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Tim Fitzpatrick: Accelerating Business Growth with Marketing Tips

by | Feb 9, 2024 | Podcast

About Tim Fitzpatrick: Tim Fitzpatrick founded Rialto Marketing, which provides marketing consulting, advisory, and outsourced or part-time marketing executive services. They help B2B professional service firms grow faster without the commitment or cost of a full-time executive. Tim achieves this by identifying and removing revenue roadblocks in three key marketing areas: Strategy, which serves as your fuel; Planning, your marketing vehicles; and Leadership, the driver behind it all. Aligning these three elements is crucial for accelerating your revenue growth. Tim tends to work with growth-focused B2B professional service firms like MSPs, IT consultants, cybersecurity firms, business consultants, accountants/tax advisors, attorneys, insurance brokers, etc. Check out the latest episode of our Conversational Selling podcast to learn more about Tim.

In this episode, Nancy and Tim discuss the following:

  • Tim’s journey from a mathematics major to entrepreneurship in marketing
  • The common pitfalls businesses face in wasting time and money on marketing due to information overload
  • Why having a narrow target market is crucial for effective marketing
  • Insights on the frequency and value of marketing messages
  • The benefits of 90-day planning cycles over year-long plans.

Key Takeaways: 

  • I will be the first person to tell you from a marketing standpoint that it is about testing: there is a lot of marketing you will do that will not work.
  • I am a huge proponent of narrowing your market.
  • The Revenant Roadblock Scorecard is a self-assessment and takes less than five minutes.
  • How can you expect to consistently convert leads if you don’t have a sales process?

“There are several reasons why people are wasting time and money on marketing. In my opinion, what happens with marketing most of the time is that people battle information overload. There are so many different marketing channels and tactics within those marketing channels today. We’re just like, where do we even start? And what most people do is jump right to tactics. I need to have a website. I need to have a YouTube channel or a podcast, or I need to be on Facebook. We just immediately jumped to acting. But when we do that, we’re skipping strategy. And the way I think about strategy is strategy is like fuel. The marketing tactics, the channels, those are vehicles. And when we jump right into the vehicle with no fuel, we all know how well that’s going to work, right? ” – TIM

“Too many businesses do not have a firm handle on their ideal clients. And because they don’t have a firm handle on who their ideal clients are, their message to the market sucks. You can’t create a message that will attract and engage people until you know who the heck you’re trying to attract and engage. Without those two elements in place, it is very difficult for your marketing to work consistently and, frankly, for you to know why it’s working. Because most people are just throwing the spaghetti up against a wall, hoping it sticks. So, if we can take a step back and invest the time in strategy and then go back to the marketing vehicles, it’s going to work much better, it’s going to be more effective, and you’re going to experience much more consistent, repeatable results with it.” – TIM

“the pandemic is a perfect example of this. If you had a year-long marketing plan that you had put in place at the beginning of 2020, come March, that plan either went into a drawer or you lit it on fire. Because here’s why I don’t like yearlong plans. One, there is no year-long plan. And this goes with marketing. It goes with any other planning you’re doing for your business. In my opinion, year-long plans are the same at the end as they were at the beginning. They change, and they change quickly. And what tends to happen with year-long plans is they become very complex. There are too many moving pieces, and complexity is the enemy of results. We need to keep things simple. And when we can keep them simple, we have a much higher likelihood of effectively implementing and executing them. And if it’s going to change quickly anyways, why take the time?” – TIM

Connect with Tim Fitzpatrick:

Try Our Proven, 3-Step System, Guaranteeing Accountability and Transparency that Drives RESULTS by clicking on this link: https://oneofakindsales.com/call-center-in-a-box/

Connect with Nancy Calabrese: 

Voiceover: You’re listening to The Conversational Selling Podcast with Nancy Calabrese.

Nancy Calabrese: Hi, it’s Nancy Calabrese, and it’s time again for Conversational selling – the podcast where sales leaders and business experts share what’s going on in sales and marketing today, and it always starts with the human conversation. Today we’re speaking with Tim Fitzpatrick, the president and founder of Rialto Mobile Marketing, a company which provides marketing consulting and outsourced or fractional CMO services to help B2B professional service firms accelerate growth. With more than 20 years of entrepreneurial experience, Tim helps clients remove revenue roadblocks by focusing on three critical areas of marketing strategy planning and leadership. Tim graduated with a mathematics major from UC Berkeley and started his career working in his family’s business before going into entrepreneurship Welcome to the show Tim. I’m so happy to have you!

Tim Fitzpatrick: Nancy, thanks for having me. I’m excited to connect with you today. [1:19]

Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, OK, so the one thing that jumps out to me, how does a math major wind up in marketing? Ha ha.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Ha, it’s a winding road, let’s put it that way. You kind of touched on it. When I got out of college, I had no idea what the heck I wanted to do. And my dad had been a manufacturer’s rep for a long time. He had started a distribution company a couple of years before that, that was related to that business. And when I got out, I had no idea what I was going to do. And I was like, hey, I know you need help. He had no full-time people in the company at that point. And I said, let me help you for the summer. And so, I helped him for the summer, and I was hooked. Like we were selling home theater equipment, distributed audio, selling to contractors that were installing home theaters in people’s homes. Nancy, I learned more doing that in six months than I did in four years of college. I just, I loved it. I was hooked. And my dad and I ended up working together for nine years until we sold, but we grew about 60% a year. And it was fun, it was great. So, after we sold, I worked for the company for another three years. I stayed with the company and moved from where I was in Northern California to Colorado. And then in 2009, I got laid off. We got bought by a public company and we all know what happened in 2008. [2:49]

Nancy Calabrese: Right.

Tim Fitzpatrick: And in 2009, they closed 30% of the branch locations that we had across the country. And so, after that, I transitioned. I got into real estate. So, I was a residential real estate agent. For several years, I was door knocking people that were in foreclosure at the time and doing a lot of short sale business. You know, Nate, you know, on the sales side, I mean, the first time I knocked on a door, I was absolutely freaking terrified. But the more I knocked, the more I got comfortable. You know, I was pushing myself outside of my comfort zone every day. But I got to a place where I was like waking up every day going, oh my God, I must do this all over again. And so that’s when I looked at shifting again and I looked at, you know, what am I good at? Where are my skill sets? And that’s when I got into marketing. And I’m not going to tell you my road, my path in marketing has been straight. It’s been winding as well because marketing is just so broad, but that’s how I got in marketing in a nutshell. [3:51]

Nancy Calabrese: Cool, well, you’ve got the sales edge too. Listen, you know, a lot of people feel that they’re wasting time and money on marketing. Why is that?

Tim Fitzpatrick: Ha! There are several reasons why people are wasting time and money on marketing. Because in my opinion, most of the time what happens with marketing is people are battling information overload. There are so many different marketing channels today and so many tactics within those marketing channels. We’re just like, where do we even start? And what most people do is jump right to tactics. I need to have a website. I need to have a YouTube channel or a podcast, or I need to be on Facebook. We just immediately jumped to acting. But when we do that, we’re skipping strategy. And the way I think about strategy is strategy is like fuel. The marketing tactics, the channels, those are vehicles. And when we just jump right into the vehicle with no fuel, we all know how well that’s going to work, right? [4:59]

Nancy Calabrese: Right.

Tim Fitzpatrick: That’s why people end up wasting time and money on marketing. I will be the first person to tell you from marketing standpoint, it is about testing. There is a lot of marketing you’re going to do that is not going to work.

Nancy Calabrese: Really?

Tim Fitzpatrick: Absolutely. But when you find what works, say that again.

Nancy Calabrese: I mean, does that vary from business to business? Does that vary from business to business?

Tim Fitzpatrick: Ah, that you’re going to try marketing, that’s not going to work.

Nancy Calabrese: Well, like some marketing methods may work better in some industries over other industries.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yes, that’s true. What I would say though is, any of the marketing vehicles can work. You know, you just, you must have the right strategy behind it. Too many businesses do not have a firm handle on who their ideal clients are. And because they don’t have a firm handle on who their ideal clients are, their message to the market sucks. Like you can’t create a message that’s going to attract and engage people until you know who the heck you’re trying to attract and engage. Without those two elements in place, it is very difficult for your marketing to work consistently and frankly for you to know why it’s working. Because most people are just throwing the spaghetti up against a wall hoping it sticks. So, if we can take a step back and invest the time in strategy and then go back to the marketing vehicles, it’s going to work much better, it’s going to be more effective, and you’re going to experience much more consistent, repeatable results with it. [6:50]

Nancy Calabrese: Huh. You know, I’ve often heard that it’s best to have a narrow target market. And why is that important and what’s a simple way to do it?

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yes, so I am definitely a huge proponent of narrowing your market. At least at first, most people’s initial roadblock is, well, if I narrow, then I’m closing off a bunch of the market. But the thing is when we focus, things become much, much easier. Most businesses are targeting a market that is far too broad, right? It’s almost like the only thing, when you target broadly, the only thing you can see is the entire red of the bullseye can’t see the rest of the target. When we focus, right, it brings that target into Zoom, and now we can hit a target that we can see. We can’t hit a target that we can’t. So when it’s too broad, we can’t see it. So, we’ve got to narrow it down. And when we narrow it down, what it allows us to do is, one, it makes it much easier to identify where we need to be to get in front of those people. It also allows us to create a message that is specific to that audience. And one of my mentors said specificity sells, right? The more specific we can be with our marketing and our sales message, the more effective it’s going to be. So, one of the easiest ways to start to narrow in on a target market and identify who your ideal clients are is if you’re an existing business, like you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. You’ve been working with clients. [8:31]

Nancy Calabrese: Okay. Right.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Start with your existing and your past clients. It’s the easiest place to start. And what I call these, the three power questions. Who do you love working with? Who are your most profitable clients? And who do you get great results for? You are looking for people that check all three of those boxes.

Nancy Calabrese: I like that.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Once you have that group, then you can start to look in that group to find where the commonalities are. And with that, we start to look at demographics, the numbers behind those people, but also the psychographics behind those people. What are their goals? What are the common problems they have? How are they feeling? Those things. And what ends up happening when you go through this process, Nancy, is inevitably you end up with some subgroups that have commonalities. And so, for example, I just, I just interviewed a managed service provider and IT consultant on my podcast who went through this process about two years ago. And they were like, Oh my God, over half of our clients are in the healthcare space. Why are we not? Why are we not focusing strictly on the healthcare space? Okay, and so that’s what they did. It is a very eye-opening process. If people that are listening to this do one thing from this interview, do that one thing. You will be shocked at what you see, and then you can start to take the steps to improve your marketing once you have that data. [10:16]

Nancy Calabrese: Right. Wow. Huh, great suggestion. How often should we be sending marketing messages out? How frequent?

Tim Fitzpatrick: That’s a loaded question, Nancy. As often as you can, I think certainly your market needs to be accustomed to how you’re going to communicate. But think about it also depends on the medium. On social, you can post on social as many times as you want. As long as you’ve got something important to say and share. You know, the email’s different, but I don’t know about you, Nancy, but I’m on some email lists where I get daily emails. And I get daily email messages from those people marketing their business. [11:11]

Nancy Calabrese: You get daily meetings? Oh. Yeah, well that annoys me. Yeah.

Tim Fitzpatrick: So right for me though, for these particular people, I’m okay with that because they’re sending out valuable information. So how often you communicate, again, this comes back to understanding your market and understanding what type of frequency you need to communicate with them. But I would tell you, most people are not communicating enough.

Nancy Calabrese: Huh, interesting.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Okay, because, you know, if you’re not staying in front of your ideal clients, they’re gonna forget about you, right, but you need to add value to people. If all you’re getting is a sales message every day, like that’s gonna be annoying for people, right? But if you’re providing information that’s valuable for them, that’s helping them, are they gonna care? No, they’re not, because it’s helping them. [12:13]

Nancy Calabrese: Well, listen, let’s talk about your revenue roadblock scoreboard. Tell us about that.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah, yeah, revenue roadblock scorecard is what we call it. And it’s you mentioned this in the beginning, you know, at my company, Realtor Marketing, when we work with clients, we are helping them remove their roadblocks, right? If you want to grow, if you want to accelerate growth, you need to remove the roadblocks that are in your way. And we focus on three critical areas of marketing strategy, planning, leadership. Right. So, you think of strategy like fuel planning is the vehicles and leadership are the driver who’s going to be the driver. So, within those three areas, there are three additional roadblocks and we focus on helping people remove those. So, all also there’s nine in total. You’ve got your target market. You’ve got your message. You’ve got your services in your offers. Then you look at lead generation. How are you going to generate leads? Then you look at lead conversion. How are you actually going to convert them? I’m sure you see this on the sales side. A lot of people have no sales process. Like if you don’t have a sales process, how can you expect to consistently convert leads? Then we look at what are you doing to retain clients and what are you doing to generate referrals? And then when we transition into the leadership side of it, we look at what metrics are you gonna track, overseeing implementation and execution, and then ongoing optimization. Those are the nine roadblocks. So, the Revenant Roadblock Scorecard, it is a self-assessment. It takes less than five minutes. You go there, you answer some questions, and then it grades you on each of those roadblocks, so that you start to get an idea of, hey, where are we doing well and where are we not? Because all of these things, if they are a roadblock and you don’t have those dialed in, they are going to be a roadblock in your way to growing revenue and accelerating growth. [14:29]

Nancy Calabrese: Oh, how can my people access that?

Tim Fitzpatrick: They can access that at revenueroadblockscorecard.com.

Nancy Calabrese: Cool, cool. So a company engages your services. How long does it take for them to see a return on their investment?

Tim Fitzpatrick: The answer that I’m going to give you, which is what everybody hates, is it depends. Here’s what I will tell you. Most of the things that I am focusing on, marketing takes time. OK. Another reason why marketing fails for most people is they’re thinking short term, not long term. And they don’t give the marketing that they’re doing enough time to work. So, when you engage anybody from a marketing standpoint, you need to be thinking long term. [15:21]

Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, right.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Okay. Having said that, there are things that you can do to get more immediate results while you’re investing the time and the effort on those things that are going to take a little bit longer to bear fruit. Okay. So, for example, okay, when we work with the client, there are some areas for quick wins. I’m going to give you; I’ll give you some right now. One, what’s already working in your business. What’s already working to generate leads? So, here’s an example for that. Most people are generating a lot of referrals. When I ask them, how are you doing that? Most of them say it’s just happening. What you are already doing that’s working is not fully optimized. You don’t have, if you don’t have a system in place or have gaps in that system, you want to fill those. So, that’s a quick win area. If you can put in a system if you don’t have it or fill in some gaps in that system to make it even better, that’s an area for a quick win. Another area for a quick win is what used to work that you stopped doing. We all have things that we used to do and then we got to, they were working great and then we got distracted with something else and we stopped. Well, you can go back and start doing that again. [16:46]

Nancy Calabrese: Right.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Those are two simple areas for quick wins while you’re working on your marketing efforts that are gonna take more time to bear fruit. The other thing is paid ads. Paid ads, you know, Google ads, Facebook ads, you know, social ads of any kind can be a way to start to generate quicker leads, but I’m gonna tell you, even with those, it does take, you know, it can take a month, two months, three months to really optimize that and dial it in. [17:18]

Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. And that could be expensive, don’t you think? Yeah.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yes, it can. It can be. Yeah, it can be if you’re not generating the right leads or you’re not and/or you’re not converting.

Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. You know, you shared with me that you think a year-long marketing plan is a waste of time. Why is that?

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah. So, Nancy, the pandemic is a perfect example of this. If you had a year-long marketing plan that you had put in place the beginning of 2020, come March, that plan either went into a drawer or you lit it on fire. Because here’s why I don’t like yearlong plans. One, there is no year-long plan. And this goes with marketing. It goes with any other planning you’re doing for your business. In my opinion, year-long plans, no yearlong plan is the same at the end as it was at the beginning. They change and they change quickly. And what tends to happen with year-long plans is they become very complex. There’s too many moving pieces and complexity is the enemy of results. We need to keep things simple. And when we can keep them simple, we have a much higher likelihood of effectively implementing and executing on it. And if it’s going to change quickly anyways, why take the time? [18:44]

Nancy Calabrese: That’s true.

Tim Fitzpatrick: I think you need to have an idea of what your goals are for a year out, three years out. But I think we need to focus on our planning in 90-days sprints. 90-days keeps it simple. It allows you to identify those, you know, those one, two, three really important objectives that if you accomplish those, it’s gonna help you get one step closer to your, to your long-term goals, but it just, it doesn’t, it keeps things simple, and you know exactly what you need to focus on. 90 days with marketing is long enough to start seeing traction, right? Is the action that we’ve taken over the past 90 days helping us push forward, but it’s short enough where we can make course corrections, and then we just wash, rinse, repeat every 90 days. [19:41]

Nancy Calabrese: Love it. I can’t believe, Tim, we’re up with time. I find what you say fascinating. How can my people find you?

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah. Two ways one we already touched on which is the Revenue Roadblock scorecard.com The other way is going directly to the Rialto marketing website. It’s our www.rialtomarketing.com you can connect with all our social there. We put out a ton of content I got a podcast blog content That’s the best place to start. I am also super active on LinkedIn. So if anybody wants to connect with me there That’s another great place. [20:20]

Nancy Calabrese: Okay. So, you must love Florence.

Tim Fitzpatrick: So, I visited, I went on a cruise in 2006 that started in Venice. And the Venice Bridge, the Rialto Bridge is in Venice. Yeah, yeah, it’s in Venice. And so that’s kind of where the name came from, but…

Nancy Calabrese: Okay. Oh it is? I thought it was in Florence.

Tim Fitzpatrick: I also, when I think of marketing, I think of marketing as a bridge that helps people get from where they are to where they wanna be.

Nancy Calabrese: I love it. Listen, you know what? I’m just confusing it with Ponte Vecchio. So anyway, I love Italy. I loved our conversation. I hope you’ll come back and people out there, take advantage of the Revenue Roadblock Scorecard and see where it takes you. And get in touch with Tim if you really wanna scale your marketing efforts. So, until we speak again, make it a great sales and marketing day. See you next time. [21:27]

 

Mike Bosworth: The Power of Story in Sales

by | Feb 6, 2024 | Podcast

About Mike Bosworth: Mike Bosworth is the author of three books on selling, a keynote speaker on sales, marketing, and leadership, and in his later years, enjoys being known as a ‘sales philosopher.’ Mike’s passion is helping people land the job of their dreams, assisting salespeople in exceeding their goals, and supporting their families. He enjoys leading experiential workshops on sales and leadership. Mike began his career in the information technology industry in 1972 on the Help Desk for Xerox Computer Services. He was their top new business salesperson in 1975, managed the “Branch of the Year” in 1979, and was promoted to Manager of Field Sales in 1980. Mike founded his Solution Selling business in 1983. Mike has a B.S. in Business Management and Marketing from California State Polytechnic University. Check out the latest episode of our Conversational Selling podcast to learn more about Mike.

In this episode, Nancy and Mike discuss the following:

  • The science of selling through emotional connection
  • Why most people do not like salespeople
  • The importance of asking for permission to tell the story
  • The science behind storytelling for sales success
  • Leveraging the psychology of storytelling in sales conversations

Key Takeaways: 

  • The authentic secret sauce of connecting with strangers is a 60-second customer hero story.
  • When you’re in sales, that’s like original sin.
  • No matter how good your story is, you can’t go up to a stranger and start telling even a 60-second story: you must get permission.

“The biggest problem large organizations with lots of salespeople have been trying to solve for the past 40 years that I’ve been a sales trainer is that 20% of the people sell 80% of the business. And that top 20%, the real difference—and it took me years to figure this out—is that they have an intuitive ability to connect and build trust quickly with strangers emotionally. So, my mission as a sales trainer for all these years has been to help the bottom 80%, the people who are not natural intuitive trust-building connectors, help them feed their families, buy a house, and send their kids to college. And when you go into the enterprise sales range, for instance, in the mid-90s, in my Solution Selling organization, we trained 15,000 IBM salespeople. ” – MIKE

“So, if you think about it, most people will not admit a problem to someone they don’t trust, so the story creates an emotional connection and enough trust that they could risk sharing their problem. And once they share a problem, they go from suspect to prospect.” – MIKE

“The best salespeople I’ve known over the last 40 years rarely have to close because their EQ, their emotional intelligence, is so high, and they’re willing to help the buyer buy rather than try and “sell” them something, and people love to buy. Human beings hate to feel sold to, but they love to buy. So, the very best salespeople rarely must close because they’re so good at facilitating the buying. So smart companies, when they hire new salespeople, they don’t teach them about the product; they teach them how their customers use the product.” – MIKE

Connect with Mike Bosworth:

Try Our Proven, 3-Step System, Guaranteeing Accountability and Transparency that Drives RESULTS by clicking on this link: https://oneofakindsales.com/call-center-in-a-box/

Connect with Nancy Calabrese: 

Voiceover: You’re listening to The Conversational Selling Podcast with Nancy Calabrese.

Nancy Calabrese: Hi, it’s Nancy Calabrese, and it’s time again for Conversational selling – the podcast where sales leaders and business experts share what’s going on in sales and marketing today. And it always starts with the human conversation! Today we’re speaking with Mike Bosworth, author of Solution Selling, Customer Centric Selling and What Great Salespeople Do. Mike began studying the power of story as a framework for building emotional connection. He’s the author of multiple books including What Great Salespeople Do, the Science of Selling Through Emotional Connection, and the Power of Story. He is also the founder of Story Seekers with a focus on teaching people how to connect with strangers using a story framework. His passion is helping people land the job of their dreams and assisting salespeople in exceeding their goals and supporting their families. I love stories, Mike. Welcome to the show!

Mike Bosworth: I’m happy to be here, Nancy, and that was a pretty good introduction for when you said you didn’t have one. [1:23]

Nancy Calabrese: Hey, you know what? When you’re in sales, you gotta dance.

Mike Bosworth: That’s right.

Nancy Calabrese: So, okay, emotional connection. What is the science of selling through emotional connection?

Mike Bosworth: Well, um, the biggest problem large organizations with lots of salespeople have been trying to solve for the past 40 years that I’ve been a sales trainer is that 20% of the people sell 80% of the business. And that top 20%, the real difference—and it took me years to figure this out—is that they have an intuitive ability to emotionally connect and build trust quickly with strangers. And then I went on ChatGPT a month ago, and I even asked that. I said, “What percentage of American adults have high EQ, emotional intelligence?” It said, it said 17 to 21%. So that kind of fits that too. So, what my mission as a sales trainer for all these years has been to try to help the bottom 80%, the people who are not natural intuitive trust-building connectors, help them feed their families, buy a house, send their kids to college. And when you go into the enterprise sales range, for instance, in the mid-90s, my Exclusion Selling organization, we trained 15,000 IBM salespeople. [3:09]

Nancy Calabrese: Holy Cow!

Mike Bosworth: When you look at these big IT sales forces, they don’t typically have a lot of high connection people. They’re very geeky, smart people, people who know all about information technology, and they know about programming, or they might be experts in finance or whatever. And those people need help connecting with strangers. And the real secret sauce of connecting with strangers is a 60-second customer hero story. [3:48]

Nancy Calabrese: Give me an example.

Mike Bosworth: All right, well, when I was 28 years old, Xerox Computer Services coerced me into going into sales. I had two years of experience with the company where I had a ton of product expertise, but I had no selling expertise. My boss took me out and taught me how to cold call, and back then, cold calling meant going into a lobby in person. So, there I was, 28 years old, selling first-generation manufacturing technology—pretty geeky stuff. I’d walk into the lobby of a manufacturing company and say, “Hi, my name is Mike Bosworth, I’m from Xerox Computer Services, and I’d like to speak with your materials manager.” Yeah, back then, in 1974, all the receptionists were females, and all the materials managers were males. I’m just clarifying so nobody gets offended by my pronouns. Anyway, she would get on the phone and call the materials manager and say, “I’ve got this guy from Xerox in the lobby, and he wants to speak with our materials manager.” Back then, almost no one ever called on the materials manager, and if you were a senior manufacturing executive back then, the only way you could learn about new technology for manufacturing was to see salespeople from IBM, Xerox, Honeywell, Univac, or whatever, because there was no internet, they couldn’t go searching. So, anyway, about 80% of the time, this materials manager would come out, and they were typically 50 years old. I was 28, and as soon as they looked at me, they’d look at their watch, thinking to themselves, “Gosh, now I have to be nice to this guy for 10 minutes until I get rid of him,” right? Because how could anybody that young know anything about manufacturing, right? But when I, and I did this intuitively—it took me many years to be able to teach it—I would confirm the job title. I’d say, “So, you’re the materials manager?” And he’d say, “Yes.” And I’d say, “Can I share a quick story with you about another materials manager less than a mile from here that I’ve been working with for the last 18 months?” Never once did that story get turned down. [6:38]

Nancy Calabrese: Wow!

Mike Bosworth: Because if you think about it, people are curious about their peers, especially if you’re selling B2B. If you’re selling to the enterprise, everybody’s curious about what their peers are doing. And this group of managers, they really struggled back then with shortages. So, he would agree to the story, and I had the story down to 60 seconds. Basically, I gave a setting, which is when I met this other materials manager two years ago and his background and how he got his job. Then I got into his struggle. His struggle was every day he’d go into work and his CFO is furious at him because the inventory was too high, and every day his boss, the VP manufacturing, was furious at him because his past due backlog was 28%. And then I went to the insight of the story, and I said, 18 months ago, when this guy had Blackman, found out that Xerox now had invented a way using computers to replan an entire complex manufacturing plant overnight, he volunteered to be our first customer. We had no existing customers. He raised and he said, “I’ll go first.” Here we are 18 months later. His inventory used to be 8,000,000, now it’s 2.7 million, and his past due backlog 18 months ago used to be 28%, now it’s 3%. But enough about me, what’s going on around here? And 60 seconds after he looked at his watch, right, he’s now saying, “You want to come in and look around? Can I give you a tour?” Because that little story led him to a couple of emotional conclusions. The first emotional conclusion is, even this guy looks wet behind the ears, he understands how hard my job is. And the other emotional conclusion he came to is, this guy helped one of my peers solve my biggest problem. Well, the offer of this story triggered pure curiosity when I said, “Can I tell you a story about another materials manager?” And then the story itself was good enough that, excuse me, it converted his pure curiosity into pure envy. [9:39]

Nancy Calabrese: Wow!

Mike Bosworth: And because now, 60 seconds later, he was envious of this other materials manager I’ve been working with for the last 18 months, all his natural discovery resistance, as I call it—you know, most people don’t like meeting salespeople. [10:00]

Nancy Calabrese: Why is that?

Mike Bosworth: I think the reason is, Nancy, that what percentage of the people you know personally have had a previous unpleasant experience with a salesperson where within minutes or even seconds they felt pushed, pressured into doing something they didn’t really want to do. We’ve all had those, everyone has.

Nancy Calabrese: Everyone has.

Mike Bosworth: Yes, and so as soon as you meet a stranger and they know you’re in sales, they’re—it’s, well, you sound like you might have some Italian in your Calabrese.

Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, very much so.

Mike Bosworth: Well then you know what original sin is, don’t you?

Nancy Calabrese: Well, I think so. You tell me.

Mike Bosworth: Well, you were Catholic, right? Original, yeah, right. Yeah, the babies don’t go to heaven until they’re baptized. They’re born with original sin. [11:07]

Nancy Calabrese: Right.

Mike Bosworth: Well, when you’re in sales, that’s like original sin. Every stranger you meet, as soon as they find out you’re in sales, their discovery resistance comes up.

Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, the sales wall.

Mike Bosworth: So, that little story we call it a customer hero story, it greets this stranger. And you have to get permission. No matter how good your story is, you just can’t go up to a stranger and start telling even a 60-second story. You must get permission first. “Oh, Nancy, you’re a podcaster, can I share a quick story with you about another podcaster I know?” Yeah, your curiosity, right? Once you get permission to tell that story, now they’ve granted you 60 seconds of story time. And if you’ve architected your story to mainly focus on the struggle of this person’s peer and before you help them, so I talked the story, had their struggle, it had their 18 months ago they decided to take the risk and be our first customer, and here we are now with the results of the inventory going down, etc. So, if that story is architected properly, even if there’s a 20-year age difference, if that story rings true, that story will eliminate the discovery resistance and cause that person to actually—they’d invite me in, say, “Can I give you a tour of the plants?” Yeah, they did. They did me almost immediately admit their shortage problem to me. So, well, if you think about it, most people will not admit a problem to someone they don’t trust and so the story creates emotional connection and enough trust that they could risk sharing their problem. And once they share a problem, they go from suspect to prospect. [13:33]

Nancy Calabrese: Right, right, I love it. I love it. So, would you say your unique idea is storytelling?

Mike Bosworth: Well, it’s not unique because two-legged creatures have been on this earth for 200,000 years and have spoken. For about the last 130,000 years, most of that time, there was no written language, so everything human beings learned about food, spices, tradition, and everything came from oral stories. So, what happens is we’re almost genetically programmed to love stories. And if you think about it, when my kids were small, if I wanted them to cooperate and get ready for bed and brush their teeth and stuff, I said, “If you can be ready in the next 5 minutes, I’ll tell you a story.” And they loved that story. And so when little kids hear “Once Upon a Time,” same thing happens to an adult. If I say, “Can I share a story with you about another podcaster?” When you anticipate a story as a human being, your critical left brain, they’ve even done it in MRI, starts to shut down, and your creative right brain that’s in touch with all the five senses and colors and music and all that, your right opens. And people unconsciously say, “OH, a story. I don’t have to decide. I don’t have to do anything. I can just enjoy it because it’s a story.” Yeah, somewhere in the back of their mind because of, you know, stories where they learned, “Don’t eat those red berries because your grandpa died eating those red berries,” they subconsciously say, “Oh, we know this. I better pay attention because this could be important information that I need to remember.” [15:48]

Nancy Calabrese: It’s interesting.

Mike Bosworth: What a perfect frame of mind for a sales message!

Nancy Calabrese: Wow! Tell me something that’s true that almost nobody agrees with you on.

Mike Bosworth: That the very best salespeople I’ve known over the last 40 years rarely have to close.

Nancy Calabrese: Yep, why is that?

Mike Bosworth: Because their EQ, their emotional intelligence, is so high, and they’re willing to help the buyer buy rather than to try and “sell” them something, and people love to buy. Human beings hate to feel sold to, but they love to buy. So, the very best salespeople, they rarely must close because they’re so good at facilitating the buying. [16:53]

Nancy Calabrese: So good at getting to learn how they can help the prospect by asking questions. Yeah, meaningful questions. Yeah, I love.

Mike Bosworth: So smart companies, when they hire new salespeople, they don’t teach them about the product; they teach them how their customers use the product. [17:18]

Nancy Calabrese: Very good, very, very good. So, what is the fun fact about you, Mike?

Mike Bosworth: I love new things, and the newest thing I’m working on is I got contacted about six weeks ago by a startup company offering private AI capability. And so now they’ve helped me build my own private AI. My own private AI’s got all three of my books in it, it’s got all my white papers in it, it’s got my Ted talk in it, so it’s got all this Mike Bosworth material in it. And I can type in questions, and it’s like talking to myself. [18:10]

Nancy Calabrese: I love it!

Mike Bosworth: I will send you a link with some sample questions unless you’d like to play with it.

Nancy Calabrese: Oh my gosh, I would love to get it. You know, AI is fascinating to me, and I’m not taking advantage of it as much as I should, but I mean, it’s the future, it’s now, you know?

Mike Bosworth: Well, if you haven’t published anything, it might be worth considering.

Nancy Calabrese: Yes, I have a book, “The Inside Sales Solution.”

Mike Bosworth: OK, well, then as long as you can get that book in a PDF or Word document, with this AI capability, you can drag your book right into it, and it will ingest your book. [18:53]

Nancy Calabrese: Oh wow!

Mike Bosworth: And then you can start asking the AI questions about your book.

Nancy Calabrese: So great. Listen, you know, I believe we’re almost out of time. So, what is the one takeaway you’d like to leave the audience with?

Mike Bosworth: That anybody can learn to use story to connect with strangers. [19:20]

Nancy Calabrese: I love it! How can my people find you?

Mike Bosworth: The easiest thing is probably on LinkedIn. Just go on LinkedIn and send me a friend request. If you do, I’ll message you a link to my AI so you can try it for free.

Nancy Calabrese: Gang, take advantage of it. I mean, I’m definitely gonna do that, Mike, and I really find you very engaging. I love what you do, and I thank you so much for spending time with us on the show today. People, go and take advantage of Mike’s wealth of knowledge, and Mike, I hope you come back.

Mike Bosworth: Well, let’s make it happen!

Nancy Calabrese: Alright, everyone, have a great sales day, and we’ll see you next time! [20:16]

Malina Poshtova Delamere: Sailing to Success in the Sales World

by | Jan 30, 2024 | Podcast

About Malina Poshtova Delamere: Malina Poshtova Delamere is the Founder and President of Vida Rose Coaching Solutions, a leading executive coaching practice for women whose business, career, and life are in growth mode. Trained and certified by the Center for Executive Coaching and the Fowler International Academy of Professional Coaching, Malina is a Certified Executive Coach, Certified Professional Coach, and Certified Disaster Recovery Coach. She is a Fellow Member of the Institute of Coaching at McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School and a member of the International Coaching Federation (ICF). A former Fulbright Scholar, Malina holds Master of Arts degrees from New York University (Journalism) and St. Kliment Ohridsky University of Sofia, Bulgaria (English Philology). Malina’s coaching practice helps people – leaders, entrepreneurs, team builders – to achieve goals, accelerate growth, solve problems, move forward, and drive change.Malina is a lifelong learner. She is fluent in English, Bulgarian, and Russian and nearly fluent in French. In 2019, Malina learned to sail; Vida Rose is the name of her yacht. Sailing has taught Malina much about leadership, teamwork, trust, resilience, and creative problem-solving. Check out the latest episode of our Conversational Selling podcast to learn more about Malina.

In this episode, Nancy and Malina discuss the following:

  • Malina’s position in coaching primarily women
  • The difference in coaching a woman versus a man
  • Why Adventure Makes People Better Leaders
  • Malina’s belief that opportunities often come in disguise
  • Success is an attitude
  • How sailing and the sales world are connected

Key Takeaways: 

  • Women tend to be more creative but slightly hindered by limiting beliefs.
  • You’re not just a woman leader; you’re a leader! Period!
  • You never know where your next opportunity is going to come from.
  • You can overcome your biggest fears with the right team in the right circumstances.
  • When you meet someone, listening to their story and looking for connecting points is important.

“ My dream job is to coach women. And here’s why. Obviously, as a woman myself, I have been there. I have experienced the challenges of professional women, be they business owners, be they on the corporate career track, or entrepreneurs; I’ve been there, I’ve done it, I’ve felt it, I’ve learned a lot of lessons that I love to share with my clients to help them succeed. As a woman, I am deeply invested in women’s success. And I’ve also had a lot of practice in my 20 years of corporate experience and corporate leadership experience. I coached a lot of men. So I also have the other side’s view, if you will. And that is a very helpful perspective.” – MALINA

“Growth mode is my way of saying you are ambitious, you have goals, and perhaps you need a little bit of help to get you there, or you need an accountability partner or a sounding board to check your decisions. But you are a woman on a mission who wants to succeed, whether in private practice, a corporate career, or as a business owner, and you have very specific goals. At least I can help you clarify and get those goals. So it’s not just I want to start a business and grow it; it’s more you know I want to start it within the next three, six, 12, 18 months. My goal is to achieve X in my first year and Y in the second year. X and Y could be monetary targets, revenue targets, the size of your team, and how many employees you want to have. I wanna grow my business to where I get to sell it to a larger corporation Top of FormBottom of Form.” – MALINA

“My unique idea is that adventure makes people better leaders. When you put someone very comfortably and safely out of their comfort zone. For example, I own a small yacht and take my clients sailing. It’s not about the sailing. It’s about being out on the water, making fast decisions, being aware of the situation, being in a small space with other people, and learning how to communicate with them clearly and impactfully set a strategy, for example, going back to the sailing. Depending on which way the wind blows, it may take you a longer time to get to your destination or a longer time to get back. And it would help if you kept that in mind when planning. Where are you going? Do you have enough time to get there? Do you have enough time to get back? What if changes or the current? What if there’s other shipping traffic all around you? On my boat, which is fantastic, I have two helms and two wheels to drive the boat side by side. So, I like to put clients on one side. It’s perfectly safe because a qualified captain is holding the other wheel or is standing by at the other wheel. But you put someone who wants to be a leader on a boat with six other people and tell them, hey, you’ve never driven a boat before; six other people’s lives depend on you, drive. Yes, exactly. It’s a very safe and controlled environment. But on the other hand, it puts you out of your comfort zone, and it challenges you to make fast decisions, to look all around, to be aware of what’s going on.” – MALINA

Connect with Malina Poshtova Delamere:

Try Our Proven, 3-Step System, Guaranteeing Accountability and Transparency that Drives RESULTS by clicking on this link: https://oneofakindsales.com/call-center-in-a-box/

Connect with Nancy Calabrese: 

Voiceover: You’re listening to The Conversational Selling Podcast with Nancy Calabrese.

Nancy Calabrese: Hi everyone, it’s Nancy Calabrese and it’s time again for Conversational Selling, the podcast where sales leaders and business experts share what’s going on in sales and marketing today and it always starts with a human conversation. Today we’re speaking with Malina Poshtova Delamere, an executive coach, business consultant, and high-performing team facilitator. She is the founder and president of Vita Rose Coaching Solutions, a leading executive coaching practice for women whose business, career, and life are in growth mode. Malina has over 20 years of business leadership and helps women leaders, entrepreneurs, and teen builders communicate confidently, build their brands, and confidently embrace their leadership style. Her clients value her as a trusted advisor and sounding board who helps them gain clarity, overcome limitations, and make sound business decisions. I am so happy to have you on the show today, Malina! Welcome!

Malina Poshtova Delamere: Thank you, Nancy. It is such a pleasure to be here. [1:24]

Nancy Calabrese: Oh, my goodness. So, the first thing that jumps out to me is why do you only coach women?

Malina Poshtova Delamere: I do not only coach women, but I coach primarily women. And my dream job is to coach women. And here’s why. Obviously, as a woman myself, I have been there, I have experienced the challenges of professional women, be they business owners, be they on the corporate career track, be they, entrepreneurs, I’ve been there, I’ve done it, I’ve felt it, I’ve learned a lot of lessons that I love to share with my clients to help them succeed. As a woman, I am deeply invested in the success of women. And I’ve also had a lot of practice in my 20 years of corporate experience, corporate leadership experience. I coached a lot of men. So, I also have the view of the other side, if you will. And that is a very helpful perspective. [2:28]

Nancy Calabrese: Sure. Is it different coaching a woman versus a man?

Malina Poshtova Delamere: It is. Women tend to be more creative. They tend to be also a little bit more hindered by limiting beliefs. It is a well-known statistic that, for example, when applying for a job, especially one that is a bit of a stretch assignment. Men will apply for that job with 60 to 65 percent of the qualifications if they feel like they meet 60 to 65 percent of the requirements, they feel they’re qualified, and they will apply for these jobs. Women, on the other hand, need to have 90 to 95 percent of the qualifications and need to feel that they have those qualifications before they dare to apply. And so, it’s very different when it comes to confidence when it comes to overcoming objections, a completely different ballgame. [3:33]

Nancy Calabrese: Wow, you know, that surprises me. I just don’t get it. Why should it be different?

Malina Poshtova Delamere: Um, you, you know, you tell me, it’s kind of funny. I consider myself a business leader. I also consider myself a sailor and that’s a whole other side to my story, which I hope we’ll touch upon. But you know, every time I work with someone, or I qualify myself as something, there’s always this woman, a business leader, woman sailor woman journalist, woman executive. And it shouldn’t have to be this way. So hopefully my work does a little bit of a contribution to, you know, if you’re an executive, you’re an executive. If you’re good at your job, you’re good at your job. You’re not just the woman leader, you’re a leader period. [4:27]

Nancy Calabrese: Right. So, you said that you like to work with women in growth mode. What do you mean by growth mode?

Malina Poshtova Delamere: Growth mode is my way of saying you are ambitious, you have goals, and perhaps you need a little bit of help to get you there, or you need an accountability partner, or you need a sounding board to check your decisions. But you are a woman on a mission who wants to succeed, whether it is in private practice or a corporate career or as a business owner and you have very specific goals or at least I can help you clarify and get those goals. So, it’s not just I want to start a business and grow my business, it’s more you know I want to start this business within the next three, six, 12, 18 months. My goal is in my first year to achieve X, in the second year to achieve Y. And X and Y could be monetary targets, revenue targets, the size of your team, how many employees you want to have, could be, I want to grow my business to where I get to sell it to a larger corporation. [5:48]

Nancy Calabrese: Right. Wow. Share with us the unique idea that is different and sets you apart as a business coach.

Malina Poshtova Delamere: My unique idea is that adventure makes people better leaders. When you put someone very comfortably and safely out of their comfort zone. For example, I own a small yacht and I take my clients sailing. It’s not about the sailing. It’s about being out on the water, making fast decisions, being aware of the situation, being in a small space with other people, and learning how to communicate with them, impactfully to set a strategy, for example, going back to the sailing. It is, depending on which way the wind blows, it may take you a longer time to get to your destination or a longer time to get back. And you need to keep that in mind when you’re planning, you’re, where are you going? Do you have enough time to get there? Do you have enough time to get back? What if changes or the current, what if there’s other shipping traffic all around you? On my boat, which is fantastic, I have two helms, and two wheels to drive the boat side by side. So, I like to put clients on one side. It’s perfectly safe because a qualified captain is holding the other wheel or is standing by at the other wheel. But you put someone who wants to be a leader on a boat with six other people and tell them, hey, you’ve never driven a boat before, six other people’s lives depend on you. [7:36]

Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, drive safely, right?

Malina Poshtova Delamere: Yes, exactly. It’s a very safe and controlled environment. But on the other hand, it puts you out of your comfort zone and it challenges you to make fast decisions, to look all around, to be aware of what’s going on. Who’s doing what? Are they safe? Is everybody wearing their life vest or whatever the case may be? It’s a fantastic way, adventure is a fantastic way to build leadership skills and especially who can be more timid. [8:12]

Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. Well, you know, I’ve read, I don’t know if I saw this on your website or when we spoke earlier, you state that life is an adventure and opportunities often come in disguise. What do you mean by that? We know life is an adventure, but what about the opportunities?

Malina Poshtova Delamere: You never know where your next opportunity is going to come from. And it could come from in the form of meeting someone, a business partner, for example, as it happened to me, on a vacation. I do retreats for women all over the world. And I met my business partner while I was on a retreat in South Africa a few years ago. And together now, back then, I was of eight of us from different corners of the world, met in Cape Town and proceeded to have this fantastic two weeks together. I was the only person in that group with a corporate job. And therefore, the only one who at the end of the two weeks had to rush back and be back in the office on Monday morning. Everyone else? Decided they loved it so much. They stayed, they explored different corners of the continent and so forth. But through this, I kept in touch with some of them. And I certainly kept in touch with the leader who, you know, is now a business partner of mine. And we hadn’t spoken to each other for several years. Here I am now with my own executive coaching practice. I practice what I coach. I go on adventures myself. [9:54]

Nancy Calabrese: Right. Yeah.

Malina Poshtova Delamere: And I value meeting people. It’s important when you meet someone to listen to their story and look for connecting points. And that’s where these opportunities come in this guy, someone that you think you have absolutely nothing in common with turns out, you know, five years down the line, your business partners. [10:16]

Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, you know, I love that you also state success is an attitude. I think that’s so true. Why is it true?

Malina Poshtova Delamere: It is because if you believe that you can succeed, there is really nothing that can stop you. And that is the attitude. Will there be pitfalls along the way? Absolutely. You may need to course correct. Again, my sailing metaphors come here. It’s just your sails to the wind. It doesn’t, it’s not like you sometimes you must take a zigzag line to achieve your goal. But if you have that attitude that I am here today. I have this goal that I want to achieve with the right attitude, you can get there. It may take a while, take a few detours, or you may even discover along the way that your initial goal is ultimately not your final destination. And that’s okay. [11:10]

Nancy Calabrese: It’s all mindset, all mindsets. They, you know, for many years I’ve been coach, you get rid of the head trash. And if you approach things optimistically and you do the right activities, the rest will come, right? Yeah. All right, we need to talk about your sailing story, please. Let the world know.

Malina Poshtova Delamere: Mm-hmm. Absolutely.

Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. All right, we need to talk about your sailing story, please. Let the world know. Why sailing? How’d you get there?

Malina Poshtova Delamere: Um, that is a fun story. That absolutely is a fun story. So, sailing has been a lifelong dream of mine, a childhood dream of mine. You know, other kids may dream of being astronauts and going to the moon or Mars these days for me. It was sailing, crossing oceans, exploring the world. Uh, but I never lived anywhere near water. I never had an opportunity to sail. And I, you know, once I was an adult and career woman and a mother and a family woman, it kind of became more and more remote of a dream. Other things took priority. Until one day, my son was 12 years old. He got invited to sailing camp. And watching him learn to sail, he invited me to sail in his little boat with him. At the end of camp, I had an opportunity to be sailed by my 12-year-old kid. That inspired me to investigate it again and to find out that yes, there are classes that you can sign up for. You can learn to sail at any point in life. And as I was taking my first sailing class, I also discovered this race around the world takes about a year for amateur sailors for people like me, people with very little or no sailing experience. They take you; they train you, and then you can do either one leg, or you can go several legs or around complete the full circumnavigation. I signed up for it at the drop of a hat. And what I learned, again, going back to opportunities come in this guise, this was about five years ago, the year before COVID. So, you know, everything’s happening with a little bit of a delay and a pandemic thrown in the middle. What I discovered is that when they take you into those trains, they throw you into this massive 70-foot stripped-down racing yacht, very little comfort, and a group of, you know, 10 to 15 mostly middle-aged adults’ people who have achieved success in their lives and are now looking for this extra adventure. Big egos, a lot of them are leaders in their businesses, in their industries. And within a week, living in significant discomfort, there are no luxuries on these boats. You form a team, and the leaders emerge, and the team players emerge and the, you know, non-collaborators emerge in the process. And it’s an incredible experience. So, as I was training for this race, the idea occurred to me, hey, I am buying a boat. I now feel five years after I learned to sail, I’m buying a boat, a brand-new boat, and this has been a leadership experience of my own. I will take this concept and apply it to my clients. And use that to use sailing as a metaphor for trust building, strategic thinking, impactful, clear, very clear communication. And yeah, my opportunity is guys. [15:12]

Nancy Calabrese: Wow. Were you frightened at all during that time? Yeah.

Malina Poshtova Delamere: Many times, absolutely many times, but I will tell you with the right team in the right circumstances, you can overcome your biggest fears. I have had a lifelong fear of heights. Absolutely, I have a fear of heights. I freeze. I just completely freeze. With the encouragement, this summer with this team.

Nancy Calabrese: Right. Yeah, me too. Yeah.

Malina Poshtova Delamere: on this roof that I was in, I went up the mast, you know, held by two basically ropes in a little harness. They hoisted me up and I didn’t dare go all the way up. Maybe next time I will. But even just going up about a third of the way is something that I never would have done before. And that’s the sort of attitude and mindset and…

Nancy Calabrese: Great. Oh my goodness.

Malina Poshtova Delamere: desire for success and ability to overcome fears that I try to help my clients with. [16:21]

Nancy Calabrese: Well, that’s amazing, but I got to tell you, I can’t even go on adult rides in an amusement park, okay? And it brings me back to, I was in the kiddie section on a carousel, and we were at the top and I was like bone white. So, unlike you, I don’t ever have to get over that fear. That’s it, I’m just not going to do heights anymore. So funny.

Malina Poshtova Delamere: I’m going to go ahead and close the video. Yep, and I was there myself, but you know, I decided, you know what, this is one thing I need to conquer, especially having my own boat. Sometimes things happen out at sea, you must do it. And I wanted to see what it’s like and in a safe environment surrounded by people who are supportive, who know what they’re doing. It was easy. Now I regret not going any higher. I look back and I say, hey, I should have just paused to regroup myself and tell them keep going. [17:21]

Nancy Calabrese: Great. So, you’ll do it next time.

Malina Poshtova Delamere: I sure hope so. I hope to have the opportunity or create the opportunity for myself.

Nancy Calabrese: Yes, you will. No, you will. Not sure, you will. Last couple of questions. Tell me something that’s true that almost nobody agrees with you on.

Malina Poshtova Delamere: Huh, that’s a very, very good question. Something that’s true that nobody, almost nobody agrees with me on. It’s not that they don’t agree, but I think in the world today, in the discourse today, common sense is not very common. We get wrapped up around big ideas or big buzzwords, we get wrapped up in taking sides or deciding that there’s only one way that something can be done. And common sense is rare. So yeah, I don’t know that people necessarily, nobody would disagree that common sense is valuable. And yet I feel that a lot of people today It is lost to them. [18:38]

Nancy Calabrese: Wow, I think that’s a great observation. I’ve never thought of it that way. Finally, what is one takeaway you’d like to leave the audience with?

Malina Poshtova Delamere: Believe in yourself. Dare to be different.

Nancy Calabrese: I love it. Dare to be different. Everybody listens to that. Dare to be different. How can my people find you?

Malina Poshtova Delamere: They can certainly find me on LinkedIn. They can find me on my website, which is www.vidarose.com. Vida Rose, by the way, is the name of my boat. You can also find me on YouTube. If you do a search on Malina and Vida Rose, the makers of my boat had so much fun selling the boat to me and the whole journey was so fantastic. Another opportunity, I made friends for life in the process, and they did a video, here I am in midlife, finding myself sort of the star of a commercial for a boat, something I never could have imagined. [19:56]

Nancy Calabrese: Wow. Listen, I think if nothing else, get in touch with this wonderful lady. You might be able to go sailing with her. Who knows where, right?

Malina Poshtova Delamere: I know where, sailing to success. That’s exactly where I will take you. I can’t tell you what body of water we’ll be on, but I will definitely take you sailing to success. [20:17]

Nancy Calabrese: Oh, I love it. Thank you so much for being on the show and for sharing your story. You’re very inspiring. And I really encourage everyone out there to say hello to Malina. Your story is really heartwarming. So, I hope you’ll come back to the show sometime.

Malina Poshtova Delamere: Thanks, Nancy. It was a pleasure to be here today and I’d love to be back sometime. Bigger and better, right? Always.

Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, you come back when you get your next boat. How’s that? Bigger and better. All right, everyone, make it a great sales day and we’ll see you next time. [20:56]

Nicolas Toper: From Spam to Glam: Mastering Email Deliverability

by | Jan 26, 2024 | Podcast

About Nicolas Toper: Nicolas Toper is the Co-founder at Inboxbooster. His mission is to help email senders achieve better deliverability and avoid spam filters. With over 15 years of experience in web development, email technology, and cloud computing, he is passionate about creating innovative and scalable solutions for online communication. Before launching Inboxbooster, Nicolas founded and led CritSend, the first SMTP relay service that guaranteed email success. He also invented Pilo, a renewable energy battery that recharges when shaken. Nicolas holds multiple patents and certifications in computer science, and he graduated from Y Combinator and the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers. Fluent in French, German, and English, he enjoys sharing his insights and learnings in his newsletter. Check out the latest episode of our Conversational Selling podcast to learn more about Nicolas.

In this episode, Nancy and Nicolas discuss the following:

  • Nicolas’ story of getting into this business
  • Practical tips for email senders to achieve better deliverability and avoid spam filters
  • How to avoid getting important emails to spam
  • Gmail and Outlook practical insights
  • How long does it take to correct spam issues?
  • Why do emails from the same sender intermittently shift between my inbox and spam folder?

Key Takeaways: 

  • Ten years ago, sending emails was straightforward with clear rules, but today, it’s a complex and unclear landscape, creating a significant challenge for email senders.
  • Outlook wants your domain to have a good history, whereas Gmail doesn’t care about the IP and the domain, but they care about your users’ behavior.
  • If you’re doing cold emailing, you need to test your email on InboxBooster or another way once a week to ensure you don’t have any problems.

“ So, you have a free tool on our system, the InboxBooster, that tells you how to, analyzes your little list, and tells you where you’re emailing. Because if you’re emailing just on Gmail, it’s not the same thing as if you’re emailing on the form of two Fortune 500 companies, which is not the same thing if you’re emailing, so there is kind of because usually a lot of SMBs are using Outlook. Some other kinds of startups, lots of startups, are using Google Workspace. So, you really, the first step is really to investigate that. And until you know that it’s kind of, you will not be able to sound efficiently. ” – NICOLAS

“Email has become a bit of a puzzle lately, and let me break it down for you. A decade ago, sending emails was a breeze—clear rules, automated stuff, and personal messages. Fast forward to today, and the line between human and machine-generated emails is blurred, thanks to outreach tools like AdRage and Apollo. Cold emails, though less annoying than cold calls, face skepticism, especially from Google, which prefers ads. Now, onto a fixer-upper story about Y Combinator: despite its strong brand, it battled spam on Gmail. Why? They imported a MailChimp template, and some pruning oversight led them back to the promotion tab. We sorted it out, and they saw a 35% click boost. The lesson? Fixing email glitches is like solving a puzzle, sometimes iterative but worthwhile.” – NICOLAS

“Sometimes we have customers sending probably more than a couple of thousands of emails per day on cold average, and it’s working very well. So, it depends on what you’re selling. The key elements are as follows: First, you need to know who you sell to if you do cold average. You need to know: “OK, So this is my ICP,” and know those people will sell. And then what I’m saying usually is if you don’t know who your ICP is, you need to experiment until you figure it out, but you shouldn’t sell a lot of emails to be very careful. In deliverability, once you know who you’re selling to, you can sell a lot. And the second thing is sometimes because you care about who you’re selling to, so basically, what’s your revenue? There is another side to it, and I mentioned it: engagement. So, you want one unsubscription link. One clicks the unsubscription link, now it will be a requirement for Google. And the second thing you want is to be between 0.5 and 1.5 of the unsubscription rate. If you do that, you’re fine. This means that you have found a Via Negativa if that makes sense, your ICP. If you want people to unsubscribe a little bit because it’s a little bit trying to sell them some stuff and some are not going to be interested, then that’s fine, but you don’t want too many of them not to be interested because if you’re there, this means they don’t care, and you’re not emailing the right people.” – NICOLAS

Connect with Nicolas Toper:

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Connect with Nancy Calabrese: 

Voiceover: You’re listening to The Conversational Selling Podcast with Nancy Calabrese.

Nancy Calabrese: Hi everyone, it’s Nancy Calabrese and it’s time again for Conversational Selling, the podcast where sales leaders and business experts share what’s going on in sales and marketing today and it always starts with the human conversation. Today we’re speaking with Nicolas Toper, the CEO and co-founder of Inbox Booster, a platform that uses AI to ensure emails don’t end up in spam promotions on Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo. The platform serves over 2,000 clients, including Y, Combinator, Zango, and Wisby, and has recently been featured in several articles, including Forbes, FIM, SMEs, and BusinessMall. Nicholas has a Master of Science in Computer Science and has been awarded four patents computer, compiler, optimization, and email, deliverability. Boy, that’s a mouthful, Nicholas. Welcome to the show!

Nicolas Toper: Thank you, thank you. [1:13]

Nancy Calabrese: I guess my first question is, how did you get involved in this business? And what’s the trick?

Nicolas Toper: So, first there is no trick and the second answer is it kind of happened randomly. I was studying and working at the same time and the people I was working with, the company I was working with, started to have email trouble and actually the teacher at my school was part of the team who built AOL’s fan feature so I kind of got some cheat codes here and that’s how I got super good person in my new company because I knew how these things worked just because I had the right connection and so that’s kind of how I got started and then I got real so it was initially just totally random and opportunistic and then I built a business in that space I sold it I worked in compilers afterwards, and then I also had my children, so I stopped working for a couple of years. And after moving to the US, I went back to it, mostly because the ecosystem has changed a lot, I feel, and not for the better. So, my point being that 10 years ago, it was very, it was straightforward to send emails and the rules were kind of simple. Now it’s basically a mess, as everybody knows, but besides being a mess, it’s very unclear. So, nobody really knows what’s working. [2:44]

Nancy Calabrese: Yeah.

Nicolas Toper: And a lot of people are selling like snake, all type of, oh, do this and that and it should work. But on top of that, the kind of playing film is very uneven. So, for instance, we’ve lost a customer recently because they raised a lot of funding and they had someone at Google at their board. So, Google told them that they wouldn’t be in spam. So, they donated us. So basically, if you know the right person or spend the right amount of money, then you will have certain advantages, and I just feel that’s wrong, and that’s also a good business opportunity. [3:20]

Nancy Calabrese: Wow. So, you are on a mission to help email senders achieve better deliverability and avoid spam filters. Give us some practical tips. How do we do that?

Nicolas Toper: So, first, the way to do that is actually… So yeah, as you mentioned, I’m on a mission, but this mission is mostly to explain how this thing works because the real problem you have right now is when you’re in spam, you have no clue why. And that’s kind of the problem because what we find out is if you’re in spam, and we explain that to people, in 90% of the time, they’ll do the right thing, and they fix their problem which is good for everybody because usually it’s because they’re sending better emails. That’s what usually that means. And so, the receipts are happier. The customer is happier because he’s selling more and it’s easily it’s more it’s easier. So, everybody’s kind of its kind of good for everybody. And there is 10 percent of the cases where they expect a magic trick. And so now, after I’ve contextualized this answer a little bit, the way to reach inbox, the first is deep. So, the first question is, who are you selling to? So where are you emailing to? So, you have a free tool on our system, the inbox booster that tells you how to, that will analyze your little list and will tell you where you’re emailing to. Because if you’re emailing just on Gmail, it’s not the same thing as if you’re emailing on the form of two Fortune 500 companies, which is not the same thing if you’re emailing, so there is kind of, because usually a lot of SMBs are using Outlook. Some other kind of, lots of, most startups are using Google Workspace. So, you really, the first step is really to investigate that. And until you know that it’s kind of, you will not be able to sound efficiently. And you’ll see that… [5:10]

 

Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. Well, why are they all different? I don’t understand.

Nicolas Toper: They all have their own inducing creases, so they all have their own quirks and way of working. So, for instance, Outlook, they really want your domain to have kind of a good history. Gmail, they don’t really care about the IP and the domain, but they really care about the behavior of your users. And other spam filters like for instance, Proofful, they’ll care about the age of the domain, they’ll care about a lot of factors. But for instance, if you look at what proof point, which is a spam filter used a lot for Fortune 500 and Gmail, they will classify spam. If you remove like the phishing email and all those things, the overlap is probably to be 25%. So that means 75% of your emails will be considered spam by let’s say one or the other spam filter, but there will be no overlap. So, you really need to be careful here. And that’s really the first step is, who are you emailing to? [6:11]

Nancy Calabrese: How long does it take to correct that?

Nicolas Toper: So usually, we can do that depending on what problems you have, but can take a day to a couple of weeks. And now once you know where you’re emailing to assuming, for instance, you’re emailing on Gmail, the first step is, are you in spam? For instance, I can use Proofpoint as an example or Gmail. But figuring it out is not that easy, because for Proofpoint, you need to buy this platform to figure it out, which we’ve done for you. And we share that information for free. Or, and even with Gmail, it’s very hard, because if you’re sending an email to your own Google Workspace account, Google is super smart that you want to receive that email, but that doesn’t mean that the rest of the world wants to receive it. So, you must use a specific way to even test if you’re in spam. So, the second step is, are you in spam? This you can do for free on Inbox Booster, and we’ll tell you if you’re in spam. Because what we do is we change, we have some test addresses that we change regularly. So, this way we know that they’re not getting trained, and they don’t learn what kind of emails our software would like to receive. So that’s kind of how we do it. And if you do it yourself, you can, but you need to create a test address almost each time you’re going to do test. So that’s roughly what we’ll do. So that’s the second step for you. So, before we can get to the inbox, the first question is which inbox? And the second question is, does it work? Now, assuming it doesn’t work, then same thing, you can use inbox booster and we’ll tell you why you’re interested, because there can be a lot of different reasons. And it starts to be very, very complicated. You really have two types of problems. The first one is it’s tied to your past behavior. So, for instance, you’ve sent emails to people you shouldn’t have, you shouldn’t have, or it has nothing to do with you, but it’s really like just a word that’s triggering the spam feature. And we’re going to tell you both and then you can fix it. If it’s a word, there is nothing to do, you just change the word and you’re there. So, for instance, we’ve had a customer, they were sending like a sign-up confirmation, and they were in spam. And that’s because they had a word tag in your HTML. So that’s the reason. And the second problem you’ll have, and for Google Develop, there’s going to be a lot of that. Well, it’s going to be a mix. It’s going to be also sometimes you’ve sent to the wrong person; you haven’t targeted well enough your email. And Google, if you’re sending to Google, they take that into account a lot. And they’ll assume that you’re not able to target. So, you’ll honor their users. So, to understand how Google works, the way they do it, they want people to like your email. To like meaning to engage with it, which means really to open the email, answer it, archive it, and search it without unsubscribing or deleting it without reading it. Or just reading it and deleting it or marking it as stuff. So that’s what you want to do, and if you’re able to do that, then there is no problem for sending on Google. On Outlook they care about similar things and proof points, they don’t really care too much about that. They care a lot more about certain keywords and all that. [9:26]

Nancy Calabrese: Why is it sometimes when I see, I’ll get from the same party the email in my inbox and other times it goes to spam? Why is that?

Nicolas Toper: Say that again, sorry.

Nancy Calabrese: So, let’s say you’re emailing me, and I’ve gotten your emails in my inbox, and then all of a sudden, your emails start going to my spam folder. Why is that?

Nicolas Toper: Oh, it’s the same principle either. It’s because I’ve sent you an email with a word or a part they don’t like at Google. Or I’m assuming you’re using Google. You’re using Google, right? [10:02]

Nancy Calabrese: Right. No, I use Outlook.

Nicolas Toper: OK, so Outlook is different. So, for Outlook, it’s because I have done so in most, so it’s almost the same thing. Sometimes because I have used a bad keyword like I’ve used, and those words changes all the time, so it’s very, so it’s kind of almost in real time. This is very uncommon with algorithms, I put a lot more with Gmail. What you will usually have been I would have sent bad emails afterwards, and because of that, I would put all my emails in spam. But Google is a little smarter, so they can just put a certain type of email. So, Google is going to do it like that so that is kind of the reason. So, it’s because of stuff I’ve done and in parallel, like for instance, I’m emailing you and at the same time I’ve sent a cold outreach campaign to people who absolutely don’t like my email and that’s what will happen. [11:09]

Nancy Calabrese: Wow. Is there a story the audience would find interesting?

Nicolas Toper: Oh, in email, yeah, of course. My story or in email deliverability story?

Nancy Calabrese: Any kind of story you want to tell.

Nicolas Toper: Ah, okay. So let me tell you the problem of email, before I talk about the story, I just want to explain why it’s starting to be a problem, because it used to be easier. The problem is 10 years ago, you really had automated emails, like newsletter, sign-ups, like a bank statement and all that. And then you had personal emails for business emails, like people that have been written by email that had been written by human. But now if you do called email, you’re probably using an outreach tool. You’re using AdRage, Apollo, whichever one of them. And those are automated emails. So, the kind of the line is blurry now. So, what’s an email being written by human? What’s an email being written by a machine? Nobody really knows. And I don’t usually want to receive an email. So that’s why this problem happened. And the reason also I think it’s important is because cold email is, first, it’s a lot less intrusive than cold calls, and two people need to sell. So, in some markets, this is how people expect to be sold for some products. So that’s kind of how you must do it. And it’s a good thing if you think about it. The main problem is Google is not very happy about that, because they would prefer you to pay some ads instead. That’s kind of the thing. And that’s the story. So, for instance, we fixed, you mentioned, a white combinator. So white combinator is not a company doing average. They don’t really care about that. They’re doing marketing. And they have a very, very high brand, a very good brand. It’s very powerful. So, they don’t really have deliverability problem. But they were still in spam on Gmail. They were in promotion in spam and Gmail for the Renewsator. And the reason? That’s kind of the interesting bit is the first one is because they re-imported their MailChimp template. So, they’ve imported, they used the MailChimp template, and they rebuilt it from that, but they kept some key elements of it. And that for Gmail was a very good predictor of promotion. So, they moved their newsletter into promotion. And the second reason they’ve had is, so we’ve did that, and it worked. But then they went back in promotion. [13:46]

Nancy Calabrese: Right.

Nicolas Toper: And the reason is because they haven’t, they never pruned their inactive users. In newsletter it’s important, meaning that some people haven’t opened their email in like maybe five years or clicked on anything, and they were still sounding to them. So, we fixed it and then the newsletter worked. And the information here and the story here is when I told them that, they were not very happy about the results the resolution we found were increased, their total number of click by 35%. But on top of that, what’s very interesting is this process is iterative. Like you had to fix it the first time, then you had to investigate it the second time. But after that, they had no problems. So, it kind of worked and they stopped paying us because they don’t have any problems. [14:37]

Nancy Calabrese: Right. Well, that’s not a good thing, is it?

Nicolas Toper: For us it is because it’s just a way of working with customers. We know that some customers will stay forever or a long time because it’s going to be a recurring problem. Most people don’t call Dimmers, usually. And for some others it’s just going to be like a one-time thing because they will not have any problems afterwards. And we can tell ahead because usually it’s email for you, business critical. Like will you be dead if your mail doesn’t work as a company or as a department? And usually, if the answer is yes, we usually have good customers. If the answer is no, usually it’s just a one-time event, but for us it’s still useful and it’s important to do it. So that’s kind of because it helps explain and all that. But what’s interesting in this story is one, the iterative nature of this kind of fix to do it a couple of times until you get there. And two, the second interesting element is that once it’s fixed, you really don’t have any problems in a lot of cases. And it’s the same thing with cold average, because one question I always have, it’s how many emails can I send? I’m proud to be your question list. And the answer is as many as the spam field lets you, meaning as many as you can with good engagement. [16:04]

Nancy Calabrese: Right.

Nicolas Toper: Sometimes we have customers, they’re sending probably more than a couple of thousands of emails per day in cold average and it’s working very, very well. So, it really depends on what you’re selling. And the key elements here are, and I’m kind of going a little bit outside of the initial discussion, it’s one, you need to know who you’re selling to if you do cold average. Very, very important. Like you need to know, okay, so this is my ICP and you need to know those people are actually going to sell. And then what I’m saying usually is if you don’t know who your ICP is, you need to experiment until you figure it out, but you shouldn’t sell a lot of emails to be very, very careful. And in deliverability, usually once you know who you’re selling to, you can sell a lot. And the second thing is sometimes because you care about who you’re selling to, so basically what’s your revenue, there is another side to it, and I mentioned it, it’s engagement. So, you want one unsubscription link. One clicks unsubscription link, now it’s going to be a requirement for Google. And the second thing you want is you want to be between 0.5 and 1.5 of unsubscription rate. If you do that, you’re fine. This means that you have found a vial negativa, if that makes sense, your ICP. Because you want people to unsubscribe a little bit, because it’s a little bit trying to sell them some stuff to them and some are not going to be interested, then that’s fine, but you don’t want too many of them to not be interested because if you’re there, this means they don’t care and you’re not emailing the right people. So, you want to, yeah. [17:45]

Nancy Calabrese: Right, okay. How many emails is it safe to send out a day?

Nicolas Toper: Again, as I mentioned, there is no limit if you’re able to reach this pattern. If you’re able to reach those KPI, you can sound as many as you want.

Nancy Calabrese: Well, hey, I can’t believe we’re up with time. What is the one takeaway you want to leave the audience with?

Nicolas Toper: that you absolutely need to test your email. If you’re doing cold email, you need to do that on InboxBooster or do it yourself, but you need to do it once per week just to make sure you don’t have any problems. Because there is another problem, because I can talk about this subject for hours, but it’s very, very important to test your email. That’s kind of, that like really, this is kind of the stats I mentioned. And even if you don’t think you have a problem, you need to do that, you need to check where you’re emailing to, like what mail server is behind it, and two, do you have a problem? Because the thing about this kind of thing is it’s not to compound, so if you wait too long, not only you will lose sales, but you might lose your whole mailbox. So, you must be very, very careful here if you start to see a problem. It’s kind of like a leak when you have a water leak in your home. You don’t usually want to wait too long. This is the same type of thing.  It’s kind of just a problem that kind of explodes if you don’t take care of it. And so, you absolutely want to check that regularly to make sure you don’t have a problem. And you can do that for free. So that’s kind of… And it’s very, very important. [19:22]

Nancy Calabrese: Wow. Cool. So how can my audience find you?

Nicolas Toper: So, they go on Inbox Booster and they can even book a meeting with me on the website. They can also test it for free if their email is in Inbox.

Nancy Calabrese: Cool, cool. You know, folks, we all live in email land. You’ve got an expert here. And I know for me, without having this discussion that Nicolas, I had no idea, no idea. So, thanks so much for being on the show. And for all of you, I strongly suggest that you reach out and you have that offer, right? You could do some free emails. Isn’t that what you said?

Nicolas Toper: Yes, that’s correct. They can test for free; they can test and again we’re happy to do that for free, there is no problem. And they will even get some diagnosis if they have a problem. And there’s no need to sign up or anything, it’s just on the homepage. [20:16]

Nancy Calabrese: Awesome. Love it. So here we go. Another fabulous conversation with an expert in what we all need to be better in. I wish you all a great sales day. And Nicholas, thanks so much for being on the show.

Nicolas Toper: Thank you. [20:32]