Summary:
When it comes to the weapons in a salesperson’s arsenal, few things are as valuable as the meeting. The meeting is how you get your face, your energy, and your value-prop directly in front of the prospect—it’s how you humanize the sales process.
With that in mind, please welcome Stu Heinecke, author of How to Get a Meeting with Anyone, on the Sales Development Podcast. During today’s interview, Stu will highlight his inspiration for the book, and how he helps his robust portfolio of clients get a meeting with anyone, no matter their title.
3 Key Points:
1. Breaking through does not require much in the way of funding, but it does require a lot in the way of creativity and thoughtfulness.
2. Never rely on hope as a strategy.
3. Don’t single-source your entry nor single-thread your contacts.
Time Stamped Show Notes:
- 00:49 – Introducing Stu
- 01:19 – One of David’s clients bought Stu’s book for all their representatives
- 01:49 – In the sales development world, getting meetings is an obsession
- 02:31 – Stu started his career as a cartoonist, but his education was in marketing
- 02:52 – Stu loved cartoons because they were a part of publication readers always remembered
- 03:14 – “Humor doesn’t work in advertising or in marketing” a common misconception Stu doesn’t believe in
- 03:27 – Creating direct marketing campaigns for magazines
- 03:35 – Two test campaigns – one for Rolling Stone and one for Bon Appetit
- 03:47 – The two tests beat the magazines’ controls—this was Stu’s big break
- 04:07 – Connecting with two-dozen VPs and directors of print media companies
- 04:43 – Using a “Contact Campaign”
- 05:25 – His contact campaign had a 100% response rate
- 06:43 – “Contact Marketing” is Stu’s favorite term
- 08:18 – “This is not the kind or marketing we’re used to”
- 09:14 – “Micro-Focus” is not about mass marketing – it’s about who do we need to connect with to propel the scale of everything in our business
- 10:05 – Stu thinks you need to be audacious to break into people who are almost ‘impossible’ to reach
- 11:05 – There’s some form of truth in humor
- 11:32 – Stu is writing a new business strategy book
- 12:52 – Stu discusses Dan Waldschmidt’s amazing process of watching stories and mistuning estimates
- 14:18 – “There are a lot of different ways to breakthrough and create new relationships with people that are important to us”
- 15:20 – You don’t need a million people to target, you need to be Micro-Focused
- 16:06 – Who are the people who could use of your service most?
- 17:25 – Don’t be single-threaded in your approach
- 17:59 – Stu is used to going to the top management to ask for referrals
- 18:14 – Stu has a podcast called Contact Marketing Radio that talks about how to breakthrough to important people
- 18:25 – Stu had a guest – a contestant on Shark Tank who sells jewelry
- 18:38 – She used social media to find the interns in Oprah’s organization and started sending them jewelry
- 18:56 – Somebody brought it to the attention of Oprah and the she ended up being featured in the show
- 19:55 – Creating community in the marketplace opens doors
- 20:20 – Don’t single-source your entry into an account and don’t single-thread your contact efforts
- 21:28 – Commercial Break
- 23:52 – Marketing by volume means wasting a lot of opportunities
- 24:43 – Stu shares a story of a guy who contacted him via LinkedIn
- 27:25 – You don’t have to spend a lot in contact marketing
- 28:39 – The cost is really the creativity
- 29:06 – Be a free-thinking individual
- 30:20 – Stu has a Fortune 250 client that uses APM
- 31:19 – Client told Stu before they did his campaign, they had 0% response rate
- 31:29 – When they applied the campaign, the contact rate came up to 75% and the meeting rate, 50%
- 31:53 – “These things can help you grow whatever it is you’re doing”
- 32:03 – “If you can’t breakthrough, you can’t sell”
- 32:59 – Hope is a terrible strategy
- 33:58 – One sales rep was calling Apple’s engineering department for a software solution
- 34:12 – He was forwarded to the purchasing department but they wouldn’t return calls
- 34:47 – One day a plywood box arrived for the CEO with a handwritten note
- 35:16 – The plywood box was the final attempt of the sales rep to contact the CEO
- 35:44 – There was a carrier pigeon with a capsule and paper
- 35:52 – If the CEO writes the name of his favorite restaurant, the date, and time that he’s free on the paper, puts it in the capsule, and let’s the pigeon to fly, it’s a confirmed meeting
- 36:13 – The representative emerged from the meeting with a $250K deal
- 36:52 – Being audacious, clever, and thinking out of the box helps you breakthrough
- 38:01 – It’s not about the budget, it’s about the creativity
Resources Mentioned:
- How to Get a Meeting with Anyone – Stu’s book
- Rolling Stone and Bon Appetit – 2 magazines that Stu first tried his contact marketing with
- Dan Waldschmidt – Person Stu mentioned as an example
- Contact Marketing Radio – Podcast that Stu co-hosts
- Forest Gump – Movie that Stu referenced for his example
Credits
- Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives
