Mark Wainwright 0:00

We talk about our friends, the doer sellers, a lot. But business development is more than sales. Marketing plays a major role in shaping the perception of your firm between and after those curious synchronous sales conversations. So how can consultants and subject matter experts contribute to marketing in a meaningful way? Is there a whole new term out there to describe all of this? Let's talk about it today on the podcast

John Tyreman 0:52

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to another episode of Breaking Biz Dev. My name is John Tyreman, and as always, I'm joined by my trusty co-host, Mark Wainwright. Mark, I think that there may be a new term, like you teased, that we can use to describe this whole new concept that we're gonna talk about today.

Mark Wainwright 1:14

Yeah. we're gonna coin this one. who knows? I've never heard it before. I don't think that you have, and I have no idea why. It is totally bizarre. and we could be missing something completely, right, John? 'Cause, you know, it's entirely possible but, you know, I don't

John Tyreman 1:33

we're gonna plant our flag on this one. Doer marketers, you heard it here first

Mark Wainwright 1:38

There it is, doer marketer. It's so funny. Everyone that I talk to, John, in the world of professional services, refers to the term business development. They talk about marketing, and a lot of times those two things start bleeding into the world of sales, and they never never like to say the word sales, but they're very comfortable using the term doer seller, right? It ha- I don't, I don't, I don't even know why. I don't even know why people are so comfortable with it

John Tyreman 2:05

it's a, it's another one of those four-letter words, right? That you just don't wanna say. It's, it, we'll dance around it. Let's do some marketing, let's do some business development, let's do some outreach, but never let's do some sales

Mark Wainwright 2:17

No, no, no sales. But lo and behold, we've never actually heard the term doer marketer, A term that people are so comfortable with, like doer seller, and also people are comfortable with the term marketing. Why have we never, ever heard the term doer marketer?

John Tyreman 2:36

It's, uh, that, that's a really good question

Mark Wainwright 2:38

So before we get too excited about coining this new term, John, because we may have, but we may not have. Let's, slow down a second here, and let's just define exactly what we're talking about. Because I think what we're trying to... We're gonna talk about something that's a little bit different than the doer seller, right? We think this whole term doer marketer is different, and let's maybe define those things, and then let's kind of wade into it.

John Tyreman 3:04

first I think it would help to define what we mean by doer seller. Should we start there?

Mark Wainwright 3:09

again, we've historically referenced a continuum, a marketing to sales continuum on our podcast. Ones are marketing, fives are sales, and we kind of wander in between those two things. Many times when we are talking about doer sellers, we are talking about people who are participating in activities that are related to the latter, probably the threes, fours, and fives, right? For doer sellers, we're also talking about people who have typically some revenue generation responsibility inside their organizations, and they have the responsibility of also delivering work to their clients. So they are people who day in, day out need to balance those two responsibilities, and other responsibilities as we've talked about in the past. mainly those two responsibilities of delivering work, doing the work, and selling the work, whether it's new clients or existing client accounts. So that's kind of, that's kind of what we're talking about here. So what are we talking about with a doer marketer, John?

John Tyreman 4:14

Let me take a stab at this one, Mark. So I think the share-- the overlap between the two is the shared responsibility to deliver work to clients, right? So that's the common ground that these doer marketers share with our doer seller

Mark Wainwright 4:29

I get it. The doer part. Clear.

John Tyreman 4:31

part. Yep.

Mark Wainwright 4:32

it. Yeah

John Tyreman 4:33

Now, to you, I love that you brought in the marketing and sales continuum because we have talked about different activities that do belong on that one to two, and even into that messy middle three area of the marketing to sales continuum. But I think that is where our doer marketer friends thrive, is on that end of that spectrum. Now, I'm not saying that doer marketers should not understand the sales process, nor should doer marketers not know how to close deals or contract, but that's not their primary focus. Their primary focus with their unbillable hours will be to, market the firm as opposed to selling one-to-one

Mark Wainwright 5:16

And the other thing that kind of just springs to mind for me is that, we are not creating a new term for all of our wonderful doer sellers, maybe regrettable doer sellers, to go running towards, Nor do we want every doer seller out there that has some amount of revenue responsibility and they're getting beat over the head for sales to go running towards this new term doer marketer and say, "You know what? John and Mark said it's okay for me to be a doer marketer, so I'm just gonna give up on all that other stuff." That's not kind of what we're talking about here. and I think that hopefully what people tease out of this is that there are people out there who can operate across the entire spectrum. They can do some marketing work and some selling work, and they are still delivering, contracted work to their clients. But maybe there are individuals, and quite a few actually, who start to gravitate more towards one or the other because of their skill set or because of their interests and their passions So I think that's kinda, we're not trying to create a safe place for all the doer sellers to run to and say, "I'm not gonna make, I'm not, no revenue. Forget it. I'm not doing that anymore." but we are, defining, you know, kind of carving out this, this doer marketer role, or opportunity for people to understand and maybe embrace if it, if it actually, you know, leans more towards their, their interests and their expertise.

John Tyreman 6:40

Yeah, I like that you brought up what they gravitate towards. And there's one distinction that we didn't mention that I think it's worth bringing up is that marketing is very much a one-to-many communication channel, whereas sales is typically more one-to-one. And so I think that's a good distinction too to bring, to bring about it.

Mark Wainwright 6:58

Yeah, good point

John Tyreman 7:00

So let's wander into why firms should even consider investing in developing doer marketers. Like, what's the case from an organizational perspective

Mark Wainwright 7:11

that makes total sense because firms have recognized and invested in their doer sellers. They believe that's a good way to spread revenue responsibilities across a lot of people. A lot of times firms, are looking at the m-marketing activities largely put on the shoulders of one or two people that, "Oh, by the way, you hear us, the marketers, you guys gotta do everything, but make sure you do all the proposals first, and then you can get to social media and whatever other sort of thousand things that you have on your plate. So what we're talking about here is why should firms invest in having doers spend more time and you know, put more effort on this whole marketing thing, probably in partnership with the internal marketing team, right? So first things that comes to mind for me, just to kind of jump into our whys here is, you know, we want to establish familiarity with your prospective clients, you know, with your subject matter experts, with your doers, with your technical professionals. that's a great one.

John Tyreman 8:14

Yeah, I'll probably bring it up a few times on this podcast, but people like to do business with other people they know, like, and trust. And we've talked about that sequence on past episodes, but I think it's really important here. And, I've done a little bit of research on the history of market research. It's a little meta, but there was a business professor at Harvard University, then his name is escaping me right now. But, he found that in any given market, doesn't matter what market it is, 50% of the people in that market are satisfied with their status quo. 45% of people in any given market are open to exploring new ways of solving a problem. And then that leaves only about 5% of any given market who are actively on a buying journey to purchasing a service or a product. So if we apply this to professional services, marketing's job is to address that 95% of the market that's not actively pursuing a solution right now.

Mark Wainwright 9:21

Right. That's that iceberg analogy that we've talked about multiple times is, you know, there's only 5% of the iceberg actually above the waterline, and we've got this huge, massive amount of the iceberg, you know, 95% of it, some of which are sort of open to new ideas, some of which are completely satisfied with their status quo. However, satisfaction with the status quo can change in a moment, for sure. So we're talking about a huge part of the potential, marketplace, that could sort of, move their attention towards you if they come across the right information. So yeah,

John Tyreman 10:00

that back to what you were talking about, about familiarity with subject matter experts, that's, you know, addressing that 95% is really about building awareness and staying top of mind, just the mere exposure effect. And I, I think we had an episode about that, that people can go check out. But just showing up and being familiar, that leads to trust

Mark Wainwright 10:21

So we're taking those doers where we're leveraging their subject matter expertise in a doer marketer role, and we are getting their content out there in front of the individuals who are maybe curious, maybe have a kind of increasing need that hasn't really gotten to the point where they're actively looking for a solution, or others that might be totally fine but may actually move to the, "Oh, you know, maybe it's not all rosy here. Maybe we do have a problem that we need some help with." So there's that one. what's another reason that firms should be kind of investing or looking at this doer marketer role with some interest?

John Tyreman 11:01

Yeah, I like the metric, pipeline velocity. or you could look at it as shortening your sales cycle. So how long does an opportunity sit in your pipeline, right? And measured in time. So if you're looking to quantify that, we talked about know, like, and trust. Well, opportunities that are generated via visible subject matter experts, they're generated via these doer marketers, those opportunities usually enter that flow between like and trust, right? So they're already familiar with you, they know about you, presumably they like the content, the perspectives that you're sharing enough to have a conversation with you to see if they trust you enough to do business with you.

Mark Wainwright 11:46

Yeah,

John Tyreman 11:46

And so what that means is you don't have to devote as many resources to winning that business as you would to pursuing a cold lead or opportunity

Mark Wainwright 11:56

Yeah. So it's not just the responsibility or the opportunity for the doer seller to try to, expedite and shorten the sales cycle. There's actually the possibility of, the stuff that's happening, upstream further up in the funnel with the subject matter experts who are doer sellers. There's actually an opportunity for them to impact the length of the sales cycle. Cool. Yeah, that's a, that's a good one.

John Tyreman 12:25

Yeah, I think being a doer marketer can unlock premium pricing. And so I think there's a combination of things that have to be true for this to happen. So, for a consultant who is investing in the marketing side of things, that side of the spectrum, your thought leadership needs to be visible. So doesn't matter what channel you choose, whether it's a podcast or blogging, a newsletter, webinars, et cetera, but your subject matter expertise needs to be visible in some way. So that's one. Another thing needs to be true. Your client success stories are also visible. And this is important, and I wanna make that distinction because your thought leadership and your knowledge and expertise is one thing, but having clients kind of putting their stamp of approval on your work or, you know, giving the, a referral or a recommendation for your work is, really impactful too. And then the third thing that need to be true for doer marketers to be able to command premium pricing is people need to be engaging with you online. So those last two are social proof points, client success stories, and that you've, you're able to do the work. But then, you know, are people responding and engaging and validating the perspective that you're putting out there on the web?

Mark Wainwright 13:47

Yeah. I totally agree. those are great points. And the unlocking premium pricing doesn't mean, again, we've mentioned this, that you can go gouge your clients. It means that you've done the work and you've positioned yourself where you are a recognized visible authority, and that, you know, if someone doesn't want to pay the price, John, there are other options out in the marketplace that may not be as, you know, skilled or well-regarded or whatever else. So sure, you can unlock some premium pricing. At a minimum, you can reduce pricing friction, meaning that, you are able to move across a spectrum of pricing and you don't feel the weight of sort of the downward push on price because you have moved yourself away from other potential consultants or experts out there in the marketplace. So, Good. I like that. All right. So those are a couple things that firms can do to kind of invest, recognize the importance of, and then invest in these doer marketers. here's the next chunk here. What, what does a doer marketer actually do? We've kind of talked about the doer seller. We have a pretty good idea what the doer seller does. what in the world is the doer marketer doing?

John Tyreman 15:00

Yeah, so this is a, a strategic reframe on how unbillable time should be spent, right? So if you think about, doer sellers and how they spend unbillable time investing in specific key relationships, looking at prospects, list building, doing prospect research. again, very one-to-one focused activities, right? Where a doer marketer should invest their unbillable hours is in building a personal brand, is in developing content, doing market research, being the face or the mouthpiece of the firm out there visible on other third-party platforms, other publications, other podcasts. So those are the kinds of things that a doer marketer can actually do.

Mark Wainwright 15:57

Yeah, that makes total sense. So building the personal brand, that's just not trying to make yourself seem sort of more self-important, right? That's, you know, finding an opportunity to share the voice and to support both your personal expertise and the needs, of the organization,

John Tyreman 16:17

Yeah, so I wanna double down on that one a little bit because

Mark Wainwright 16:20

Ja,

John Tyreman 16:21

I've run into the scenario where, firm leadership starts to question whether or not there is an over-investment in a personal brand of an expert on staff, and at what point should we be promoting the firm brand? And I think it goes back to what we mentioned earlier. People like to do business with other people they know, like, and trust. People like to do business with people. Like, we could just stop right there. And if you look at, um, y- look, look at how many followers does Elon Musk have on Twitter compared to SpaceX or compared to Tesla?

Mark Wainwright 17:04

probably too many, you know, all, all of m- maybe, may- may- maybe my personal opinions that are coming into to bear on that one. But yeah, I, I'm, I'm guessing he's got a lot more personal followers than he does sort of organizational followers

John Tyreman 17:17

Yeah. I think that's the whole, like it's an oversimplification, but I think that just kinda is in support of that point where people just wanna do business with other people. People would rather do business with a face rather than a logo

Mark Wainwright 17:30

You're listening to breaking biz dev

John Tyreman 17:32

the podcast that beats up, breaks down, and redefines business development for the professional services firms of tomorrow. Your hosts are John Tyerman, founder of Red Cedar Marketing, the podcast marketing company for experts and professional services firms,

Mark Wainwright 17:46

And Mark Wainwright, principal consultant and founder of Wainwright Insight, the fractional sales manager and sales consultant to professional services firms.

John Tyreman 17:56

If you find this podcast helpful, please help us by following the show and leaving a review on Apple podcasts

Mark Wainwright 18:02

and now back to the show. Yeah, John, I know you're gonna get the data or you have it at your fingertips but, sort of just anecdotally, it is dramatically harder for an organization to build some level of trust with, their audience or with individuals than it is an individual, a person, right? I mean, because there's that whole sort of human connection thing. So it's dramatically easier for people, individuals, to build that trust that then kind of transfers actually to the organization, right? They make a real nice tight connection between, I've got a relationship with that person, that person is associated with this organization. I transfer that trust to the organization. For sure. that one makes a ton of sense. And you mentioned content and market research and all those things. John, what was painfully, absent from your list here was working on proposals all day long. that wasn't here. So, what are you saying? I'm kind of reading between the lines here, John, saying that it-- are we saying that a doer marketer should not find themselves buried on page 27 of a complex proposal? Is that,

John Tyreman 19:07

that's exactly what I'm saying. and the reason being is that's not a one-to-many communications

Mark Wainwright 19:14

Ja.

John Tyreman 19:14

That is a one-to-one communication channel, which is something that a doer seller should absolutely have a hand in, maybe working in conjunction with a proposal manager. but the doer marketers, what I'm saying is no, that's not a good use of your unbillable time because you're not having those conversations on a one-to-many channel.

Mark Wainwright 19:34

in the industries that we operate in, a lot of people, have that big huge pile of business development and marketing's all mixed up and proposals and everything else. and we don't want, to create another term for, the doer marketer. We don't wanna create another term just for another person who's out there working on proposals all day long, because that's not what we're talking about here, right? We're talking about something very different a shift, right? A different way of looking at it, for sure.

John Tyreman 20:03

Yeah. And just one thing that I wanted to double down on with the conducting market research and how that flows into content real quick. So, we talk about curiosity being an important skill in the sales process, but I think curiosity can be a very important force multiplier on the marketing side of things as well. And market research is essentially the application of curiosity, right? In a marketing sense. So you're going out, you could be interviewing clients or interviewing target prospects about, their experience, their challenges, the benefits that they get from working with a service provider like you. This could take the form of surveys, but essentially you're leaning into your curiosity from a foundational understanding of your expertise, and that's a powerful combination. So if you can apply that curiosity in market research, that leads to content that you can use to write about, to speak about, to share with your network.

Mark Wainwright 21:06

Yeah. Good. Good. I like that. That's a, that's a, a good sort of add to that whole market research thing for sure. and typically, doer marketer would do that in conjunction with either a third party, an outside party or their, internal marketing team for sure. But yeah, I can totally see how those sort of surveys or market research are connected to curiosity. All right. So we've painted a pretty picture of this new term, John, this doer marketer. How can firms actually create an environment where this doer marketer role, this person can thrive?

John Tyreman 21:41

So I've hinted at it a few times, but there's really a shift in mindset that needs to happen between, the value of the unbillable time that's spent on marketing activities. I've seen it time and time again where that's the first on the chopping block when a firm wins a lot of new business and, "Okay, we need to do less on marketing. We're full up on clients. Let's devote your time, doer marketer, to more of the doing and less of the marketing."

Mark Wainwright 22:10

Ja,

John Tyreman 22:10

And there is a hidden opportunity cost associated with that because, there is such a lag between the investment in the content and the marketing that you're doing and when that has an impact on sales pipeline.

Mark Wainwright 22:26

that came to mind as you were talking that through, is that one of the massive challenges with this role is that, you know, with a doer seller, you're going to have a more immediate return because those individuals are closer to the clients, they're closer to the contracts, they're closer to the closed one and then the subsequent revenue. These doer marketers are undertaking activities that are pretty far out there. You know, we may not see a return on these things for a while, John. Heck, a year, a year and a half, like two. Like, it can be a long time to see some type of a, measurable return. It can be short, but it can be pretty long too. So that's a challenge.

John Tyreman 23:08

It, it's a challenge and it kind of underscores the importance of strategy really in, in how-- what direction are you pointing your marketing compass? Because if you're pointing it in the wrong direction, then even if you are giving all the resources to these doer marketers, I mean, they could end up in the wrong place. So setting that compass in the right direction is really critical because marketing can take a while to bear fruit

Mark Wainwright 23:36

Yeah, Totally sense. It, makes total sense. all right, John, how else can firms support doer marketers?

John Tyreman 23:42

All right, so I think, there should be an important distinction on sales goals versus marketing goals, and they both should be treated as important, right? So I'll give you an example. So a sales goal could be the number of conversations with prospects who represent your ideal client

Mark Wainwright 24:01

Yeah. Qualified opportunities. Yeah, sure.

John Tyreman 24:04

Qualified opportunities, number of conversations with them. A marketing goal could be securing brand mentions in three notable industry publications.

Mark Wainwright 24:15

Oh yeah

John Tyreman 24:16

Both are really, really important because one is a one-to-one metric on the sales side where you're having those conversations with people who represent the kinds of people you wanna do business with. But then there's also the one-to-many communication channels where if your brand is seen in a positive light through a reputable industry publication, chances are your message is reaching hundreds, thousands of prospective clients

Mark Wainwright 24:45

I've always been a fan of trying to establish and then achieve separate marketing goals and separate sales goals. inevitably everything just all runs downhill to one big sales goal. It's like, did we hit our number this year or did we not hit our number? But we can't do that because if you establish different goals at different levels, right? Sure, sales goals, but also marketing goals that are kind of higher up in the funnel where they're starting to build familiarity with your firm. Starting to build goals around those lets you understand what's happening between the top of the funnel and the bottom of the funnel, right? Are we getting a bunch in the top and losing a bunch at the bottom? what is the shape of that funnel? Is it actually a funnel? is it pear-shaped? what is it? So, for sure. Are there leaks? Right. Exactly. So that's good. All right. what's another thing that comes to mind that firms can do to support these doer marketers?

John Tyreman 25:32

Yeah, I think firms need to make it easy for these doer marketers to manage the sales process, right?

Mark Wainwright 25:39

now we're... Are we crossing over now? Like, what's happening? What?

John Tyreman 25:41

Marketing leads to sales. So I think, yeah, managing that sales process is important because inevitably, if a doer marketer is doing the marketing part of their job to the best that they can and they're having success, they will be generating inbound opportunities, and those inbound opportunities will want to work with that doer marketer, that subject matter expert. So the doer marketer is lining themself up to do the work, but they need to close the business. So firms need to make that easy for them to do that,

Mark Wainwright 26:18

or, you know, a sales leader, a person who is a true doer seller who is responsible for revenue generation comes alongside them or whatever. I mean, those transitions or connections are always a little strange, and we don't tend to favor those. But in the instance where you have a doer marketer person who is familiar with the sales prospect, has less sales process but has less confidence in that process, you can pair them with someone who has greater confidence and greater experience in all of that. So okay, makes, total sense. All right, so

John Tyreman 26:51

then to--

Mark Wainwright 26:52

can support them.

John Tyreman 26:53

Well, pairing them with, someone else internally or a coach or a consultant who can help them handle that process, but then also arming them with the resources that they need, like proposal templates, three-option pricing table, different variations of that, how to handle contract negotiations. like, these are skills and activities that doer marketers may not have a lot of reps at that they could use some coaching for.

Mark Wainwright 27:20

Oh, I see. This could almost be a transitional role, right? I think the picture you're painting right here is that someone, one of these doer marketers who's really comfortable in the content creation, you know, all of that, you know, the understanding the importance of being a visible authority can actually gain greater and greater sales skills to where, lo and behold, at some point down the road, they're a doer seller, and they have both skills. All right. So what are people gonna go and do here? what's the, what's the homework, John?

John Tyreman 27:48

a practical thing to do first, is write down a list of questions that you get asked frequently by your clients, and then answer them in different ways. So write the answer to the question. Do a selfie video of you reading the question and then answering the question quickly. Or if you want to, set up a time with a colleague internally or maybe with someone that you respect or someone that you have a good relationship with, and record a Zoom conversation about that question and try to answer it, go back and forth and have a conversation about it. So I think those are some things that you could do first stemming from that list of frequently asked questions.

Mark Wainwright 28:32

Yeah. So that's a pretty specific kind of hyper tactical sort of what baby step do you take first or, you know, second that really kind of gets you moving in that, in that direction. I think that's great. And, you know, for me, the go and do the homework is, is like, look, just take a realistic assessment of where your interests and skills lie inside your organization. And if you're just a doer and you're not doing any selling or any marketing, but, you know, lo and behold, you can write, you're curious, you're interested, you wanna go deep, you wanna do some research on something, then this could be something for you, for sure. And yes, this could be an entree into becoming a doer seller with more revenue responsibility. if you are in a doer seller seat and, maybe it's been frustrating. Maybe you're continuing to lack the comfort and confidence that you need in these one-to-one interactions. maybe positioning yourself for more of these one-to-many marketing, content creation, activities, will be a more successful seat for you. we love the doer sellers, but we don't wanna assume that they're, the end all be all for all the needs of, the modern professional services firm, for sure. So there it is, John. Doer marketer, uh, trademark, right? We've heard, you've heard it here maybe first. Maybe. but yeah, we think it's an interesting role for people who, you know, maybe are just doers and they wanna do more, or, maybe they're doer sellers and they kind of have an interest in this, this m- crazy marketing thing.

John Tyreman 30:05

Or maybe they're doer sellers and they want to generate more leads in a different

Mark Wainwright 30:09

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. They wanna do more lead gen activities higher up in the funnel. Good. John, this has been a good one. all right, to all you future doer marketers out there, go get 'em. and John, until next time.

John Tyreman 30:21

Until next time