Kara Smith Brown shares principles from her storied B2B sales career that help every professional make the most of their opportunities.
You’ll Learn
- How and why to think of your career like a funnel
- Why “maybes” are more dangerous than “no’s”
- How to develop and share a unique point of view that gets you noticed
About Kara
Kara Smith Brown, LeadCoverage CEO and Founder, is a recognized supply chain, logistics, and technology thought leader. Her book, The Revenue Engine: Fueling a B2B High Octane Pipeline, is an Amazon Bestseller and offers readers effective revenue-generating strategies. Kara is a thought leader in the supply chain and go to market industries. She lives in Atlanta with her husband and two daughters.
- Book: The Revenue Engine: Fueling a B2B High Octane Pipeline
- Website: KaraSmithBrown.com
- Website: LeadCoverage.com
Resources Mentioned
- Book: Go for No! Yes is the Destination, No is How You Get There by Richard Fenton and Andrea Waltz
- Book: The Four Conversations: A New Model for Selling Expertise by Blair Enns
- Book: The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers―Straight Talk on the Challenges of Entrepreneurship by Ben Horowitz
- Past episode: 016: Going for No with Andrea Waltz
- Tool: HubSpot
- Tool: Crystal Knows
Thank you, Sponsors!
- Strawberry.me. Claim your $50 credit and build momentum in your career with Strawberry.me/Awesome
Kara Smith Brown Interview Transcript
Pete Mockaitis
Kara, welcome!
Kara Brown
Thank you so much for having me. I have been looking forward to this for weeks. Weeks!
Pete Mockaitis
Oh, me too. I’m super excited. Well, this is rare that I knew you in college, and then just discovered you wrote a book that needs to be on the podcast. So that’s kind of a new one. Thank you.
Kara Brown
Yeah, my pleasure. You are clearly not one of my 14,000 or so logistics and supply chain followers on LinkedIn because I feel like everyone in supply chain and logistics knows about this book, which was the idea, actually.
Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, good work.
Kara Brown
Yeah, mission accomplished.
Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m not great at logistics, but it was so funny. I’m trying to buy a big, like, heavy studio door for recording stuff. And I was talking to this mill, and they said, “Oh, we don’t even know how to get a door to you.”
It’s like, “All right, you got to call a 3PL, it’s a third-party logistics company. You got to tell them you want an LTL, less than truckload.” And so, I was like, “Why am I figuring out how you can send me a door?” It was like, “Because I’ve been talking to Kara. I know some things.”
Kara Brown
I will happily help you get that door, by the way. I know people.
Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I appreciate that.
Kara Brown
I definitely know people that can help with that for sure.
Pete Mockaitis
Awesome. Well, you’ve got so much fun stuff in your book, The Revenue Engine. And so, even though most of our listeners are not in go-to market, or GTM teams, which you’ve defined as sales, marketing, and customer success-ish type roles, those who go to the market and get their money, if you will, but some are.
But I think you’ve got some universal wisdom about goal-setting, points of view, meeting your audience, and so much more. So, can you tell us the story of a disastrous meeting that changed the way you think?
Kara Brown
This is really funny. Yes, so I will tell you the story of probably one of the worst meetings of my career. So, I was early to a very sexy company there in Chicagoland, called Echo Global Logistics, and I was one of the first employees there. And we walked into a leadership meeting because, I, Kara, decided that I was going to share my expertise on branding with a team of men that were running the company I was working for.
And my sheer naivete and confidence at setting this meeting to begin with, today just shocks me. But you and I knew each other in college, so maybe it doesn’t shock you that I was, like, this confident in my early 20s. And so, I brought them all into this meeting room and I said, “Look at my PowerPoint with how we’re going to use the brand colors, and the taglines, and all of these cool things” that I thought was important.
So, I’m mid-sentence, and one of them stands up, and he says, “What the heck are we doing here? Why are you wasting everyone’s time? Don’t ever call a meeting like this ever again,” and just walks out the door. And the guy that I actually reported to was a little more apologetic, and he’s like, “Hey, sorry, like this isn’t really what we’re looking for. We should probably have these conversations before you called the entire leadership team of the business into one of these meetings.”
But I took away from that super uncomfortable conversation, “Okay, these guys that are running a free brokerage, for all intents and purposes, and we’re a startup and we’re trying to make money, all they wanted me to do was participate in generating revenue. And what I had brought them was a color palette.”
And it, just, was so misaligned to what they really wanted me to do. And thankfully, for me, fast forward three years, they did appreciate what I brought to the table by the time that I exited. And it was a wonderful experience. But I took away from that sort of horrible, horrible moment where you’re like, your gut sinks down and you’re like, “I’m going to get fired, right? This is a horrible experience for me.”
Turn it into kind of what would drive me for the next 15 or 20 years around “What does matter?” and “How do I never get kicked out of another meeting like that?” and “How do I actually get asked to be at the table?” So, full cycle, which is really funny, is I’m now on boards and I got my first paid board seat a few weeks ago.
Pete Mockaitis
Congratulations.
Kara Brown
Thank you, yeah. So, I’ve come full circle from, like, “Hey, get the heck out of here,” to, “No, we really want you in the room because you bring value.”
Pete Mockaitis
Well, I love that story for many reasons. One, because it’s so emotional. And, two, it’s because that sucks to hear. That must have just been a total gut punch, very unpleasant in the moment. And yet, what a gift. What a gift to have that clear, unambiguous feedback, like, “What you are saying is not at all what we want.”
Kara Brown
Yeah, “And don’t ever say it again.”
Pete Mockaitis
And yet, at the same time, it’s totally understandable. Like, in the book, you said, “I was the marketing girl.” And marketing is a big word that can mean a lot of things. And for some people may want exactly a color palette, exactly a brand voice, guidelines, fonts, perspectives, consistency.
Some people that’s exactly what they need at a certain point. For them, it was not at all, and they let you know it. And so, they wanted to hear, when it comes to marketing, how you do stuff and that turns into customers and revenue.
Kara Brown
Yeah, they did not want to hear about the color palette. And no deference to folks that do design and branding, it’s super, super important. It’s just not something that I do. And so, as a professional today, we, as a company, today, I’m the CEO of a company called Lead Coverage, and we do zero graphic design.
So, we lead to the customers, and we say, “Listen, we will do all of the math for you. We are very, very into how you measure what’s happening in your marketing group, how you measure your go-to-market, but we are not the team that’s going to give you a new logo or a new website or a new look and feel. There are incredible branding shops out there that’ll do that for you. It’s just not what we do.”
Pete Mockaitis
Understood. So then, what is the big idea behind your book, The Revenue Engine?
Kara Brown
Yeah, so the big idea is go-to-market needs to be measured, and it needs to be measured three ways – through volume, velocity, and value inside of three funnels. We think about it as the prospect funnel, those are strangers, people who do not know who you are today. The nurture funnel, who are folks that do know you but aren’t quite customers yet. And then the customer funnel, which is cross-sell, up-sell opportunities. And we execute all of this in a three-step motion we call share good news, track interest, follow up.
Pete Mockaitis
All right. Very succinctly. You’ve practiced this.
Kara Brown
I have practiced, yes, many stages, many coaches, all the things.
Pete Mockaitis
Lovely. Okay. Well, so now some of our listeners find themselves in a go-to-market role. Many do not, but I think this is pretty handy in terms of any time you’re trying to move anything through a pipeline in terms of, let’s say you’re looking for a job. And so, there’s prospects, you know, and there’s folks you want to get their attention. You want to get some meetings with them and sell yourself.
You’ve also applied some of this in your own romantic life, Kara. Can we hear the tale about how this hunky, fitness model, nuclear physicist, shout out to Eric, became your husband?
Kara Brown
Yeah, you met him long before we got married.
Pete Mockaitis
I did, yeah.
Kara Brown
We hung out many times before this actual event happened. So, I was training for Iron Man Wisconsin, which was a big deal. And he told me that we would get engaged after the Iron Man, which, Kara, in her 26- or 27-year-old brain heard at the finish line of the Iron Man. So, when I accomplished this Ironman goal, and there was no ring at the finish line, I was immediately disappointed, right?
And then I did an IPO. So, my name was on the IPO press release for the company I worked for, Eco Global Logistics. It was a big damn deal. It was awesome. It was like the coolest thing ever. I owned my own house. I was a 10 out of 10, Pete. Like, Chicago dating scene, 2009, I was, like, I was top shelf, right? And I was saying to this guy, “Listen, if it’s not you, that’s fine, but I need to get this back on the market if it’s not you, so let’s do this or let’s not.”
And so, he said, “Yes, yes, we’ll do it. We’ll do it.” And I said, “Okay, great.” So, I did what any normal girl would do, and I booked the church. So, I called my parents’ church in Schaumburg, Illinois, and I said, “Hey, I need to book a wedding.” And Father George, who, rest in peace, said, “Hey, great, congrats on your engagement.” And I said, “Father George, I’m not engaged, but if this doesn’t do it, you can keep the 100 bucks, so let’s just book it,” so we did.
And he sent me the receipt in the mail, and I put the receipt on my refrigerator and I took off all the other magnets on the fridge in my little house in Chicago. And Eric came over one night and leaned closely into this document on the refrigerator, and stopped, and said, “Hey, what is this?” I said, “Oh, I forgot to tell you. I booked the church for my wedding.”
And he was like, “What wedding?” And I was like, “Well, honey, this is a 10 out of 10. And so, if you don’t want this, in 265 days, someone else is going to be at the end of the aisle, and I’m kind of tired of waiting for you. So, someone will be there. And if it’s not you, it’ll be someone else.” And so, two weeks later, I had a ring, and it was the best hard close of my entire life.
And in the book, I use this to talk about funnels and how, you know, the top of the funnel, you end up dating a bunch of folks. Like, you and I met in college, right? And in college there’s a whole bunch of ideal customer profiles all shoved into one place, and so you’re pretty lucky if you find one there. And then you date some and some get away from you, etc. And this is moving down the funnel.
And then finally, you have to kind of, like, sometimes put it on the line and do that hard close before one gets across the finish line. So, it’s my silly story to talk about funnels and dating in Chicago and how they’re kind of the same thing.
Pete Mockaitis
Well, let’s talk a bit about funnels and pipelines, and we’ll take it maybe one level away from abstraction. Not only in business-to-business sales, but in anything in which there are people and we want them to take an action. How do we think about doing this well?
Kara Brown
Well, I think it’s whether you’re looking for a job or for us looking for candidates, right? Like, looking for candidates is exactly the same thing. We have LinkedIn now where we can see basically every candidate in our geography. We can narrow it down by region, and where they went to school, and how much experience they have, etc. Everything we do in life is a pipeline.
Every time you shop, right? I am a Nordstrom aficionado, which will not surprise you as my friend from many years ago. And I am constantly on their website looking, on there, like narrowing down my filters to get just the right pair of pants or just the right jacket for whatever outfit I’m wearing. So, every decision we make, whether it’s buying groceries or major life decisions, like jobs, we are sending everything we do through a funnel.
And so, we put three funnels in place, and here’s the really interesting piece about a funnel. You can’t go up a funnel, ever. You can’t ever move up a funnel. And so, what I really like about the way that we laid out these three funnels is, to go from one to the other, there is a true flexion point. There is a moment where you have to exit one funnel to enter the next. And the flexion point is where the measurement happens. This is where the magic happens.
And so, we talk a lot about deltas and ratios and conversion ratios, and it’s all kind of boring. But I think what’s really, really important is at the bottom of the first funnel, there’s a flexion point before you get to enter the top of the next funnel. So, whether you’re looking for a spouse, or looking for a job, or doing demand gen, and go to market and B2B, it’s the flexion point that matters.
Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, for example, we might just be thinking of ideas as at one level, and then the next level might be proposals or agenda items at the meeting. So, we’ve exited one funnel which is just by head. It’s like, “Okay, I got 20 ideas, 14 of them are kind of dumb. So, I’ve worked through that funnel, and now there’s six of them I’m going to go ahead and bring to my teammates. And then we’re going to discuss those and some will get ejected and then some will move forward on further.”
But to your point, is they don’t go backwards in terms of, it’s like, “Hey forget we ever spoke of that.” Like a judge, “Strike this from the record. I never brought that up. It’s going back in my head idea stage.”
Kara Brown
Yeah. And I think that the key is opportunity cost. Every idea that is not struck from the board that you move through, even though you know it’s the wrong idea, represents opportunity cost. And it’s the same with dating, and it’s the same with candidates, and it’s the same with jobs, and it’s the same with a pipeline in a B2B environment.
Every prospect that you leave in the funnel, that you know will not convert for whatever reason, “Timing is bad,” “It’s not the right idea,” “It was really dumb to begin with,” “We don’t like Pete to begin with. We’re just going to cross him off the list, right?”
Whatever the reason, if you are keeping something in the funnel that doesn’t belong there, you are creating opportunity cost inside your organization, inside your thought process, inside your brainstorm activity, anytime you are not honest, and scratching out things that you should be disqualifying, you are creating opportunity cost.
Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. And it’s funny, as sort of being steeped in your book and other learnings about sales and marketing, being on both sides of the sales table, instead of just the buyer/consumer, I’m starting to appreciate how useful a clear no is. Whereas, before I was like, “I don’t want to be rude. I don’t want to hurt their feelings. They spent a lot of time.”
But just today, talk about the doors again, somebody, apparently it was kind of hard for him to get this estimate for the doors. And I said, “Okay, so what is this? Pine? Okay. Does it have an STC, sound blocking rating, or a weight on it? Okay. No? All right. Well, I’ll pass on those. Do you have any others?” And so, it’s just like, the poor guy is like eight minutes after his estimate got to me, I was like, “Those are out. Got anything else?” He’s like, “Ah, not really.”
And so, I used to think, “Oh, I don’t know. Is that rude? Is that…? Oh, should I be kind of nicer?” But, no, being on other side, we appreciate knowing clearly, it’s like, “Okay, I don’t need to follow up with that person at all. I can free the mental space, free the time and energy, and put that to someone else.”
Kara Brown
Amen. There’s a book that I think you might like, by Blair Enns. It’s called The Four Conversations, and it’s the art of selling, the idea of expertise, so the art of selling expertise. And he says this very clearly in the book. The exact wording will escape me, but to paraphrase, “I would prefer a no than a maybe.” And so, he recommends that you ask for the no, that you say to someone, “If this is not going to move forward, that is okay. Please tell me now.”
So, we have this new mantra, because it’s actually Blair Enns’ mantra, and it is, “I am the expert. I am the prize. I am here to help. All will not follow. That’s okay.”
Pete Mockaitis
Okay.
Kara Brown
That’s okay. And I think, sometimes, as entrepreneurs, like, I’m an entrepreneur and I’m a salesperson, I want everyone to like me. I want everyone to be a part of the ecosystem. I want to help everyone. Like, what we have can help everyone in my super, super tiny niche, which is actually a $2 trillion market. But if you are in my niche, I know that what I can do can help you.
And so, when they say no, I’m almost like, “Oh, I wish you said yes, because I know I can help.” But a hard no means that I can go spend that time finding the next customer who will see me as the expert. And so, I think the same is in dating, right? Like, date a lot of people, but if they don’t see you as the one, like it’s time to move on, right? I dated a lot of guys for a long time that we’re going to be it, right, and we’re not going to be the one.
And so, this is exactly the same thing as the opportunity cost of that time. Maybe because I’m a woman and, like, I did have to date in Chicago in my 20s. I have like this real affinity for dating analogies. But it does, oftentimes, feel like you’re being dumped or you’re being rejected when someone says no. And it took me a long time to get over it.
And now I ask for the no, “Please be honest with me and tell me no because I’d rather spend my time on someone else who’s going to give me the strongest possible yes, and they’re out there.”
Pete Mockaitis
I like that a lot. And, well, I mean, I was a Chicago single for a while as well. I went on first dates with approximately 100 women, before my dear bride and I found each other. And so, I think that’s a great frame, and it’s bringing me back, too.
I used to say, when they told me no, I thought of it almost like a marketing funnel myself. I was like, “Oh, actually, this person is disqualified due to inadequate Pete interest. Because that’s one of my criteria and she’s not measuring up on it. So, she’s disqualified.” As opposed to, “I was rejected and I’m very sad about it.”
Kara Brown
I love that so much. I love that in business, too. Like, I am rejecting them because they don’t want me as much as I need to be wanted to close this deal. I love it. Yeah, I think I might be reframing everything we do from now on.
Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, one of our first episodes, 14-ish, Andrea had a book called Go for No, which is really fun about pursuing the no’s and making it more fun and less rejection-y. So, very cool. And then also when it comes to a pipeline, you say that in many sales contexts, there’s hidden gold that tends to be often found in a similar place. There’s a pattern. Where is that hidden gold often found?
Kara Brown
Yes, so one of the campaign strategies that we run, we call Signs of Life, which, generally, comes from sales teams, or people like me, disqualifying too early, or kind of wrong timing. So, you can still help this prospect or help this person, but maybe your timing was off the first time.
And so, we literally call it signs of life. And we just send an email to anyone who could potentially be a prospect. And we see about a 10% lift overall. And this is very specifically in freight, but it can be applied to any B2B business. But it’s kind of like sending out like a group WhatsApp to all the women that you dated being like, “Hey, anybody thinking again? Anybody want a second shot?”
Pete Mockaitis
The group part is what’s most terrifyingly interesting. Like, I’ll have a weird dream about this tonight, Kara. But, no, I think that Signs of Life is a good way to say it. I think I was listening to the “I Love Marketing” podcast, and they talk about the nine-word email that revives dead leads, which is just kind of like, “Hey, are you still interested in launching a podcast, or getting some freight brokerage, go to market strategy advice?” Like, whatever your thing is.
And I’ve used that myself and it’s kind of amazing, they say, “Oh, yeah, well, that was like actually seven months ago that I filled out the form, but you know what? Yeah, it would be a good time to pick up the conversation.”
So, I think that’s interesting in terms of anything, or like job hunting, any company where the conversation got a little bit interesting, or, “Ooh, it wasn’t quite the right time or the right fit or they went with someone else but it was close.” There’s a lot of power and opportunity often hiding there, but we discount them all the way to zero. We’ve written them off and moved on.
Kara Brown
Yeah, so I think there’s a delicate balance between writing someone off and moving on forever and the Signs of Life campaign. Professor John Dawes, who is in Australia, came up with the rule of 95. So he says 95% of your buying market, this is B2B specific, 95% of your buying market are not in market at any given time, which means that you’re looking, really like a needle in a haystack, for the 5% that are in market at any given day, which means that if you hit them, and they’re not in market on Monday, and three Mondays from now, they might be in market and you just have no idea, right? There’s no way to know.
Now, there are ways to know whether someone’s actually interested, and we can get into intent data on another time. But the point is that 95% of the individuals who could buy from you aren’t buying the exact thing that you’re trying to sell at that exact moment, which is kind of the joy of marketing, right? It’s part of why we even exist because if everyone was buying everything at the exact same time, we wouldn’t need marketers to begin with.
And so, finding that 5%, that needle in the haystack, and uncovering exactly how you can help them at the exact right time is the joy of what we do.
Pete Mockaitis
Well, it’s beautiful to hear your fondness and passion for this because some folks could very well be like, “Oh, that sounds so brutal, 95% of the time, they’re like, ‘Get lost. I don’t want this now.’” But that actually brings up another important conversation. In your book, you go into some detail about how sales goals are often generated in practice versus what is the best practice. There is a wide chasm between the two. Could you paint these two pictures for us?
Kara Brown
I think most of the time, we see, specifically in SMB and sometimes in mid-market, we see leadership teams making goals that are just not aligned with reality.
Pete Mockaitis
So, they just made it up, or, “It’d sure be nice to have this. The investors would like this. This would let me buy a boat.” It’s like there’s some kind of thing driving it other than the underlying market realities.
Kara Brown
Yes. There is a reason. There’s always a reason. There’s always a reason. There’s a board member who decides that McDonald’s is going to be your customer. There’s a VC partner who’s decided that he has to get a 12X return on this or it’s all for naught, right? Like, there’s always a reason why these totally irrational goals happen that become available.
Very rarely is it the marketing team saying, “Hey, let’s build ourselves a super irrational goal that we don’t think we can hit.” Normally, it is being imposed upon them. And so, in the book, I talk a lot about having a point of view so that you don’t end up getting in that position, so you have something to come back to the team that’s giving you this kind of wild and outlandish goal that you know is totally impossible.
And instead of just saying no, you’re saying, “Okay, but can we look at it this way?” or, “Can we measure it from a different perspective?” or, “Do we really think that’s possible?” or, do the backwards math, right, like, “How do you expect us to get there? Today we’re closing two deals a quarter and the expectation is we’re going to start closing 10 deals a month. That is an outrageous multiple. How much money are you giving us to execute that goal?”
So, there’s lots of ways to go about having that conversation, but I think what’s more important is the go-to-market leadership on the marketing side, so the marketing piece of the go-to-market team has to have a point of view. And the number of times that I interview junior marketers in B2B orgs, and I ask them very basic questions about the sales team’s goals, and they cannot answer, gives me all the information that I need.
They are operating in a vacuum, they are not aligned with the sales team, and no one is sharing goals between these two organizations. And that happens more often than I’d like it to.
Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, yeah. So, you’ve shared how goals often just fall downward upon us. Like, someone has a number that they would like for some reason. Share with us how it’s really done in terms of like best practice, this is what a robust revenue goal-setting process looks like, step one to six, or whatever. And I think we can extract a little bit about that in terms of what great goal-setting can look like for any number of things.
Kara Brown
Sure. So, shameless plug, it’s in the book. So, we literally walk through this and then we just finished the workbook, the companion workbook for The Revenue Engine. It’ll be available on Amazon in a couple of weeks. And, basically, we take you through this process in these exercises. And it’s really what we call backwards math.
There are a couple of components that you absolutely must have in order to understand your backwards math. And one is either ARR or LTV. ARR is annual run rate. So, this is how much each of your deals, or clients, or boyfriends, or ideas, whatever it is.
Pete Mockaitis
Twenty-five thousand a year.
Kara Brown
Yeah, right? Like, where’s the better check? But I have no judgment, no judgment on exactly what you’re charging for. And so, the how much they’re worth. ARR is the annual run rate or how much they’re worth to you over the next 12 months. Lifetime value, or LTV, is how much are they worth to you if they stay a customer for as long as your customers normally stay a customer.
LTV is a much more complicated math equation. So, 99% of the time, we use ARR. The other option is just the average value of a deal, which is where we normally start. So, start with the value of each deal. That’s all you need to start with. So, value, volume, and velocity. So, then we’re going to go up and backwards, and we’re going to look at “How many of those deals at that value do I need every single month to hit this goal?”
And then lastly is velocity, “How fast do I need to hit those goals? How fast do I need to hit those volumes in my funnel to hit my goals to close those deals?” You will also need a couple of what we call delta or conversion percentages. Oftentimes, we make them up because most of our clients don’t have them today. The only place to get your velocity metric is from inside your CRM.
So, your CRM is your customer relationship management tool. We like HubSpot, it’s our favorite, it’s easy, it’s DIY, etc. And we can see how fast opportunities are moving through your funnel into closed deals if we can track the time-stamping of activities inside the CRM. This all gets really complicated and kind of, you know, mathematical.
But really, what you’re asking me is, “How do I do this backwards math to then walk into the room with my leadership team and say, ‘Here is my point of view as the marketer on what is achievable at the top, middle, and bottom of the funnel in order to hand these potential customers over to the sales team to close’”?
And if you can walk in the room with that point of view, and you can show the math behind that point of view, that marketer will have a seat at the table and the sales team will welcome them into sort of their goal-setting exercise. But if you are showing up without a point of view and without understanding the key components of the backwards math, then you’re just going to be handed a goal, either top down or from the sales team over to the marketing group.
Pete Mockaitis
Well, I think there’s so much goodness there in terms of so that the math is just translates reality into goal and vice versa in terms of, like, “You want five million dollars? Well, here’s what that means in terms of deals.” And then you’ve also got a piece in there about having every record in your CRM software tool. What do mean by this?
Kara Brown
So, this is a little different philosophy, and I’m really glad you asked this question because I’ve been having this question asked of me in my life lately. So, our philosophy is very specific to B2B but we believe that if you have a TAM, or a total addressable market, that is encapsulated, right, there is a finite end to the TAM.
So, I’m going to use something pretty specific from my marketplace, which is there are 19,677 shippers in America that matter. So, the TAM, or the total addressable market, on shippers in America that really, like, matter to freight brokers is about 20,000.
Pete Mockaitis
So, not me sending out T-shirts, but perhaps a shop that has thousands of packages going out.
Kara Brown
Right. So, we believe that because you know the TAM of exactly who can buy from you, you should procure or buy the email addresses attached to every human who could become a customer. What I did not say is that you should spam them. That’s not what I said. I said you should own their email address. If your TAM is finite, there are absolutely ways to find these email addresses and they should be in your CRM, preferably HubSpot, and here’s why.
When that human comes to your ecosystem because of your great marketing…
Pete Mockaitis
Like your website.
Kara Brown
Like your website, or your LinkedIn profile, or someone who’s connected to you, or the G2 Crowd page, whatever it is, when they enter your ecosystem, because you own their email address inside your CRM, you can see that activity. If you don’t own their email address in your CRM, they show up as an anonymous visitor. And anonymous visitors are not able to be monetized.
So, if you’re going to try to monetize an audience, then you have to, first, build the audience and understand who the audience is. And the only way to do that is to literally buy the email addresses of the humans who could become your customer.
Pete Mockaitis
Or have a crew mercilessly crawling all over LinkedIn for days, one way or the other. But I think that also makes the goal-setting all the more real to that notion about perhaps only 5% of folks could be in market during a given timeframe. Well, if you’ve got your 20,000-ish shippers, then 5% of them, 1/20th, only 1,000 could even possibly buy from us. So, like, if your revenue goal is equal to 2,000 customers times the deal size, then it’s just, it’s already impossible.
Kara Brown
That’s right, it’s already irrelevant. And you have to really be able to have that conversation with leadership because it is pretty common that leadership doesn’t actually know these numbers. All the time, we deal with this all the time. What is the actual TAM? How many shippers are there? How many brokers are there? How many T-shirt vendors are there? How many book vendors are there, right?
Like, these total addressable markets are findable. You can find them. And then you can build an audience just directed only to them, and then find who is actually interested in what you’re selling because they will show up. They will show up on your website. But if you don’t own them, if you don’t know who they are, and you haven’t owned their email address, they will show up as an anonymous visitor and you’ll never know that they were there.
Pete Mockaitis
So that’s just handy to know, that, “Hey, world, there’s creepy software available that knows you by name if you’re at certain websites.”
Kara Brown
It is so creepy, but it’s called intent data and it’s real and it’s super creepy.
Pete Mockaitis
But in some ways, I think we’ve almost gotten over that, it’s like, “Okay, yeah.” Once I first saw my first re-targeted ad, like, “Hey, wait a minute, I was just on that website,” you know, over a decade ago, I was like, “Okay, I guess this is just what’s happening now.”
And I guess what I’m getting at for all this is, if you have a job that has nothing to do with sales, these same principles apply in terms of, if you really know the numbers inside and out the bounds of what’s possible, if you’re in manufacturing, it’s like, “Okay, hey, time out a second. We’re going to spend how much on this robot? Well, here’s what that would really have to do for us in order to give us a reasonable return,” or, “We’re going to hire how many people?” or, “Is that…?”
Like, any goal, you can just sort of check the bounds of the rationality or sanity of it. And then if you’re the person who is bringing these data to light and presenting it clearly with some mathematical linkages, and nobody else in their world is doing that, well, there’s your seat at the table right there.
Kara Brown
Amen. That is exactly where your seat at the table is. And, oftentimes, you know the person that gets the most excited about this, that we don’t see very often in these marketing and sales books? The person who gets the most excited about you bringing a point of view to the table is the CFO. And, oftentimes, in marketing situations, in B2B, mid-market and SMB specifically, the CFO is the biggest deal breaker.
They are the ones that are saying, “No way. I want to see real ROI, right? I’ve never seen marketing produce any real revenue, etc.” This is just in my experience, right? And if you can get the CFO on your side, if you can show them that you have a point of view, and that you understand what a payoff looks like, or what ROI looks like, or what good looks like in your world, you can have a champion on the leadership team that you didn’t expect.
Pete Mockaitis
Well, hey, the CFO’s not a bad friend to have, certainly, as you’re doing a career. Thank you. Well, so you’ve talked about having a point of view a few times, and you mentioned that having a point of view is better than advice. How are we defining point of view? And what’s the distinction? And can we have some examples?
Kara Brown
Yeah, that’s a good question. So, I am a member of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization, EO, and we talk a lot about experience shares versus giving advice. And so, I really like this, it’s called the Gestalt method. It’s a way to share information with people that isn’t demeaning. And I really like this even in business. I like the idea of sharing an experience or sharing a point of view.
And most of the time, if we share, “This is what good looks like in our space.” This is much easier to do if you’re in a niche environment like we are. So, “This is what good looks like at your competitor. This is what good looks like at your compatriot, at someone who looks and feels like you. This is what good looks like,” that’s a solid point of view.
And I think the other thing that has come up in my life lately, Pete, is that my point of view about buying the TAM is actually new to a lot of marketers. And I was pretty surprised. I was pretty surprised when I’m talking to people of my age or older who are considered, you know, veteran experts in marketing and sales and go-to market, and I’m sharing this position, and our point of view on owning and buying the TAM, and they’re telling me, “I disagree.”
And I appreciate that because I love a good sparring, right, back and forth on, you know, the philosophies of go-to market. But I think, if we didn’t have a point of view as a team, as a company, or as an author, then there wouldn’t be anything interesting to read. And it wouldn’t be very interesting to work with us. And we wouldn’t be able to prove the ROI back to our customers because so much of what we do actually has to do with our point of view.
And so many young marketers that I meet spend a lot of time worrying about the what, “What are we sending? How are we sounding? What are the words that we’re using? The messaging is super important.” And my point of view is the who, the who you’re putting it in front of is actually more important than the what. You’re still with me?
Pete Mockaitis
All day.
Kara Brown
Thank you. I think, sometimes, just having a contrary point of view is also something that’s interesting to people. And they want to have a conversation with you because you have a point of view. So, I think having a point of view in general, in life, etc., you’re always someone that had a very specific and unique point of view. I remember that very specifically.
Pete Mockaitis
Oh, me? And do you have one come to mind, Kara?
Kara Brown
Yeah, so many things about you in college. You knew exactly when you were getting married. You knew exactly what your life was going to look like. You knew exactly where you were going to work. I think some of that’s changed for you. But you knew exactly what you were going to do and how you were going to get it done. And I always respected your point of view on how you were going to live your life.
And I think it’s very similar in some aspects to having a point of view on your professional, exactly whatever your profession is. So, whether you’re a dentist, or you make clothes for a living, have a point of view on what good looks like in your industry, and people will take you seriously.
Pete Mockaitis
And in contrast to advice, which I think sounds more like something that the top page of Google or generic, we could dunk on AI a little bit because it has a lot of goodness to it. But with a broad prompt, like, let’s just say, “How should I start a podcast?” So, I mean, sure, you could find plenty of search results on that. You’ll get a bunch of steps associated with your microphone and your hosting, whatever. And that really does feel cheap and commoditized because it’s just there.
And I can get sort of like the standard issue truth of the matter in seconds effortlessly, but it takes an insider to tell you, like, “Here’s why the Blue Yeti is a terrible microphone choice for the vast majority of contexts, even though you read some people said it’s good. Here’s why it’s probably the wrong choice for you.”
So, that’s very minor or macro, but it really does, I think, highlight the core distinction between expertise you share that earns you street cred and gets folks to think, “Okay, this person knows something,” as opposed to, “Ah, yes, I, too, am capable of Googling things.”
Kara Brown
Yes, and I think there’s a word, a key word that we do not use when we experience share or when we share a point of view, and that is the word should. We don’t should on people. So, the word should is demeaning. It’s almost like the word no, right? Like, “Pete, you really should get a haircut before you come onto these podcasts.” Your hair looks great. Your hair looks great.
Pete Mockaitis
It’s been a while.
Kara Brown
But this should-ing someone, right? And so, I think it’s really important to keep the word should out of any conversation that you’re having if you want to be taken seriously as an expert with a point of view that people are going to hear. Because the minute they hear the word should, they’re going to shut down. Nobody wants to be should-ed.
Pete Mockaitis
It’s like, “Oh, I guess I’m just wrong. I’m just an idiot. I’ve been doing it all wrong my whole time. And at last, this genius visionary, Kara, is going to set us straight.”
Kara Brown
Yes. So, we try really hard not to use the word should because I definitely don’t want anyone to think that about me.
Pete Mockaitis
So, then in terms of actual linguistic word choice, you might say, “Our point of view is…” or, “We believe…” or, “We’ve seen great results by…”
Kara Brown
Or, “May I share an experience?” or, “May I tell you a story about when this worked for us?” And I use that a lot. And we share three core strategies that work in supply chain, which I will not bore your audience with. But there are three core strategies that work in supply chain, go-to-market. And I usually ask the question before I share them, “May I share with you our three key strategies that work in supply chain and the ROI that they’ve delivered?”
And people are usually like, “Yes, please, that’s why we’re on the call.” And so, I think I am then asking permission to share my point of view. And never once do I say, “You should do these things.” I’m just saying, “Here is our point of view on what is working with your compatriots and your competitors.”
Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, you know, you’re also articulating something, like one of my pet peeves when I’m reading the news, and like, I’m just a weirdo, but I really bristle when I see a news headline say, “Something: What You Need to Know.” Like, “Pope Francis’s Death: What You Need to Know.” Because that’s sort of, like, the hubris, the presumption.
Kara Brown
Like you don’t know already.
Pete Mockaitis
Like, “You don’t know me, my relationship to the Catholic faith and Pope Francis.” Because context matters a lot in terms of what you need to know about anything varies quite a bit in terms of it might just be nothing. Like, “This is a thing that happened. Some people might be talking about it. So now you know just by reading the headline.” Or, it might be, “You are a Cardinal who is going to elect the next Pope. Like, there may be a whole lot more things you need to know.”
Kara Brown
Yeah, you should probably know more than what the headline is going to give you from the Daily Mail. Yeah, yeah.
Pete Mockaitis
Or, like politics of all sorts is like, “What you need to know is…” Like, well, maybe nothing until Election Day. I’m probably not going to do anything at all with this information.
Kara Brown
And I think where the information comes is also super important, right? Like, I do not belong giving advice on business to consumer at all. Like ever. I had someone ask me today, “What do you know about B2C?” And I said, “Absolutely nothing. I hope you hire someone else. I’m not going to lie to you and tell you I’m going to do that,” right?
So, I think the credibility of the “what you should know” question is also really important is, “What is the source of this information?” Very different with the source of the information on Pope Francis from the Daily Mail than from, you know, the Vatican blog.
Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, certainly. Well, Kara, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?
Kara Brown
I am just so glad that I was here. Thank you so much for this. I’m so proud of you.
Pete Mockaitis
Oh, shucks. Well, you, too. Well, now let’s hear about a favorite quote, something you find inspiring.
Kara Brown
My favorite quote is, “The enemy of progress is perfection.” And so, we need to make sure that… I give this advice to clients, and this is sometimes actually straight advice, not an experience share, that everything digital can be changed. And so, if you’re not going to physically print it in a book, it’s okay to send it and we can change it.
And then I wrote a book. And it was the scariest moment of, like, saying yes and hitting the send button on it because it’s in print, and there are mistakes in it, and I’ve found them, and it’s so embarrassing. And even still, perfection is still the enemy of progress, and I wouldn’t take it back.
Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?
Kara Brown
You know, we do our own studies and research internally. And I think one of the things I’m most proud of is our new experimentation around answer engine optimization. So, we’re doing as much research as we can around how are our clients found on large language models versus how are they found in traditional SEO.
Hyper-hyper technical, and we won’t go into the results yet, but I’m really proud of the work that my team is doing in helping our customers understand how they’re going to be found on large language models.
Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?
Kara Brown
So, besides my own, I think my favorite right now is The Hard Thing About Hard Things. I think it’s one I come back to all the time as an entrepreneur.
Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite tool?
Kara Brown
So, there’s a super creepy tool that I like a lot that you might find kind of gross, but it’s called Crystal Knows. So, Crystal Knows is a psychographic profiling tool that tells you the DISC profile of any human on LinkedIn based on their LinkedIn and Google activity. And it is the creepiest, coolest thing that I’ve ever had an opportunity to be a part of.
Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?
Kara Brown
My favorite habit is I go to bed at trade shows. So, when I go to trade shows, which is all the time, I go to bed at nine o’clock.
Pete Mockaitis
And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks, they quote it back to you often?
Kara Brown
Share good news, track interest, follow up. I feel like any good marketer has a nice solid, you know, one, two, three in their back pocket. And I’ve been saying it long enough that people are now saying it back to me.
Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?
Kara Brown
I would point them to KaraSmithBrown.com or LeadCoverage.com. And you can always find me on LinkedIn because I am very active.
Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a final challenge or call to action for someone looking to be awesome at their job?
Kara Brown
So, my final call to action for someone looking to be awesome at their job is to say yes. Take the opportunity, whatever it is in front of you, it may be really hard, it may be super easy, but if you are the person that always says yes and gets it done, you will go very, very far.
Pete Mockaitis
All right. Kara, thank you.
Kara Brown
That was so fun.