The #1 Fear That Keeps B2B Teams Silent | B2B Podcast - Content Wars EP16

Nathan Yerian: So there's something that I continually hear from clients and prospects when we're talking about creating content, specifically creating content with their team. And I feel like it's something that we need to talk about because I think it's something that happens behind closed doors at other companies. And I think it needs to be addressed. If companies are going to start increasing their voice in the market, they have to have active participants and there seems to be a little bit of reluctancy and actually including their team. And the thing that I keep hearing and I've heard it more times than I would like is, ooh, whoa, what if we put Jim or Susan or whoever in front of the camera and they become this big star and known and then they leave our company. 

I personally think that this is a little bit of an irrational fear, but I think there are valid components of it. So let's talk through it. Let's kind of figure out where this fear is coming from and how companies that are afraid that their thought leaders or subject matter experts leaving is going to have this drastic negative impact on the company and their content and maybe what they could do to get over that. 

Adam Marquardt: Yeah, I think you hit on a good point whenever you're talking about Susan or Jim and your content should never be shaved around a single person. And I think that's what a lot of people hone in on is like, well, what if this person leaves and it's like, sure, that's going to happen. There's going to be turnover in companies. But I think if your whole content strategy is developed around a single person, it's flawed from the start. I think there are a lot of opportunities to break your content into different departments or into different divisions, depending on how your business is structured. That's really going to allow people to see into your business from multiple different angles. Because obviously, as we've learned over the last five years, that a lot of B2B sales are made up of buying committees. 

So it's usually not just one person that is carrying the weight. And it's not just like you're hearing from the salespeople. It's not like you're just hearing from the product or engineering team. A lot of different people can influence that buying cycle. 

Nathan Yerian: And a lot of people should influence that buying cycle. As you pointed out, if you have a buying committee, your entire committee is not going to listen to just one voice. If you have engineers involved, guess what? An engineer wants to talk to other engineers, they're going to have a different perspective of why your solution might be right. Whereas the CEO is going to have a different perspective. Whereas the CFO is going to have a different perspective. So getting your entire team involved in the different facets of how your solution works for different audiences is going to be important because they'll all have different perspectives that relate to different people, potentially on a buying committee. So to your point, it shouldn't be a single person. It shouldn't be the gym show. 

It needs to be a team collaboration in content. Now, can Jim have a show? Sure. But there should be other people involved in the company's narrative, in the company's content. So when you look from the outside in, you're not just hearing from Jim. You're hearing from Jim and Susan and Larry and Bill and Tina and whoever else might have a valuable perspective that your audience needs to hear. 

Adam Marquardt: One of the best examples that I've seen of this was a company that we visited last year and they basically got their whole executive team on board in front of the camera. And so you were able to capture the business, but from different angles. So you were able to capture it from the security side, from the marketing side, from the product side, from the CEO's perspective of like, what are we doing? How are we changing? 

How are we evolving? And even though we generally ask them similar questions or similar topics, the answers that they gave and what ended up being the actual video at the end was so uniquely different across each department. And I think that if you're relying on one person to be that voice or to be that face of the company, you're creating a dependency. You're not creating effective communication across the board that's going to influence someone. You're literally just creating a, well, this is the face of the company or this is the voice of the company. And that's not going to move the needle like having a unified front across the whole organization. 

Nathan Yerian: The real issue that we're dealing with is control, right? So, oh, if we make this person the star and they leave, there's a fear there, right? And we can't control that. So we just won't do it. 

The worst possible thing you could do is not do it. If you fear putting someone into market that actually speaks for you and is recognized, maybe you should fear not putting someone into market and not having an active voice and being silent to your audience. Because I can tell you right now, if they're not listening to you, who are they listening to? 

It's probably your competition. So there's a lack of control in not taking action just the same way as if you take action. Are you able to control it? No, you're not going to control everything, but you can mitigate your risk. By spreading it out to a team, by having more than one dog in the fight, you're not taking on the same risk profile. Now, there are companies that just say, hey, you know what, I'm going to put all of my eggs in the gym basket or in the whoever basket. And sometimes that's not wrong. And sometimes it's, hey, they're the only person that is willing to speak. Everyone else, I'll wear a fray to the camera. 

We don't want to be in front of the microphone or whatever it is. And that's fine as a starting point. Maybe start with Jim. Show your company what Jim is doing. Point to Jim as an example. 

In fact, get Jim to involve the other people on the team. If Jim can create content by himself, he can also create it with Susan one time. He can also create it with Tina one time. He can also create it with Larry one time. 

He can be the poster child that starts to involve the other people. And it's not that you just have to go from zero to 60. You don't have to say, oh my goodness, well, we're going to get all of our thought leaders, all of our executives today doing content. 

That's not realistic for most organizations. Start smaller. If you have to start with one person, go ahead. 

Just don't make the plan to end with one person because that's where that risk comes up as well. And when Jim goes to the competition, his personality, his stardom, his authority is all going to go to that competitor. Is that true? 

Kind of, kind of not. He can't take his show with him. He can take his credibility, his reputation, but guess what? When he was at your company talking about what you do well, how you do it, the results that you're getting, is he talking about the competition? No. Is he talking about himself? 

No. He's talking about you, the company, the service provider, the product provider, the person that takes care of those customers and gets them from point A to point B in a positive way. So regardless, if he's a year from now, five years from now, 10 years from now, at a competitor, that doesn't change the fact that for the past year, five years, 10 years, he's been talking about how freaking awesome you are. 

That's the point. And not just with Jim, but for your entire team. If you can take the company's perspective and get your team to put it out there, that's where the value is. Not having the fear that doing that creates an opportunity to lose something. Because the real loss is not doing that to begin with. 

Adam Marquardt: And you mentioned about mitigating risk. I think that that's probably one of the things that people lean towards the most, is like, well, what if I put my best and my brightest on camera and then somebody sees that and they poach them? The thing that people have to understand about what we're talking about is we're not talking about a legacy video that's going to be good to use five or 10 years from now. We're not trying to create evergreen content. We're trying to create content for now, in the moment, with where your company is and what you're doing. And realistically, most of the type of content we're talking about would be distributed in a social channel. This isn't typically a long form video that's going to highlight your company forever and ever. 

And if that is your goal, that's a different conversation altogether. But for the purpose of social content, you should be shooting it and distributing it within, let's say, a one or two month period. So as you're on that cycle and you're creating it and then distributing it, what you're doing is you're building trust, you're building credibility, you're educating people in that time frame. And so let's say that this goes on for a year or two where you're able to successfully create content for this person, then in year three they leave. Well, think about all the influence you've built in the market over that period of time, that one or two year period. What is more of a risk? Not talking to your audience over that one or two year period or talking to them and then, you know what, that person did choose to go a different direction in their career and that's fine because people will do that. 

In my opinion, you're looking at the wrong thing. Well, what's the cost of putting that person on camera and then losing them? What's the cost of not talking to your audience? 

Right? What's the cost of not saying anything? What's the cost of saying silent? So I feel like people are irrationally weighing the risks in a way that isn't actually going to help them, it's actually inversely hurting them. 

Nathan Yerian: There's a consultant in the retail space, goes by the retail doctor, shout out Bob Phibbs. He has a saying, we did work with him years ago, and he has a saying that has to do with training your retail consultants. 

So he works with a lot of really big brands in the retail space and a lot of times there's pushback, right? There's, oh, why do we need to invest in training our floor people, essentially? Their big kind of pushback is what if we train them and they leave and go to the competitor? And Bob's response is, but what if you don't train them and they stay? And it's just like stuck in my head, I was like, oh my goodness, you've got an entire sales force out there that's not trained and you're actively choosing to keep them on your staff paid, unable to actually do their job because of a fear that they might leave and take this sales skill somewhere else? And when you break it down like that, it seems ridiculous. 

Adam Marquardt: Think about that in other parts of the business, right? Like if you have a group of engineers and somebody does something wrong and it has detrimental effects and you're like, you know what, I'm actually not going to teach them how to do that right next time because what if they leave in a few years? Like you're actively jeopardizing your company if that's the approach that you're taking and you wouldn't take that with your products or services. So why are you taking that towards any kind of messaging or promotion or marketing content that you could be creating? 

Nathan Yerian: There's also another risk that I think comes not from outside the company, but more inside the company. And I think when a company takes a perspective of, oh, we're not going to put people on a pedestal because they might leave, people internally know that. 

I mean, you've got should have anyway, very bright and brilliant people in your company. And when they see the company's not willing to shine a spotlight on us, even if we're the smartest person in the room, even if we have something important to say, even if we want to communicate the company's message out there, there is apparently a lack of trust in our company. They don't trust me. And I can tell you when you have a group of very smart, very talented people that don't feel trusted, it creates a problem. 

So if you are that person and you don't feel trusted, what's going to happen? One, you're going to stop using your voice. You're going to stop giving your perspective. You're going to stop touting the company line out there. You're going to just say, you know what, they don't trust me. 

I don't care about this. And then someday, you're going to run into a company that is showcasing their executives. They're going to say, oh, look, look, I could do that. I would just have to do it somewhere else. This company doesn't trust us to do this. 

But look at that company, they do. And I might not end up there, but I'm going to end up somewhere that trusts us somewhere that's going to give me the opportunity to use my voice and elevate myself into a position in this industry. So when a company takes that, they might leave for the right people, the best, the brightest, the stars on the team, you're actually creating the opportunity for them to leave by not allowing them the opportunity to speak, to be known, to be heard, to share perspectives, to promote the company, your fear is actually causing the thing that you don't want to happen. So by now I think someone listening is gonna say, okay, maybe we've jumped the gun a little bit on, you know, trying to prevent somebody from becoming the face of the company, but what would be a potential path forward? 

How do we de-risk the situation? How do we do this in a way that makes any kind of sense so that when I take this to the executive team or the CEO or the CMO or whoever it is, how do I get them to listen to a plan that makes sense to where I have a prayer of getting this approved? 

Adam Marquardt: Yeah, I think the first thing that we have to clearly identify is that we're not talking about a single face of the company. The goal that we have to move towards is a multifaceted approach where we have multiple voices that are spreading the company's perspective, the company's point of view, the company's thoughts and perspectives on what we're actually educating our audience on. But in order to do that effectively, we have to identify what we call the core content team. 

So anytime we're working with a client on this and we're helping them to develop this, we don't say, hey, go pick out your, you know, star and let's put him or her on camera. We focus on a core content team and that's made up of three to five individuals who kind of cover the different industries or the different areas or the different spectrums of your service or your offering and we can really break into the market talking about the different perspectives that those people hold and it's really valuable because you're not risking yourself or your company by putting one person and making them the star of the company. You're instead taking this team of experts or this team of thought leaders and we're really putting them out collectively so that we're sharing our voice like that. 

Nathan Yerian: And diversifying your team is definitely a critical part of it. So when you're going to go to whoever the executive team is a, hey, I have an idea. I want to do this content thing. If they've shot down the idea of making someone the face of the company in the past, that's not the idea this time. The idea is we have a crew that we would like to elevate to be the voice. In this case, the voice is of the company. It's not a single face. 

It's multiple voices. We're putting out to represent our position in the market. And I think that's the next most important thing. 

We have faces. Well, what if they're just going rogue saying whatever the hell they want and getting different perspectives and all of a sudden that seems risky again? It shouldn't because they're not out there just making things up to say. They need direction. They need guidance. They should have a point of view, not their point of view necessarily, the company's point of view. It's their point of view about what the company's doing, how it's operating, what it's up to. What's the industry doing? 

What's next? How is the company going from point A to point B? How is that going to help the customers? There's things that they need to know from the company perspective before you just push them out there and say, okay, go say whatever you want. 

There needs to be guidance and direction and guide rails. Not that there's rules, but just, hey, this is the message we generally want the audience to understand about our company and whoever's on that content team should generally understand, should generally be educated on, this is what we want to say. This is what we want to show. Ultimately, this is what we want our audience to believe. And if you prime them properly to understand the what, the how, the why, they're going to be able to communicate that effectively. 

Adam Marquardt: That will definitely be easiest for the sales team and maybe the marketing team because the sales team is talking about those points of view outwardly to the customer on a regular basis. But for some of your internal teams, whether it's product or engineering, it's more of the guiding principles that are helping them to move forward on their day-to-day tasks every day. 

But you're right, it's not rules. It's guide rails that are really helping them to know this is the direction that we're going to talk about. This is the angle that we want to talk about. This is what we want someone to believe. I really like the way that you kind of tied that up with a bow on it with saying, it's what you want your customer to believe at the end. Because I think that we get so lost or so caught up in the what we say and how we say it and the point of view and the perspectives and all these different things. But at the end of the day, the real thing that we're trying to do is we're trying to communicate in a way that gets our prospect or even existing customers in some scenarios to believe something. To believe something about who we are, the direction we're going, the thing we're building, what we believe, what we stand for. Because a lot of teams are really good at building that internally into their culture. They're good at having missions and vision statements and core values and all these things. But they have to show outside of the company too, or it doesn't really matter. We have to make sure that the thing that we're communicating is the belief that we want somebody to walk away knowing so that next time they're in a meeting behind closed doors that you're not invited to, they can say, hey, you know what? I know this company that does A, B, and C because I've been hearing this repeatedly for the last three months, six months, nine months. 

And it might not be today that they buy, but the longer you can ingrain that in their brain, they're going to walk away with a belief saying, hey, you know what? I know who can do that. I know who can help. I know their solution. I know their outcomes. And all of these different components are valuable in helping to shape a decision or a preference towards a company. 

Nathan Yerian: That's true as you brought up for prospects, for customers. It's also true for investors. It's also true for the employees you have. It's also true for the employees you want to have. So transferring that belief into even internal audiences is good, but your entire external audience is huge. And, you know, having a team approach to do that, it's going to carry more authority. It's going to carry more diversity of perspective that's going to make it more believable, more authentic in general. So there's a huge case for getting those voices in the market to actually start transferring that belief. So we talked about the team that should go forward. We talked about kind of shaping that point of view for the team. And I think the missing component at this point is, but what would the content be? 

What does that look like? I think most teams are a little bit apprehensive of how would we get these people involved in content? I think a lot of teams struggle to even get them involved in blog content to do just interviews and collect information. How would we possibly get them involved in video content or something of that nature on an ongoing basis? 

That seems far-fetched. The tendency from, especially the marketing department, right? The marketing department wants us to be big. They want it to really make an impact for the company. 

Usually because their performance is being graded and the bigger it is, the better it's going to be for them. But the reality is, it is very hard to get your executive team, your subject matter experts, the greater team that's not involved in marketing in content. Currently, they don't view it as their job. So you have an uphill battle of how does it become part of their job? You have two separate things. First of all, you have their usually lack of willingness to want to be on camera. 

They're a little bit camera shy sometimes. And then there's the, my job is not to promote the company. Both of those things you can overcome. First of all, the more reps you get on camera, the easier it becomes. So don't walk in there and say, ooh, we're going to do 20 videos and you're going to be the star. They'll immediately say no. 

You need to have something very digestible. Have a single event you want them to be a part of. Dip the toe in the water. Get them involved. Show them what it will create. Show them how they can use it to position themselves in the market as an expert, a thought leader, or whatever it is. Let them put it on their LinkedIn. 

Get comments, get likes, get whatever. Let them get a little reward before you go in and ask them to do it again. You don't have to walk in and say, oh, we're going to do this, that, the other, and you're going to be involved. It's going to take up a lot of your time. 

And maybe there's very little benefit for you. Start small. A little ask that has a benefit for them and grow it from there. You can have a big plan. Just don't necessarily reveal the big plan straight out of the gate. 

And then the other piece, when they say, hey, that's not our job. That's marketing's job. Marketing's job is to communicate the message. 

True. Marketing's job is to communicate the message. But you need someone with authority to be the voice that is communicating the message. Marketing's job is to capture the voice. Marketing's job is to distribute the voice. Make sure the right people see it. But marketing cannot be the voice because when marketing's the voice, it's faceless. 

There's no person. It's the company said this and I don't know about you, but I don't listen to a lot of things that faceless companies say. I know individuals. I know what individuals think and what they say. But I'm not just listening to a faceless logo tell me how to live my life or what decisions to make or how something works. I'm listening to smart people at good companies that help their customers and I'm making decisions based on that. 

Adam Marquardt: And I think we've seen that in our own life where I'm saying, hey, I need a solution for X, Y, or Z. And you're like, oh, hey, go look this person up. You don't say go look this company up. You say, go look this person up because they just said, you know, X, Y, Z on LinkedIn or they just were on this podcast. 

And you'll send me the link. And it's we don't think of authority in the terms of like a company always. We think of it as the person that's relaying the information about the company, which has its benefits. 

Right. And I think that the thing that is really important to focus on is starting small gives them the ability to dip their toe in the water and gain traction versus, like you said, if you did this whole big thing and it was intimidating or it was tedious, they might back out before they even start. And I think getting momentum is a really easy way to get buy in. And to your point, you can have a big strategy. You can have a plan, maybe not revealing it to them at once. 

Or if, like we said earlier, you have a multi voice approach, you can have 100% of the plan and give five different people 20% of it. Right. So I think that there's value in being able to break that down into smaller pieces, being able to maximize their time. 

And we've talked in other episodes about how to batch create content. But I think it's really, really valuable about remembering that marketing can't be that voice because marketing isn't the expert in engineering. They're not the expert in the sales of that organization. Now, do they know stuff? Sure. 

Absolutely. That's their job. But if you want a unique perspective and you want that broken down across the company in multiple voices, you're going to have to involve other people. And I think something you said earlier of like, we're not asking you to get the whole organization involved. We actually just talked to somebody about three months ago where they had a sales team of probably over 50 people and he wanted all of them to be really involved in LinkedIn. How many people did we get on camera? 

Like two or three. We didn't get everybody involved. They still have a part. They can still support the efforts of the two to three. Right. 

But they don't have to be the one on camera, especially in the beginning. We're not necessarily proving its value. But I think that when we are able to start getting momentum and start seeing the impacts or the feedback from the market of this in the terms of, you know, hey, we're getting insights. We're getting comments. 

We're getting more phone calls who are like, hey, you know what? I actually saw you on, you know, XYZ. You get that all the time where you're, you know, at different meetings or at different events. 

Someone's like, oh, you know what? I actually just saw this podcast or this, you know, social clip and I really liked what you said about this. And I think there's a lot of value there with being able to transfer the position or the belief out into the market. 

Nathan Yerian: I think the moral of the story here is if you're on the executive team and you've said the words, ooh, we don't want to do that because that's going to make whoever the face of the company. I think you need to reconsider your position and take a different approach to get a different result. If you're on the marketing team and you've been told we would do that, but we don't want to make this person the face of the company. I think you need to re-architect your solution based on some of the things that we've discussed. Obviously, everybody's company is going to be a little bit different. 

Your situation is going to be a little bit different. But if you take the principles that we've discussed today, you can create a new solution that you should be able to take to your leadership and say, hey, we heard what you said. We have a different approach and we think you're going to like it. Give me an hour. Let me go through this with you and let me show you how it's going to work, why it's going to work, and most importantly, what it can do for our message in the market.