SPEAKERS

Christian Klepp, Andrei Zinkevich

Christian Klepp  0:08 

Hi, and welcome to the B2B Marketers on a Mission podcast. I’m your host Christian Klepp, and one of the founders of EINBLICK Consulting. Our goal is to share inspirational stories, tips and insights from B2B marketers, digital entrepreneurs, and industry experts that will help you think differently, succeed and scale your business.

Okay, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this episode of the B2B Marketers on a Mission podcast. I’m your host, Christian Klepp. And today I am joined by an incredibly accomplished entrepreneur, an expert in the B2B marketing space, and somebody I consider a true connector, because thanks to his amazing event in August, the Full-Funnel B2B marketing summit, I had the pleasure not just of connecting with him, but also with connecting with someone like Stu Heineken. So joining me today from beautiful Croatia is Mr. Andrei Zinkevich. So, Andrei, dzień dobry, welcome to the show. And sorry, I know that that was Polish and not Croatian, but you are from Poland, so!

Andrei Zinkevich  1:11 

Yeah, exactly. Thanks a lot for having me, Chris. I appreciate it. And yeah, it was in Polish, obviously, not in Croatian. But anyway, thanks a lot for your kind words, for your kind invite to be here and share my knowledge with your audience.

Christian Klepp  1:30 

Yeah, this is really amazing, Andrei. And I mean, you know, this is something that, you know, happened. It mostly happened on LinkedIn, I have to say, and that we made these connections. And it’s, great to have you on the show. And also, before we start, I just want to congratulate you, speaking of LinkedIn. I saw the post this morning, and I want to congratulate you on your new venture called Fullfunnel.io.

Andrei Zinkevich  1:54 

Yeah, thank you so much. So basically, it’s not… I once said, this is a completely new project. So basically, it’s an extension of my existing business Getleado. So basically, just to give… you know it, but for your audience, so Getleado is a bit of a marketing consultancy. And I applied on lobbyists to work because I’ve worked with B2B service based companies and B2B tech companies like SaaS or hardware companies that are selling high ticket services or products. They have complex products, and they have long sales cycles. So it’s just a narrow audience, you know, it’s not a broad market. So basically, I was limited by my own expertise having by my own time, so earlier this year, I had a fantastic collaboration with a seasoned B2B marketer, Laduma Blagojevich and we did an anti-crisis program for University of Ghent from Belgium. So, we created an anti-crisis, anti-covert program for Belgium startups. And it was so successful in terms of results, in terms of feedback. So, we decided to partner up and create this project together. So basically, it’s, let’s say, extension of Getleado. we continue helping together, these verticals, as well, we plan in the nearest future, to open a Full Funnel Academy, where we’ll be able to train B2B marketers to share all of our knowledge and create actually, you know, prepare marketers for our existing clients because, in most cases, they acquire this skill set and will be able to train staff for them. So this is what makes me most excited about this project. So we fulfill, you know, the market needs from both sides, not only with our knowledge and experience, but also helping them to get the right skill set.

Christian Klepp  3:58 

Wow. That’s incredible. Andrei, thank you so much for sharing that. I mean, you know, like, obviously, this has been, you know, this has been an exciting year, you know, for you in terms of all these events and these new developments. And it’s amazing that you’re putting this together within such a short timeframe. So Andrei, just tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do, and most importantly, also, what is the current project that you’re working on that you’re very excited about?

Andrei Zinkevich  4:30 

I’m a bit of a marketing consultant. I don’t want to overcomplicate my job. Also, I’m B2B marketing consultant. As I mentioned, I’m working with only two industries. And as well, I’m running several companies around advice. This is a local, I mean, inbound marketing agents that operates on local market. This was my first project and the agency was created based on my consultancy, then I created Getleado. So it’s like worldwide project I collaborated or joined as an external advisor or as external CMO, if you will. I joined B2B marketing sort of B2B tech and service based companies and help them to create a predictable sales pipeline and scale the revenue full funnel marketing. And as well, there is some project that I mentioned today, FullFunnel.io and I spoke a little bit about it and how I plan. So this is a SaaS product. It’s a marketing plan and platform that simplifies marketing planning, and marketing reporting for as well B2B growth teams. So these are three areas I’m focusing on right now.

Christian Klepp  5:59 

Wow, that is indeed an extremely impressive list of credentials. And thanks so much for sharing that. I mean, and obviously, all of these things are very highly relevant. Not just in the current period, but also moving forward. Especially because a lot of these, a lot of these processes have already migrated online, and the advancement of digitalization, especially in B2B, you know, has been accelerated also, partly because of the current global situation.

Andrei Zinkevich  6:30 

Yes.

Christian Klepp  6:32 

Yeah. Okay. Andrei, you know, you started your career as a sales representative at Kimberly Clark, and then you switch to trade marketing. And then there you had a role as a CMO at a German consulting firm. So tell us about what made you decide to become an entrepreneur?

Andrei Zinkevich  6:50 

That’s a great question. Actually, I remember I wrote an article that was for a local newspaper, you know, eight years ago, when I switched to consulting. And basically, I got this question so much times, because I had a really good career, I had a good job, good compensation plan, so I couldn’t complain. And the reason why I decided to switch… now, actually, there are multiple reasons. I don’t want.. I know, I complain about, you know, my company, or bosses, or investors or whatever. So there were, let’s say, my external reasons:

One of them is that I prefer to implement and experiment, you know, and I prefer faster implementation. I hate when we need to waste time, you know, to discuss some ideas with multiple people, getting their buy-in, discuss the process and cost, and we lose too much time, which is happening in corporate world, unfortunately. So the time between, you know, idea discussion and idea implementation could be something like two or three months, and I hated it.

Another one is limited my area of performance execution, if you will. So basically, you are limited to your, you know, to your job functions, to job role.

And the last one, I always, you know, always prefer to lead the team. So, besides, I believe at this, my team says this, I believe, I’m a good manager. And, you know, I couldn’t, sometimes I felt that I’m managed by people from whom I’m not learning. And so, in this case, I felt that I’m not developing myself. So I’m limiting myself, and you have no opportunity so you should seek for another job role, you know, and who knows, if your new CEO, or if your new boss will be better. Or you should start your own, you know, adventure. And, like, after spending 80 hours in a corporate world, I finally decided that it is the right time to start my own adventure, so I won’t call it business. I definitely, initially it wasn’t a business, it was, you know, as solo, let’s say solo entrepreneurship. And because everything was limited by my time and by my, you know, by my clients, and it wasn’t scalable, of course.

But the good thing about it the question I often receive from, you know, from my followers or from subscribers, or students: did I leave the company and just targeted the consultants or not, so actually, for the last years, I was at Biosphere Corp. Actually, people started to refer me, you know, whenever they have had some friends who ran some businesses you know, and had some marketing challenges. I won’t say about this industry, so I’m working right now, and at that time, it was, you know, general referrals. So people are coming to me, can you help me with this? Can you help me with that? So I just got a request from a guy I was chatting, you know, I was helping him, being friendly, you know, coffee meetups, and he talked, like, would you be interested to help me, you know, on a consistent basis, like an external consultant, so I told, yeah, of course but, just shut down you know when I will have free time from my main day job, and he agreed. That’s how my adventure started.

Christian Klepp  11:07 

Wow, that’s an incredible story. Thanks for sharing that. And, you know, you’ve brought up so many great points. And, you know, when you were back working in, the corporate world about, you know, the long and slow approval and feedback cycle, and that certainly is a big cause of frustration. And the other one is, you know, giving yourself the opportunity to grow further. And I think that’s also, you know, one of the many reasons that people become entrepreneurs. So, that was a really great point. Yeah.

So, Andrei, you brought up this really important point a couple of minutes ago, which is going to lead into the next question. Because, you know, a lot of entrepreneurs, and, you know, many of us start out this way. But you know, you start to build up your business through your personal network of contacts and referrals. And at some point, you, exhaust both of these channels. And then after that gets exhausted, well, what’s the next step? And I think that kind of leads into the area that you’re specialized in, because you’re specialized in the field, that I would argue is incredibly lucrative, but also competitive, because it’s the business of generating qualified leads in a predictable and scalable way. So in 2019, you wrote a book called “LinkedIn Content Marketing: How To Generate High Quality B2B Leads on LinkedIn Without Cold Messaging And Ads”. And then you got, you know, then you received an award from book authority, who said that this was the best B2B marketing eBook, which was then also included, to the 100 best B2B marketing books of all time. The fact that this alone happened is already an incredible achievement.

So, here are the questions. So, in this world of, like, lead generation through automation, I mean, there’s many people that argue that automation is more of an annoyance to prospects, because it lacks personalization. And as such, they feel that platforms like LinkedIn, should regulate this approach more. So, what are your thoughts on that?

Andrei Zinkevich  13:19 

That’s a good question. Actually, I believe that lots of companies abuse automation. And the reason why, because, most of the companies, I don’t want to say, you know, total exact numbers, but I believe everybody knows it. Most of the companies operate in lead generation laws. So they measure everything by leads. And in this case, every marketing campaign should immediately generate leads for this company, which means, Okay, so, Chris, let’s have a podcast interview today and let’s pretend you are my guest, yeah? And I want to reach your podcast, I’m in your shoes. And I tell my CEO, and I say, you know, I want to invite Christian, he is like a well-known B2B entrepreneur. And yeah, we can reach out to his audience. So it will help us to generate some awareness, you know, with his audience. And he has, he also collaborates with our target addressable market, and so says, Okay, how many leads will we get from it? Well, like this campaign doesn’t attribute to revenue directly, obviously. And then you’re hear, okay. So it makes no sense…so I don’t see revenue, I don’t see lead, so I see no value in it. And that’s the problem, the same is automation.

So you know, lots of LinkedIn, not on LinkedIn but in general, marketing and automation providers, they provide you a quick win. So basically, they satisfies the need and the ego of this, let’s say lead generation minded companies. And if you remember the Roman Pie, it comes from ancient times, you know, people just wanted to have, like, some fun and bread. So it was called, you know, bread and fun and Roman Pie. So the same is here. So people want to minimize their efforts, they don’t want to connect this target audience, they don’t want to analyze the needs of target audience. And they prefer just to have a spray and pray approach or playing the game of numbers, you know, and automation allows it. So it basically says, okay, so buy a list of prospects or scrape, you know, the list of prospects on LinkedIn, and then spam them all. That’s all. And of course, in this case, it’s like, it’s, I believe that everybody knows that it’s not effective. ‘Cause here’s my question, especially when it comes to my verticals. You know, I realize B2C are sort of B2C industries, or some low ticket, non-expensive, you know, impulse of products. So let’s talk about my verticals. Just a question for you. Have you ever bought an expensive product, by expensive, I mean a five figure or six figure product from a cold message, cold call or cold e-mail from a guy who you have no clue about? You’ve never heard about him, about his company. Have you ever bought from these guys?

Christian Klepp  16:54 

Absolutely not.

Andrei Zinkevich  16:57 

Exactly. And the same way, my clients answering to this question. So my follow up question is, okay. So in case, if you need to invest, you know, in some market, or, like, doesn’t matter, in case if you want to get some external expertise, so you know, that these contracts are expensive, how will you, you know, research and find this vendor and then describe him the process? So we’ll ask our network, we will want to make some case study, you know, want to learn more about the process, how they can help us who they partner, etc., etc. So you see, a lot. And so this is what’s happening nowadays, buyers want to be self-educated. And this means we need to provide more content. And in this case, you know, it makes no sense just to spam them all. Unfortunately, that’s why I’m not a big fan of automation nowadays.

But, in some cases, in some specific cases, you can leverage automation. And it’s pretty simple. Just to give you my example, let’s say you have a list of customers, yeah? And you create some closed event, you know, closed event for your customers. You want to make a business breakfast. Of course, it’s- that’s not relevant nowadays because of COVID, but yeah, you can make, you can arrange some exclusive event, you know, and in this case, it makes no sense to send manual invitations. So of course, you can lodge, you know, and automation and send this invite. This, of course, it’s a standard message. But it’s not possible when you are prospecting. The goal of prospecting is to build that relationship and learn more about the needs. So, you can define the gap between the challenges your product solves, and the needs of your prospects. And most companies, unfortunately, ignore this fact. But as you just proved me, you know, you have never bought, I have never bought as well, my clients never bought just from, you know, expensive products or expensive services, just from some random guy, who provides, you know, who sends me some generic message or a generic cold call. So, these are my thoughts. So, automation is definitely a good tool, but it can’t replace human marketing.

Christian Klepp  19:38 

Right. Right. No, I mean, those are those are some great and very insightful observations. Andrei, and I think I, you know, I couldn’t agree with you more, like, you know, which is why, I answered the way I did. Because of course, you’re probably not going to commit to purchasing a product or service from somebody that you know nothing about. And I think that’s applicable across the full B2B marketing spectrum, but it’s also applicable to other segments as well, that you have to, you know…the problem is a lot of people are just looking at this from a transactional point of view where it says close the deal, close the deal, yeah? But then, what about the, as you rightfully said, build a relationship first, gain the trust, you know, show that there is some credibility behind what you’re saying? And you know, and, you know, as well as I do on LinkedIn, there has to be some kind of social proof as well, right? So case studies, testimonials from people that have worked with you so it’s all about the, you know, it all goes back to like, Okay, do you trust this person? Do you trust that they’re going to deliver on what they promise, and you know, rather than somebody that’s, as you said, spamming 1000 contacts with a template email where they just replace the person’s name?

Andrei Zinkevich  20:58 

Totally agree with yourself. Thanks a lot for wrapping it up. And thanks a lot for the great question because I know, nowadays, lots of people, you know, consider automation as a way to replace human marketing.

Christian Klepp  21:11 

Right, exactly.

Hey, it’s Christian Klepp here, we’ll get back to the episode in a second. But first, is your brand struggling to cut through the noise? Are you trying to find more effective ways to reach your target audience and boost sales? Are you trying to pivot your business? If so, book a call with EINBLICK Consulting, our experienced consultants will work with you to help your B2B business to succeed and scale. Go to www.einblick.co for more information.

And, you know, and you’re…and to all those great points and insights that you’ve just stated, can you give us an example of like, you know, where you’ve seen companies generate leads from platforms like LinkedIn, without using cold outreach, or expensive advertising? Because we know that, you know, online advertising can get quite costly and the ROI sometimes is questionable.

Andrei Zinkevich  22:09 

So, I want to make one clear statement here. Just not understanding me wrong but still the cold outreach costs, when you connect with your audience still you are connected with a cold audience. That’s true. The same here, I mean it that with don’t spam everybody. We don’t, you know, I don’t, I never do it for myself, on my own. I don’t do it. I never recommend it for my clients. So you’ll never hear from me. Hey, Chris. So I am a founder of how I plan and I believe you should have a demo call with me. Here’s a link to my calendar, Oh that’s how I call and, okay. Mark has a spam blog, Andrei, and that’s how, that’s how it happens nowadays, on LinkedIn.

So basically, we still connect with the audience. But besides, of course, for me, for Getleado, LinkedIn is a core channel of lead generation channel, you know, I generate all inbound and enquiries through LinkedIn. So most, you know, people are reaching out, ask, can you help with this challenge? This is how it happens. But I am limited. So it’s not scalable, and I don’t need a lot of leads. So you know, two new leads per month, that’s maximum for me, because I have ongoing existing clients. And that’s why I’m not you know, scaling but with clients, I have completely different approach.

So we start with LinkedIn, and I will provide you a recent example with a client that we are just implementing this strategy right now. And I will give you some fresh data from this week. So they’re implementing the strategy for four days and I will provide some practical results. So basically, what do we do, we create a list of target accounts based on our ideal customer profile. So the first step here is defining target verticals. Next, create an ideal customer profile, defining the criteria for account selection. And then we make a list of target accounts.

Next step is defining buying committee. So we define roles, you know, for buying committee, and then we just map out the people from our target accounts, let’s say Christian Klepp is CEO. So he will be our decision maker, Andrei, he is VP of Marketing and he might be our influence or champion, etc. So now of course, the truth is, the more people inside buying committee will know about our company, the more chances we’ll have in future to close the deal with this account.

So next, we connect with them, and I will provide so it depends, it really depends. They have several campaigns and several examples, how do we connect, we can invite them for a podcast, we can invite them to contribute in a roundup post, or you know, I also have a survey campaign where we create a market research funnel. But, because of this market research funnel, we can extract as much information as possible about the needs of our clients. And then later, you know, once the research is ready, just to give you a practical example, how it’s implemented, I can say, Christian, so here is a copy of our market research, I believe it would be valuable for yourself, I have interviewed seven to five CEOs of B2B tech companies from Canada, for example. And here are key takeaways. And here is a PDF, I believe it would be interesting for you, as well, I noticed that you mentioned that your current challenge right now is identifying, you know, the most lucrative market segments and create an ideal customer profile. So I prepared a guide. I believe it would be a good fit for you. Would you like to learn more about it? So what would be your reaction?

Christian Klepp  26:14 

I mean, obviously, you’re seeing that person will hopefully see that you’re adding value, right? Like that’s it’s a more thought-out approach as in as opposed to like, you know, somebody’s just doing a cold, random cold outreach.

Andrei Zinkevich  26:27 

Yeah, so, Exactly. These people in most cases, I don’t say that you’ll have 100% positive reply rate, but, what people will say, Yeah, that sounds good for me, kind of pleasure. So the next step, you are sharing, and then you can just suggest, okay, if it makes sense, let’s have a call, I’m happy to answer your questions and maybe provide some value for your company, you know, sharing, how you can implement this process at your company. And feel free to invite your CEO or sales or marketing or any department, you know, your target. And boom, you’re generating leads. So right now you have a discovery call so you can discuss it, you can learn more about the challenges, you can provide value. And you can ask if guys, if it makes sense. I’m just sharing the service based approach right now. So the services you can say, if it makes sense, if you need any help, I am keen to help. Let me know. And you proceed with the conversation. And it’s a value-based discovery call.

In case if you are selling product. And this is what we are doing with the client. You know, I told you in the beginning that we implemented this strategy right now for four days. So what we are doing, I won’t name the company, the name of the company, because of NDA, but I will provide the idea. So they create servers for smart home installations. So this is a hardware-tech company. And we are targeting Dutch and German market. So what we are doing right now, we select accounts. I mean, we create right now an audience for key executives from my client. So how do we do it? We made a list of target hashtags on LinkedIn, and we connect, this act of people there. And as well, we made a list of target accounts we connect a buying committee. Once they accept our connection request, we do an intro we say about ourselves, what we’re doing. And always we have a signature, like, for example, Andrei Zinkevich, CEO at fullfunnel.io, and short, unique value proposition: We help B2B service based companies to scale revenues full funnel B2B marketing and link to our website, which has not, you know, you promote your website and learn to trust the brand. And it’s quite acceptable by audience.

And during this chat, we introduce ourselves and let’s pretend, so the question, you know to, start the conversation, we ask, okay, can you… I’m really curious, I noticed some of your past projects. So you did this project and that project? I’m really curious, what servers did you use at, you know, at this project, and they’re like, they reply, okay, we use this brand of this trademark. And then what we did in the past, of course, we have prepared ourselves this campaign. So we created the comparison report between our product and the most popular competitors. And we just ask, you know, so I’m, my client answers. Okay, so I’m in charge of preparing a comparison report. And basically, I’m really curious if you can take a look on it and provide me a feedback. And that’s the product I mean, our product looks attractive, you know, just really curious about their thoughts. And best, you know, most people say, Okay, I’m really interested, just share it with me. And then in most cases, we’ll hear: Okay, you know, your product really sounds interesting. So can I take it because it’s like a physical product, it’s server, can I have a demo call? Can I have a, you know… can I learn more about it? And boom, you generate inbound leads? Or what? You know, modern word for this, the social selling approach. So this is how we generate leads, and you see, no spam. No, you know, no manual invites. Okay, let’s have a call or whatever. So this is how we proceed, you know?

Christian Klepp  30:42  

Yeah, no, I mean, Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Hundred percent. And I, think this is definitely, at least in the B2B world, I think the approach has to be this way. Yeah. Because it’s, again, back to things that you were saying earlier, and that I’ve recapped, I mean, it’s about building trust, and, and adding value and, and, you know, allowing people to, to open up a little bit more to having a conversation with you. Because, you know, you see a lot of people, and you’ve already mentioned it, you’ve seen a lot of people that don’t want to make that effort to get to know the target audience better. Because for them, it’s just them. And this is the thing with automation, they’re just playing the numbers game, right? So they’re just, they’re just playing the numbers game of like, Okay, if I reach out to 1000 prospects, and they get maybe 200 that connect, and then from those 200, maybe, maybe 50 might agree to a call. And I have yet to see someone that, you know, has actually generated business by just doing it that way.

All right. Okay, Andrei, you know, you’ve brought some, some really amazing points. And, you know, like, what are some of the changes that you’ve seen in the past couple of months, especially because of the pandemic… You know, what are some of the changes that you’ve seen to lead generation and sales systems? And talk to us also a little bit about that, and some of the future trends that you see.

Andrei Zinkevich  32:07 

Basically, you know, what has happened, so lots of companies, we don’t touch the segments that were impacted in the most negative way, like tourism, etc., other hospitality sector, we will avoid them. But in most cases, you know, again, talking back about tech companies, about tech sectors, lots of companies, decreased their budgets. Some of the companies were swept out from the market, some companies will fire employees because of costs. And all of these things mean, you know, companies are operating in turbulent times, they’re insecure, they can’t predict the future. So, before the trends advance, lots of marketing strategists, you know, marketing influencers… they will post: you need to have a long term strategy, etc., you need to be very clear where you want to be in five years and three years.

But this is my approach, I never plan further than three months. Three months or next quarter, you can predict, but you can’t predict what will happen, you know, in six months in nine months, who could predict the COVID? Nobody. So you must be flexible, and when it comes to changes, so this is the first change. So change your approach and treat market and I believe that the most advanced companies, they switch to this approach, they started to work in sprints, you know, instead of long term planning, they switched the market and sprints that define short term goals. They set up iterations of campaigns and just work towards this short side of the goals. So that the first thing.

Another one, unfortunately, nowadays, everybody, you know, like when the budget was frozen, the cold outreach, I mean, in the essence, like we all know, the cold outreach, call and leads, you know, the sending cold emails, it was done, it was dead. Honestly people are ignoring it. Most people, you know, are out of office, etc. So, I remember like, probably two weeks after the official lockdown, some of the well-known sales guys on LinkedIn, he posted that he decreased…he saw, you know, a huge decrease in replies rate to sales outreach. Because you know, because we started to ignore it’s, so no… Now that everything I believe normalized, but what I wanted to say that you have no chance as to continue with my spam.

So much so the next change is switching into personalization and account segmentation. This is a field that I’m not talking quite often about but I believe it’s important. You can’t treat all the leads the same way. And the reason why is because some of the leads can generate you 10 times, 20 times 50 times more revenue than others. So the question is, if they can generate you 50 times more revenue, why they should be treated the same way as other companies. Obviously, you need to devote more time, you know, highly personalize your proposal, your offer, so you… by personalization, I mean, not only, you know, adding, first name, last name and job role, I mean that you need to be very clear how exactly Christian Klepp can benefit from my product, you know. How you can benefit, how your department can benefit and how the entire company can benefit from it, and how it aligns with your company’s overall strategic goals. That’s what I mean by highly personalization.

And for these companies, you need to do in depth account resource, so you need to evaluate and find this information. And lots of companies I hear, you know, they tell me, oh, okay, so we don’t have time for it. Okay, if you don’t have time to generate customers and raise revenue potential, like 50 times higher than your average revenue, you know, the average revenue generated by users, then probably you are doing something wrong. That’s my point.

The next step is obviously you’ll have…most of your customers, or let’s say, if we’ll apply the famous Pareto principle – 20% of clients will generate 80% of revenue and 80% of clients will generate 20%. And for this 80%, you can easily implement mass market, inbound marketing or demand generation, if you will. So you can be active on LinkedIn, you can connect with this audience, you know, you can apply search engine optimization for your content. And these people will discover you, you know, you don’t need to personalize highly your products. So it should be personalized to this particular vertical and have some use cases for your target job roles, then you can implement retargeting, etc. So the cost of acquisition should be really low, of course, the revenue potential is not so high. And that’s the huge difference. And that’s the next trend I see will happen in the B2B market and funnel.

Christian Klepp  37:56 

Well, I mean, my reaction to your to your answer right now is just wow, I see why your book was considered one of the hundred best B2B marketing books of all time, because that answer alone is already…weight in gold. And thanks so much for sharing these insights are really very valuable. So Andrei, you know, there’s something in English, we call it like conventional wisdom, or commonly held beliefs, and they have them in every field, including yours, okay. So talk to us about one belief that you feel has been floating around in your area of expertise that you strongly disagree with.

Andrei Zinkevich  38:40 

That’s a funny question, I believe, I will name it in a second. But I believe you have held if all your life. So basically, it means we have a great product, and our customer’s just not aware about it. So we need to reach out that our product exists. So that’s…basically it was our topic for today’s conversation. So I assume I nailed it, provided a summary. It’s not you know, it’s not about reaching out to your customers and telling, hey, you know, it was like in 90s. I remember some old marketing books, where they provided you some tips for… I mean, general tips, you know, or growth hacks. 40-50 years ago that was okay. If you open a brick and mortar shop, just put a stand and tell “we are open”. The same, you know, it’s just a mother of growth hacks. So we need just buy an automation and spam thousands of people on LinkedIn and tell, “Okay, our product exists you didn’t know about it. It’s a fantastic fit for your company. So here’s a link to my calendar. Let’s have a call.” Now, that’s the biggest, you know, the biggest challenge I see so far or what you could call the conventional wisdom. I strongly disagree.

First of all, you know, one point I want to add, besides segmentation, besides ideal customer profile, besides account segmentation, account research, all of the things I shared with you and with your audience today, there is one critical element, disqualification. You should be very clear, who is a bad fit for your company, this who don’t want to work. And this is something I learned the hard way, I believe I don’t have time for this story, but maybe next time, I will share it.

But basically, after several cases, what I did when you visit my website, you’ll see that I put, you know, I just highlighted in bold that I don’t work with several industries, and I describe why. So I don’t work with e-commerce. You know, basically, I believe, I’m good marketer, I can help with some strategical stuff, but I’m definitely not an e-commerce guy. And I don’t want… I never work with this audience. I don’t work with B2C, you know, I don’t work this informational marketing, or consultancy, etc. So, just because of these reasons, you know. So you must be very clear, who you can’t help, who is a bad fit. And once you are clear on this qualification, prospecting and lead generation becomes very easy.

Christian Klepp  41:47 

Yeah, no, that’s such a great piece of advice. And, you know, on the surface, it seems like it’s common sense. But it’s amazing how many people, you know, don’t narrow down their focus on their niche, right. Like, as you were saying earlier, like the ideal customer, like, they just want to just target the, I wouldn’t say everybody, but they’re like going across multiple industry segments, and not really like focusing on one particular group. And, you know, to your point, I think it’s really important to determine who is or who isn’t a perfect fit for your company. So I couldn’t agree with you more, Andrei, I totally believe in that as well.

So, Andrei, this has been such an excellent session. I mean, you know, thank you so much for coming on and sharing. And I’m gonna say it again, thank you for putting on such an amazing event. Because, you know, that’s how I got to connect with people like yourself. So what’s the best way for people out there to connect with you?

Andrei Zinkevich  42:55 

Getleado.com or LinkedIn, just type Andrei Zinkevich. And that’s how. I believe there is only one person with this name and surname.

Christian Klepp  43:06 

There can only be one Andrei Zinkevich. I can tell you that right now. But I think one thing, I will also add for the listeners, you can add Andrei on LinkedIn, but please do not spam him. Don’t send him a request to book a call for a demo.

Andrei Zinkevich  43:27 

But I believe your audience consists of great B2B entrepreneurs, great B2B marketers or so. If you guys have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out and I’m always keen to help.

Christian Klepp  43:42 

Absolutely. Absolutely. Andrei, this has been such an amazing session. And I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with me today. So please take care, be safe, and I’ll talk to you soon.

Andrei Zinkevich  43:53 

Thank you so much. It was a pleasure to chat with you today. Have a great day as well.

Christian Klepp  44:01 

Thank you for joining us on this episode of the B2B Marketers on a Mission podcast. To learn more about what we do here at EINBLICK, please visit our website at www.einblick.co and be sure to subscribe to the show on iTunes or your favorite podcast player.