Business
00:00 I would like to go over something that's pretty critical. As we all look at Sales and Marketing and even in leadership roles, we're all in the position of being very concerned about revenue and lead gen and opportunities. So there are three areas around this that I want to cover right now. One is that the selling paradigm, the selling process, the selling landscape - it has changed with the advent of the internet and social selling and how people consume information. It's all changed. Your prospects are going to do a lot more research behind the scenes long before they get involved with you. So the traditional role of the sales rep has changed. That is the one point I want to make. The second point is the sales rep is no longer the only vehicle to deliver information. The leadership of a company, and I'm not talking about the sales leadership or the marketing leadership, I'm talking about the the CEO, the Founder, the top person - is just as responsible for going and getting people interested in the business and the product and the service.01:19 This is just as important as the marketing team is putting out a website or putting out marketing collateral. And the leadership is still just as important, if not more, of putting particular deals into the pipeline and driving those deals through the funnel all the way to closure. So that role, traditionally it was left up to sales. Marketing would send a lead to sales and sales would nurture them and close the deal. And then the leadership team was brought in at the 11th hour to kind of close the deal. That's all changed. The reality of today is that leadership is involved in the front end and the middlle and at the end. It is thought leadership that is driving the intrigue, driving the interest of the consumer, of the prospect and to the business. That's the second point. The third point I want to make, and it's really where our niche is, is that we feel like the technology industry, as compared to other industries, has a more difficult time of finding opportunities and lead generation because, it is more difficult to pinpoint the right message to the right target at the right time.02:44 A lot of technology businesses are focused on industry disruption and finding those early adopters of the technology. This strategy is sustainable for a short period of time, but not over a long period of time. As an aside, I could go more into that. So those are the three areas. One, the selling paradigm has changed. Two, Leadership is involved now more than ever through the entire sales process. Third, that technology industry has a more difficult time. The last part to this is that in order to approach all that you need a systematic method to it all. And that doesn't mean bots and automation and things like that. It's just a one to many approach of driving a message strategically, a message to deliver people and push them through the pipeline. That's what the systematic approach is. And we find that that conversation is not had internally as much as it is externally.03:51 A marketing team, for instance, our experience is that when we come in and we talk about it..."you need a systematic approach to build relationships and drive revenue and drive leads and opportunities" They respond, " Oh my gosh...no!" So we are a threat to them because well it's a new approach to it that will potentially compete with exactly what they are doing. When you talk about systems and methods and things like that, it's a threat many times. When we go out and we speak to leaders and technology organizations when we explain this, many times the light bulb goes off. And that's why these conversations aren't being had. So the truth is you do need a systematic approach to deliver your message as a Thought Leader to your audience, to make sure that yo