Blythe Brumleve:
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LinkedIn presents welcome in to another episode of everything's logistics. I am your host, Blythe Brumleve. And this is a very special edition of the podcast because we're actually live right now we are going live on LinkedIn, possibly YouTube in the future. But for folks who may not know, I am part of the LinkedIn podcast Academy and part of those requirements is writing a newsletter and also going live once a month. I've been a part of the program since late March, when it launched, I did some traveling in April. And here we are in May, and I haven't done a single live broadcast. So hoping to change that. And with this first topic is really going to be sort of intertwined with my weekly appearances on freight waves. Now I appear on freight waves now, every Wednesday at 10am, with a topic that we can kind of have a conversation around. So the goal and the thought process behind a broadcast like this is that I will be able to have that conversational tone around a topic, particularly marketing AI, that that's really my bread and butter, you know, anything that helps the one person marketing or the one person sales team. And so being able to talk about that in a conversational tone, and then also be able to start these broadcasts immediately after that appearance. So then we can kind of dive into a little bit more of the nuance and the research behind why I picked that topic to begin with, and why you should care. And so looking forward to doing these probably twice a month to start. And then sort of the lay of the land, as far as how these broadcasts are going to work is I really want to make something that is enjoyable on the listener. And even if you don't watch it live, I hardly ever watch LinkedIn live while they are live on the platform. I like listening to them after the fact. And when I can listen to them. In my own time, I typically listen, you know, when I listened to podcasts, I listened to a bunch of them in a row. And so I really wanted this broadcast to be able to focus and play to both of those markets. So with that said, love to be able to one of the biggest draws of of doing these broadcasts. And what I would love to be able to do is to involve more view in the discussion in the conversation through q&a. But particular format that I am aiming for is doing q&a At the end of the discussion. So anytime we go live on the platform, this one is actually quote unquote, pre recorded. So I'm recording this immediately after freight waves now and then I'm going to be sending it out as if it's live just to kind of, you know, get my feet wet a little bit with the stream yard platform. And to be able to, you know, get the nuances like the logo in the upper right hand side of the video, we're going to be bringing up some different V rolls and different articles that we're going to be discussing in just a minute. But just so you kind of you know, get a peek behind the curtain of what I'm working on, I didn't really expect to start doing lives again, especially after, you know, the the cyber live show ended back in November of 2022. That's the last time I've really done a lot of you know, live broadcasts where I host it. So this is going to be a good mix of both. But if you're a podcast listener, if you watch on YouTube, or you watch after the fact, hopefully this will be just as useful to you as if you are watching live. So with all of that said, I'm always taking questions. I'm always looking for additional feedback. So if you have questions that you're struggling with, especially around the AI movement, then send them to me send it to a in a DM, comment on this post with your question, and I will answer them live in a future broadcast. But for this first one, I just wanted to make sure that I could do a little recording first and then get into the discussion. So now that we've got all of that housekeeping kind of out of the way, the main topic that we discussed on freight waves now today is is discussing lead gen and lead gen in a down market. We all want lead gen right now, especially in not just a down market, but a tight market. You know, competition is really tough right now it's challenging to sell against other companies and other services. And so how do you differentiate yourself? How do you make sure that even your lead gen campaign is working? That's going to be our main topic for today's show. And the reason I want to start with this is because a lot of us are probably not very I don't want to say not busy, but we have a lot of work to do but at the same time it's slowing down. And so during that slowdown, what do we do and that is you need to really first step is to reevaluate your processes and reevaluate and audit everywhere that you appear online or your company appears online. So your social media pages, all of your business pages, even your own you know LinkedIn profile in anywhere else where you are active online, your website, of course, you want to audit all of those things to make sure that when a prospect or a lead comes to your page or comes to your website, that you are ready to accommodate them. And what do I mean by ready to accommodate them? Well, let's take your your social media page, for example. Where is that pathway to conversion? If I am a new user, if I am a prospect, and I'm coming to your social media page, you probably routed me there from somewhere wasn't an ad? Was it a, you know, a cold email campaign? Was it somebody within your company that was talking about the company and the visitor arrives? On the page? What does that next step look like? Do you want them to book a meeting? Do you want them to schedule a demo? Do you want them to just watch a demo that's already pre recorded on your site? Or do you want them to call the phone number, you want to make sure that that is clearly established on your social media pages, and even your own personal pages? And also within your cold outreach campaigns? And also your ad campaigns? Where are you sending that traffic? And what does that look like for the visitor to make a conversion, we just redid a website for a recruiting agency and all of their social media posts, were redirecting folks to their website to apply. But when those folks arrived to the website, there was nothing for them to say, Okay, this is the next step that I should take. So you need to keep that in mind as you're sending your marketing messages out there. Because you want to make sure that that pathway to conversion is crystal clear. And it works, you would be surprised at how many times that folks will arrive on a site, they'll click on a phone number and the phone number doesn't work, or it leads to a bad phone number, or it leads to a generic phone number where someone is not as is going to answer but they're not going to be able to answer and be able to help that person with the questions that they're coming to you with. So what does that process look like, and make sure that it actually functions and that it actually works, it's a great time to audit a lot of these different processes. And then another thing that you want to do is you want to make sure that you are testing the forms on your site, there is nothing worse. And I mean nothing, because I've personally experienced this and practically, you know, threw my computer outside of a window, because of the fact that somebody I did all of the hard work, I did all the marketing, and then the visitor arrived on the site and the damn forms didn't work. So you want to make sure that your damn forms work on your website so that that way it's there's a clear path to conversion for the visitor. And then also, there's a clear follow up process who for whoever is on the receiving end of those forms, I manage more than 30 websites, in the freight industry, I manage my own forms. And we do testing every single month, just to be able to make sure that we know the forms are working and they're routed to the proper person. So then that way that person can follow up accordingly. So it's a good time, that's my first initial tip is to make sure that you audit all of your social media and your Google My Business page. That's another really big one, if you don't have a Google My Business page, you need to make sure you get that because it's like free advertising on Google, it's free to do all you do is sign up on Google My Business, you submit your address and where you're located, they'll send you a little postcard with a comfort with a verification number just to make sure that you are actually there and that you are actually at that address location. So that's one thing to keep in mind is that you want to make sure that you're taking advantage of all of these platforms that are free to use, they cost you time as far as an investment wise, but they're free to use and that pathway to conversion is solidified with a strong foundation. And then that way when the user does eventually see your social media or see your your campaign, whether it's ad or email or whatever the fact that when they come to your site, then there's that pathway to conversion is actually suitable for that person to take it. It's crystal clear. And and there's no sort of guessing game around that. So fix that first. That's tip number Far and Away tip number one. And you should actually be testing this at least once a quarter just to make sure because you can you never know when especially with websites, if you update one part of the site, it could force you know other things or other script errors code errors within the rest of the site, it could cause them to malfunction. So as long as you're testing these on a regular basis, then you can stop a problem before it becomes a big problem. So just keep that in mind. This episode is brought to you by SPI logistics the premier freight agent and logistics network in North America. Are you currently building your freight brokerages broker business and feel that your capabilities are being limited due to lack of support and access to adequate technology? At SPI logistics we have the technology, the systems and the back office support to help you succeed. If you're looking to take control of your financial future and build your own business with The backing of one of the most successful logistics firms in North America. Visit SPI three pl.com. To learn more. Now, the next thing that we discussed on freight waves now is really utilizing a lot of these different tools that have flooded the market in recent months. And of course, I'm going to be talking about techy btw, it is the fastest growing app to 100 million users in the history of technology. It's safe to say that it's I want to say it's safe to say it's absolutely already here. And it's dominating a lot of workforces. And if it hasn't affected your work already, within six months, it absolutely will. And I want to bring up this next article, because this is going to really tie into the final topic that I want to get into. And that's creating your why buys. And I'll get into why buys in just a second is essentially a cold email outreach campaign. But it's centered around getting through the noise of AI and getting through the noise of all of these other campaigns that are mass created that are just blanket sent out. And there's no regard for the end user and what their experience looks like. We don't want that we don't want a bad experience for the user. Whether we're doing cold outreach, or a prospect is trying to get in touch with us. We want a very good experience. And then that segues into what tools can we use to get there faster? And that is chat GBT. So I want to bring up this first article. And bear with me, I am new to using stream yard as a host. I've been on other live broadcasts. But this is my first one that I am doing myself. So let me we're gonna add to screen. So if you are listening, I'm sorry, you can't see this article. But as it is a newsletter that I wrote a few weeks back, titled AI is forcing another work revolution upon us here is what to do about it. And if you want to read that in depth, it's overall my LinkedIn profile, just search for Blythe Brumleve, you should be able to find it. And it's one of the more recent, there's only four issues so far with this LinkedIn partnership. So it should be pretty easy to find. But I gathered a bunch of stats, that should be pretty eye opening, I think for a lot of folks out there. So let's, let's run through a few of them. Now, in order to, to kind of understand, you know, what is happening in the AI workforce is that we have to kind of think about what the modern workday looks like. And the modern workday has really only been around for about 100 years, Henry Ford came up with it in the early 1900s. And he came up with the the concept of, you know, the eight hour rule. So you get eight hours at work, you get eight hours at home and eight hours for sleep, that has dominated our work day for the last 100 years. And it hasn't really evolved until COVID. You know, when COVID happened at Forrester, you know, another work revolution, where everybody's working from home, it pulled a lot of these, you know, sort of older industries, these legacy industries logistics being included, and pulled them all into the 21st century, where, you know, the majority of people now have webcams Shaka, they now have you know, mic or not a lot more people should have microphones, but things like you know, at home, you know, studio experiences at home work environment, a dedicated place for you to work from home, instead of spending that time traveling to and from work and spending that eight hours at the office and then driving back or eight hours at you know, a factory or a warehouse and then driving back to your home. So that has existed for about 100 years. And a lot of that has changed in the last couple of years. And a lot of it is going to keep changing, you know, change is the the only constant that we can sort of expect. So running through now that you have sort of a backstory about that there's one really alarming, I guess alarming is probably a Freudian slip. Because it's it's one of those things where there is a new study that just came out by Gartner that says the share of US industry employment exposed to automation by a AI and this was done not by Gartner but actually by Golden's Goldman Sachs and they estimate 25% of us jobs across all industries could be at risk to replacement by AI. But the number rises dramatically for legal roles and Office admin roles. So 25% of us jobs across all industries are at risk for being replaced. But when you're talking about legal, it's 44%. And when you're talking about Office and admin roles, it's excuse me that legal jobs is 44%. Office admin roles is 46%. So when you think about the jobs that are going to be largely impacted, it's the back office, it's a lot of these white collar roles, Knowledge Base work. I think there was a fear for a very long time, you know, especially by truckers that you know, robots are going to not not by truckers but by folks within the trucking industry because truckers are very aware of the skill set that you need in order to operate that big piece of heavy machinery. How Wherever there are lots of folks within the industry that have been trying to automate a lot of those jobs, whether it's warehouse robotics, or, you know, some capacity of the trucking industry, you know, a lot of different facets within blue collar work was expected to be replaced by automation by AI by technology, when in reality, what we're seeing is that maybe the blue collar jobs are safe, or safer from Ai, that's now going to come in and really, I don't want to say wipe out, but it's really going to change how we work. And so knowing this, it seems a little scary, it definitely feels scary, but it's not scary. If you pay attention to where the market is moving. That's what I've always prided myself on. So hopefully, you know, with the things that I listened to, and the things that I pay attention to, hopefully, I can be a good curator of that content for you and hopefully help you sort of, you know, I guess, be the flashlight in the dark of night in order to try to find hope, and figure out how your job can adjust because your job will probably be impacted by AI at some point where you know, at least 30% of your role. I've heard some, you know, investors VC type folks say that anywhere from 30 to 50% of your role will probably be powered by AI. So what do we do about it? I mean, there are so many stories that we can talk about. For that I mentioned in this newsletter, such as the you know, the open letter calling for a six month halt on future AI development. This was written by Apple co founder Steve Wozniak, Elon Musk, and other prominent computer scientists. It was really heartfelt Reddit post that that made the rounds talking about a 3d game designer, where he really loved creating a different characters for a game and mid journey, which is another AI platform that creates images based on text prompts. So if you are he was using this, or his boss wanted him to use this platform. And now, essentially, his job has gone from creating beautiful characters into creating text prompts that then create the beautiful character. So he feels like His purpose, His job is gone. Now on the flip side, there's another designer that works within that same company, and he's been loving it, his productivity has increased his it's allowed him the ability to even the playing field a little bit with the skill set that he was lacking from a 3d game perspective, the boss obviously loves it, because the productivity has increased dramatically. So, you know, knowing that those stories exists, I'm empathetic. And I'm sympathetic to those different stories where, you know, a guy legitimately feels like he has lost his purpose in his art that he's been creating. But I could make the argument that he hasn't lost that purpose, he is still free to create any of that art in his own way. But if he's working for an employer, an employer is going to be looking at ways to increase productivity. And that's exactly what these tools do is to increase productivity and give you access to skill sets that you might not have had the time or desire to learn. I know the power of me personally, I know the power of what a great image will do for a video for an article. But I don't know how to create that image from scratch, I don't know how to go into a program like Illustrator and create that from scratch, I could hire somebody to do that. But that takes time, energy and money. On the flip side, though, if I just learned how to use and what I have been doing is learning how to use mid journey, which is one of those image creator platforms. That is you enter in a text prompt and it can create images for you. If you subscribe to my newsletter on LinkedIn, then any image that I use for those newsletters, I am practicing using mid journey to create those images instead of you know, going to another source where I could possibly be sued for copyright violation, or going to another source where, you know, I mistakenly have done this in the past, especially my early blogging days in the you know, the 2000s, where I've taken an image from social media thinking that it's free to use because it's posted on social media, when in fact that is not free to use. And you learn the hard way. Have you learned the hard way of how you're going to gather images or how you should source images, but then you also learn the hard way of Well, I still need to get images. So where am I going to get them from and this type of program like a mid journey evens the playing field for someone like me. Now you could do it on the flip side where someone is used to creating beautiful images, and maybe they're not as great of a writer. So these other tools like chat GBT or copy.ai or Jasper, some of these other copywriting tools can help you become a better writer. Even if you don't have that skill set, so I'm a big fan of these tools, I think we should embrace them, I think we should use them to our advantage. So there is a little bit of a scary side, there is a little bit of an empathetic sympathy side of things. But let's talk about how to implement these tools into your workday. And there was a great post that I want to bring up and that I'm going to kind of read from, and that comes from the marketing AI Institute podcast. It is a great podcast or over on YouTube as well. So it records two guys might kaput. And I'm blanking on the other host name, but they they do a weekly show it releases every Tuesday morning, I believe they recorded on Monday. So they recap all of the biggest AI news that has happened and how they're consulting other companies to start using these tools. And so when you think about it that way, education is going to be the biggest barrier. So you want to make sure that you're starting to incorporate regular education because this stuff is moving so fast, you have to really focus on how am I going to get educated quickly. And then how am I going to stay educated for all of these new tools that are coming out into the market. So the marketing AI podcast, I would highly suggest, I would highly suggest subscribing to them, they're on LinkedIn as well, you can follow a couple of the creators of that. And they'll be able to, you know, at least offer you insight and tips as to what's going on in the market and how you can kind of adjust. But going through some of the use cases of how you can start using AI in your business. My first tip and what I personally do is set chat GPT. First of all chat GBT is free for anyone to use, they have three different versions as 3.0 3.5 and 4.0. You can only access 4.0. If you're a paying member, if you're a paying member, it's only $20 a month. So it's the best $20 a month that I spend each month because it's a it's a no brainer. For me, it also gives you access to new features and new tools that are coming into the market. So if you want to try out the just regular plain 3.5 version, you can sign up for a free account, give it a try, start practicing your text prompts, as you enter into and put it into the system. And then you can set it as your start screen on your browser. So either bookmark it, set it as your Start screen, and then really keep that window open on your computer. So then that way you are training yourself on how to use this to summarize long form content. So you found an article and you really want to summarize it for your customers for your audience, you could input that text into chat GPT and say summarize this in less than 200 words. Theoretically, you can do this with books with podcasts, it's not quite there yet tech wise on chat GPT, for example, but there are other solutions that will summarize that for you. That's probably a topic for you know, a later show that's a little bit more advanced. I want to keep this more for the folks who haven't really dived into, you know, a lot of the just stuff that's going on in AI, it's been so much of a quick, fast revolution that is happening right before our eyes, that it is really it feels overwhelming and intimidating at times, because I feel like I have rewritten my work processes for not just customer outreach, but also sales, marketing, website design, outreach to customers like it can feel really overwhelming at times. But education start with that first marketing AI podcast then Next. I think that it was a really smart post by the host of the marketing AI podcast. And he said that on this post, I would try to bring it up on the screen. But I don't know how to really do that yet. So we're let me I'm going to keep it on this article for now. And just keep that display on the screen. And so let's just move forward with these suggestions from Mike kaput. And he said need help finding use cases for AI in your business, and some helpful advice to do that. Step number one, write down a list of all the things you do in a week. This is great for my fellow, you know, process nerds out there. This is probably like step number one ingrained in your brain. But if you're not used to setting up a process or establishing a process, you were literally just taking a Google doc taking a sheet of paper and you're writing down everything you do for a week. You don't have to do this right from memory. What really helped me is to have a couple post it notes off to the side or Google Doc and then you just for one week, you just practice it in your head that anything new you do responding to emails, how long did it take you to do that? And sort of time tracking of what you do, how long it takes you to do that. And so that's step number one is to write down everything that you do in your business. Step number two, which kind of hints to what I just said is list out how much time you estimate each test takes. Number three for each task, ask yourself three questions. Is it data driven? Is it repetitive? Does it involve trying to make a prediction? If you answer yes to any of these, highlight the task, then step number four, sort the list of highlighted tasks by which ones take the most time, you now have a starting list of high value potential use cases for AI. And you can use it as a jumping off point to research vendors and tools. And so this is a really good way of just taking the approach of okay, I know what I do in a week. Now, how do I use these tools that are flooding the market, like a chat GPT, or like a jasper copy.ai. Some of these other these other tools. swell.ai is another one that I use for podcasting, but that's not applicable to everyone. But nine times out of 10, you're using writing and some part of your job. So a couple tools that I recommend is is definitely copy.ai. Because they really help to bridge the gap between Okay, I have this tool, but how do I use it. And so what they do is they send out daily prompt and you don't even really have to be a customer of copy.ai yet, just sign up for their emails. And you can get what's called the daily prompt email, and it will send you examples of what to use in a prompt that can help you in research for new customers. It can help you with summarizing emails, it can help you with, you know creating, there's even you know, new AI tools that are going on top of tools that we already use, HubSpot is a great example of this, I'm willing to bet the overwhelming majority of folks within the freight industry are using a CRM. And then you're probably if you're using a CRM, you're probably using HubSpot. Well, they just released a new tool called Chat spot. That is almost not almost it is a AI tool powered on top of your CRM that you're already using. So it can help you identify revenue targets, who just raised money, paste this LinkedIn profile and tell me a summary of what this person's role is. So then I can then brainstorm what their problems in their job are at and how my solution my product, my service can help them adjust. And it can help them you know, maybe save a little money, save a little time, save a little frustration. So it helps you dramatically in the research part of the process. So using these tools, figuring out how they can fit into your workday, and how you can utilize them is a great way to get started. And you don't have to your you don't have to be an expert right away. But it will help you to craft that messaging to craft, you know, those end goal, or those end goals that you want the prospect or the lead to take advantage of. And so when you think about it from that, that it's going to help you do things faster, it's going to help you write an email faster, it's going to help you create a campaign faster, it's going to help you, you know, do all of these other things faster, but also recognize that it's going to help a lot of other people do things faster, and it's going to create a lot of noise, it's going to create a lot of spam. And until some of these spam filters can keep up, it's going to be challenging on the end users hand to filter through the noise. And so if you can use these tools not to write your entire email campaign for you, but to massage your own words, so that the best I guess phrase that I can use for you know a lot of different discussion points around AI is that it will get you to 80%. But it's going to take you massaging that last 20% to get it to a place where that's a suitable email that sounds like you it doesn't sound like a robot, and it's valuable to the end user. Do you wish there was a central place to pull in all of your social media posts, recruit employees, and give potential customers a glimpse into how you operate your business? Well, all of this should already be on your website. But too often we hand that responsibility of building our online home off to a cousin, a neighbor's kid down the street, or a stranger across the world. Digital dispatch believes in building a better website at a fraction of the costs that those big time marketing agencies would charge. 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So let's let's lock it in with this final topic because of the fact that we're now going to have so much different content that's coming into the I mean, I've even seen like LinkedIn, they're starting to use AI to come up with, you know, different topics and suggestions and comments, suggestions, and DM replies of what you should say things like that, like these are all being this is all AI and it's all slowly being integrated into every facet of our internet experience. So knowing all of that, it's going to be challenging to have a prospect, see your message resonate with it enough. So then that way, they make a decision that they want to book a meeting with you that they want to request more information from you. So how do you stand out from the rest and the way you do that is by this new concept called Creating why buys. Now, I first heard this on a podcast called stalking growth. And the guest was a woman by the name of Jessica watts, she calls herself a sustainable revenue evangelist on LinkedIn, which I love that title. So she created this concept and I'm not sure if she created or maybe the company that she worked for created it. But she broke this down into some really, really valuable insights into what is a Why buy a Why buy is why you should buy from me, and you should be thinking about it in the lens of the customer that you're trying to reach. So going back to that initial topic of how we kicked off the show of lead gen in a down market. Yes, the job market is tough. Yes, the sales market is tough right now. And yes, we have an influx of all of these tools that are coming in that are going to continue to shift our work life in in ways that we probably don't even know yet. And it's going to completely catch people off guard in the next six to 10 months who haven't been paying attention. So if you have been paying attention, then these are ways that you can start to incorporate so not only from an educational level, but also from a daily habit of setting chat JpT to a start screen, setting it as a bookmark so that it's right there in front of your face every single day. So you can practice new ways to use it, you want to think of yourself as it. So if we are facing this sort of I don't want to say like existential crisis, but it kind of feels that way at times that our job will be replaced that that at least the majority of our job will be replaced, replaced, or automated or powered by AI, then it makes sense to be at the forefront of using this technology. So if you are working at a company, and you volunteer to be the AI person volunteer to be the person that's going to practice and to check out the processes of the business and the company that you're operating in. And how you can use these tools to get better be the voice and start using these tools. Because whether you could be the leader in charge of incorporating a lot of these different tools within the company. Or if something you know, the worst case scenario happens where you're replaced. Because AI can help you know one person do the job of many, if you're replaced, you still know these tools that you can take into a new gig into a new business into a new company, or maybe even start your own business because you now have the power of using you know, five quote unquote people, a digital assistant assistants, virtual assistants, things like that, with using the power of these tools. So we've got all of that out of the way. Let's get back to the why buys. And the why buys. I wish I could set this up. Why think I can let me go ahead, I'm going to share my screen. And it's going to be this sales flow documents that I have up on the screen. Yeah, I did a live Okay, good. So this is sort of my, I guess, proprietary notes or whatever. So I'm going to go ahead and share my screen now. And with my fancy layout, so if you're watching, thank you. But if you're just listening to the show, this is basically a a document that I have that I almost treated as my Bible, I take a lot of notes, I listened to a lot of different podcasts, I digest a lot of content in order to be able to create content, you know, 80% of your content journey should be consumption. So then that way the 20% of you actually speaking and on air, and on a podcast will be a value to users. So this is my sort of guidebook and I when I listen to this podcast of stalking growth, and Jessica was breaking down, it was such a light bulb moment and it I think it's such a major key for a lot of businesses out there that are going to be faced with these different challenges and it's with this down market in a tight market. You can now take these steps to begin to hone in on your messaging and make it short concise and specific and to the point. And I feel like that's probably you know, a bunch of different analogies to say the same thing. But let's get into why buys how to create them. Now, the first thing you want to do is you want to establish who you're talking to, and why. So ask yourself, get out, you know, Google Doc or Microsoft Word doc, or, you know, a pen and paper, whatever your pleasure is. But get out that pen and start writing down these applicable to your company, your business. So you want to ask yourself, what is the current state? What is the problem of the current state? What is the future state? And what is the outcome of the future state? You want to keep these, as a reminder, keep these simple and specific. And then you want to create two of these. So establish who you're talking to, and why you want to establish two of these. And turn it into a question. This intro question is the first sentence you're going to use in your cold outreach campaign, which is AKA a why by and Jessica goes on to explain that, you know, cold email gets a lot of grief, I've been guilty of, you know, trash talking cold email, I think cold calling is largely dead. I think cold email is very, very challenging just because of the enormous amount of folks who just spray and pray, where they grab an email list off of zoominfo or wherever else, and they load it into their CRM, and they just send, you know, 10,000 messages to folks who might not ever need your services ever. So if you want to drown out the noise, because you are going to contribute to the noise if you don't establish these why buys I just heard from a shipper the other day that said his cold, his cold email inbox, or the the number of cold pitches that he is getting has dramatically increased, it's tripled. He said it used to get about 100 a day, anywhere from 80 to 100. Now he's getting more than 300 a day, you don't want to be part of that noise, you want to stand out. And I firmly believe that doing this creating your why buys is a way to stand out. So she says list design is messaging. So if you establish who you're talking to, and why, then that doesn't necessarily feel too cold email Lee, for lack of a better phrase. So she goes into. So now that you've established who you're talking to a why she goes into well, what's the pseudo controversial opinion that we're taking. And then you want to create two value props, and avoid saying everything that your product or your service does. So you want to keep these short, concise, specific to the point. And then you get into actually building your email list. So you build it your your email campaigns. So you've got who you're talking to, and why you've got your value prop, you've got your super short, specific targeted email. Now you're going to construct your sequences, whether it's HubSpot, whether it's MailChimp, whether you know, whatever CRM that you're using, she says the first line in your email should be that question that you figured out in the earlier steps. And then you want to label each sequence. Why by number one cold, why buy to cold? Why buy one warm nurture, why buy to warm nurture? So you want to have remember those two different value props we talked about earlier. And those two different questions, you want to have those set up in different sequences in your cold email campaigns. And this is how she also says this is how we start to track messaging efficacy. So efficacy means is a message actually working. And I've never actually done this before. So this was really eye opening for me. I've created cold email campaigns before, but they were sort of one and done. And if the person you know booked a meeting for me great. If not, you know, the email kind of goes into the abyss, you know, I've fallen for these tricks before that companies have taught us years ago, that oh, it's it ends up being easier for you to send out 10,000 emails, and maybe it's applicable to, you know, 500 people on that list. It's easier for you to do that. But it's seen as an annoyance on the person at the other end of the email. So keeping that in mind, then you want to start then you can start really like the data collection, you can start analyzing which part of your messaging is working, because then she goes into saying, Well, what sequences lead to more calls booked? Also ask yourself, What about say, you know why buy one is working better than why buy two? Ask yourself, What about why buy one is working better than to let's work shop two, so we can make it stronger. So you have to have these campaigns going at once. But your targeted to a list of folks that you've already identified are a good candidate for your product or your service. So imagine she says imagine a sales rep seeing a well Why buy sequence and then being able to go to Marketing and tell them, why buy one is killing it, go make two ebooks on this topic, another great way for marketing and sales to work together, because the messaging has goals behind it, marketing is probably going to eat it up because they're able to actually provide value and the work that they're providing, instead of just, you know, making another, you know, PowerPoint presentation tweak for the millionth time, and you're probably doing that two days before a conference. This way, it creates a much more collaborative experience between marketing and sales. So then that way you are creating messages that your customer or your prospect actually wants to see. So also thinking about it from the lens of training your business development reps on the on the Y by messaging, you know, if you're making cold calls, I would imagine that a lot of these you know, that intro question, that intro sentence is really going to go a lot further than that, hey, how you doing? Folks are busy, folks don't have time to answer, you know, sort of those placating questions. And as beating around the bush questions, get to the point, have it be specific, and then you'll probably be well rewarded because of that. So after you do all of these things, and you start monitoring a little bit of why buy one, why buy versus two. So how are they working? How are they performing, and then that helps you develop your baseline data. And this is what gets me really excited, especially as like a marketer, and especially from like an executive point of view. Like if you're an executive team, and you're looking to see if your messaging is resonating, you probably have no idea of what a baseline even looks like. But if you start from this journey, this really helps to set that strong foundation of what that baseline data looks like. Because once we determine messaging that works in the Y buys, we can create dashboards that monitor baselines, once you have baselines, then you can forecast which is a marketers, especially a marketer who is, is should be I want to say concern, but should prioritize revenue and where revenue actually comes from that would help a marketer tremendously, to have kind of have that math behind your marketing and be able to sit in on those executive meetings, or to be able to be a founder and be able to answer some of those tough VC questions of whoever's giving you money, and how you're spending it. So that's another thing to keep in mind. And now, once you have what those forecasts could be, then you can start monitoring things like dial to pick up phone to meeting meeting to contact. And as long as your baselines hold, then you can realistically plan revenue forecasts, and you only have to revisit this Wi Fi campaign, when the product or the service changes that might happen multiple times throughout the year for you. But at least you have that, that, that reasoning behind of who you're sending to why you're sending it to them. And you're you're cutting through the noise. And you can absolutely use some of these AI tools to help you during this research phase to help you condense an email from you know long paragraphs, which I'm guilty of into short, specific concise emails. So then that way your audience is resonating with the messaging that you're trying to send them. So hopefully, you know that that why by exercise will really be helpful. If it's helpful for you, I can probably share this in a future newsletter. So then that way, it's completely broken down in a text format. I've been raving about this because it just really helped me developing my why buys it's really helped me in the content marketing side of things, so that I know what content to create, that my audience is actually going to care about. I love different topics. Such as you know, I don't the logistics of Mother's Day flowers and the logistics of racehorses or you know, things like that. But that's not necessarily going to get me web hosting clients. So you need to sort of rein in your brain sometimes, and have it become hyper focused on what the end goal is. And the end goal is obviously survivorship of both your role and the business and the company that you're working for. So how can you use a lot of these different tools that are out on the market in order to help along with that process to make yourself more valuable, whether at your current company or prospective company down the road, and then also helping your customers and prospective customers. So hopefully, that was a really good, you know, Roundup, I know it really helped me a ton. But for the sake of sounding like I'm just repeating myself over and over again, we've gone about 43 minutes during my first live broadcast. So this was a really fun exercise to sort of run through and to see where the opportunities are at and you know, some of the behind the scenes of what I'm working on and why I'm working on it and how I'm using some of these different AI tools to help me in my own work processes. And hopefully, you know, some of these different tips and tricks and strategies will help you in your processes and help you and your company and grow and sort of survive. You know, this changing market that we're going We're gonna be dealing with because it's not just right now, but it's in the next, you know, sort of six to 10 months, two years tops that, you know, the people who are not paying attention to AI and adopting these tools and starting to use them, you're going to be left behind, and you are in danger of having your job be replaced. So why not fight fire with fire, and use these tools to your own advantage, whether it's to further the goals of the company that you work for, but also, it's furthering yourself in order to be able to adapt to these tools quickly, and be able to adjust your processes more on the fly. So you can get more work done in a shorter amount of time. So that you can spend that time doing things that you actually love. And, you know, giving yourself a little bit of a chance to have a breather, you know, all of this news can feel very overwhelming. I'm guilty of filming a film not filming, I'm guilty of feeling very overwhelmed at times when it comes to these different topics. But the best case to do is just to be educated and stay educated. And start practicing and start using these tools in you know, as many ways as possible. And what really helps is setting Chechi btw, you go to open ai.com or chat dot open ai.com to create an account and just start messing around with these platforms. Once you get a little familiar with it, maybe you can add another tool into that mix. But by staying updated on what's going on in the market, it's really going to be an investment not just in yourself, but your future employment opportunities. So with all that said, I hope you guys enjoyed this special first live slash recorded broadcast of everything is logistics, going to be doing these again, in a true live format now that I have kind of, you know, a good presentation down of what to expect during the live broadcast. So again, you know how these will work is I will plan to go live immediately after appearing on freight waves now, which I appear, usually about 1005 to 1020, eastern standard time every Wednesday. So the plan is to go live on LinkedIn, and YouTube in the future, right after that. And we'll do a similar deep dive into the discussion. And then the goal is at the end of a broadcast like this, I'll be able to answer some of your questions maybe in the comments or in the chat. And we can keep it you know, a little bit more collaborative, especially towards the end of the show. Because the best part of any kind of discussion like this is finding out like what questions you have, what concerns you have and how I can help answer those in the future with future content and helping you stay above the fray or above the ground above the fray. I don't even know why I said that. I only really know what free means. But helping you stay above and sort of tread. Instead of treading water, you feel like you're swimming in a direction that is known to you. So if you want to find more of my work, you can follow the podcast, everything is logistics actually have it linked, everything is logistics.com. All of my social media channels are there. Be sure to also subscribe to my LinkedIn newsletter, I'm putting a more a greater priority on that newsletter that I am, you know, traditional newsletter because in my mindset, you know, when you're on LinkedIn, you're trying to be distracted from something you're trying to learn about something you're trying to be educated entertained. But when you're in your email inbox, it's a to do list it's how can I get these tasks done as quickly as possible. So my mindset around that is that I want to create content and put that newsletter content where folks want to be educated and they're looking to be distracted. So that's where I'm hoping to provide value in your feed. So be sure that you are not only connecting with me on LinkedIn but you're also subscribed subscribing to that newsletter, which is where that first story sort of came from with the you know, the AI work evolution revolution is upon us. Here's what to do about it. So with all that said that about does it for this show. And if you want more insight for me, be sure to follow along over at everything is logistics.com Thank you again I hope you enjoy this episode of everything is logistics, a podcast for the thinkers in freight, telling the stories behind how your favorite stuff and people get from point A to B. If you liked this episode, do me a favor and sign up for our newsletter. I know what you're probably thinking, oh God, another newsletter. But it's the easiest way to stay updated when new episodes are released. Plus, we dropped a lot of gems in that email to help the one person marketing team and folks like yourself who are probably wearing a lot of hats at work in order to help you navigate this digital world a little bit easier. You could find that email signup link along with our socials and past episodes. Over at everything is logistics.com And until next time, I'm blind and go Jags
