golfing. Right? Corporations have these massive budgets for entertainment. Right? You you sponsor professional golf. Why? To bring your clients to these amazing events.
Vince Menzione [00:11:06]:
Build relationships.
Brandon Lee [00:11:07]:
Build relationships. And for some reason, we looked at LinkedIn and we’re like, I’m gonna hide behind my resume.
Vince Menzione [00:11:14]:
Or I’m gonna put my my sell sheet out there. I’m gonna Or or a link to my website.
Brandon Lee [00:11:18]:
I’m gonna publish my brochures.
Vince Menzione [00:11:20]:
My brochures.
Brandon Lee [00:11:21]:
Because, you know, when you meet somebody, you’re at a you’re at a trade you’re at a conference, trade show, an event, and you look over and somebody’s got their lanyard, they got their name. I look at, oh, Vince Benzion. Oh, I was like, oh, I wanna meet him. I what I do, oh, he’s standing in line at star I’m gonna go get behind him in Starbucks line. I’m gonna get up to him. I’m gonna pull out my brochure, and I’m gonna stick it in your face and go, Vince, do you have time
Vince Menzione [00:11:42]:
for a demo? Never. Never. Never.
Brandon Lee [00:11:46]:
But yet in this digital world of LinkedIn, that’s totally okay. That’s acceptable. And it’s stupid. It’s ridiculous Yeah. Because there there’s actually real human beings on the
Vince Menzione [00:11:56]:
other side. That’s right.
Brandon Lee [00:11:57]:
And get this. They act like human beings. Yep. Which means when you throw your brochure in their face, unless they’re currently in market, which in any industry, the average is 1 to 3%, they might be in market. You might get lucky because you’re at the right place at the right time. And there’s there’s a little bit of fruit and that’s what keeps a lot of sales leaders going. But it worked. They hold onto a story.
Brandon Lee [00:12:21]:
3 years ago, it worked and we closed that. Yeah. But how many failures did you have in the meantime? And even worse, how bad have you screwed up your brand’s reputation because you’re just pissing people off
Vince Menzione [00:12:34]:
That’s right.
Brandon Lee [00:12:34]:
With spamming them in LinkedIn?
Vince Menzione [00:12:36]:
So I wanna go back to COVID for a moment. Okay.
Brandon Lee [00:12:39]:
Sorry. So I no.
Vince Menzione [00:12:40]:
No. No. Because no. It’s a great conversation and discourse. I wanna continue here. But I do think, I believe, I started, you know, I started back up the podcast during that time, and I was interviewing a lot of executives from the tech industry. And this change that was happening was how organizations were dealing with their people. They were dealing with their customers.
Vince Menzione [00:13:02]:
They were dealing with their partners differently because of COVID. Right. And because we were using tools like Zoom and Teams and other technologies, we were showing up in our pajamas. We were showing up with our kids in the back of the room screaming, Mommy, mommy, daddy, daddy, with our dogs and cats maybe jumping on our desk. Right? We’ve seen all of that. And so we needed we shifted, and our mindsets all shifted around. It was now okay to bring your authentic self to work, right, things you would leave behind about yourself. Yeah.
Vince Menzione [00:13:38]:
Right? How many people did you ever have work for you that you didn’t even know they had kids or didn’t know much about their family situation? We all were now in each other’s living rooms Right. Through COVID. And I think when you talk about, like the personal aspect of LinkedIn, I think that’s when the acceptability happened. Yeah. That you could bring your authentic self now to the platform, to the discussion, to the discourse. Right? What would you say about that?
Brandon Lee [00:14:03]:
Yeah. I mean, I think you’re spot on. I think that, you know, we you make me think of the times, remember, when you the rare opportunities that you had to work from home or you had to had to take a call from vacation or something and you pretended like you were in the office. Right? All of that went away. And I do believe that that one of the accelerators with COVID was so many people were isolated, and they didn’t wanna go throw all their social stuff on Facebook or Instagram.
Vince Menzione [00:14:33]:
Right.
Brandon Lee [00:14:34]:
And, and they missed their friends from the office, their colleagues, their relationships from the office. I think that was a bit of an accelerator to it. But I think the other thing was, you mentioned in in 2020, in COVID, companies were just trying to help their employees have a work from home environment. I mean, this is the first thing.
Vince Menzione [00:14:52]:
How do
Brandon Lee [00:14:52]:
we help them work from home? Let’s get them set up on Teams or Zoom or something so they could actually we could see people when we talk. They can see their customers when they talk. You know, does everybody have good internet access at home? Do they have a good chair? Like, we don’t want them sitting at the
Vince Menzione [00:15:07]:
kids’ hotel. Computer with a great camera, audio, all of those things, right? All of
Brandon Lee [00:15:11]:
that was the first 12 months of COVID, I believe. And let’s just use either easy numbers, 12 months. And then we started looking at what else. But in my opinion, the sales portion of it, the virtual selling portion of it, got kicked to the back because all these other things were important. And the belief was, when we go back to normal
Vince Menzione [00:15:34]:
Yeah.
Brandon Lee [00:15:35]:
Just wait till we get back on the plane. It’s like, okay. Everything’s down. So 2020, we didn’t see revenue numbers drop too bad because we were living off pipeline from 2019. It was in the end of 21 that people started going, wait a minute. What’s going on? Yeah. What’s going on here? And then you get into 22, and there was still some some bit of hope. When we go back to normal, it’s gonna all be okay.
Brandon Lee [00:15:57]:
But a lot of people, they didn’t wanna go to shows. And their their companies were dealing with some financial challenges from COVID.
Vince Menzione [00:16:05]:
That’s right. The economic headwinds that we all saw.
Brandon Lee [00:16:08]:
And so they weren’t their budgets Yep. Weren’t there. And, I mean, I had a client of ours, and this was probably 18 months ago, he was saying, I can’t get clients to meet with me in person because they’re not working at the office and they don’t wanna get up in the morning and get ready and go to the office to have a meeting with me there. So where it used to be, I’d fly in town and be like, I got an entertainment account. Let’s go have dinner. We wanna go to a game. You wanna do this? And people would come. They’re like, no, thanks.
Vince Menzione [00:16:36]:
You know, what struck me about what you just said is pre COVID, I had relationships I had built up as a seller. And if if I was fortunate enough to still be in the same organization, I had relationships with my colleagues, my partners and my customers. And to your point, like, that sales cycle, maybe we got to a certain point where, okay, we’re not going back in the office. Now what do I do? Right. And you talk about something. I wanna tie in here. Right? You talk about LinkedIn as this always on super conference. Right? This 24 by 7 by 360 5 day a year Except
Brandon Lee [00:17:15]:
this year. 360.
Vince Menzione [00:17:17]:
66 with leap year, this super conference. So, how how what would you say about that and how how people are utilizing this super conference?
Brandon Lee [00:17:27]:
Yeah. Well, the challenge is most people aren’t using it in that way. Yeah. Right? And that’s why I like to say it because, so sort of like my t shirt that I had that said social selling sucks, I wanted to jolt people into thinking, Wait a minute. What do you mean? Aren’t you a LinkedIn type guy? I’m like, It depends on what you mean. I mean, that was a whole thing with social selling sucks. But I just want to pause people to say, What does this mean? So, the 20 fourseven, 365 is how do you act? What do you do? What is your goal when you go to a conference? And if you look at it from the corporate strategy side, we do a lot. Yeah.
Brandon Lee [00:18:07]:
We we we bring a lot of people. Are you bringing your team to LinkedIn? Are you bringing them to this conference? Most most companies aren’t. No. Right? If you, you’re going to they go, this is your biggest trade show of the year, your biggest conference of the year. Do you do a sponsorship? How big is your booth? What type of footprint? I get budget, but you so you go to sponsor. Why? Well, we get to then do a breakout session. Right? We get to put our CEO on stage during a breakout session and talk about this topic that we’re experts in. Why do you do that? You want people to come and listen.
Vince Menzione [00:18:45]:
That’s right.
Brandon Lee [00:18:45]:
You want to share your expertise.
Vince Menzione [00:18:47]:
You want to build authority.
Brandon Lee [00:18:49]:
Build authority, build influence. And then people that Your team members that are at the event, what do they do? Well, they walk around to go meet the people who they want to meet. They want to go meet their customers. What do they want to do? They want to network. They want to build relationships. And just like I was saying with that silly story about you and the Starbucks line and I throw my brochure in your face
Vince Menzione [00:19:13]:
It’s so true though.
Brandon Lee [00:19:14]:
We don’t do that. We don’t even do that in our booths. Right? Somebody walks in our booth, we don’t shove our brochure right in their face. We go, how can I help you? What are you looking for? Thank you for coming to our booth. We do something other than shove the brochure in their face. But yet, in LinkedIn, so many companies bought this crap. Automation in order to do what? I I think even the words tell you it’s wrong. I’m gonna blast my audience.
Vince Menzione [00:19:40]:
Blast them. You know, we can go on. So I wanna talk let’s talk about this. Right? So many people are not getting it right. This is what you’re alluding to. Let’s talk about that.
Brandon Lee [00:19:53]:
Yeah. So when when if I can, you know, start thinking about your biggest conference, right, and how you act corporately, how you act individually. What is your goal? You go to work a room. You go to network. Okay. Let’s take that, and now let’s look through that lens at LinkedIn. If you wanna sponsor something in order to have a breakout session, Well, you can go live on LinkedIn. You can create a live weekly show, and you can bring on your customers as guests.
Brandon Lee [00:20:26]:
You could bring on your prospects as guests. You can bring in your team members that are experts in certain areas and talk about the things that you’re doing, talk about case study. You can talk about anything you want. But you create it as a live weekly show and a podcast because don’t waste your effort. If you’re going to record something, then reuse it, reuse it in other areas. So you can go live on LinkedIn and you can take the video with tools like Restream, which is one that we use. You also we’re going live on YouTube, and we go live on Facebook just because we throw it, and we go live on X.
Vince Menzione [00:20:58]:
Nice.
Brandon Lee [00:20:58]:
But LinkedIn and and YouTube are our primary categories. And then we take the audio file, and we edit it, and we publish it to our podcast. So when you’re thinking about wanna go to this conference and a lot of companies right now are talking about their big conferences, and we’ve got a partner of ours that they’re booth manufacturing, And they’re saying, our customers are coming to us, and they’re shrinking their booth size because they’re shrinking the square footage of their booth because they’ve got shrunken budgets.
Vince Menzione [00:21:28]:
Interesting. Right?
Brandon Lee [00:21:29]:
So we know and they’re and a lot of them are saying, we have to go because we can’t no show. We’ve been going for 20 years. We have to go, but we don’t have confidence in the ROI, so we’re gonna shrink our budgets for it. We’re gonna be there, but we don’t. K. So how are we looking at LinkedIn in the same way? Right? So many companies have looked at LinkedIn kinda like that show. Well, we gotta be there. So alright, everybody.
Brandon Lee [00:21:57]:
Here’s a half day seminar on how to update your profile. And maybe somebody comes in and updates your profile, and then we pat ourselves on the back, and we go, we have great profiles. And it’s the Field of Dreams mindset. Right? If we build it, they will come.
Vince Menzione [00:22:10]:
Right.
Brandon Lee [00:22:11]:
But your profile and just posting brochure type of content doesn’t make POs magically fly out of the sky and fall in your pocket. So if we just keep extending this analogy of looking at LinkedIn through that lens, we we bring our whole team there. We train our team how to have talk tracks and conversations with customers. We have strategies at the about conferences that And we invest in it. And it’s for a lot of companies, it’s their biggest pipeline builder of the year.
Vince Menzione [00:22:56]:
If you’re part of the movement, you know I have a very strong point of view. I’ve sat on both sides of the table for over 30 years now. I’ve built growth through partnerships in PC, Internet, cloud, mobile AI, marketplaces, and more. I’ve also seen the demise of organizations that are resistant to change. I’m part of the communities, special interest groups, and associations, and I don’t see one place that mirrors the ecosystem and brings it all together. You see, I see a vibrant world where hyperscalers, builders, ISV sellers, SIs, MSPs, and other partners come together to spark the ecosystem’s growth. I’ve talked to many of you and what I continually hear is it’s noisy. I don’t know whom to listen to and where to go.
Vince Menzione [00:23:44]:
There’s a massive opportunity, but I’m not sure how to get there. Well, you’ve been heard. We’re getting ready to open the doors early on March 1st to pilot this new experience. We want this to be your place with your feedback and participation. If you’re a builder, an innovator, or a leader, visit our website. Your ultimate partner experience is less than a and this is why I think this is so valuable conversation, right? I am a company that has been a traditional sales and marketing organization, right? I might have a partner channel, I might have a direct sales organization. I might do co selling in the Microsoft world. Mhmm.
Vince Menzione [00:24:31]:
And I’ve been using marketing in the way that most organizations have used marketing. Right? Maybe some digital, maybe some click funnels, maybe some of that, but also, but not using LinkedIn in the right ways. Yeah. How do you talked about helping them and coaching them through that. Can you give us, like, an example of how that works?
Brandon Lee [00:24:50]:
Yeah. So first of all, like your principles, number 1 is mindset. We we gotta look at there’s a mindset shift here of of how we look at LinkedIn, or any of those modern selling. Because if you know, when I say a LinkedIn live with podcasts that goes to YouTube, that’s digital, not LinkedIn. And I’m a digital first, but not digital only guy. So if we look at some of the traditional outreach, and I’m gonna say traditional in quotes because there was, like, traditional outreach sales pre, call it, 2010. Right. And then you got this new modern traditional outreach from 2010 to, call it, 2020, which
Vince Menzione [00:25:31]:
was This is when Marketo and Eloqua and some of the technologies where marketing caught up a little bit to selling.
Brandon Lee [00:25:37]:
This is when Predictable Revenues, a book, was published in 2011 and everybody, you know, lost their and and everything moved.
Vince Menzione [00:25:45]:
That’s when we started
Brandon Lee [00:25:46]:
hiring SDRs and marketing automation. And I think that’s where blast came in and all this stuff and
Vince Menzione [00:25:53]:
And division of labor too. Right? Yep. Like, the whole division of, like, I don’t have consistency as a customer across who I’m talking to in your organization.
Brandon Lee [00:26:00]:
Right. Right. So when when that happened, a lot of the lead gen moved into marketing. And sales, quite honestly, just got pushed to the side when it came to digital and was just keep doing what you’re doing.
Vince Menzione [00:26:17]:
Yeah. Close the deals.
Brandon Lee [00:26:18]:
Yeah. Close the deals. Yeah. Go do your own outreach. Get on planes. Go do just go do your own thing. But marketing got all the focus.
Vince Menzione [00:26:25]:
That’s right.
Brandon Lee [00:26:25]:
And we created, quite honestly, culturally, we created some really crappy stuff. It worked for a while and that’s why it was good. But we saturated inboxes with email. We we saturated the voicemail. And so that you know this happened because then technology started creating to support people, us, all of us. Like, we all have spam folders now.
Vince Menzione [00:26:50]:
Yeah.
Brandon Lee [00:26:51]:
I mean, when asking anybody out there, when was the last time you checked your spam folder? Because there might be something important in there.
Vince Menzione [00:26:57]:
I never check my junk folder. Right. Right. Unless somebody calls me up or sends me a note or a DM and says, check check your folder because that’s where I think it wound up. Right.
Brandon Lee [00:27:08]:
So when all of that started happening, marketing got more of this power and control, but we really hurt our buyer seller relationship. And this is why, like, Larry Levine, a good friend of mine, was selling from the heart. Yep. He comes out and just says, selling has no trust in it. Yeah. Sales has an all time low of trust. Well, it’s because we we created email automation. We’ve created phone calling automation.
Brandon Lee [00:27:38]:
Right? I I remember I I’m not gonna say the company name. It’s a big one. Everybody knows. But I love their research. But whenever I go and I download now it’s all ungated now. I don’t have to put in my name or e or any. I don’t have to I don’t have to put in my name and email. No.
Brandon Lee [00:27:54]:
I do. I have to put in my email. But it’s just my email. No phone numbers. No anything else. I download their research, and then I look at my phone. And within a minute, my phone rings. Yeah.
Brandon Lee [00:28:05]:
And I always tell them, look. I am not gonna be a client. I’m never I am not a buyer for what you do. I love your research. You wanna just notate that in there so you guys don’t call me every 6 weeks Do
Vince Menzione [00:28:15]:
not call.
Brandon Lee [00:28:15]:
When I when I download your research.
Vince Menzione [00:28:17]:
Yeah.
Brandon Lee [00:28:19]:
But that’s what we did. And it made buyers even more hesitant when the poor sellers were making calls or sending their own emails because the brand saturated their emails. And and and then we had, at the same time, the startup world. Right? Martech 500 or Martech 750 in 2012 is now the Martech. They they capped it at 5,000.
Vince Menzione [00:28:44]:
I think it’s over. I think it’s 8,000 or 10,000.
Brandon Lee [00:28:47]:
11,06 3
Vince Menzione [00:28:48]:
at the end of 23.
Brandon Lee [00:28:50]:
But they just stopped. At 5,000, they said, man, screw it. We’re not gonna change the name anymore.
Vince Menzione [00:28:54]:
Scott Brinker.
Brandon Lee [00:28:56]:
Yes. HubSpot. But over 11,000 companies, and what you know what they’re all doing? Landing pages, mass email, going out and buying cold databases, and emailing people, calling people, putting the SDRs on the phone, calling, calling, calling. What did we do? Buyers just said, Enough. Yeah. I’m done. And this is where the mindset around a conference. This is where we gotta take a look at creating demand versus capturing demand.
Brandon Lee [00:29:24]:
So you have those 11 1,000 companies out there and all the other ones, and they’re calling in, they’re sending in emails, they’re hammering away. They’re all fighting in this red ocean of trying to capture existing demand. And in any market, the data will say in a TAM, at any given time, 1 to 3% are currently in market.
Vince Menzione [00:29:45]:
Interesting.
Brandon Lee [00:29:46]:
All that is going into 1 to 3%. Yeah. You’re beating the crap out of your each other, your competitor. Everybody’s fighting. And then we got buyer intent software out there. Well, now we know, like, Vince may have done a Google search for this, and now you got 50 companies that are all calling you and sending your emails because your buyer intent score somewhere kicked up. And now what are you gonna do? You’re not gonna respond?
Vince Menzione [00:30:09]:
Not at all. And you talked about something that doesn’t exist in the room anymore, and that’s trust. Exactly. And I talk about the principles of partnership and saying that you have to have mutual trust in a partnership in order to have a that’s the oxygen in the room. Right. It’s also the same oxygen involved in the selling process. If you don’t have trust, you don’t have a sale.
Brandon Lee [00:30:28]:
Here’s exactly. Now here’s here’s the question I love. So c suite sales leaders that are out there, here’s the question. When was the last time that you answered a call from an unknown number?
Vince Menzione [00:30:42]:
I blocked them all. When was
Brandon Lee [00:30:45]:
the last time you opened an email from somebody you didn’t know who it was from?
Vince Menzione [00:30:49]:
I’ll sometime if if it gets in through my spam filter, I might look at it, and then it’s it’s file junk, right, or block.
Brandon Lee [00:31:00]:
So the follow-up question is, if you’re answering I don’t and I don’t or a version of I don’t, maybe, kinda, sort of. Yeah. And all the companies are doing these motions. Would you actually buy from your own company based on the way your company sells? No. Would your company get your attention?
Vince Menzione [00:31:21]:
Not at all.
Brandon Lee [00:31:22]:
We wouldn’t. And yet this is our go to market. And our strategy has been post COVID, oh, let we’ll wait till it goes back to normal, and we ain’t going back to normal. No. Right? We didn’t, and we’re not. The make more phone calls. Send more emails. And now it’s even worse that you got sales on one side going, where’s our MQLs? And you got marketing on the other side going, All the MQLs we send you, you guys don’t close.
Brandon Lee [00:31:49]:
And so there’s this great division there. And all the companies are fighting for the 1 to 3 percent. And we’re sitting back going, you know, if we create demand, we stand out, and we’re in a blue ocean. And you and I were talking before and without names, but, you know, last fall, we had a customer, 400% of their qualified pipeline goal. And within 4 months, they were at a 120 percent of their annual revenue goal. We just had to change the mind shift, the mindset. We had to shift. Like, this is this is my job right here.
Brandon Lee [00:32:24]:
My job is to get people that are looking like this and go, just just look at this a little bit differently. And that’s why I come back to look at it is what do you do at a conference? How do you strategize a conference? And guess what? LinkedIn is a lot like your conference. Yeah. These digital platforms Like, they’re they’re listening to podcasts. That’s right. They’re Like, they’re they’re listening to podcasts.
Vince Menzione [00:32:52]:
That’s right. They’re there. They’re consuming from various forms. Right? Right. Like, 12% of people are listening to podcasts. 30% are on link. And so they’re on they’re on various platforms, but it all aggregates together to build your authority.
Brandon Lee [00:33:04]:
Right. They’re there. The question is, are you showing up there?
Vince Menzione [00:33:08]:
Yeah.
Brandon Lee [00:33:09]:
Or is your competition showing up there? But we’re at a we’re at a time right now. All this has been coming to a head. 2024, big year. This is the year that millennials a millennial person becomes the buyer at 70 some percent of the positions. Yep. Right? They’re and millennials buy differently.
Vince Menzione [00:33:31]:
They do. They they behave differently. They’re on social.
Brandon Lee [00:33:34]:
They’re on social.
Vince Menzione [00:33:34]:
They’re scrolling. They’re real they’re looking at TikTok reels and Instagram reels. They’re watching all that content. I wanna you talked about mindset, and that brings me back to this set of principles. I talk about both the set of principles around partnering, and I talk about the dysfunctions of partnering. And I think you had mentioned that you have a set of false beliefs.
Brandon Lee [00:33:55]:
The fallacies.
Vince Menzione [00:33:56]:
The fallacies.
Brandon Lee [00:33:57]:
The CEO fallacies.
Vince Menzione [00:33:57]:
Well, and I talk about mindset really being a c suite conversation. Right? You gotta get the mindset right at the c suite and then up and down the organization. So can you talk about those fallacies?
Brandon Lee [00:34:06]:
So number 1, we we touched on it earlier, is they think of LinkedIn as a resume, a place for your resume. It’s it’s where I go when I when I look for a job. So that’s one of the biggest fallacies we need to get it out. The other piece is that anything social media is self promotion, and it’s not. It’s brand promotion.
Vince Menzione [00:34:28]:
Yeah. Yeah.
Brandon Lee [00:34:29]:
We go back we go back to the conference. When your company sponsors so that you can be on stage for something, are you up there to promote you? No. You you use your CEO status to share the brand message to the industry.
Vince Menzione [00:34:47]:
That’s right.
Brandon Lee [00:34:48]:
It’s brand promotion, but it comes through your person
Vince Menzione [00:34:52]:
That’s right.
Brandon Lee [00:34:53]:
Because of the role the leadership role that you play in your company. So that big
Vince Menzione [00:34:57]:
fallacy position of authority. Position of authority. Right.
Brandon Lee [00:35:00]:
Right? So that fallacy is, you know, oh, LinkedIn, social media, anything. You’re like there’s there’s this pushback. And I get it because early social media was very self promoting. I mean, we didn’t know the word influencer until social media came about. And and a lot of influencers are very self promoting, but that’s their job structure. That’s their business structure.
Vince Menzione [00:35:25]:
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Vince Menzione [00:36:18]:
Check them out. I think it’s acceptable to be self promoting in the context of it helping the organization as well as long as it’s aligned to the brand and to the strategy.
Brandon Lee [00:36:29]:
And and that’s that’s brand promotion that comes through you. It’s it’s a slightly different mindset.
Vince Menzione [00:36:34]:
Right.
Brandon Lee [00:36:35]:
But but I believe there’s the fallacy of social media gets all gets thrown into the bucket of the the person that’s a talking head on their phone doing 10 videos a day, and they’re they’re making their money through affiliate deal, you know, opportunities. Yep.
Vince Menzione [00:36:51]:
Agree.
Brandon Lee [00:36:51]:
Right? Or the the bikini clad women on Instagram and where they’re making their money or you know, all that stuff, it’s very self promote self promote. Look at me. Look at me.
Vince Menzione [00:37:01]:
That’s right.
Brandon Lee [00:37:02]:
And a lot of c suites are like, that’s not the way I got here. I didn’t get to my position by being self promoting. I’m I’m a team player. I’m a team builder. I’m about my team. So that’s one of the fallacies we just we’ve gotta address.
Vince Menzione [00:37:16]:
I see it so often too. And, you know, we talked about this earlier. Like, I do these podcasts with a lot of big corporate brands, a lot of leaders in those organizations. Some do a good job of it, like they do a good job of promoting that episode and promoting their brand and their self their personal authority and brand as well as the company’s brand. But there are others that they don’t know how to do it right. And it’s almost and it’s really, it’s challenging to me because I look to them candidly Mhmm. To take the podcast that we just did and help promote it because it helps promote my brand and reach. Right? And when they don’t do a good job of it, and it happens less time than more often, I guess, is what I would say.
Vince Menzione [00:38:00]:
But why do you think that happens? And how do you coach those organizations, the C suite leaders? What do you say to them now to help them be successful? Well,
Brandon Lee [00:38:13]:
that says a lot about the organization and the way that they’re structured, and it says the mindset that they have around all things digital. And we do that with our show too is, we gotta have you as a guest on our show. We put together this package, and there’s there’s shorts. There’s, you know, pre written social media content to help you. We’re like, you know, change anything you want. But there’s all these different shorts, here’s graphics. Here’s all of our tags and everything. And you have some guests.
Brandon Lee [00:38:39]:
They’re like, hello? Hello? Did you get did you get the email? Did you get the memo? Well, what does that say? They’re not equipped. They don’t have systems in place to take advantage of these because if they did, they would know, hey, this is great content that we could use to go tag our CEO or tag this person and do that. And, hey, let’s go tag the show and tag Brandon and Carson and Tom and take advantage of all their networks as well. And some of them just don’t do anything. So first thing for me, you know, what do I do is well, first of all, it tells me where they’re at. Tells me the structure of their business. That they’re probably one of those that are saying make more phone calls and send more emails because they don’t have any other actions that are actually helping them anyway.
Vince Menzione [00:39:27]:
So we reached the 400,000. I call it the Microsoft ecosystem, but it’s the same ecosystem that both Google and AWS care about. Right? In that ecosystem of partners, they range in size from companies that are 20 or $30,000,000,000 in revenue, like the large distributors, large reseller, transactional reseller organizations, some of the largest ISVs down to the smallest MSPs, small 1 or 2 person organizations. What would you say to them now to help them be more successful? What what are the 3 to 5 things that our listeners and viewers should be thinking about and doing differently, Brandon?
Brandon Lee [00:40:07]:
3 to 5 things. So the the first thing I wanna set it up with, companies should be looking at, are they blocking out? Are they breaking in? Like, where where are these companies at?
Vince Menzione [00:40:19]:
And what do you mean by that?
Brandon Lee [00:40:20]:
Yeah. It’s, you know, blocking out is you’re an established company. You’re one of the OGs. You’re there. And if you get a little bit arrogant and lazy, the young, aggressive, digital first organizations, they’ll be on your backside before you know it.
Vince Menzione [00:40:43]:
Right. Right? There’s They might even be copying your content.
Brandon Lee [00:40:47]:
They might even be copying your content. Yeah. Couldn’t imagine that happening.
Vince Menzione [00:40:50]:
Never happened.
Brandon Lee [00:40:51]:
Could you?
Vince Menzione [00:40:51]:
Never happened.
Brandon Lee [00:40:52]:
But, yeah, it’s in in that’s the challenge we have right now. Right? I mean, gosh, don’t even get me started on the whole expert space like anybody because you can go out there and watch some videos. Go watch YouTube. Go read the OGs content and learn it, and then start parroting it. And if you know how to engage with people on social media, you know how to be consistent, which being consistent is just showing up and doing it. Put in a system. Go go post every day and parrot someone else’s content, and you will start to get a following. Yeah.
Brandon Lee [00:41:24]:
And so you ask, what are those? Number 1 is looking at your own structure and say, are we trying to capture demand or are we creating demand? And that’s gonna be a huge shift. And for most companies that have the very strong marketing and sales silos, can almost guarantee they are trying to capture demand. And there are some more companies on the marketing side that they’re trying to be more proactive around demand generation. But, honestly, it’s weak. Most of it’s weak. And there’s some people out there doing a phenomenal job, but most part, it’s pretty weak. It’s, you know, case studies. Yeah.
Brandon Lee [00:42:02]:
But, you know, case studies are still very sales y. What are you doing to help your customers think about what’s coming in 6 months?
Vince Menzione [00:42:11]:
Right. Right.
Brandon Lee [00:42:12]:
How are you helping them think about what the shifts that they should be working on? How are you bringing to them something of value that they really care about? And the biggest challenge is we use words like, you know, be a trusted advisor and add value. And if you don’t take the word serious, you start creating crap.
Vince Menzione [00:42:30]:
Yep.
Brandon Lee [00:42:30]:
You create a bunch of stuff and it doesn’t really do the job. And you go, well, we’re doing that. But but you’re not. Like, pull yourself back and really think about why should your customers or your prospects Why would they want to talk to you? Do that. And it’s not about you. It’s not about, oh, you got a new product or you got new pricing or whatever. What do they what would really, really make them go? Vince, I need to talk to you. I mean, we were talking about it.
Brandon Lee [00:43:01]:
Three messages today. Yep. I need to talk to you.
Vince Menzione [00:43:05]:
So I would layer in to these organizations. Specifically, we talk about brand and story. I would layer in those same organizations if they’re selling with and through a Microsoft and Amazon or Google. They need to be known
Brandon Lee [00:43:18]:
Mhmm.
Vince Menzione [00:43:18]:
With they need to be a shiny quarter in a bucket full of shiny quarters, again, that red ocean we talk about. And how do I stand out? Why should I, as a Microsoft seller, like a Carson Hetty
Brandon Lee [00:43:31]:
Right.
Vince Menzione [00:43:31]:
Wanna work with pay attention to me.
Brandon Lee [00:43:33]:
Yep. Right? But and that’s so if your your customer is a Microsoft seller, well, let’s focus everything on them.
Vince Menzione [00:43:40]:
Yep.
Brandon Lee [00:43:40]:
Why would they which we know the Microsoft sellers, what do they get all the time? They get partners going You got any leads? Yeah. You got any leads?
Vince Menzione [00:43:49]:
And thousands of emails and calls a week. Like, can I work with you? Can we do a deal together? Can you can you bring me into your accounts? It’s
Brandon Lee [00:43:56]:
and how’s that messaging working out for you? It’s not working out. Right. So do something different. What does that Microsoft seller need? What can you bring to them to make them want to talk with you? Exactly. So maybe let’s make this practical. Your CEO is very prolific with content. Your organization has a show and you get to invite those Microsoft sellers to come on your show as a guest and talk about the cool stuff that they’re doing. Now would they wanna come on your show? Like, you sit back and look at this company and go, okay.
Brandon Lee [00:44:32]:
Their CEO’s pretty they they create a lot of content. This is interesting. The team, all across different, departments, they’re active on LinkedIn. They’re commenting. They’re posting content. Overall, we built this brand of an organization that they’re active and they’re there.
Vince Menzione [00:44:49]:
You know, maybe they’re doing something very innovative and unique on, let’s say, AI as an example. Right?
Brandon Lee [00:44:55]:
What what’s your innovation?
Vince Menzione [00:44:56]:
What do
Brandon Lee [00:44:56]:
you guys talk about? And, you know, one of the fallacies we didn’t we didn’t get to all of them, but one of the fallacies with CEOs is I don’t have anything unique to bring to the market.
Vince Menzione [00:45:05]:
Yeah. Such a bet.
Brandon Lee [00:45:06]:
Which is totally wrong. Your your perspective is unique to the market. That’s right. And here’s the other the other thing with that is, for c suite, you wanna help all areas of your business Get active with content. It doesn’t have to be LinkedIn, but digital first because your employees are watching you. Do they see you? Are you there? Yeah. In an internal memo, it doesn’t matter. No one cares.
Brandon Lee [00:45:31]:
Nope. But are they seeing you out in public? Go back to the trade show. Go back to the conference. Sales is always going, okay. I got these important meetings, mister and miss CEO. Can you join me? Why do they do that? Because your person, your title, your presence matters.
Vince Menzione [00:45:51]:
Yep. So at the leadership level, I need to up level my game. Yes. I need to have I need to have my brand and story right. Yes. I need to tell my unique point of view is the way I would say it, maybe. Mhmm. Perspective, point of view, authority.
Vince Menzione [00:46:06]:
Yes. And then my team needs to come alongside me. Yes. And this is where, the amplification happens. Right? Yeah. And so many times, all I see is a marketing person repost a link to an event or whatever it might be with no point of view, no authority, maybe no following, by the way. They were just they’re just hired hands to go do that job, but they haven’t built their own authority, their own networks within LinkedIn.
Brandon Lee [00:46:33]:
Right. Yeah. So you get you know, I’ll get, oh, yeah. CEO. So, oh, yeah, our marketing team, they they take care of it. They’re crushing it. Yeah. They’re crushing it.
Vince Menzione [00:46:42]:
The marketing team does a great job.
Brandon Lee [00:46:44]:
And so we’ll go look and and go, okay. Well, here’s your here’s your post, and you had pick a number. You had 30 likes and one comment. So we go look at the likes, and 22 of them were your team members.
Vince Menzione [00:46:58]:
Yeah. They’re just amplifying it themselves. Right?
Brandon Lee [00:47:01]:
There’s no value in it. It’s it’s like you threw an event and no one showed up except your team members. And you’re like, we got all these people here.
Vince Menzione [00:47:08]:
We got a lot of leads.
Brandon Lee [00:47:09]:
We got a lot of people here. Right? So, yeah, as you were saying, leader led
Vince Menzione [00:47:15]:
Yep.
Brandon Lee [00:47:16]:
For sure. And then get your story right, get your systems right. When the leader starts taking something like LinkedIn serious, it actually demonstrates to the rest of the company that this is important. And then you equip them. There’s some coaching. There’s some training. There’s some guardrails that need to be put in place, but it’s gotta be part of that culture. It comes back to that mindset.
Brandon Lee [00:47:42]:
And we gotta get out of how much time does this take? Because it’s not about how much time does this take. It’s about how valuable can we make this.
Vince Menzione [00:47:52]:
How much time does it take?
Brandon Lee [00:47:54]:
Depends on what you want to accomplish. Yeah. May I ask this question? How much time does it take to make cold calls?
Vince Menzione [00:48:03]:
A lot of time. Right. A lot of time.
Brandon Lee [00:48:06]:
Is it is it is the the juice worth the squeeze?
Vince Menzione [00:48:09]:
Not not at all. Not at all.
Brandon Lee [00:48:11]:
So let’s stop looking at LinkedIn. Like, how much time does it gonna take? And let’s go, is there fruit from the activities that we’re doing? Because if I could have somebody that used LinkedIn for 8 hours a day and there was fruit and lots of it, I’d be okay with them not making cold calls anymore.
Vince Menzione [00:48:29]:
Yep. So for our viewers and listeners that wanna figure this out, what do they do next?
Brandon Lee [00:48:38]:
I think learn, observe, and this is the best way I think to do it. Who influences you? Where are you learning?
Vince Menzione [00:48:51]:
Who do you respect? Who do you Who do you respect?
Brandon Lee [00:48:54]:
And and what is it that they do? Whether it’s the company or the individual or the combination of them, what do they do that is getting your attention? Do you have podcasts that you follow? Okay. How influential is that pod? Oh, I love it. Great. Does your company have a podcast? No. Okay. So podcasts you love podcasts. Oh, yeah. I listen to them when I’m on a treadmill.
Brandon Lee [00:49:20]:
I go for a while. Love them. Great. Does your company have 1? No. Why not? You just demonstrated that
Vince Menzione [00:49:27]:
That’s right. It’s valuable.
Brandon Lee [00:49:30]:
Right? Oh, I got there’s people you know, I don’t do a whole lot on LinkedIn, but there’s a few people that I follow. Okay. Why do you follow them? I love their research. I love what their point of view. I learn a lot from them. Great. Are there people out there that want would want to learn from you? We are a customer. Great.
Brandon Lee [00:49:46]:
Are you out there on LinkedIn so they can learn from you? No. No. No. But but we have an email newsletter. Great. And our open rates are good. Are you sure? Because open rates and and, you know, don’t even we won’t talk about the cookie dying later, but, you know, your open rates don’t necessarily mean a human actually looked at it. That’s right.
Brandon Lee [00:50:07]:
It means their software looked at what your software sent them. So what are the click rates? Yeah. What are those trends? So I would say, first of all, is take that step back and say, who’s influencing you? Ask your team. Where are you learning?
Vince Menzione [00:50:23]:
And if I need some coaching, who do I call?
Brandon Lee [00:50:26]:
Well, we would love to talk to anybody. Okay. I would I didn’t I you know what? I’m not that self promoting, although I should be. But what should they do? Yeah. Look. We’re it’s get fist bumps .com and, Brandon Lee on LinkedIn. I’d love to help you, but and it’s if we can help you, I’d love to. Here’s the key thing.
Brandon Lee [00:50:45]:
Are you spending time, money, and effort, and frustration with your team trying to fight the red ocean of the 1 to 3 percent? Were you able to actually create demand? And I and I don’t say this very often. Yeah. And forgive me for being a little braggy right now. But it I had 3 messages today from people that said I needed one of them was from I think it was from my post today. She said, I need to know more about what you can what you do. When can we talk? Nice. Senior VP of a company. Another one was, so and so talked very highly of you, has tagged you in a couple of posts that they’ve read share.
Brandon Lee [00:51:25]:
Can we talk? And the other one was, okay. I think I’m ready. We need to talk.
Vince Menzione [00:51:30]:
Yep. You’re moving in down the funnel. In the funnel and down the funnel.
Brandon Lee [00:51:34]:
Well, I like to say we’re moving. We haven’t even talked about the matrix. Let’s move him in the matrix. Brandon, you have
Vince Menzione [00:51:40]:
been an amazing guest. I so enjoyed having you here in our beautiful studio. Look at this view here we have. This is incredible. Beautiful South Florida, Boca Raton, the Boca Raton moment as I refer to it. I had somebody at Microsoft say, I I don’t wanna hear Boca Raton moment anymore because I’ve heard it so many times. No. They got it again.
Vince Menzione [00:51:58]:
You were very generous to fly down today from Atlanta to be with our viewers and listeners here on The Ultimate Guide to Partnering. This is such a great set of nuggets to help organizations, partner organizations that really need help here. A lot of organizations I work with, a lot of organizations that I know and admire still don’t get this right. So this has been such a great and valuable conversation for us.
Brandon Lee [00:52:25]:
I hope it helps.
Vince Menzione [00:52:26]:
Thank you, sir.
Brandon Lee [00:52:26]:
My pleasure. Thanks for having me. And thanks for letting me come down to Florida for the day. Yeah. Yeah. Be a part of that
Vince Menzione [00:52:31]:
to get you down here
Brandon Lee [00:52:32]:
more often. And have my my fist bump mug over there and everything.
Vince Menzione [00:52:36]:
I need a sip, actually. It’s been
Brandon Lee [00:52:38]:
a while. We’ve been talking for a while. Yeah. For for everybody, we we had about a 2 hour delay. So we’ve been talking for 2
Vince Menzione [00:52:43]:
hours before we recorded. We’ve been we’ve been for a while here. So I wanna thank you. I wanna thank each of you, our valuable friends, listeners, for joining the ultimate guide to partnering. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of Ultimate Guide to Partnering. Online at ultimateguidetopartnering.com. If you like this episode, I’d be thrilled if you left us up to a 5 star review on either Apple or Spotify. This helps us to continue to feature amazing guests.
Vince Menzione [00:53:17]:
Also, please check out and subscribe to our new YouTube channel, Ultimate Partner. We’ll catch you next time on the ultimate guide to partnering.