Speakers: Kirby Wadsworth, CMO, Illusive Networks
What was the biggest a-ha moment of your marketing career?
Kirby via Handbrake: Well, I guess the biggest ah-ha moment of my career came in talking to one of our existing customers. I was sitting down with him and I said, Look, I know you get attacked by hundreds of companies all the time. Everybody's trying to get your attention. What can you tell me about how we as marketing people and sales people, could do a better job of breaking through all that clutter? How do we start conversations with you without driving you crazy? And he laughed, and sat and he thought for a few minutes. He said, Well, I can think of a lot of things that you can't or you shouldn't do. Don't invite me to a ball game. I don't like sports. If you spend a little time checking me out, you could probably figure that out in advance. I also plenty of friends. And if I wanted to go to an event or a sporting event or to a wine tasting or something like that, I wouldn't want to do it with you and your sales reps. frankly. Don't offer to buy dinner. Frankly, I've eaten enough red meat, red meat and eaten enough steak in my life that you know, inviting me to another another dinner is not really something that I would enjoy. I like to stay home. I like, don't send me a bunch of jump with logos on it. I have trash cans full of logo plastic. I don't want any more look junk in my office. I'm not gonna put it in my office anyway. I'm just going to throw it away or give it to my kids, so just don't send it to me. It's a complete waste of time. But there is one thing, one characteristic that's true of all of the sales people that I do allow into my office more than once. He said they they do one thing. They give me a new way to look at an old problem. Now it could be that they changed my perspective on what's going on around, Maybe they challenge some constraints that I boxed myself into. They helped me kind of unpack my thinking and rethink the way that that I'm thinking, But there give me a new way to think, or give me an idea. Or the seed of an idea that I can take and use to make my daily life better, to do better in my career, to advance my company. Those of the sales reps did get through and get through more than once. He also said when you send those sales reps if I let you in when I send them to you, One more thing don't have them. Come in. Look around my office, See the picture of my children, you know, sitting on my desk and started asking me about my family. I'm divorced. My wife got custody. It's kind of a painful subject.
