Howlin' For You

Welcome to The Beat by Rockstar CMO. I’m Ian Truscott, a CMO, trusted advisor, strategy consultant and Chief Bottle Washer at Rockstar CMO. In this newsletter, I’d like to share a mix of what’s caught my eye from our community, our podcast and our street knowledge blog.

Hello there!

As you know, the titles of these emails come from songs and today I am going for Howlin’ For You by the Black Keys, as I am not sure who needs to read this, but I feel the need to defend our marketing and sales craft. As marketers, we are howlin’ for you.

I was with a group of entrepreneurs the other day, and one of them felt uncomfortable with doing sales.

Using the language of the cool kids—it gives them “the ick,”—and for me, if you are uncomfortable with selling, then you are probably a little uncomfortable with marketing.

The trope is that we are the dark side of any virtuous business, that sales and marketing are either like Jedi mind tricks fooling people into what they don’t want or some slimy door-to-door seller with his foot jammed in your door.

Which reflects a general view that we are pushing something onto someone who doesn’t really want it.

I guess this depends on what you are selling, but someone wants it if we’ve already got a customer or have done any market research.

In This is Marketing, Seth Godin uses the phrase “Here, I made this” to describe the moment we bring something into the world that helps someone, not everyone, of course, if you are familiar with the work of the good Mr G, but the smallest viable audience.

But, it would help if you were in front of someone to make that offer, however good the thing you made is, unlike the line from the classic film “Field of Dreams” that promises if you “build it, they will come”: They ain’t coming.

You need to find the people to say “Here, I made this” to.

You know you can help them, but they don’t know that yet.

As a reader of this newsletter, I suspect you know this, and to be honest I feel a bit daft sharing this, but in this group, here was an entrepreneur feeling the pain of being seen as some “slimy” salesperson - and I feel obliged to address this trope.

We need to remember that whether it’s our time consulting, a product, a book, or even our labor as we look for a job - this is the solution to someone’s problem.

And, in B2B, in particular, the job of sales and marketing is to connect the solution with the need.

True, it’s not that simple; there is a market full of other people who feel they have the solution to this buyers problem, and buyers need a lot of help to make a decision.

But trying to help is not slimy.

And maybe this person you’ve found yourself on the phone with doesn’t appreciate the “here, I made this for you”, but we go again.

As the Black Keys say:

Throw the ball, to the stick

Swing and miss and catcher's mitt, strike two

Baby I'm howlin' for you

Thanks as ever for reading this far, hope you like the links below and if you’d like to get in touch, just reply to this email or ping me at [email protected].

Have a great week!

Cheers!

Ian

Ian Truscott | Chief Bottle Washer Rockstar CMO

Say hello, reply to this email or find me on LinkedIn or my personal website.

On the Podcast

Street Knowledge

From around the Rockstar CMO community and stuff I like :-)

Q&A Episode of ‘This Old Marketing”

One of my favorite podcasts, made better with contributions from some big names in content marketing this week:

Get your Monday Marketing Mojo Working

Hmmm… I do like this tune, but the video is an odd one :-)