← The Dave Gerhardt Show (from Exit Five)
The Dave Gerhardt Show (from Exit Five)
#196: Drive | LinkedIn Growth Tips Every B2B CEO and Founder Needs to Know with Devin Reed, Founder of The Reeder
00:51:02
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- [00:02]
Dave
This episode is brought to you by Revenue Hero. Our friends at Revenue Hero recently did a lead response test of over a thousand B2B sales teams. And this is crazy to me still. I did a study like this seven, eight years ago when I was working at Drift. It's taking too long still to this day to follow up with leads. On average, it took one day, five hours and 17 minutes to hear back from those companies on the website. It's 2024. Look, your buyer has probably already moved on to an alternative. A few minutes of not hearing from you, let alone 29 hours. What those companies need is automated scheduling for qualified leads. And that's where Revenue Hero comes in. Their platform is the fastest way for qualified leads to schedule a meeting with your sales team. Plus, they have the most sophisticated matching algorithm, so all of your leads get booked with the right rep. Whether they're a new account or already a customer, hundreds of businesses automate their request. A demo workflow today with revenue hero, including Freshworks, Nooks, Sendoso, Seamless AI and and Customer IO. If you're in B2B marketing with an inbound sales motion, Revenue Hero is a must have tool. You can check out this full lead response report, the latest version of it, which has plenty of other takeaways you should really know about so you can help your team drive more revenue with the people that are already visiting your website, the most valuable audience that you have. Go check it out. It's RevenueHero IO Exit 5. You can find the report and learn more about Revenue hero there. It's RevenueHero IO exit 5. 1, 2, 3, 4.
- [01:37]
Devin Reed
Exit. Exit. Exit.
- [01:51]
Dave
Hey, it's me, Dave. So this is a special episode. This was a session that we recorded live at Drive, our first ever in person event, which was early September in Burlington, Vermont. It was incredible. We had 200 people there. The NPS after the event was 88. We're going to do it again this year. Don't worry. I know there's a lot of FOMO out there. For those of you that didn't make it, we're going to do it again September 2025. But we have all of the recordings right here for you on the Exit 5 podcast. Now, this is just the audio if you want the full video and see the slides and everything that is available exclusively in our community, not on YouTube, not on the Internet, nowhere else except inside of Exit 5 in the community. Join 4400members Exit5.com and you can see all the content. Okay, let's get into this session from.
- [02:37]
Devin Reed
Drive.
- [02:42]
Dave
Devin Reed is here. Devin is a legend in the content game. Every, every speaker referenced Gong's content and social media strategy, and he's behind all that. But number one of the number one things that comes up in exit 5 is people wanting to know how to use LinkedIn. I'm a big believer that I don't see it as a social media channel. It's not a fun little toy that people play with. If I was running marketing at a B2B company today, I wouldn't be spending 20 grand a month on a. On a retainer for PR. I would be investing it all in organic LinkedIn. And that's exactly what Devin's going to talk about here today. So give it up for my guy, Devin Reed. This is how we do.
- [03:24]
Devin Reed
Thanks. So when I. I was going to drink out of that. So when I looked at the agenda, once Dave confirmed I'm going to speak, I was like, all right, cool. What slot did I get? And I was super grateful I didn't have to follow Ross. And then after yesterday, I was really fucking grateful I didn't have to follow Dan. And then I was like, shit, everyone's going to be pretty tired this morning, but it's still better than following those two. So I'm going to make a deal with you. I'm not going to do that super annoying thing where I asked everyone to stand up and stretch and shake it out. Instead, if you could just take out your phone and stare at that for the next 30 minutes, that'll make my job a lot easier. So I, as it was referenced, started at Gong in 2019 as the head of content, and we built what I call a content powerhouse. We found content market fit, we scaled it across multiple channels, and it had a massive impact on Gong's brand and pipeline. And then I quit and I joined our competitor. And that could cause some problems and also caused a temptation, which I was reminded of time and time again, because during my listening tour at Clary, you know, I'm going around talking to marketers and salespeople and executives, and after the niceties and the weather and all that, they go, so you're gonna run the Gong playbook here? And I said, it's tempting, isn't it? And I said, no, I'm not here to build Gong 2.0. I'm here to build clarity 2.0. And the reason why is because you can't just take a strategy in a playbook, copy and paste it, and take it from company to company. I'm Seeing some nods over there. Reason being that is created in a certain time, in a certain market, for a certain audience. And so when you try to copy and paste it, it doesn't work. Plus it's pretty freaking lazy. So what I did instead was think about, hey, how am I going to look at our strengths and see what we have today? And what I realize is there are principles that I can take with me from gong, and I've taken them to Clarion, I've taken them to the Reader today where I help B2B SaaS companies design top of funnel content strategies. And they're pretty timeless. And so if I take everything that I've learned, everything that I believe, and I put it into one principle, it would be this. Oh, hell yeah. I gotta mm early. I look over, he's just eating the.
- [05:49]
Dave
Breakfast sandwich, going to say, that was like a. That was real.
- [05:54]
Devin Reed
That was like a Campbell soup. So I want people who influence and make purchasing decisions to know, like and trust us. That's kind of it. Hell yeah. Phones are coming out early. Let's go. That's when you know you're doing well when that first phone comes out. And if it's vertical, you know they're lying. I would appreciate that too. And so I'm a content guy, so of course I believe content is the best way to do it. And every mission statement I go to starts with these three words or excuse me, whoop, jumped ahead. I want them to know who we are, like what we're about and trust we can help them. I'm making too many jokes. I'm not looking at the conference monitor. So this is what it comes down to. That last one is really important because the four words that I always talk about are build trust at scale. That's really what it is. And so I was thinking, how am I going to build trust at scale at Clary? And the fun part is my CMO at Clary is in the room right now. And I actually never told him this. Sorry, Kyle. I knew that when it came to the corporate LinkedIn page, Clary was never going to be gone. I told you I had never told him this before. And when I joined, it was 12,000 followers. When I left, it was over 200,000 followers. Thank you. It was a great team. I had a great team of eight who helped obviously scale this. It's not all me, but I was like, there's no way if the king of Revtech Sales tech is going to be crowned in the next two years, there's no way we're Going to catch them up in this way. But I knew that we could play to our strengths. And so I thought, hey, what do I have that gong doesn't have or at least isn't using it? And that's a charismatic CEO. And it's okay if yours isn't charismatic. We sell sales tech, so you kind of have to be in that space. But I realized, hey, we've got a guy who believes in marketing because he hired a tattooed guy like me. And.
- [07:45]
Dave
Wait, sorry, what does that have to do with marketing? You told me to interrupt.
- [07:49]
Devin Reed
Sorry, strike one, Dave. I'll see you after class. You believe if you hire a head of content. Sorry. Then you believe in marketing. Totally fucking threw me off, by the way. Right before this at breakfast, I'm like, dude, we all love that you're on the mic interrupting people. I hate it.
- [08:07]
Dave
He's like, yeah, he's like. He's like, make sure you do it a lot during my session. You're already.
- [08:10]
Devin Reed
Yeah, it's pretty Good. I have 48 minutes, right, to give this presentation. No, it's all good. So what we decided to do, I'm really glad it's an informal conference, was to build Andy, andy Burns, our CEO. We decided to build his LinkedIn strategy. So we built a LinkedIn strategy. We committed to it for 12 months and then I wrote about it on LinkedIn. CEO just started posting. He got 6.1 million views in the first 12 months. If you click See More, you'd see that I shared a five step framework of how we got there. Now what's really annoying is anyone, like everyone guessing is on LinkedIn, right? Like, do a quick show of hands. Give me one hand raise. Okay, now keep it raised. If you post on LinkedIn even like once a month, like you just do sometimes post. Dave's lying. Okay, cool. Now keep your hand up or just raise it up if you're like, I'm on it, but I'm not like really on it. You know what I'm saying? Oh, fuck yeah, we're all in it. Okay, cool. This is great. You'll be on it by the end of the day. Okay, fantastic. So what I realized was what I wanted to do is lean into this more. And so I shared the 5 process where I was going was it's super annoying for the folks who write on LinkedIn. Like, the posts you write in like four minutes or five minutes always outperform the ones that you write. Edit, write, edit. So I'm on a plane with my wife. Shoes here. Say hi A little louder next time, but all good. She's my partner at the Reader. And so we're on a plane, and I'm, like, buckled up. We're literally on the tarmac about to take off. I'm like, punching this thing in. I click publish as we're in the air, turn on airplane mode. And then I, like, put on a podcast, fall asleep. When I land, I turn off airplane mode, open LinkedIn, and this thing had half a million views in, like, five hours. And I'm not bragging that I'm like, some God at LinkedIn. If I could write this type of post every day, I would. And I'd teach you, and I'd probably be a billionaire. But what it showed me was that I was onto something. People weren't just interested in those 6 million views. There's something interesting where a CEO has kind of entered this creator mode. They're taking it seriously, and it's working. And I got a lot of dms, a surprising amount from marketers, executives, and founders who are like, hey, can I learn a little bit more? But I wasn't the first one. Some other dude kind of made it up first. Go ahead. You can talk in the mic now.
- [10:14]
Dave
Sorry. My favorite review of that book was it's Somebody wrote one star on Amazon and all it said was, this should have been a blog post.
- [10:21]
Devin Reed
Yeah. So basically, what I'm going to talk about is founder brand meets LinkedIn. Raise your hand if you've read Founder Brand. Okay. If you raise your hand slowly, you're lying because Dave's in the room. That's okay. And so that's what we're going to cover today. So a little bit the obligatory about me slide. I spent 10 years in SaaS, sales and marketing. Some folks don't know. I got my start in sales. I was the head of content at Gong. I was actually a rep at Gong. From 2 to 20 million. Head of content from 20 to 200 million. ARR. When I went over to clary, we crossed 100, and I think we got to about 150 million. Now. I found the reader. Three months ago, I quit my job on a Friday, Quick Clary two days later, packed up my family and my house, moved from the Bay Area to San Diego, and then two days after that, opened my laptop as an entrepreneur. So I'm three whole months into it, and this is my first presentation from the Reader. So I'm pretty excited about that. I'm pretty excited about that now. If you know me past my career, you know I own way Too many sneakers, I cheer way too loudly at warriors games, and I'm a proud dad of two girls. Girl dad. Hell yeah, girl dad. Okay, so here's my thing. You can pull your phone out if you want. I said if you want. I didn't ask you. And what I like to do is like, I hate homework. So if you have notepad, if you want to follow along, you can literally follow this step by step framework with me today. And by the time we're done, you'll have V1 in your pocket for when you go home. The other disclaimer is, I wrote this presentation as a marketer for marketers who might want to build this on behalf of your B2B leader. That could be your CEO, your CXO could just be a thought leader or someone fairly smart at your company. And so keep that in mind as we go through it. Even if you're not on LinkedIn or maybe, I don't know, you're obsessed with Reddit for some reason. Had to rose right on. I had. It's a layup. This will still be helpful. You'll find a lot of valuable insights that you can use no matter where you publish content. Okay. I absolutely love Natalie's presentation yesterday because when you bring this idea to your executive, they're going to ask why? Why should we do this? Why should we do it now? There's so many other priorities, I'm spiraling. So step number one is really step zero, which is you gotta sell this thing. And so I wanna give you a quick tip list that you can use to make your case. So here are 10 undeniable reasons for B2B leaders to get active on LinkedIn right now. I know. Hell yeah, more phones. Honestly, when I wrote this slide, I was like, if I don't get a phone by now, I'm the biggest. One is number two. Number two is how I always get funding, resources, whatever I need is because every CEO has what I call the CEO slide. It's three to five company wide initiatives at the beginning of the year. And if you can tie your initiative to that initiative, you're almost guaranteed to get funding. All this other stuff is nice to have. And for the personal stuff, that really works really well for like, I don't know, if you have like a CRO, cmo, vp and they're like, I like the company, but like, do I really want to give my LinkedIn to it? I don't know, do you like bigger paychecks, dog, real quick, this is not.
- [13:18]
Dave
A bit a serious thing Maybe you answer this later, but, yeah, go for it. I think one of the biggest objections that I've heard from founders or even people here personally is they believe all this. And I know you're going to answer this, which is why I'm giving it to you, but they believe all this. But the founder, they don't want to be that person. They don't want to be. That part makes them uncomfortable. And yet there's all of these undeniable benefits to doing it. How do you help people get over that? Objection.
- [13:42]
Devin Reed
What was your line yesterday? The pain of change has to be. What was it? The pain of staying the same has to be greater than the pain of change. So all those woes of pipeline and we're not different in our competitors and yada, yada, yada, this is it. And I get to a little bit more on that later. But I also have a backup answer, which is like, if all else fails, Adam Robinson's doing it. It seems to be working. I honestly thought he was going to be here today, and I really wanted to do this in person. And it's funny because as I was making this in my Google Doc, this was the first comment I wrote to myself. And I can assure you there were a few more. I had to cut them out. I went early. All right, cool. So step one, we'll get real tactical today. Step one is you got to pick your one word. Pick your one word. So really what it means is this is probably the most overlooked but critical part of my LinkedIn strategy. And I say overlooked because when I made the post pick one word to own, there was a theme in the comments which is like, what's that? What is this one word? How do you pick it? How do I choose? And someone great. I should probably focus on that a little bit. So the one word is what you want to be known for. And here's why it matters. The right content strategy is going to spark word of mouth marketing, which is the most powerful form of marketing. But whenever I heard word of mouth, I'm like, that kind of just means, like, people talk about you, they say nice things about you. And that's great, I've experienced that. But like, what triggers someone to talk about you? What is that trigger word or phrase or thing? And so I wanted to explore that a lot more. And if you have your one word and you execute the right content strategy, then you start to earn mind share. And if you earn mind share, then you can win market share. It goes in that order. And if you try to Go without it. Two pretty bad things are going to happen. And you can tell they're bad because there's a red X you. It's pretty cool. So not being known for anything. You'll publish a ton of content, but you won't earn mind share. People will not talk about you when you're not around in a good way, or you'll pump out a bunch of content, but you'll be known for the wrong thing, something that you don't actually sell. Mm. I got a second. Was that the same guy? Different. Let's go. I love it. This is a new thing. There's phones and. Mm. All right, so I talked about these conversations when you're not around. There's two styles of word of mouth conversations. There's casual conversations, and there's what I call closed door conversations. Let's go through the first one. Casual conversations. Not this event, but kind of looks like it. Right? Right after this, we're all going to go hang out. We're going to talk, we're going to. We're going to see each other. And certain people remind us of certain things. Anyone know Erica? Yeah. Hell yeah. Erica's awesome. When I think of Erica, I think of editing. Yeah. Yeah. When I think of anyone know this guy, Eddie Schleiner. Fantastic. We think copywriting. And when I think this guy, I think great hair. Wait, no, I think growth. You want to go back? Okay. You know how hard it was to see you all day yesterday and not let this out? Like, I was really. And you told me you cut your hair. I was like, God damn it. This was the second slide I made of this whole presentation. Don't make fun of Adam Robinson and make fun of Brendan's hair, because I love your hair. It's awesome hair. It's awesome hair. Right? So these people have mind share. They have worked hard. They have a certain content strategy. They talk about the same things over and over. And so when you see them, you think of a certain thing. And when you see that word growth, editing, copywriting, you think of this person. Growth. Is that the right word? Growth. Growth. Sprints. All right, cool. Done. All right, so the next one's closed door conversations. And this one was actually introduced to me while I was at Gong, because as I was in sales, I would often ask people, so, like, how did you hear about us? Like, why are you on a call with me, VP of sales? And it was really interesting what they would say. They say, hey, I'm in a forecasting meeting. Sales strategy meeting. You know me My VP is directors and we realized we had a demo problem. Our reps can't demo for shit. Their words in our mind. And we're going around the table thinking about, like, how do we solve this problem? We need some sales coaching. Someone thinks gong. Hey, have you heard of gong? Yeah, yeah, I like their content. We read a lot. Hey, cool. Don't they like, do something with sales coaching? Yeah, I think so. Hey, let's go see a demo. It's really that simple. Your prospects right now, whoever you sell to, are talking to each other in these closed door meetings. And you need to have your trigger word be mentioned in those meetings. Because what happens is they go, all right, sounds good. They go to your website, they ask for a demo, and that's how you can use this concept to get more inbound. So your one word is your North Star. And it serves two main purposes. Internally, it helps you keep focus. It's much easier to create content when you have some sort of guardrails. Externally, it helps you carve out that mindshare. Right, so I'm going to use Andy because I talked about Andy at the beginning of the LinkedIn post. So we're going to use him as a bit of a proof point as we walk through here. For Andy, it was revenue. We had started a strategic initiative to go from a forecasting tool to a revenue platform. We launched a new category called Revenue, Collaboration and Governance. Terrible freaking name. Fun fact. When I was signing my Clary letter, like right before I signed, I made like a good and bad list and the only thing on the bad list was that fucking terrible category name. But I signed up anyway. So anyway, he wanted to be known for revenue. When CROs and certain people are talking, he wants that name to be synonymous. So I ask you to take out your notebook. You can think for a second. What's your word? What's your leader's word? If you're already thinking about your CEO now, chances are it's the word that popped into the front of your mind by the time I finished that question. But if not, you need to think about it. That's all good. Take the weekend to think about it. But don't take too long. Because the sooner you pick your word, the sooner people will start talking about you in those conversations. And that's going to help grow your brand and your business. Dave, if you're going to interrupt, now's the time. Thanks. Oh, you thought about it too? You didn't have anything me a minute.
- [19:28]
Dave
My nose was itchy to turn the mic On. So you're good.
- [19:30]
Devin Reed
It's a whole day. All right, cool. So step two, now we know we're going to win Mindshare. Step two is who are we going to win Mindshare with? I'm going to go a little bit faster now because that main concept was, like, the big one. We're going to kind of rip through the rest of this. So that was not a joke. Shit, should it have been? Okay, narrow your audience. All right, so real quick, we got to figure out who the hell are we going to get that mindshare with. We've got a niche. If you say niche, that's all good. You're wrong. I don't care if you're. Hold on. Riches. I don't care.
- [19:59]
Dave
Nobody says the riches are in the niches.
- [20:02]
Devin Reed
Yeah, I do, and you just did.
- [20:04]
Dave
Well, because I'm trying to make a point.
- [20:06]
Devin Reed
Got him at his own conference. Not as funny as Damn, but I'll try. All right, so here's the focus segment of the broader market. You want to be the go to expert audience is the group of people who resonate with your message. Now, here's the deal. This is how I think about it when I want to win. In the attention economy, you are either playing winning or dominating. And I know it's like 9:15, and to ask you to dominate this early in the morning is pretty aggressive, but this is my mindset. I don't want to play. I don't play to win. I play to dominate because there's first place, and then there's everybody else. Ricky Bobby. Okay, so that's what I want to do. But I know sometimes it can be really challenging to figure out, like, who is that exact narrow audience, that niche, that who is it Exactly. Because we've got, like, this business leader, and they're the one that we really want to buy from us. But then there's, like, the end user, and then there's ancillary departments, and then, oh, shit, the cfo. They're the one who's actually going to sign off on this thing. So I'm gonna take you through. Oh, shit. You okay? Sorry. We won't point attention to the fact that Mark just spilled coffee everywhere. So I want you to think of this. If you're struggling, here's an exercise I do with my clients. I want you to imagine this. There's two parts. One, think of it through the lens of your brand. Okay? Imagine you're an event like this. Maybe bigger. Whatever. You've got a booth outside and a swarm of people come up to your booth and like, oh my God, I love you. Love your brand. It's so great. Who is that one person? If you had to pick like one title, think of like, who would that be? To love your brand from a marketing standpoint. Write it down.
- [21:38]
Dave
Hey, it's Dave Quick interruption of this podcast to tell you about my friends at Compound Growth Marketing. They're sponsors of Exit 5. They're an amazing agency and I've worked with them not once but twice. Hired them at Privy, hired them at Drift. They're the go to growth partner to help you figure out demand generation. They've managed over 50 million in ad spend working with everyone from fast scaling mid stage startups to publicly traded companies. But what really sets them apart from the other agencies out there? They were built by someone who has actually done the job that you're trying to do. John Short, founder and CEO, was a VP of marketing in B2B SaaS. Like many of you that listen to this podcast, he worked at companies like Log Me in workable and monster.com and he's built this company through that lens so they can focus on accountability, delivering results and being an extension of the marketing teams that they work with. So many B2B agencies that we see are B2C firms in B2B clothing. They focus on cost per lead, not pipeline, but CGM Compound Growth Marketing. They don't just run campaigns, they engineer compound growth strategies that turn your dollars into measurable roi. They know how to talk about it. They know how to help you present to the CEO, to the board to do it all. I've seen it firsthand. They take the time to understand your business, your goals and your challenges and they execute with precision. They are truly a growth partner. I can't say enough good things about John and the team at Compound Growth Marketing. And I'm pumped that they signed up to be a sponsor of Exit 5 because I think they can provide a ton of value back to you as a listener if you're looking for an agency. So if you're ready to unlock your next level of growth, head over to compound growth marketing.com and tell them you heard about them on the Exit 5 podcast. Hashtag attribution. Compound growth marketing.com now next to heat.
- [23:29]
Devin Reed
Check yourself is you got to think from the sales lens too. So think of if a wave of people hit your website, punch the demo button like an overhand right from Mike Tyson. Who would your sales team want that to be? Who's your sales rep be like, oh Hell, yeah. Today was a good day. Ice Cube reference. Couple millennials in the fan. Okay. Right. So I did this at gong. While we were scaling and while we're going up market, I would constantly go up to my VP of sales and say, hey, if you had one that could hit the demo button, who would it be? Because we sold to VPs of sales. But also there's like, sales enablement. They influence it. And again, the CFO signs it off, but he said, no, no, no. I want VPs of sales to hit the demo button. We'll do in pipeline marketing to the cfo. We'll do in pipeline marketing to the sales enablement. But I don't want to start conversations with them because we have data. They don't close.
- [24:13]
Dave
I think this step is so important. And I've been in the internal conversations. Like, we can't overstate how important this is. I think it's inside of every company. I've heard many conversations like this this week. It's like, well, sales, but also this Persona. But also then you have like, the four VPs inside of the company with competing opinions. Or the company tells you they sell to one core Persona, but actually they kind of also care about this one and this one and this one. It's like, I understand that, but if you want to be good at content marketing and do this, you have to focus and you have to pick one. And so, like, that is the exercise.
- [24:43]
Devin Reed
Yeah.
- [24:43]
Dave
You have to disagree and commit and say, yeah, maybe we do serve all multiple Personas, but for our content strategy, we're going to pick one and we're going to own that one word and that one Persona. And because like anything else, if you try to write for everything, everyone, you miss and you're for no one. You have to figure this part out. And this is the hard part, because you have to push back. You have to tell people, nope, sorry, we're not writing that way. This is the part you have to.
- [25:04]
Devin Reed
Figure out that I had a little longer. Yeah, I totally agree. And here's the thing, too. And you talk about riches, and this is. I get it. Is like, other people still read the content and other people still hit the demo button and they still know. And like, you, like, think of the VP of sales is like the bullseye, but there's still, like, the green ring around the bullseye. I don't know what that' but those are, like, great buyers, too. And then there's like, all the rings around. It's all good. It's still going to work. Okay. Now, quick nuance alert. If you're working with the CEO, founder of the company, they're basically going to be like, here are the keys to the car. Like, bring it back by midnight. Right. The marketing strategy is like my strategy. My LinkedIn profile is now like a marketing channel. Treat it and go. Not 100% of the time, but pretty, pretty frequently. But if you're working with like a VP or it's like a director and they don't own the company, they're not going to give you the keys because it's their reputation on the line as well. So just know there might be some variance between these audiences that you choose. And there's a little bit of variance. When we were working with Andy, so one, CROs and SVP's was actually our second buyer Persona. We wanted Rev Ops VPs, but Andy wanted CROs in his network. Two, he wanted CEOs or his peers. Again, people around the Rev Ops person, people that can still say, hey, go. Like group one and two can still go. Tell the Rev Ops leader to go look at Clary. Hell yeah. Kyle's nodding. I was kind of like making sure he's not like, what the fuck? I also told Kyle that he has this really cool ability that right after my presentation, because he goes next, he could be like, so none of that is true. Yeah, I took it from you. Yeah. I was not going to let you do that to me. And then you wanted VCs, because, you know, you wanted to be cool with VCs. Who doesn't? They're rich. So I guess. All right, step three, Pick content, pillars and topics. I'm going to give you a cheat code. Fun fact. I hate when people say cheat code, but I wrote one, so I'm going to. Lot of laughs. Way more than I thought. So what everything comes down to when I'm creating content. I think about what your audience wants to know, what their peers are seeing, thinking and doing. And here's how I came up with this. I had a VP of Rev Ops. I was hosting and in charge of running a webinar program for other VPs of Rev Ops. And I basically don't know a goddamn thing about Rev Ops. And so I've asked leaders like, so hey, when you're like, with your executive, when you're with your CEO and your CEO tasks you with something and you don't know how to do it, but you're not going to say that in the meeting. And then after the meeting, what do you go do? Anyone want to guess? No. Who said that $100 for the Reddit comment. Run it back. No, that's not what they do. But that would be funny. They pick up the phone and they call their peers because they want to know what other peers are saying, thinking and doing. So this is like the cheat code is like, I don't know a damn thing, but I can go find the answer with this framework. And so when you're picking your pillars, you need to know what your audience cares about. You need to know your niche, knowledge and experience. And when you put those two things together, you have relevant and valuable content, or what I often call content that converts. That's the sweet spot. Okay, if you need a quick exercise for how do I come up with the topics below that, Here it is. Really quickly. I had like skill statements. I know how to write a co prospecting email, run an event. Next one is outcome statements. What has the outcome of those things? I know how to generate sales pipeline. You're going to go through and list all these things out that this person knows they're not going to fit into the middle of the diagram right away. Right? You have your Venn diagram. You're kind of putting stuff everywhere. You'll go through this list and then you're going to look at what's the most expensive problem? This is what I asked the VP of Rev Ops. He had all these ideas because he's like, intelligent. He was actually really smart. It was intimidating. So what's the most expensive problem and what's the most urgent problem? And that's what we picked for that webinar and other programs because that's what's going to matter most. That's what's going to stop people on the scroll, stop them in their email and go, that's something I need to show up to. Here's what we came up for. Andy, I thoroughly do not expect you to read all this, but I wanted to show you the content pillars we came up with. So one was how does Andy run revenue at Clarity? Run revenue was like our phrase is something we're going to market with. People want to see CEOs build in public. As proven by the LinkedIn post earlier today. Number two category evangelist. We were doing the category play. So we said, hey, people kind of need to like know what that category is. We shortened it to Revc. Again, the name is terrible. We change its revenue platform so I can shit on it now realize value from customers. This is saying, hey, we're going to make a lot of claims. We're going to show you the new way. But are people actually doing it? So let's tell some compelling stories. This is really important for the deck because these example topics, you don't have to use them actually, but when you're making your strategy, it's helpful just to have this, like, general direction. Like, cool. We're going to take exit four and go that way. Fuck. So dumb. All right, now. So dumb. So dumb. I know I'm a dad, okay? I led earlier with dad so I could make like two dad jokes, one for each kid. Okay, so now you're thinking, all right, cool, that we made like all these exercises, all these decisions. But I read this book called Create Once, Distribute Forever, and we haven't created a goddamn thing. See, I made fun of you, but then I brought you back up. Yeah, yeah, I try to do that. So here's the main problem you're gonna hear. Excuse me, first objection. You're gonna hear. Anyone want to guess? Time? Time is money. $100? Fuck it, 1000. I'm not paying. I don't have enough time. How am I going to do all this stuff? Devin, this sounds great. We're going to differentiate, build a bunch of pipeline. I'm going to be famous in the VC community. But, like, I'm busy though. So another thing to consider is, did you know the average exec replies to about 4,200 Slack messages every day? I made that up when I made this slide. But it's kind of true, right? How many times are you in a meeting, like even a one on one, and you're like, they're doing this, the blank stare. And you're like, no one listens like this. You're doing other shit. So they contact switch a lot and they're busy. So you need to make it as easy as possible. I learned this earlier in my career. A confused exec is an angry exec. And that'll make life easy for any marketer. Great results come from great processes, not promises. We've all had some empty promises in our lives. Hashtag personal stuff. But execs are scarred too, right? They kind of don't believe in marketing. A lot of times that's just the truth. Internally, we have to fight for ourselves, so we have to have great processes. And so I'm going to walk you through the production process that I came up with. Andy and other execs. Now, I wish I'd made the word commitment larger and maybe a little brighter, but I lead with this word if I'm going to make the strategy and I'm going to be running the program. I need a commitment that I will do what I say. And you exactly are going to do what you say. So I will. What am I going to do? Here's the day by day process that we follow. And I color coded it because it makes it easier to follow Tuesday, never Monday, by the way, if you even think they'll be like, no, Monday, 8:00am or 4:00pm, just don't do it. It's going to push and it screws the whole week up. Don't do Mondays. Stupid thing to say. Okay, Tuesday, idea, brain dump. Excuse me? Let's go back. Idea and brain dump. 20 minutes. Me, you, zoom. Gonna ask you some questions, you're gonna give me some answers. You don't have to prep, you don't have to think, you don't have to write. Just give me some content. All right. Alternatively, if you wanna send a voicemail and video, I'm cool with that too. I'll take 20 minutes back in my calendar. I don't care. All right, Wednesday, I'm going to write the first draft. I'm going to take all your ideas and put it into all the formatting that I know because I know LinkedIn better than you, exec. All good. Your idea is my writing put in this Google Doc. I'm going to tell you what day and time to post it and then I'm going to share it to you via Slack. You're going to revise the draft? You got to look at it, dude. I don't know. Rev ops. I told you that earlier. I don't know. I don't know what's good. You're going to review it by Thursday, end of day. It's pretty like, demanding, right? Timelines. And then Friday, I'm going to take a final pat. There it is. Get it. Get a girl. And then I'm either going to stage it for you or like, again, they give me the keys or some people are like, nah, nah, I got it, I don't care. Like, that's fine, you get the idea. But the point is idea dump. First draft revised. Finalize anything more than this level of revision. Again, going back to earlier, you're like overworking the content. Let it fly. Okay, any questions on this? Thoughts on this? Wasn't just thinking of Dave. Other people can talk to. All right, cool. All right, last part. Is this five? Yeah. All right, last one is measure and iterate. Number one question you're going to hear. Anyone want to guess? Holy shit. Yeah. Except no, not at all. Because really what are they going to ask? When the fuck are the leads going to get here, dude. Yeah, so I've posted twice and like, what the hell? I've gotten this after week one. Literally I submitted, you know, the Friday where I'm like, the posts are ready. Literally the question was like, so when do we see the leads? And I was like, tomorrow for sure. Obviously, I can definitely promise how the algorithm will treat you. So here's a shit ton of metrics that I made before I met Pranav. Kind of insecure about it at this point in time, but here's the truth. These are. You could look at these and be like, those are pretty standard. Yeah, dude, for sure. Because the last thing I want to do is like, yeah, and also like enterprise account penetration, because. No, dude, take the simple route. These are metrics that your CEO knows for the most part, right? So you want to meet them where they're at now, really quick post publish. I said three a week. I think if I did math, that's 36. This is my benchmark. This is like me putting my line, going the gauntlet or whatever. Like if I can't get you 20% lift from like basically nothing, then like probably let me go. Right? Honestly, this is a little bit of a reach. 10, 15. We all know the algorithm kind of sucks these days. Whatever. Content downloads, I turn on creator mode. This is a little hack. Turn on creator mode. You can take a gated piece of content. I do this every single time. You put on like their featured thing or their like link. Dude, we've gotten some seriously good leads from that really cool enterprise stuff. It's all good. Set the benchmark. I don't know how many downloads you're going to get. I don't know how many people like you yet. Website from traffic. Excuse me? Website traffic from organic MQLs. The MQLs has an asterisk. This is specifically from that gated piece of content on their LinkedIn profile. So it's specifically like publishing content. Hit the profile, download the content, you know, become an MQL and then like, buy in a week.
- [34:43]
Dave
Hey, on the, on the creator mode thing, are you talking about the, like, you turn on creator mode and that gives you the ability to like the pin posts in the featured section.
- [34:52]
Devin Reed
Yeah, so I put stuff in the featured section because it's a big visual. And then also there's like, you can, there's a couple of ways you can do it. There's like, view my website. Like, I think me and you have.
- [34:59]
Dave
Like, you have to pay for premium. To get that.
- [35:01]
Devin Reed
Just a CEO of a company. No, no, no.
- [35:03]
Dave
I mean, I'm just saying.
- [35:03]
Devin Reed
No, I know. Yeah, yeah.
- [35:05]
Dave
Like we did. Everybody asked about, oh, how do I do it? I'm not saying because it costs money. It should cost money. Just means.
- [35:10]
Devin Reed
No, Yeah, I know they don't know.
- [35:11]
Dave
How to do it. But you're talking about. So you upgrade to premium and then you can use the website link in your profile and drive that to a resource. Yeah.
- [35:19]
Devin Reed
And the reason why, real quick, the reason why is when you're on the profile, you'll see the featured stuff. Right. But when you post on the feed, you get the link under your name that says like, go to website, whatever. You can put your, like Clary.com. i think we actually did Clary.com sometimes, sometimes we put in like other stuff. It's all.
- [35:33]
Dave
Yeah, like we do it for our newsletter and it's a number one. Yeah, it's the number one growth lever for our newsletter.
- [35:38]
Devin Reed
Right. Super. I don't know, correlation causation. I'm not a scientist, but like the more impressions you get, the more people see your face in that link and the more people click the link and then like you get to host an event in Burlington. Okay. And then the last one and I again, this is probably the most insecure one at this point in time is the self attribution. But at the time this is the best that we have. So I just like to see like when we launched it for Andy and we started to see people saying, Andy, Andy's LinkedIn more and more in the self reported attribution, I'm like, look, it ain't the whole pie, but it's a piece and it's working a little bit. Pranav isn't here or at least not throwing tomatoes at me. So we're going to keep moving. All right, cool last bit. I said confused exec is an angry exec. So let's just put a quick operating cadence together, like setting expectations, all that good stuff. So every week we're going to sync on topics, produce and publish content, engage with our audience. Dan talked about this. This is a big one. You got to do this. Super annoying to be like, hey, you have all these fans and like VPs and presidents and like commenting and you're just leaving them out to dry. Super chill. Every two weeks, share wins and learnings. They want to know really quickly what's happening and what's working. Review content performance, refocus on those content pillars, keep revisiting them, keep Looking at them. And then every month, metrics, deep dive. There's the phones. Killing it with the phones right now. I'm stoked, dude. I'm super stoked. All right, review top and low performing posts. Tell them why they're top and low performing. Like, hey, it's all good. No one really cares about you mountain biking. Just saying. But people really like when you talked about that board meeting last week, though. So, like, let's do more of that. Right? And the last one, tweak the strategy as needed. You shouldn't be taking, like, hard rights, but again, you can take exit. Stupid joke. Okay. All right, the best part. Ready, set, ship it. You're ready to go. You've made all the posts, you've done the strategy. You go in a hit post, and then you get to do the money dance or the happy dance. If I dance right now, it would be the nervous dance. So, quick recap. I'm a little bit over. Pick your one word, narrow your audience. Pick your content pillars and topics, Build your assembly line, measure, communicate, and iterate. And I think now it's Q and A, if we got any. Okay, I have a question.
- [37:49]
Dave
Can you do this with a company.
- [37:51]
Devin Reed
Page or does it have to be a person? If your CEO is really not interested in, you know, being active on social, it's a fair question. You definitely can. And I've done it. Like I said previously, and I have. Even at Clary, we did have a company page strategy too. The algorithm gives Personal profiles 5 times more views than company pages. That's the last, like, stat that I heard. So you can definitely do it on a company page. But I have five clients right now. I'm not advising any of them to do it for their company page. Three out of five have come to me and said, we want to do it for the executives. And that's just going to get you the most bang for your buck, no doubt. Hey, awesome presentation. Thank you. Thank you.
- [38:30]
Dave
Can you talk a little bit about your Tuesday brain dump? I could see that going really well or, like, really bad, potentially.
- [38:38]
Devin Reed
Oh, you too? Yeah. So you'll know real quickly what kind of mood your CEO is in in the first two minutes of that. So here's how it usually goes. One of two things. So one is like something had just happened. And he's like. And he was super excited one time. He's like. So I went to an AI conference yesterday, and it was just like firehose central. Like all this cool AI stuff, right? So I'm like, cool. Recording the conversation I've got a whole bunch of stuff on AI. I guess we're going to focus on AI. It fits into the pillars. All good or halfway through, I'm like, hey, that's all cool, but AI isn't the main pillar. So what else happened this week? And I have just a little list of what happened this week. What was surprising? What was interesting? What was something someone said you didn't like? I try to get emotional responses. What did you hate this week? What did you love this week? What annoyed you? He's like, you. And I'm like, fine. And so I try to get those type of responses. And then I just kind of like do interview discovery and just try to pull out as much as I can. Was that helpful? All right. Also, sorry, option two is I just lead. He's like, I don't want to be here. And I'm like, me either. Now and then I just asked a bunch of questions. It was awesome, man. Thanks, man.
- [39:39]
Dave
Great job.
- [39:39]
Devin Reed
Thanks for not hating me after the Reddit. It's all good.
- [39:42]
Dave
Let's say you're working with, like, multiple executives within an org where they want to, like, have the entire leadership team, active and social. Would you run the same playbook, just like control C, control V, with different story tracks type of thing, different words.
- [39:55]
Devin Reed
Or would it be the same word, same process? Yeah, you probably are going to have different words, though. You should have different. It would be. I mean, there's always an exception. Maybe the whole team's like, all in on, like, selling on behalf of the company. And so, like, revenue, for example, might work. I've never seen that. I've done this at a work ramp where we ran through their executive team. Through this, no one had the same word and only the CEO had the word of, like, whatever their thing was, like learning or something. But the process is the exact same for sure. Yeah.
- [40:23]
Dave
Hey, Devin, so when you're picking your one word, let's say there's people in your space that already own that word. How do you think about it? Is it just like niching down in your audience? Do you niche down with the.
- [40:33]
Devin Reed
That's it. No, that's. Well, one. I was hoping that question would come up because it is a popular one and you know the answer. Yeah. You niche down. So you might be known in editing in one pocket of the Internet, but you could be known for editing in another pocket in another niche. Right. And the other thing is, like, kind of aggressive again, like just dominate. Like, just. You have to, like, be consistent, have differentiated content, have A point of view and you can beat other people. Gong was not the first to a lot of races that we won. We were not the first conversation intelligence program. We're not the first to talk about sales coaching by any means. But if you have a different approach and a consistent approach, you can beat out people who might already be in your niche or again, realize actually that person's over there. They don't even sell to quite the same people. And it's okay if you're like, adjacent to each other also, just to build on that.
- [41:13]
Dave
I believe in the. I say niche, so I'm going to say niche, but I believe that the niche can also be you. And so just because someone else talks about that topic the way you say it is different, your way of doing it is different. Maybe you're more informational or educational or funnier or witty or whatever. I think you can have your own flavor on it. Doesn't mean you have necessarily. The way you be different is by being yourself. I think a lot of us, the power of doing this from the founder, not the company page, is that the founder is typically someone. They didn't start this company just for fun because they want to get super rich. It was like, oh, they had a deep background in this engineering thing and they have 20 years of history. Like, those things are the perfect ingredients to tell this story. Dude, great job.
- [41:52]
Devin Reed
That was awesome. Thanks, man. So my question is around the engagement.
- [41:54]
Dave
Stuff, and it's something I still struggle with even when I'm like, managing programs to get CEOs. Like, how do you reply to the comments as the CEO? Like, how do you tell who's important what to dig deeper on? Are you doing that yourself?
- [42:08]
Devin Reed
How does that even work? It's a good question. And there's no one answer, to be honest, because the busy objection comes back a lot. And. But I really try to put. And I pushed Andy into, like, look at. I never replied to any comments for Andy because Kenley, I don't feel comfortable doing that. Helping him write his content is one thing. Like, he's putting his fingerprints on it. Me logging in as Andy and then commenting to like, I just. I'm already, like, uncomfortable. So what I was like, can you just go look at the engagement? You know those people? Like, three weeks ago we said we wanted to get in front of. They're on your page commenting right now. I want him to see that and hopefully that lights him up a little bit and he can punch out a quick comment. I can't force him to do it. Of all the things in the world of marketing and that I'm running, I'm not going to like, fucking beat him up for that, but I do, I'll do like this a lot. Like, hey, did you. I'll send him comments like, hey, did you see, like, the CEO at Cisco commented, or whatever, you know, whatever. And he'll be like, oh, that's awesome. So it's kind of a way, I guess, like, to tether him back into the program and to get on LinkedIn is like, hey, it's working. Yeah, no problem.
- [43:03]
Dave
Hey, question about if this can apply to other platforms beyond LinkedIn, because for my company, our audience is not as heavily on LinkedIn. It's so B2B.
- [43:11]
Devin Reed
Yeah.
- [43:11]
Dave
But much heavier on, like, Instagram, Facebook, social media.
- [43:16]
Devin Reed
So, like, does it apply? Is the question.
- [43:17]
Dave
Yeah.
- [43:17]
Devin Reed
Can you do the same framework? Yeah, I don't see what wouldn't, but I'm happy to chat after because, like, do you still need Mindshare with one word? Yes. You still should have content pillar, you still should have a production process and you should still be measuring things. So, like, obviously the metrics are going to be probably a little different for Instagram, but overall the framework, I would stay the same. Hey, Devin. Yeah, Great talk. I wanted to ask, when you sort of write for the CEO, right? Like, obviously there's information coming from them, but don't you sort of lose their voice? Because, you know, you're the one that's writing. You're not going to be there at the company forever and there's going to be somebody else. It's just like that voice question always sort of comes to me, like, the best sort of. I don't know. What are your thoughts on that? It was the second objection or not objection, but question from the group. I was hoping and expecting. Give me one sec. Because you're right. It comes up all the time with everyone. They're like, this doesn't really sound like me. And I'm like, yeah, no shit, it's me. A little. The good part of a transcript is I actually start with copy and paste because, you know, sometimes they go on a little story around. They're like, I do this, then I do this and I do this. I'm like, cool. Copy, paste, hit enter. A lot of times, get that, get that formatting. Looking good. Hit the Grammarly a little bit. Right? Clean it up. And then I just go through and I'm like, I'm really like, revising. Writing is almost like actually like a little too strong of a Word. It's like revising probably. But when we get to. Give me one sec, I promise I can click. Oh, man, it's a little deeper than I thought. I want to get to Thursday. If I can get there in a second, then I'll show it to you. Yeah, cool. So this day is the tone day. Maybe I should have mentioned that faster. Great call out. This is that heat check of like, yeah, no, duh. I don't sound like you. I'm not you. So when you revise your post before I revise it, finally put your tone on and make sure it sounds a lot like you. And honestly, you might hear it for like, the whole year. And we kind of do. It's like, this doesn't quite sound like me. I'm like, you also don't know what you sound like. You don't have your writing voice yet. So, like, we're finding this together. And unfortunately, you're getting a little bit of the Devon Reed action in there to maybe muddy it up. Devin, yo, real quick. Talking about the one word of that part you mentioned, like, don't wait too long type of deal on that. So my question is more around, like, is there a way to pick a bad word? And do you have any guardrails for us to not pick bad words? I wouldn't pick fuck. Can you pick the wrong word? Yeah. I mean, here's the thing. I line it with, does your audience care about this thing? Do you have expertise in this thing and are you selling that thing? There has to be a through line. That should be the word. The place I see people mess up is actually pretty. Usually it's more on the audience side. Usually people are like, I know what I'm good at, I know what I sell, and that's what I'm going to talk about. And I'm like, no one cares that much about your origin story. They care a little bit, but not every day. So make sure it hits on all three of those points and workshop. You can talk to people and be like, hey, you know me. You know me enough. What do you think my one word would be? There's probably a bunch of people here that now know about it. We could all talk to each other and help figure it out. Yeah, so I've read found their brand, and also, what do you do if your CEO doesn't have a compelling story?
- [46:07]
Dave
Like, if they did just get into it.
- [46:09]
Devin Reed
Oh, I can't click fast enough. You have to just get the book. Like, straight up. You have to get the book.
- [46:12]
Dave
No, I'VE read it as well.
- [46:13]
Devin Reed
But like our CEOs that I've worked for, frankly haven't had like, compelling, interesting stories about why they found the company. They just sort of wanted to get rich. Can I be honest? I don't know.
- [46:22]
Dave
Yeah, that's.
- [46:22]
Devin Reed
I'll be honest. Struggling, actually.
- [46:24]
Dave
I think there's like a different path. I don't think. I think you, if you have a great story that you can be an original creator.
- [46:30]
Devin Reed
If not, you can be a curator industry.
- [46:33]
Dave
And so like, maybe they're. They don't have all the amazing stories, but you make them like the go to account to follow for news and insights as it relates to that industry. And maybe over time that the thing that helps them find a voice. So if it's, you know, finance or whatever or hr, maybe they'll have an amazing founding story. But like, there's got to be. They got to have some strong point of view about the industry and where HR is going. If they don't have that, then you can be like, you start doing it for them. You're reading articles, you're surfing up stats. You notice that this trend with Starbucks hiring has happened and you can like be the curator and they become like a source of meetings for the industry.
- [47:07]
Devin Reed
So we got.
- [47:09]
Dave
Sorry. I know you can go hunt, Devin. After.
- [47:12]
Devin Reed
I'm leaving right after this. I'm sprinting to the car. Yeah, I am, I am around. I would love to. I was actually. That is my, my only call to action. I did, I didn't do a QR code, but it's like, come holler me after. I'm happy to talk about it. So you had, I think last week's newsletter or the week before, you talked about reach versus teach. Oh, yeah, you read my newsletter. But you just made some cheeky joke about like, no one wants to see you mountain biking.
- [47:32]
Dave
So you can talk a little bit.
- [47:34]
Devin Reed
About the balance of those, like, engagement pushing posts versus, like teaching and being relevant to your one word. So the reach is about reaching them and what they care about. So if you post the mountain bike and you see the mountain bike doesn't work, then they don't care about that. That's a miss. So I love that you brought up that framework because I still believe in it and I would try. Like, we posted the mountain biking thing. Like, we did it. We did the reach. You still should always look at the numbers and be like, what do people care about? Like, oftentimes we had one with another go to market leader. It was just him. Like, in like bam for something. He's like off site. Like literally like 10 words. It was like we're at an off site and it got like the most views of all the stuff. So like cool people love off sites. And apparently you in shorts. Great. So you just got to. You have to test it out but still follow the reach first teach. I still believe that for sure. Is there like a best practice of ratio or just like it's up to like style? Right? Like if you're. Some people were like, my CEO really doesn't want to do it, then like probably little to none. Candidly.
- [48:26]
Dave
Are you guys. You could take this offline later. Your time is up.
- [48:30]
Devin Reed
Give me the right hand dab, dude.
- [48:31]
Dave
No, but seriously, we have a break and breakout lesson. Wait, I need that clicker. Give it up for Devin. That was awesome. But, but seriously, I think something that we're learning as we're doing this event, I think one of the cool things is like accessibility. Like, I love that all the people who spoke are sitting in the front row and hanging out here today. So there's something to that. And obviously everybody's very approachable. So if. If I couldn't get to your question, it's not personal. Go find Devin in the break or go find him in the hallway after this and he'll help. This episode is brought to you by Revenue Hero. Our friends at Revenue Hero recently did a lead response test of over a thousand B2B sales teams. And this is crazy to me still. I did a study like this seven, eight years ago when I was working at Drift. It's taking too long still to this day to follow up with leads. On average, it took one day, five hours and 17 minutes to hear back from those companies on the website. It's 2024. Look, your buyer has probably already moved on to an alternative after a few minutes of not hearing from, let alone 29 hours. What those companies need is automated scheduling for qualified leads. And that's where Revenue Hero comes in. Their platform is the fastest way for qualified leads to schedule a meeting with your sales team. Plus, they have the most sophisticated matching algorithm, so all of your leads get booked with the right rep. Whether they're a new account or already a customer, hundreds of businesses automate their request a demo workflow today with revenue hero, including Freshworks, Nooks, Sendoso, Seamless AI and Customer IO. If you're a B2B marketing with an inbound sales motion, Revenue Hero is a must have tool. You can check out this full lead response report. The latest version of it, which has plenty of other takeaways you should really know about so you can help your team drive more revenue with the people that are already visiting your website, the most valuable audience that you have. Go check it out. It's RevenueHero IO Exit 5. You can find the report and learn more about Revenue hero there. It's RevenueHero IO exit 5.