How Can "Content Led Sales" Transform Your Business?

Dr. Jim (00:02)
So from an execution perspective, you integrate this into every stage of the buyer journey from the top of the funnel all the way through. And you need to have the mindset that every interaction with the customer is a perpetual discovery opportunity.

The idea is to learn as much as you can with every touch point so that you can actually prioritize properly and come to a mutual decision on what the next step is. So what that means is whatever content you are anchoring this on, I'm a podcaster. I anchor it on video and audio podcast content, but you could do this with blogs. You can do this with articles. You can do this any number of ways, whatever your anchor content is.

You can go out outbound with

Benjamin Ard (01:09)
Welcome back to another episode of Content Amplified. Today I'm joined by Dr. Jim. Jim, how are you doing today?

Dr. Jim (01:15)
I'm good. How are you?

Benjamin Ard (01:16)
Good, good. Jim, well, thank you so much for coming on the show today. I'm really excited about the subject. This is a phrase I've never heard before. It's an area that you're an expert in I think our viewers are going to get a lot of value out of this. So this is going to be fun. But before we dive into the subject, Jim, let's get to know you. Tell us about your career and background.

Dr. Jim (01:37)
full disclosure. I don't consider myself an expert in this. It's just something I've kind of fallen into. And if your typical audience is a bunch of marketing folks, I'm not a marketer. I'm somebody that has grown up on the sales side that has integrated marketing and partnerships into how I show up from a go-to-market perspective. So from an overall revenue side of the house,

I'm not your typical pitch slapping salesperson that actually drives me nuts just as much as it drives every marketer nuts. and I'm kind of an odd duck in both spaces, but basically I've spent my entire life in the sales side, typically opening new markets, in accelerating growth or, or startup organizations, and working on opening new markets, new products.

Stuff like that. I tend to be more pioneering and that actually plays better to my skills than a highly structured larger enterprise

Benjamin Ard (02:27)
I love it. So Jim, we typically ask our guests, what do you love about content and marketing? But this time we're going to alter it a little bit because of your background. We're just going to go straight with what do you love about content when it comes to business?

Dr. Jim (02:40)
So I think content from a business perspective and from a sales perspective is actually the great equalizer. When you look at how sales is functioning right now, just about every organization is operating on that predictable revenue model, feet on the street. The more dials you make, the more revenue you're going to get. And I think anybody that's paying attention knows that that is fundamentally broken because it creates an environment where you are pushing your customers away.

Content's the great equalizer because instead of having to fight that outbound resistance the entire time of the way and forcing people into a funnel, you're actually coming alongside of your customer and working out meaningful collaborations with them that spotlights them instead of spotlighting what you are bringing to the table.

And I think that's rooted in a fundamental mistake or a misconception about how sellers go into the market. They, when you talk to every seller, we behave as if we are the hero in the customer story when we're just a prop. And that's what content allows you to do is that it allows you to put the focus on your customer and helping them realize that they're the hero in their own story. You're just kind of

go-along person that helps them get there. So that's what I love about content because it allows you to remove the friction in the entire buying process and the selling process and really creates a collaborative experience for everybody that's involved.

Benjamin Ard (04:05)
I love that. That's amazing. I'm so excited because I am so aligned with this concept. You also introduced to me this idea of content led sales, right? There's lots of terminologies and phrases out there. What does content led sales actually mean to you? How does that work and how is it a little bit different than the typical sales journey?

Dr. Jim (04:25)
problem that I started looking at trying to solve is how do I have conversations with a hundred percent of my TAM? Because in a typical selling environment, it's the predictable revenue model. There's 3 % of your market that's looking to buy right now. And a lot of the motion from an outbound perspective is assumptive and also trying to figure out which

one small percent of that buyer that you're reaching out to and spamming your entire TAM is going to take the bait and have a conversation with you. That's inefficient. It burns like 97 % of your market. And I started asking the question, how can I talk to a hundred percent of my marketplace and bring them into my ecosystem? Give them an experience really spotlights like who I am as a person, but also who they are as a person.

and sets the relationship off on a strong foundation to build from with the idea that I'm looking to understand what their situation is before trying to be understood as a seller. So that's a fundamental principle of any sort of leadership or business is seek to understand before trying to be understood. So when you apply content led sales, and it's just something that I just made it's not anything new.

It's leveraging content to set the foundation for you to create that frictionless brying journey and collaboratively work out what makes the most sense from a buyer seller perspective. What typically happens in the selling motion is that if you're using that spam your Tam approach, people aren't going to be honest with you. They're going to tell you what you want to hear because they know being sold to.

With this approach, you're spotlighting the content first, first, the focus on understanding first, and you're coming at it from an authentic perspective. And then that actually allows an easier down funnel conversation to happen. And then you can slot things out where you need to and prioritize things the way that they need to, instead of trying to force fit everybody into that artificial discovery stage or sales funnel stage.

that every organization tries to do it. This is an approach that will work if you're in that startup early stage, accelerating growth stage of an organization, because it allows you to overcome those issues with brand recognition, lack of marketing strength, lack of partnership capability. and it gives people a reason to talk to you because if you're a startup and you're going out to market, the biggest question or challenge that you'll be faced with is

Why would I as a CHRO or a VP of IT or a CRO want to talk to you? I don't know who you are. I don't know who, what you sell. I don't know any of that stuff. This helps you overcome that.

Benjamin Ard (07:05)
I love that.

That's so cool. So I'm really good at I give people credit for terms even if they didn't come up with them. But here we're going to give you full credit. Jim, you are the official owner of content led sales. The phrase it's copyrighted trademarked. All right, right in here now. So we're giving you full credit for that. So my next question that I think is really interesting is what does this actually look like?

In an organization you want to build relationships, you want to start with content and really get to know them before you really force them to get to know you. What would that practically look like in a business? What are some ideas? Maybe some experiences you've had there.

Dr. Jim (07:43)
No, that's a great question. the way to answer it. It's a lot easier than than what you would think. So the key principle in executing this well, especially if you are a seller, is you need to delay your urge to start selling as long as possible. Because if you're using this as a go to market to get in front of people and then you immediately turn it into a selling conversation, it's going to blow up.

And you're going to do the same thing that you do when you smile and dial. So the goal is delay that and put that off until the time is right.

So from an execution perspective, you integrate this into every stage of the buyer journey from the top of the funnel all the way through. And you need to have the mindset that every interaction with the customer is a perpetual discovery opportunity.

The idea is to learn as much as you can with every touch point so that you can actually prioritize properly and come to a mutual decision on what the next step is. So what that means is whatever content you are anchoring this on, I'm a podcaster. I anchor it on video and audio podcast content, but you could do this with blogs. You can do this with articles. You can do this any number of ways, whatever your anchor content is.

You can go out outbound with

it. And what you would do is identify your ICP, identify your key persona. And instead of having a problem focused outreach, you have a content focused outreach. And the way that it would look is if I'm trying to get in front of you, Ben is my message would be, Hey, we do a podcast on this topic. We're spotlighting practitioners who are experts in the field. Would you like to be a guest?

And using that as your outbound, you go from getting, you know, 10 % response on your outbound to 50, 60 % response. And out of those 50, 60%, like 90 % will book and 90 % of those will show up and you have high conversion all the way through the funnel versus what typically happens if you hire like an SDR firm or have your own SDRs, you're smiling and dialing your way, trying to force feed people into a booking.

And your no show rate is like 90%. So it tends to waste a lot of time. This is how you get scrappy and create a scenario where people actually want to talk to you. No, but the big problem in the world today from a, from a sales perspective, nobody wants to talk to a salesperson using this approach. And if you do it well, people actually want to have conversations with you. And that's, that's when you take the selling part out of it.

and you focus on the relationship first.

Benjamin Ard (10:15)
I love that. So I've created a channel, you know, whether it's a podcast, I have a blog, something of that nature could even just be my YouTube page or not my YouTube page, like LinkedIn posts or whatever it may be. I do the outreach. I'm engaging with these people, these experts, this, you know, part of my Tam. I get them onto the initial opportunity. Let's say I'm interviewing them. Where do I take it from there? And like you said, you have to know when the conversation

needs to turn over to the sales conversation, but you need to wait as long as possible. What does the follow-up sequence look like to actually kind of progress them through the pipeline?

Dr. Jim (10:51)
Yeah, no, that's a, that's a great question. And it's a lot more seamless than you would think you you'll know it when you see it, but basically the way that you want to approach it is that you've structured this, whatever you're doing, it's a B2B show. Like I come from the B2B world. So everything that I've actually put together is relevant to the B2B space. Not really sure how this would translate to like a product led growth organization or a B2C organization, but in a B2B context.

You've built a show around a common problem or issue that exists within your ICP and your persona. So the persona is coming on to talk about that topic as the expert. You should be actively listening through that conversation to look for keys or triggers or things like that, that are interesting for a followup conversation. And 90%.

95 % of the time that will come up and the, the end of the show, you ask for, Hey, you mentioned this. it was pretty interesting. I'd like to get a little bit more detail on what that actually looks like. did. It would have taken the show off topic. would you be open to having that conversation? I get yeses all the time on that. And then in that followup conversation, you're still talking about that as potential content for another piece of content that you want to pull out.

but that's going to be designed to identify, is there a need that might warrant, you know, having a product for focus conversation? So you're actually using this as a learning opportunity, but it's also a discovery to see if there's a pain point there that you solve for that can naturally bridge to another conversation. So what I've done is in that stage,

talk about the thing that I want to talk about relevant to the content. And then I'll say, Hey, you know, I'm curious, I'd like to get your feedback on something that we're working on. And that gives me an opportunity to show a couple pieces of whatever product it is and get their feedback. So you're doing product research in there too. So in that stage, you're still a content marketer, but you're also doing product research with the intent of

tying the things that they mentioned to things that are relevant in your product and seeing if there is an aha moment that, that bridges a longer conversation that you set up for. So it's like, you're doing springboards in each step, actively listening to identify any key pain points that you can, you can act on to move the conversation along to where it needs to move along to.

Benjamin Ard (13:13)
I love that. So when you have a full team, let's say you've got a 50 person sales team. Sometimes people look at these podcasts and content creation as pretty much leadership exclusive. You know, maybe it's the founders, maybe it's the executive team. What does that look like or boots on the ground? SDR BDR AE. How does that kind of function? Do they all have their own channels? What does that look like?

Dr. Jim (13:38)
So this is where sales leaders are going to go out of their mind. My position is that everybody should be CEO of their own desk. Obviously go through your channels to try to figure out how you can make that happen. But if you, an individual contributor and the CEO of your own career, and I'm saying this as a Gen Xer, so I'm one of the old guys in the room that's saying this. So for all of the Gen Z and millennials that are listening and even Gen Alpha,

Are they even in the job market yet? But anyways, for all of you folks who aren't taking the time to build your own brand, you need to, and this is a vehicle for you to do it. So whether you're an A and S SDR, a BDR, you should be developing some sort of professional portfolio or content channel that you're integrating into your job and bringing your buyer into it, into these sort of motions, because that's only going to serve you going.

down the road because what you have to think about is one of the big challenges and threats that happen that that exists right now in the revenue side of an organization is AI. So you should be looking at how do I make myself irreplaceable or un-AI-able? That's not a word, but you get what I'm saying. Do the things that AI can't do. And if you're an SDR, the only thing that AI can beat you on is volume. So

What you need to focus on is how do I get more effective on the volume that I'm putting out? So creating your own channel, using content led sales as your vehicle for outbound, getting those buyers in your ICP into your ecosystem, your own personal ecosystem, building that relationship and then bridging it to a commercial conversation. That's the way that you make yourself immune to a large degree to what AI can do. So I would say this is like,

Don't get me wrong. I'm a frontline seller too. So even though I might be head of growth or VP of whatever and wherever I am, I'm still in the trenches doing outbound and getting people into the ecosystem because that's how you make yourself irreplaceable and build a set of skills that makes you attractive to anybody else. So that's, it's, it's deeply applicable to anybody that's a frontline seller. And I would encourage everyone to do it.

And if you get kibosh from your manager or director, go rogue and do it yourself and do it on your own time, because it's only going to serve you well in your long-term career. the focus should be on how can you drive better outcomes instead of do I get more smiles and dials out? Nobody cares about that. past a certain point it's how many people are you working through the funnel and building strong relationships with that's going to serve you over a lifetime.

So one of the things that I would recommend to get your mindset right when you're thinking about this, read the book customer for life and read anything by Stu Heineck. the author of grow your business like a weed, get the meeting and get a meeting with anybody or anyone read those, those three, four books and apply that to what you do as a seller. And you'll be well served in terms of your career longevity and making yourself.

really unique in the space.

Benjamin Ard (16:40)
I love it. Well, we could dive into the subject for hours. I am fascinated by it. There's so much goodness, but we try to leave these episodes nice and short and sweet and we have run out of time already. But Dr. Jim, if anyone wants to reach out and connect with you online and further this conversation, how and where can they find you?

Dr. Jim (16:59)
Easiest channel is LinkedIn. So you can find me on LinkedIn, I also have a YouTube channel. My TikTok is in business focus, but I am active on TikTok and I'm on a whole bunch of platforms. But for these sort of conversations, LinkedIn is the best channel.

Benjamin Ard (17:14)
Awesome. Anyone listening to the podcast, will link to everything in the show notes below. Jim, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. This is amazing. We really appreciate your time and insights today.

Dr. Jim (17:24)
No, thanks for having me on. It was fun.

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