Todd Clouser:
I just want to throw this out there. I feel like we're having a very kumbaya moment right now which is very in line with Ross's stereotype of marketers.
Ross Pomerantz (Corporate Bro):
Yeah, well if we try to trustful right now we'd all hit the ground. (Laughs)So let's just be let's just remember that.
*Beyond Quota Intro*
Pouyan Salehi:
We’re back. I'm Pouyan from Scratchpad and we've got Ross from… where are you from now?
Ross:
I don’t know, I don’t even know. I'm just Corp now just -
Pouyan:
Just Corp.
Ross:
Just Corp dude.
Pouyan:
And today we're excited to have Todd with us.
Ross:
The ToddFather. Is it Clouser? Because it's almost closer.
Todd:
It is Clouserr. Or some people know me as “Ya Boy.”
Pouyan:
I feel so lame here. We've got Corp. We got “Ya Boy” - I mean we got 2 excellent marketers on the line here. Maybe you all can help me come up with a new brand.
Todd:
When you guys reached out to me to do this I literally told people this is just going to be a bloodbath.
Ross:
Nooooo noooo. I mean we have to talk to the other side sometimes. We want to know - get the perspective on how the other side lives… with themselves. Knowing who they are. Give us your background because I think we need some context out here. We've admitted that you're a marketer. Okay, and you said that out loud so you have to live with yourself. So tell us how did we get here? What happened? What mistakes were made?
Todd:
So I think I had the - I started as a - I'm going to call it an SDR even though that's not what the term was back then. But it was pretty much the same story that I think most SDRs kind of fall into which is I didn't have the brightest college career. Got out of school in 2009. Job market was trash. And I basically ended up taking the first job I could get which was the first hire at a company that… honestly didn't really know what the hell they were selling. So I literally spent all day for six months cold calling people. Essentially asking for their contact information. It got to the point where I was like, I'm either going to quit or I got to figure something out. And the job market was trash so I couldn't quit so I ended up starting a Youtube channel thinking like, hey maybe I can push people from Youtube over to the website. And the Youtube channel ended up taking off so we literally transitioned the whole [business] to kind of focus more on content and education and scrap the previous idea altogether.
Pouyan:
So you went down the influencer path before influencers were influencers.
Todd:
Yeah, so this was in 2011. Um, and companies weren't really doing it. There was people out on Youtube, but I don't even think Youtube was monetized yet to be honest. It was pretty early on and we just started putting out content once a week and I think we hit like 50K subscribers within… this is going to sound like a long time but at the time it wasn't it was like probably 2 years? And then we started doubling every year after that to when I left we were at like 650K.
Ross:
Dude I think I'm in like 20K in like eight years, seven years so I would say that's pretty good.
Pouyan:
What were you posting? What was on this channel?
Todd:
It was literally like 100% education. So it was for the welding and fabrication space and I'm not a subject matter expert in that area whatsoever. Before taking this job I had no idea about welding or fabrication. So we basically went out and we found subject matter experts in that area and then flew them in maybe once every two months and just banked as much educational content as we could. And at the time there wasn't that much out there so we had the first mover advantage. The point of the story here is that marketing drove 100% of our business. Just want to throw that out there.
Ross:
And what happened to that business again?
Ross:
Look. Good marketing is the best. It's the best.
Todd:
You heard it here first.
Ross:
Good marketing is the best. It is.
Pouyan:
From one of the best marketers out there.
Ross:
Great marketing is great because it supports sales efforts. That's what it is. Now we're not talking B2C here. We're talking B2B. We can talk about B2C another time.
Pouyan:
Do you think people actually care though? Like there are all these voices out there on Linkedin that are like, oh the debate between sales and marketing and what's better and this and that?
Todd:
No, I think at the end of the day. It's the same goal right? You’ve got one of the best marketing influencers out here on this call. He just identifies as a salesperson.
Ross:
I'm gonna just blow my brands out here. Yeah I identify how hell I want! So where are we now? What are we doing now? We're making content. We've seen it. It's good stuff.
Todd:
Yeah, so basically - and the whole reason I was invited to show - is basically I think the way forward with marketing and sales together is creating content that differentiates. Like, I'm creating Tiktok content and putting it on Linkedin. My TikTok content doesn't do that great on TikTok. It freaking blows up on Linkedin though. And when you do that - whether you’re a salesperson or a marketing person - people know who you are. If Ross goes out and cold calls 50 people, there's a good chance that they know who he is and they're going to take that call because they've seen the content that he's putting out. Whereas if your average SDR does it, you're not going to have that effect.
Pouyan:
Do you think that still holds true though? Because we've talked to folks that found their way into sales because they didn't know what else to do. And ended up staying in sales for a much longer period of time because they found out that they were actually good at it or worked for them even though they weren't sure that this was their life dream or or their passion the direction they wanted to go in. But do you think it still holds true where you could come into sales and then transition into content now just given how much content there is? Because it sounds like when you did it it was like there was nothing. There just wasn't a lot of content on welding.
Todd:
I think every single person that is in marketing should have spent some time doing sales and specifically grinding as an SDR or something like that because I think it - for me at least - it made me realize that like 1) I suck at this. Like I was a terrible SDR. So if I wanted to succeed I had to figure out a better way of bringing people in and for me, it was creating content.
But there's people out there that are fantastic at sales. Like my wife is going through Aspireship right now so she's going into sales - like I'm not saying sales is bad by any stretch of the imagination - I think it's super important. But some people just suck at it.
Ross:
That's it dude. That's it. I mean you just summed it all up. I think if more marketers were just like look, I suck at sales and I could never do it. That's much more what I'd rather hear. It's like great. Cool. Agree to agree here and like we can move forward together. That's how we do it instead of the like, No! We're just as important thing! That's just fundamentally wrong, but if we can just be a little more self-aware. That's all I'm saying. Salespeople - we're terrible to deal with most of the time like Diva's, whiny, like all the things, but that's what I talk about. Yeah I'm a little baby-back-bitch sometimes, but I know that and I willingly tell people that. I think that's part of where we get the friction of people not willing to admit their shortcomings.
Todd:
Call me out 100% if I'm wrong Ross but have you not almost taken the same path? And I'm not saying that you suck at sales. But that's not what I'm trying to say but -
Ross:
No, no I was about to say I do suck - well I don't suck at sales. But I think like… my feeling was the same as yours where I was like how can I just be different than another 5’11” white dude with a chill photo on Linkedin pinging somebody? The superpower I had was I could make people laugh.
Todd:
But that's the beauty of why your stuff works so well. It’s because everybody - just about every salesperson out there can relate to probably 90% of the videos that you put out. I think that's what separates good marketing from bad marketing is like, am I creating some response that is going to connect with the audience? That's going to make them want to connect with me, reach out, whatever your end goal is.
Pouyan:
I mean this might be a silly question but when you said you were bad at sales or being an SDR what does that mean? How did you know you were bad?
Todd:
I think I was originally set up for failure because like even as they were building the website nobody really knew what it was going to be so like I didn't even really know what I was trying to get these people to do when I would call them other than like “hey can I can I take all your information and put it on my website” so like… it wasn't a very compelling offer.
Ross:
Yeah, I think that's fair. A lot of SDRs get set up to fail. Just generally speaking. I think my second cold - no my first cold call with my manager back when we had wired headsets. We had a splitter so he's sitting next to me. And the dude told me to @$&* on the first call.
Ross:
I’ll never forget. I can still see the guy's Linkedin photo. He looked like a total douchebag. He had like aviators on, he was running some big company out of Florida and he looked like a douchebag and I judged him before and then he turned out to be that and I was like “oh my god” and my manager was like “this is not how it normally goes.” But it wasn't not how it normally went at Oracle.
Todd:
I had a very similar experience and it wasn't the only one but the best one I can remember was I called this guy up and was basically asking him for his information and he basically asked me if I could either give him a bag of money or a kilo of Coke… I was like what? And then he said I'm not interested and hung up on me. I was like okay.
Pouyan:
Well, at least… not qualified.
Ross:
Or now you knew his need and you could adjust for that, ya know?
Pouyan:
What did you learn though? I’m sure there are some things you learned from your lovely time as an SDR?
Todd:
You have to know your audience. Like for instance I was calling these people - I had no idea about the industry I had no idea about what they wanted or even what I was selling so there was no way that I was going to be successful. So what I did was I reached out to somebody who was a subject matter expert and could help me on that journey. And I did that in the way of marketing. But I think even if you're going to stay in sales like you need somebody. You don't want to be just thrown into it and then hope for the best. That's a recipe for disaster. You need somebody there kind of coaching you along the way to help you figure that out.
Pouyan:
I guess you have to be in tune to knowing your audience but you have many more opportunities to get to know your audience because you're like literally reaching out to them. You're understanding why they're shutting you down, why they might be leaning in… how does marketing do it?
Todd:
I think this is partially where coming from a sales background really helps. Because the best thing to do as a marketer is literally just call prospects, call customers. Like the beauty of doing it from a marketing standpoint is I'm not trying to sell you anything. I'm just trying to figure out what that is so that I can put it into my content, I can relay that to my sales team, like it's a non threatening call for the person on the other end of the line.
Ross:
I agree. I totally agree. And that's like it. Like if you want to be in marketing somewhere I'm like do the SDR role for like even a month. That even maybe too long. Like two weeks. You're gonna get to experience the whole gamut of reactions you're gonna get. And I just think it's so critical whether you stay or not like that’s up to you, but I think it’s exactly what you said Todd.
Todd:
Well I think there's also an opportunity for teams that are already pretty well aligned where the head of sales or the CR-whatever your title is… bring marketers into those - like have them cold-call people for a day and see what it’s like.
Pouyan:
Okay, I mean I'm gonna share this with my marketing team and Todd I'm gonna share your contact info as well. If that's all right and tell them that ah Todd told me… so you might get some friendly emails. Like Todd told me that you all should be cold-calling.
Ross:
Thinking about them like hearing that. Like imagine… I want to be in that meeting -
Pouyan:
Yeah, you want to join?
Ross:
Yeah dude!
Pouyan:
Okay let’s do it. I’m serious.
Todd:
I'll tell you what it would make for fantastic content. I'll throw that out. But that's what I attribute my success as a marketer to is like… I realized early on that 1) I was bad at this 2) I didn't know anything about the industry or the people I was selling to and I I didn't make the mistake of thinking that I knew or that I was I knew more than the people I was talking to. I brought somebody in to basically help me with that.
Pouyan:
So let's let's dig into that for a second though because if somebody I mean one I'm curious how you did it. But if others are listening and they're like okay great, that sounds awesome, let me let me learn. Do you have any tips or how did you go about reaching out to somebody so that you could build empathy for them and learn from them?
Todd:
For me when I did it I was essentially adding value to that person that was going to help me because I was saying, listen I am terrible at this, I want to start a Youtube channel to see if we can bring in inbound stuff. You're gonna get all this notoriety from being the face of that Youtube channel so that's a little different than me reaching out to somebody on my team like, hey can you spend an hour a day like helping me get better at whatever? But I think if you can bring value to the person that you're asking help from… I mean you'd be surprised. People don't say no to stuff like that.
Pouyan:
That's in line with a lot of what my cofounder and I did very early on. Like this was probably before Scratchpad before even our last company. Reaching out to different audiences and trying to connect with them to learn. But I think what I learned was the,what's in it for me, is one of the most important pieces to unpack for somebody before you reach out to them. And what's surprising though to your point Todd sometimes it's just giving somebody the opportunity to share their learnings. On the other extreme I literally had people say, yeah I'll talk to you for 15 minutes if you send me $250. So the what's in it for you is very clear. You want to see the dollars but you know for others it was you know and you can position it differently and we'd reach out to folks and yeah I was surprised as to how many people would be willing to give up 15 minutes to share their learnings and I think just being open and honest about that and saying hey we're looking to learn looks like you've got a lot of experience here I'm not trying to sell anything and genuinely curious to learn from you and a lot of people what would offer their time up for that.
Todd:
I just want to throw this out there that I feel like we're having a very kumbaya moment right now which is very in line with Ross's stereotype of marketers.
Pouyan:
Yeah I feel very connected.
Ross:
If we try to trust-fall right now we'd all hit the ground. So let's just remember that.
Pouyan:
For us, you know, just reflecting back on the work we did at Scratchpad. That that was really it. Like salespeople changing their behavior is one of the hardest things to do. And some folks will know like yeah, my system's not the best but you know what? It works and it works for me and I've got my spreadsheet, I've got my post-it notes, and my - you know stack of notebooks from deals years old… but… the behavior change was the most important thing for us to try to unlock. Could we get anybody to say “yeah like I'm actually willing to shift to that?” The money we would know would come down the road but we had that conviction. But in other industries or let's say in other problem-solution-sets, yeah maybe it is more “hey would you be willing to pay for this right now” or “what would it take for you to actually move forward?”
Ross:
That's a great point. Great point. Really good point.
Todd:
I think the most successful salespeople are the ones that are playing the long game right? Look look at any of your favorite salespeople on Linkedin. The reason that they're your favorite is because there's not always a call to action to buy my product. They're not sharing the latest ebook and trying to grab your your contact info so they can cold call you. They're playing the long game. So that whenever you do have that need you you think about them and you think about their company as the category leader.
Ross:
That's a good point and that's one of the misalignments of sales generally. It's like you're seeing companies go to shorter and shorter quota cycles. Like the monthly cycle I think is the most outrageous thing ever. Of course like your acv matters and like the sales cycle could you one-call-close so on and so forth. But I think the long game is the way to go. I think that's how you build a sustainable business. The problem is all reps are forced to now now now now now urgency urgency urgency.
Pouyan:
I don't know if it's - the long game may not be the right term for it though because that implies it actually does take a long time to make it happen. What I'm unpacking from what you're saying is it's almost letting go. And trusting the process. It's letting go that I need to close right away and saying let me invest in this. Let me not go for the hard ask because by maybe helping you first or giving first or guiding you in some way that may actually get to close faster I mean honestly like I've seen that happen. So I think that the long game to me is more just a change in mindset to say I'm going to focus more on the end result of making sure that you're happy because I believe you'll be a customer but I'm not going to go and say all right are you going to buy right now? Sometimes you have to do that. Honestly that's one thing I’ve respected and appreciated about the best salespeople I know. With surgical precision they know exactly when to go for the ask and they do it in the most confident, calm and crystal clear way. That's like yeah “oh yeah, absolutely I'd like to purchase.”
Ross:
Todd where do you see all this going from here? How do you see the world of sales and marketing changing?
Todd:
Honestly I think it's more of what we just talked about. I think that the lines between marketing and sales are going to be blurred and you're going to start seeing more so than sdrs just like - I want you making a hundred dials a day! You're going to have more specialized people in those roles that can provide education and value and sales is going to be part of that inbound engine.
Pouyan:
Well Todd we end every episode with this one thing we do - and I guess maybe you can reflect back to your your sdr days or maybe even now on on marketing initiatives that don't go well but like, what's your hype song that you just you looked into getting amped up to go into into calls?
Todd:
So I'm from Pittsburgh. Diehard Steelers fan. So there's only one answer to this which is “Renegade.”
Pouyan:
Okay, solid, solid. What's the inverse of that? Like what's your - you just got punched in the face. through the phone and you need to recover.
Todd:
I'm gonna let you hammer on me for a little bit because you can probably picture me in the corner crying to “Here Comes The Sun.”
Ross:
Ah God! Yeah, yeah, Wow. I just see the mascara is running just a little bit. Oh my god.
Todd:
Single tear running down my cheek.
Pouyan:
Todd it was awesome having you and thanks for all the perspectives and the fun conversation.
Ross:
Yeah man and keep making the content that people want. That's good shit and so I guess this is your time for shameless plug. Where can people find you? How do they find you? What are you all about?
Todd:
It’s pretty simple. Follow me on Linkedin: Todd Clouser TikTok: Todd Clouser. That’s it.
Ross:
Check ya man!
Pouyan:
I'm doing it now. You're getting a follow.
