Episode Transcript
WEBVTT
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It's still comes down to people by
people. First, someone needs to be
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able to build a repport and open
a relationship. You're listening to BB revenue
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acceleration, a podcast dedicated helping software
executive stay on the cutting edge of sales
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and marketing in their industry. Let's
get into the show. Hi, welcome
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to be to be a rivn acceleration. My name is onion with you and
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I'm here today with Rub Billington from
macmhon, how are you roup today?
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Yeah, very well, thanks,
right. Perfect. So, ROB,
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today we wanted to take some time
with you to talk about the human touch
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in a in a digital sellers world. But before we go into the details
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of and get into the question,
can you please give us a bit of
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background for yourself as well as mcmun
and what the company does? Yeah,
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sure, thanks. That right.
So, my name is Rob Billington and
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the UK country manager for macmon.
I joined the company last year really to
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take on the platform that we'd already
built in the UK and to accelerate the
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growth for that where European company headquartered
out of Berlin. We've been going for
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fifteen years. Have a very strong
footprint in mainland Europe with over nine hundred
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clients and the idea now is to
emulate some of that in the UK as
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a company where in the knack space, which is network access control, and
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we're helping companies to get full visibility
of every thing on their network, which
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is becoming more and more critical with
the rise of Iot, bring your own
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device and a whole load of things
that are just coming on to networks.
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It's give people visibility from the perspective
of security network infrastructure and compliance is obviously
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a key thing for them. So
that's what we're all about. Okay,
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very, very interesting and thanks for
that. So let's dive into the conversations.
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We had the opportunity to discuss this
offline, but we all know that
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over the last few years the technology
landscape to help cells and marketing professionals as
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incredibly evolved. We know that there
is many amazing tools that are supposed to
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support business acceleration, marketing acceleration,
replace the human touch and in a way
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accelerate pipeline generation or reduce the administration
time from a marketing ourselves individual to increase
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their productivity in speaking with prospect and
I guess you know what I'd like to
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start with to us. You a
wide open question, but based on your
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your experience, and I know that
Mac money is not your first GIG and
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you you've been in the cells industry
for for a little while yourself. What
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are your sorts on all these technology
and the way the market is going?
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That's a great question and I think
the first thing I'd say is that when
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I started in it sales and sales
before that, marketing technology when I started
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was a fresh yellow pages. who
were so it certainly come on a long
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way since then and you're absolutely right. There are some fantastic tools out there.
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When we look at how crm has
developed, the amazing range of plugins
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for Crm, whether that be tools
that crawl around for new stories, that
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come up with new contact names for
us, that put all of that sort
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of thing together, it's great and
those tools are really important and do have
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a place yet. However, where
I think it comes back to is that
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they are just tools and, like
any tool, that needs a skilled,
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trained, motivated operator to use it
effectively. Again, going back to it,
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when I started telesales and telemarketers,
we're very much seen as an entry
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level. In twy t sales,
it was the bottom run of the sales
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ladder and they were given the yellow
pages and given the task of generating leads.
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I think now they've become a much
more important business critical function. So
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actually to not just have the tools
but to have the people around those tools
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and implementing them properly. We all
know it's a lot more difficult to get
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hold of key contacts within an organization. It used to be they could hide
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behind a gatekeeper. Now that gatekeeper
isn't someone that you can be nice to
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and butter up and find out when
a boss is going to be available.
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That gatekeepers an electronic voice smile.
It's people continually not being in the office.
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Even if you've got their mobile number. It can be a real struggle
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to get hold of people. So
it needs a very diligent, persevering approach
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to how we communicate with our prospects. So, yes, whilst the tools
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are good, all the technology in
the world won't be able to qualify an
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opportunity that you know, something like
Marquetta or ranking won't be able to test
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understanding and to build rapport with a
customer and to get that level of understanding
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commitment needed to build a long term
relationship with a client. And the other
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thing on it is that, as
the whilst these tools are useful, they're
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expensive and for a single organization to
buy an array of tools and make that
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sort of investment is a very difficult
call to to take. So I'm all
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for the development of them and see
them as really useful, but unless those
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key personnel or there to understand what
they're seeing in terms of the information that's
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being provided and utilize that, they
sit there as tools that need to be
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utilized. Absolutely I think that makes
a lot of sense. Is it almost
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sounds like it's. There is a
big arsenal of tools that are available to
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use, but like any tool,
you need to put them in the right
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ends. And that kind of fleed
me to some of the conversation that's Una
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and adding the past and obviously for
some of our listener we rub an I
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at your bottom. Need to walk
together in the person to support each other,
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and I remember you always speaking about
intelligent led lead generation process and the
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influence of the individual in that marketing
process as well as in that cells process.
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From your perspective, and again,
from while you're sitting right now,
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where do you see the humantage being
the most critical or the most important as
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part of the process, because I
completely agree with you. amachined ultimately cannot
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qualify your Manchine or not yet.
Cannot close a dealer machine, cannot get
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into a complex cell cycles. But
what would you say? The humantage is
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the most important from your perspective?
Brought on the marketing and the cells aspect.
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Now that's right, and it's still
comes down to people by people.
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First, someone needs to be able
to build a repport and open a relationship.
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When we're talking about getting through to
decision makers, it's still needs someone
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to be able to broach that first
conversation and start moving things forward. And
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if you look at this particular industry
that we're in in the text base,
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I read a report the other day
that there are over five hundred new tech
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vendors that will be trying to get
into the UK market in the next twelve
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months. So that's a huge volume
of new vendors creating phone calls, putting
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out messages. There'll be lots and
lots of electronic marketing and unless there is
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someone that can pick up a phone
and strike up a conversation to cut through
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the rest of the volume, the
message that Mac mom wants to put across
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to customers about our fantastic services really
becomes very diluted and amongst the noise of
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everything else that's going on. And
of course those five hundred are going to
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be competing with the companies that are
already here, and some of those are
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big players that are very established.
I think from a personal point of view,
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with Mac one we've then got the
the added challenge we've got one thing
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to talk about, which is network
access control. So when we start a
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conversation with someone when we're obviously going
to talk about network access control, it's
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what we do and we don't discover
necessarily all the other things that are going
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on in that organization. We don't
perhaps find out about the the big network
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refresh they're going to do, about
the anti virus work, about upgrading their
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fire walls, and that's the same
for all of these other companies that are
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talking about single things. A lot
of the information they hear they can't utilize
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because it doesn't apply to them.
So so much of the conversation is almost
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an irrelevance to what it is you're
trying to get out. But that first
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initial conversation with a client. So
for me, intelligence led is all about
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an organization like operatics having multiple conversations
around multiple topics with multiple end users,
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and what that means is that actually
you end up with this huge pool of
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knowledge and it might well be that
one of your staff is talking to a
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potential customer about anti virus and that
guy goes you know what, I'm not
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spending any money on anti virus for
the next twelve months because everything I'm doing
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is is a big network refresh and
for the Anti Virus Guy that's not great
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news, but you've got other clients
that suddenly that becomes really useful information for.
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So it's that intelligence led marketing is
is to have really that sort of
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three hundred and sixty view of the
market and be able to put all of
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those loose ends together and be able
to build pictures that make sense to somebody
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cap's. That's really where I come
in it from and where I see the
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value of an organization like operatics to
us, and thanks for I think it's
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we always the other concept and I
actually agree with it. I think the
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traditional way of doing daily marketing.
For me, day marketing means called calling
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in a very intelligent ways. I
you are contacting someone and you are repeating
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the same thing other another gain with
dear friend people, and so we are
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offender to the marketing is dead and
I agree with it. We often that
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it's a number game and I don't
agree with is that. I think it's
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actually a quality game. It's about
the quality of the engagement rather than number
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of engagement, because you could,
you could engage with hundred people a day
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if they're at the right individual.
Ultimately they won't give you anything, and
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it's often what we see from the
technology led the technology like like actually the
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human touch. It's all about finding
the right people and having an intelligent conversation
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with that individual and being able to
interact with that individual, ie, if
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they say yes or no, what
you go next? That's the concept of
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telemarketing, the concept of a to
jump on the back of what you said,
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of that intelligence led Lee Generation,
is really about giving the power to
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people. Are Giving the tools to
people to have that business conversation, leading
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the conversation, potentially challenging the preconcert
ideas of the prospect and to see what
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we can get out of it,
but also build up a relationship with this
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individual because, as you rightly said, and probably is the case for you,
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you receive thousands of emails every day. As those five hundred companies that
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you're mentioning, I mean it's going
to be thousands of marketing COMPAIS and the
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same people fighting after the same message, that same regulation, that's attack,
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that happen in the market or that
same this is what we do in terms
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of making you more efficient, excter, etc. So basically everybody is fighting
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the same corner and and that wantage, that relationship, that engagement, that
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attention to the prospect by doing your
research before you engage Rehi them, is
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is, from our perspective as a
business, becoming mine more important. One
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of the things that obviously we praised
you over the years for doing with our
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team. I mean you are one
of the clients that I said would probably
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work the best with the people we've
got, and I think it's often because
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you worked with very good individuals,
but you also have that way of motivating
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on gaging that team. I personally
think that it probably comes from the fact
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that you've done the job yourself and
you know what it is you you've been
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strung formember. I'd like to get
your views because again, you've been very
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good at it. So, for
Li'Sten I could you share the tips of,
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I guess, how to engage best
with the resources. Is a resources
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of a company like operatics are your
own resources, because at the end of
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the day, you know, these
are comes for us. Are they could
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be on resources. But what's the
best way to engage with this individual as
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well as keep them motivated? Yeah, I think a lot of it just
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comes down to a management style.
I think if you if you ask someone
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to do a job and leave them
to get along to do it by themselves
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without any input, the reality is
that probably not going to do the job
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that you want. So it's about
working with individuals and in a lot of
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ways, the sort of things that
we do salesman. It's about testing understanding
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as you go. It's about qualifying
that they've got the message and that they're
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comfortable with it and helping them to
find their own message. So, you
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know, the start of a campaign
with operatics, the way that otherwise worked
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is to get together with the the
operatics team make sure that they really understand
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what it is that I would like
them to be able to do for us.
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You know, at the end of
the day. We can't make any
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bones about it. It's a service
that we pay for and I'm equally sort
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of cognizant to the fact that I've
got to report to someone if the results
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are bad. So so I've got
a vested interest in making sure it works.
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So daily communication then with a team
of operatics is important to really make
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sure you're praising when they get it
right, to look at how we can
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we can change things around if things
aren't working, and through that daily communication
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it means that you're always testing and
keeping a finger on the pulse of what's
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happening and how those conversations are going. So the thing I would say to
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anyone looking to engage with operatics is
to bring the team of people into in
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operatics into your own business. Make
them part of that sales process. If
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you're doing a team events, invite
the operatics guy along. If you're doing
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a show, have the operatics guy
on the stand so he really feels part
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of the team and he's immersing himself
not just in knowledge but also culture,
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because a lot of what we talked
about as companies when we're selling is is
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selling our culture. So if the
person making the first initial contact doesn't understand,
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doesn't get that culture. We're missing
an opportunity there and that prospect is
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missing out on an opportunity to buy
into something that we team is really important.
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So I think the short answer is
just daily involvement and really bringing people
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into into a framework of a team. Yeah, well, and it's something
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that, as we say, we
drink on Champagne or wet on doc foot.
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But basically I also have a team
with no operatics that do what they
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do to you to me. So
you know, for me, is which
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is helping me to engage with prospect
and the way described it the best these
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guys that they are an extension of
me. I need to keep my finger
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on the pulse with them. I
need to make sure that turn the stand
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when things are going right things are
not going right. If celebrating success absolutely
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critical, discussing issues, calibration also
critical, but having that's ongoing relationship,
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giving them a call when you come
out of a meeting or you come out
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of a call, to give them
a feedback, for it's about empowering these
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people and it's also showing them what's
happening, what is the results of that
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walk? So I do completely agree
with you and I think I mean again,
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you've done a fantastic job with our
guys. We was very, very
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interesting for me to listen to your
insight and I'm sure that the audience as
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well probably picked up quite a few
interesting takeaway from what we discussed today.
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Rob Just so if if some of
our listen, I want to get in
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touch with you, what's is the
best way to get old of Rub Billington?
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Yeah, so the best way to
get hold of me generally is email.
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So that's Roberts top Billington at MAC
MON DOT EU. Okay, and
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that'll get there. If you want
to have a look at our offering that
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it's WWWMAC MON DOT EU and I'll
take you to our website. There you
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go. Well, that was wonderful, rob so thank you very much for
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your time today. You know inside
it from my best but you was in
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very able I find and I hope
all this I will find this time way.
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But thank you very much again for
your time today. Right. Thank
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you very much being pleasure talking with
it. Thank you. operatics has redefined
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00:16:10.960 --> 00:16:17.080
the meaning of revenue generation for technology
companies worldwide. While the traditional concepts of
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00:16:17.200 --> 00:16:22.549
building and managing inside sales teams inhouse
has existed for many years. Companies are
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00:16:22.590 --> 00:16:26.870
struggling with a lack of focus,
agility and scale required in today's fast and
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00:16:27.029 --> 00:16:33.580
complex world of enterprise technology sales.
See How operatics can help your company accelerate
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00:16:33.620 --> 00:16:41.539
pipeline at operatics dotnet. You've been
listening to BEDB revenue acceleration. To ensure
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that you never miss an episode,
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