7 Meetings Per 100 Brands: Mike Barron on Ditching Outreach Automation

0:00 · Intro

Jordan:0:00
Welcome back to the [High Ticket AI Systems] Podcast. Everyone, please welcome the one and only Mr. Mike Baron. Mike, how you doing today, my friend?

Mike Barron:0:07
Doing well, Jordan. Good to be here. Thanks for having me. How are you?

Jordan:0:12
Fantastic, man. Today's been awesome day. Talking to great people like yourself. Besides my dogs pissing me off, know, life is going pretty well. For those of us that aren't familiar with the name yet or don't recognize the brand, can you please tell us at a very high level what you do and who you guys serve?

Mike Barron:0:20
I'm

Mike Barron:0:30
Yeah, yeah. Icon Digital Media, we're an affiliate marketing and management agency. That's all we do is affiliate creator marketing. We partner with D2C brands and Amazon brands to really scale the channel.

0:43 · What Is Affiliate Marketing and How Does It Work

Jordan:0:43
Gotcha. Now for those of us out there like me that aren't really familiar with affiliate marketing on the D to C side of businesses, can you kind of explain what that might be or what that might look like?

Mike Barron:0:58
Yeah, mean, affiliate marketing, you know, has been around for a long time, long, long time, well over 20, 30 years. And it's a performance marketing channel where essentially, you know, D to C brands and it also is very much the same on the Amazon side of things. So D to C, whether you're a D to C brand or an Amazon brand, you know, you're basically like, I always like to explain affiliates to brands. like, think of affiliates as your outside e-commerce. sales team that is working on a commission only pay or fee structure, right? So you have affiliates or traffic sources or publishers, creators, there's all sorts of interchangeable names and these traffic sources, whether it be Buzzfeed or GQ or Wirecutter or, you know, Capital One Shopping or Honey or Rakuten Rewards. whatever affiliate it is, is driving consumers to a brand's website or to a brand's Amazon store page or product page. And if that consumer purchases the product, then the affiliate or the referring traffic source earns a commission of the sale. Commissions vary anywhere from 1 % per sale all the way up to 30%, 40%, 50%. It's really up to the brand.

But it's a really, really effective way for brands to leverage a very powerful digital channel without spending a lot of money upfront, hoping for results. Affiliate marketing is very much the opposite, where brands are only spending money when the traffic converts into actual customers, actual sales and revenue.

2:48 · Why Customer Acquisition Costs Are Lower With Affiliates

Jordan:2:48
So essentially, acquisition cost is really low then, right? Because you're only paying when someone purchases your product, right?

Mike Barron:2:56
Yeah, I mean, it's usually relatively low unless you're paying a really high commission, then your CAC can go way up. The beautiful thing about this channel is you can control that, right? Like the commission dictates the customer acquisition costs, which impacts the ROAS. So if your CAC is high, let's lower the commission, which then decreases the customer acquisition cost, right? So it's a very...

Jordan:3:05
Right, right.

Mike Barron:3:24
controllable channel, you can be very intentional with how you kind of approach it and set things up. Also, it's not really like permanent, meaning if a traffic source or affiliate is driving traffic or customers to your website or Amazon sort of page that you don't really like, or they're not net new customers, you can turn that traffic source off. you can be really agile and move quickly and make important decisions fast.

Jordan:3:53
Would you say that affiliate marketing is more consistent in terms of metrics, opposed to Google or TikTok ads or maybe even meta ads?

4:03 · Is Affiliate More Consistent Than Meta or Google Ads

Mike Barron:4:03
I would say yes, yeah, I would. And candidly, I'm not an expert in PPC, paid search, social, but I'm an expert in affiliate. And I think that, yeah, the costs seem very sustainable, very controllable, right? So I would say yes.

Jordan:4:23
For sure. From my experience, haven't really dabbled in Google, but for meta ads specifically, depending on many factors, but I think everyone can agree that it's pretty volatile, right? One week, one month, maybe even six months campaign is dialed in, performing within KPI. The business is profitable. Then all of a sudden, you know, in month six, week one, it tanks, ROAS is not good. And we can chop it up to ad fatigue, right?

The customers are seeing the same ad too many times and it's just not converting anymore. Is that a similar situation for affiliate marketing? Like ad fatigue, one might say.

5:04 · Does Ad Fatigue Apply to Affiliate Marketing

Mike Barron:5:04
I don't think so, no, because the ad component isn't really there in affiliate. You think about the various types of affiliates or publishers, whatever you want to call them. On the DTC side, it's quite diverse. You have content, editorial media like BuzzFeed, GQ, Wirecut are the same ones I mentioned. You have these shopping partners, these coupon discounts that are promoting brands via offers, not necessarily ads.

You have closed user groups and card linked offers. You have deal sites, you have media buyers. So there's not much ad fatigue in our.

Jordan:5:44
Gotcha. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but are you essentially the connector between DTC brand and the affiliate company looking to take on this new brand to sell?

5:56 · How Icon Digital Media Recruits and Manages Affiliates

Mike Barron:5:56
Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. mean, our role is as the agency or service provider is we, you know, we partner with an e-commerce Amazon brand to manage, but more importantly, grow their affiliate program and channel. And how do we do that? Yeah, we, we onboard, we activate, we optimize affiliates, the right affiliates, the right traffic sources, the right publishers, that will drive meaningful traffic and sales, right? We get them.

We get our clients exposure in large media outlets, content partners, best of lists, gift guides. So I think that brands, that's where brands struggle the most is they struggle with the recruitment process of scaling their affiliate program, right? So very relationship driven industry in order to be effective with recruitment and building a strong, robust, diversified roster of affiliates, you have to have relationships with those affiliates. so know, ICON, digital media, any other good agency out there, that's what we bring to the table. We have tens of thousands of relationships with all of the largest relevant affiliates out there. And it's very much per vertical, meaning like when we join forces with a new brand, whether they, you know, sell sunglasses or vitamins or tennis shoes or, you know, computer monitors. we typically have a really clear path to success with recruitment because we have an internal CRM of affiliates per vertical, right? So yes, we're the ones that are kind of like connecting the affiliate with the brand. But it's yes, much deeper than that, but at a high level, absolutely. Yeah.

Jordan:7:38
For sure. Now, thanks for the context there. And then I have to ask this. It might be a loaded question, but what dictates a successful affiliate marketing campaign? Is it matching with better brands that would promote the DTC product or are there more technical aspects of the campaign that really create a winning affiliate marketing campaign?

8:02 · What Makes or Breaks an Affiliate Campaign

Mike Barron:8:02
Yeah, it's a little bit loaded. It's great. It's great. There's so many variables that can, you know, impact the performance of an affiliate program for a DTC brand or Amazon brand. I would say, you know, first and foremost, yeah, it's about, you know, alignment with the affiliates that you're trying to partner them up on, right? That you're trying to really

Jordan:8:05
Sorry, I was curious.

Jordan:8:19
No, sure.

Mike Barron:8:32
you know, onboard of their program. And if you're trying to recruit or activate the wrong partners, they're gonna drive a bunch of traffic that's not converted to sales, right? That's garbage, that's bottom of the funnel, that's like low quality. There's so many other things, you you think about commission modeling, right? Making sure that you're paying appropriate or warranted commission amounts per affiliate or per affiliate type. which is a very kind of like deep, long conversation. know, text links, program structuring, reporting data analysis, understanding what's working and what's not, and using, you know, what's working to do more of that and optimize better. And, you know, there's all sorts of stuff, but yeah, hopefully that answers your question.

Jordan:9:22
No, for sure. Data is really important, right? I don't think it matters what channel you're utilizing. Affiliate marketing, email, Facebook ads, Google ads, TikTok. You have to know what the hell the data is telling you, right? It's so mind boggling when people try to guess, when it comes to scaling their company, it's like, dude, like, no, the data clearly says X is a problem. Let's tackle X and then scale up this channel over here, know, opposed to, it might be this or it might be that. You know what I mean?

Mike Barron:9:51
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, data, data tells a story. We use data as our North star, right? When we think about how do we make really strategic, effective decisions for client X or client Y, we always start with the data. So, I mean, I don't think that there's any other way to do it. You know, you can't just stick your finger in the wind and be like, I think it's that, I think it's that. It's like, let's look at, let's do a full analysis. Let's dive deep into the data and whatever the data tells us, let's, let's trust that.

10:21 · How Mike Got Into Affiliate Marketing

Jordan:10:21
For sure. And I have to ask this as well, because I am genuinely curious. How did you get into this field here? Like, how did you go from what you were doing before to affiliate marketing for D2C companies?

Mike Barron:10:31
Yeah, I, over 10 years ago, I ended up joining a really small agency, which became a very large agency over the course of several years. But, I've always been in sales, always been a salesperson through and through business development. That's where I feel like I thrive. I enjoy it. And so when I was looking to make a shift out of medical sales, which I was in for almost 10 years. just kind of stumbled upon this opportunity and it was an affiliate marketing agency. had no clue what affiliate marketing was. I'd never worked for a marketing agency or really like any sort of service provider, but it looked like a great opportunity and I jumped head first and that was over 10 years ago. Left that organization over three years ago and spun up my own company and it's going great.

Jordan:11:25
For sure in terms of scale any ballpark where you guys are at maybe headcount all park revenue if you're comfortable with that

11:32 · Scale of the Business — Team Size and Structure

Mike Barron:11:32
Sure. Yeah, we're, upwards of 20 employees at this point. We, we don't outsource, so we're all us based, revenue. I'll keep close to the chest if that's cool with you. but you know, our approach is really, is really like a white glove kind of service. And I'm sure you hear that a lot, you know, and, it's all about, you know, making sure that the client retention and we, you know, white glove this, but, but I mean, that's really like how we think about our service at the core, right? We try to.

Jordan:11:43
So, yeah.

Mike Barron:12:02
provide the most effective service possible. We work incredibly hard to make sure that we're meeting and surpassing client expectations and the clients are happy and fulfilled and they're staying with us. We understand their goals, priorities, you know, that way we can really craft like our playbook around what they do and don't want, what's really meaningful to them. And so, you know, we're really proud of our client retention. I think that's so, so important, but.

Yeah, as an organization, mean, it's structured a little bit differently on like the DTC side for us and the Amazon side. So we kind of have two divisions of the business because both channels or brand types or client types require such a different service and approach that, you know, we're pretty intentional with how we think about that.

Jordan:12:47
You should be really proud. mean, to only be in business for three years and to have 20 employees, I feel like that's awesome, Seriously, you're making me proud.

Mike Barron:12:56
Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's, you know, that's an interesting way to judge like a company success or performance is like, I got all these employees. But, I will say that we, tend to operate pretty darn elite, right? 20 employees for us is like, everyone is pulling their weight. Everyone is wearing multiple hats. we're very thoughtful with how we kind of think about the resources that we allocate to each account and, you know, all sorts of analysis goes into. that side of the business as well. But I appreciate you saying that, man. Thanks for the compliment. Yeah.

Jordan:13:26
No, of course, of course. Let's see. regarding customer retention, you on our previous phone call, you said that was a really strong pillar within the organization. Do you mind giving us like the secret sauce as to like retaining clients or when something bad happens with the client in the company, how you guys approach that on like proactive versus reactive leadership, just things like that.

13:48 · The Secret to Retaining Clients Long-Term

Mike Barron:13:48
Yeah.

Mike Barron:13:54
Yeah, I love that. And I will start by saying, as we all know, there's things that are out of our control. A new CMO comes in, you know, the company gets acquired. We just lost one of our biggest best clients because they were acquired and, you know, it's just part of the business. So can't keep them all, but we work incredibly hard to keep as many as possible. I think it comes down to a couple of key factors. One is communication, right? Clear, transparent communication with clients.

Jordan:14:16
Thank

Mike Barron:14:24
making sure that you are getting in front of them, making sure that you are really understanding their ongoing goals, priorities, what they do, what they really want, what's important to them. We use all sorts of communication functions and we have specific cadences that we keep everyone accountable to. So communication is key. We're not a management agency, we're a growth agency.

Like you can ask any employee here, they hear me say that all the time. And I'm like, I don't want to manage a client's affiliate channel. We're here to grow it. We're here to scale it. Right. So by focusing on that and driving incremental revenue, meaningful revenue, meaningful sales, new customers, that's a huge factor in client retention. Right. As I'm sure we can all understand. that that's key as well as like really focusing on scaling and growing the channel for our clients.

And then, mean, the other things are, I don't want to sound like a broken record, but really understanding the client's priorities. Because I've seen agencies, service providers get it wrong where they kind of roll out the same playbook for every single brand, whether they're in, know, home and living vertical or consumer electronics or health and wellness. That's the wrong move, right? You need to build a custom playbook and strategy based on The vertical based on what the brand deems most important and meaningful. So really understanding goals, priorities, and that's pretty critical to retention. Hiring, great people, right? People that are aligned with our vision and can go above and beyond and are really committed. So we have a huge emphasis on company culture and employee retention, just as important as... client retention, right? I don't want to lose employees because there's like our team is incredible, right? And they all deserve as many compliments as possible and they should be compensated accordingly. So I think that's an important thing to mention as well.

Jordan:16:35
No, for sure. And I want to say two things. One is if we are actively growing and scaling a client account, why would they leave us? Like we're obviously have, we have a clear ROI for them. They're making more money every single month than last month. Why would they want to leave us? But how do we actually do that? I think you hit the nail on the head with that one is the people, the people actually managing the accounts, they have to have a strategic growth.

I guess they have to have the skill to actually grow the account opposed to being a reactive leader or a reactive CSM, client success manager. Well, they don't, I guess, have the, I guess, ability to go into account, or they don't think deeply about growing accounts, if that kind of makes sense. But I think the first, the most important one is having the knowledge to do it, right? Because without the knowledge, it's going to be pretty hard to actually grow a client account. And then secondly, just Maintaining that and being proactive about growing the account and obviously if shit does hit the fan one day because this is life This is business things do happen. I think communication what you said is vitally important Reaching out to that client before they reach out to you about XYZ problem, you know, okay, we noticed something's going on. Here's how we're gonna fix it

Mike Barron:17:51
Yeah. Yeah.

I think you're spot on and the word proactive is so critical, right? Like it's so much better and more important to be proactive versus reactive, right? Like why wait until the client is upset or not satisfied or the account is not growing to do something, right? Let's be really proactive. And I think that's worth reiterating is just a proactive mindset for sure.

18:22 · The Outbound Sales System That Books 7 Meetings Per 100 Brands

Jordan:18:22
And that stems from leadership. I don't think people are getting, I mean, maybe some might have that natural ability, but if that's instilled in the company culture, then obviously that stems from leadership. Let's see, in regards to customer acquisition, I have to dive into this. So on our first call, you stated that for every 100 emails you send to land your clients, roughly

Mike Barron:18:50
Uh huh. Uh huh.

Jordan:18:50
six book meetings with you, which is like F in unheard of in the outbound space. I would leave like a three to 10 % positive or reply rate. I'd say about half of those, excuse me, half of those are positive, but I don't know if we're booking six meetings per 100. Wow. Well, I guess in, the initial, um,

Mike Barron:18:55
Thank

Mike Barron:19:12
Yeah, yeah.

Jordan:19:20
Outbound email, like I assume you're personalizing it. Like how long is the email? What's the subject line say? Like all the secrets.

19:29 · Cold Email Strategy — Subject Lines, Sequences, and Personalization

Mike Barron:19:29
Yeah. Yeah. And to give you, to give a little bit of clarity there, you know, I guess what I meant is let's say for every hundred brands we hit, we prospect, we're booking our conversion rates increased over the last, think since we talked. let's say seven, eight meetings, possibly. The sales team is crushing it. They're doing great. So, so, so for, us to prospect one brand.

Jordan:19:52
I know for sure.

Mike Barron:19:58
could mean that we're reaching out to one to three contacts, right? So it's not a hundred emails, it's a hundred brands prospected, yields seven, eight meetings, right? Dude, it's not rocket science. My answer is not gonna be earth shattering. It's old school, manual, intentional.

Thoughtful strategic outreach. There's no automation to it, which I think is, we've tested all of that, dude. And we've seen massive, it's impacted our conversion rates in a massively negative direction. And so we pulled off of automation immediately because I'm here to book meetings and close business and grow the company with the right clients. And I'm not spraying and praying hoping for a couple of meetings. So anyways.

Jordan:20:42
Thanks.

Mike Barron:20:55
Old school manual outreach. We definitely have some pretty darn effective email sequences. very firm and committed to our cadence, right, of the days between. But everything is done manually. Subject lines? I don't know. I can pull up one if you want. I don't remember what they are.

You know, the goal for us here, here's the, here's the secret. And out from all the BS email automation, AI outreach, you, me, I mean, I get hit up 20, 30 times a day probably. And that's not even including on LinkedIn. Right. And so for me as a business owner, as someone that's been in marketing for a long time and been on the sales side for a long time within.

Jordan:21:28
There we go.

Mike Barron:21:54
two seconds of looking at an email without even opening it, I can tell if it's spam, right? I can tell if it's like one of those that we just want to open. So what we've really focused on and been committed to is how can we be as authentic as possible in our subject line, in our first one or two sentences, because every single marketing executive out there is getting

Jordan:22:19
which is important.

Mike Barron:22:24
just as many emails as I am, and they're filing a lot of them. But for some reason, what we're using, the messaging, the subject lines, the authentic approach, is causing people to open our emails, respond, and want to chat with us. So it's working well.

Jordan:22:43
I think that is the secret sauce though. Like personalize it, right? Make it authentic. And everyone I think does want to utilize, you know, AI or automations probably to just make things more efficient. But the end goal is book meetings and revenue, right?

It doesn't matter how you get there. Obviously, if automations are ruining metrics or making metrics go down, opposed to increasing them, like throw away the freaking automations, let's go back to old school manual approach. I would say for me, subject lines, we try to make it as personal as possible. So like for mic or mic or RE, like it's already in a thread. It's like re mic or forward mic, just super, super simple.

Again, super non-salesy. And then when it comes to the first one to two sentences, we try to use like like a tension, like based hook, a problem based hook, but, that is like super specific to them and their company based on like the enrichment layers that we, let me pull from. We try to keep our email under 60 words to like super short skimmable. And then opposed to asking for time as the call to action.

We say, hey, like we built this free thing that I know you want. Is it cool if we send it over? So like a personalized lead magnet to be exact for, are you utilizing LinkedIn in conjunction with cold email? Like when someone says yes or like has a positive reply, do you connect on LinkedIn or anything like that?

Mike Barron:24:06
Yeah.

24:17 · Why They Added Cold Calling Back Into the Sequence

Mike Barron:24:17
We connect on LinkedIn as part of our sequence and I think it falls between like email one and two or two and three, but that's literally it is just a connection. And I think that that is our way of making sure the prospect. understands that, you know, who sent them an email as a real person that, you know, we're like JJ or Tanner or Mike, you know, Hey, I have a LinkedIn profile. you know, I'm real. one thing I didn't mention is we definitely still utilize cold calling, which I think is a forgotten craft is something everyone, no one likes cold calling, but I have to tell you, I think it's a very big reason why our conversion rates are high. So.

Jordan:24:45
this.

Jordan:25:04
Talk to me about that for a second. Do you email and then cold call? Like is cold calling part of the sequence or do you isolate them? Email, LinkedIn, cold call in isolation. Okay.

Mike Barron:25:15
Part of the part of the sequence. Yeah. And, and believe it or not, again, props to my sales team. They, they just asked to add another cold call to the sequence. So they want to do more. I'm like, absolutely go for it. You know, cause usually it's the opposite. I don't want to make a call. you know, dude, and I think a lot of the calls that they make, they're not necessarily like speaking to someone or booking a meeting on the phone, but It's another touch point that again is authentic. It's a personal eye. It's like, you know, Hey, John, I just sent you an email yesterday. I wanted to check in and see if you got it. I'd love to chat, right? Like, wow. The person that sent me an email is actually real. Right. So, I think it's a really effective touch point for sure.

Jordan:26:03
1 million percent and you said the word personalized or personalization and like that in my opinion is how you get outbound to work when you are in a sea of emails or when your recipients your lead is getting 30 40 like you're saying emails per day what is going to make you stand out that personalization definitely will and the higher you go up on the sure the income bracket the more people want to sell your shit right so if you can stand out

Mike Barron:26:29
Mm.

Jordan:26:31
by personalization or just stand out in any numerous ways, that person is going to be very receptive to, might not buy from you, but you'll get a fricking reply, which is a lot better than getting ghosted, you know?

Mike Barron:26:44
I mean, I tell the team, I'm like, replies are gold, even if it's no, like we have to, you know, be ready to, to, move forward on every reply and turn that into a meeting. exactly, exactly. I mean, the fact that they're replying and there's communication flowing, let's, let's go. also I think that, you know, companies tend to get a little bit too focused or granular with their ICP.

Jordan:26:56
Yeah, turn a no into a yes, baby, let's go.

27:14 · How to Expand Your ICP Without Losing Focus

Mike Barron:27:14
Right. I think that, you know, something I've learned over the years is that it's important to have an ICP, but don't let that ICP cause your, you know, your target account list or your lead list to shrink to a hundred, right. Or 200, like be, be flexible, expand upon that. can't tell you how many meetings I've had with, you know, brands that didn't look qualified or that, you know, it definitely wasn't qualified, then. jumping on and it's like, no, I have three other brands or, know, this, you know, Mike, this conversation has been incredibly powerful. I've learned more with you than I have and got this coming the other day. I've learned more in 30 minutes with you, Mike, than I learned in six months with my last agency. I can't work with the brand because they're too small, but he referred me to another brand that's right in our wheelhouse. like, so, you know, don't be, don't be too like narrow with your ICP.

Jordan:27:59
Ha ha ha.

Jordan:28:14
I would combat that and say you definitely don't want to go too wide, right? Definitely don't want to go too wide, but I do lean on the side of expanding it just like one to two percentage points outside of the exact ICP. Cause like you said, you never know if that person could become a potential client. Out of curiosity, what is your exact ICP for DTC brands?

28:36 · Their Exact ICP for DTC and Amazon Brands

Mike Barron:28:36
D to C, we try to work with brands. First of all, we're pretty particular with the verticals that we want to work within. There are certain verticals that we have chosen to just not tap into. We might in the future. We don't really do much SaaS or B2B, finance, insurance, those sorts of affiliate verticals. But we're very focused on traditional verticals, home and living, consumer electronics, sports and apparel, health and wellness, all of that stuff. But on the DTC side, a brand has to be doing at least like two, three million in DTC revenue for it to make sense for us, because that's the level where we can join forces and drive meaningful revenue and return for them based on how much they're paying us and the cost of the channel. On the Amazon side, the threshold is about double that.

Amazon again, the affiliate channel there, it's a whole different beast. It's incredibly nuanced and brands have to be a little bit larger there to see a good return.

Jordan:29:44
I would say, cause I have a couple of clients that work in the, in the account space. Do they, Amazon takes like 40, 50 % rev, right?

Mike Barron:29:52
It's maybe not that high for like a 3P seller. If you're a 1P, your margins are a lot thinner, but Amazon takes a pretty big chunk.

Jordan:30:02
for sure. I mean, it sense as to why they're doing, you know, so good revenue wise. What would off topic question for sure, but since you brought it up, how does a company go from one P two P three P in the Amazon world? Okay.

Mike Barron:30:15
I don't know. It's a good question for an Amazon brand. don't know. Yeah. mean, basically like the 1P to 3P means that they either like Amazon either warehouses and ships the product. it's ships and sold from and ships from Amazon or sold through Amazon ships from the brand. So.

Jordan:30:21
Sure, sure.

Jordan:30:41
Okay, okay, yeah, that would probably make more sense. Let's see, speaking of hiring great players, obviously the sales team is freaking amazing, client success team seems to be awesome. What type of process do you have for hiring and recruiting new players?

30:55 · How They Hire — What They Look for Over Experience

Mike Barron:30:55
Yeah, nothing, I think that what we, the approach we take is, you know, we try not to hire when we're desperate for a resource. We try to be proactive with it, but not too proactive to where we're hiring too far ahead. But I think we take our time. We're diligent. We ask the right questions. You know, we don't look at

Jordan:30:58
I just find them, they find me, you know.

Mike Barron:31:24
You know, we don't hire based on, you know, their industry experience. I'd much rather hire someone that has no industry experience mindset, the, the culture fits, you know, the dedication, the hunger that stat drive and I'll do it. I'll teach them about affiliate marketing. I'll teach them how to sell, but you can't, you can't, you can't teach someone those, those like intrinsic qualities or characteristics that, you know, There we are.

Jordan:31:54
You can't teach hard work. You cannot instill that into somebody. They have to figure that shit out by themselves and carry that into the company. I can teach somebody affiliate marketing or whatever the fuck I do. Right. I can't teach you how to work hard. You have to own hard work. I agree. Yeah. Hiring from a place of desperation never freaking works out because it's like, I need somebody right now. Okay. I found out the street coming to the company and that shit just like.

Mike Barron:32:01
Yes.

Mike Barron:32:08
Correct. Absolutely.

Jordan:32:20
Unqualified, probably bad culture fit, unskilled, all the negative things you don't want in a high.

Mike Barron:32:25
Yeah. And one bad hire, right? Can like really, really negatively impact the company culture. And so you can't always be perfect. You can't always hire all great people, but I think you can take your time and yeah, be proactive with it.

Jordan:32:45
No, definitely. Do you utilize like LinkedIn for finding people like indeed?

Mike Barron:32:50
LinkedIn's been great. Yeah. I think that for us, cause we're so niche in the affiliate marketing world is, you know, couldn't be somewhat small. Like LinkedIn seems to do pretty well for us. on the Amazon side, the, the, the affiliate channel is so new that we've never hired anyone with Amazon affiliate experience because there's maybe like five people out there that have that. so yeah, LinkedIn works well for us.

Jordan:33:17
For sure, for sure. And then I have asked this question and then maybe one more question. But I imagine that if you're booking, you know, seven meetings per 100 brands for the outreach, the sales process is also about the freaking. So could you give us some insight as to what you might do for a sales process? How you conduct yours?

Mike Barron:33:22
Yeah, take your time.

33:39 · The Sales Process From Discovery to Proposal to Close

Mike Barron:33:39
Sure, yeah. I think it's really important to be able to book the intro discovery call relatively quickly, right? So making sure that there is availability based on the prospects request, but try to get them meeting with you in the next couple of days, right? Work off of that sense of urgency. So we typically just book an intro discovery meeting, 30 minutes.

You know, we try to be really, really dialed with that intro discovery meeting to ensure that we learn as much as possible. It's not an opportunity for us to tell the prospect about us or pitch our services or feature dump or ramble. It's an opportunity to ask questions and dig deep because, you know, we use that information to craft and build a very customized proposal that is incredibly impactful.

Right. And, and so it's important to like use that intro discovery call to understand as much as possible. intro discovery meeting four to five days later, proposal meeting. So we spend that, that four to five day window between intro meeting and proposal meeting, doing a full channel program analysis and audit. you know, just what's that.

Jordan:34:54
Make that proposal personalized, brother.

Mike Barron:34:58
100%. Yeah, absolutely. mean, dude, I'm not here to waste my time and, you know, just pitch more services and, you know, have a 10 % conversion rate from proposal to close. We're going to spend our time making sure that that proposal checks all the boxes for them. We address every single question, hurdle, challenge, you know, objective for them that we uncovered in the discovery call and blow them out of the water with, know, what our growth strategy would look like.

Yeah, that's pretty much it.

Jordan:35:29
Sorry, sorry. There is a lot of parallels between processes here. I come from a, I don't know, cold calling background. I love hardcore sales, but as I swapped over into B2B, I realized that it's kind of a different approach. It's less transactional. I used to sell solar over the phone to be exact. Super freaking transactional. With B2B, it is not. Not transactional at all.

What I've realized is that personalization dude is fucking non-negotiable. I can't tell you, maybe like an increase in close rate by at least, at least 15 % from personalized proposals. Like this was made exactly for me. Like you listen, here's like the three problems that I have. Here are these solutions to solving these exact problems. Here's some case studies with people in your exact niche. And like it works like magic. It's fucking awesome.

You

Mike Barron:36:25
One of the things we do in the proposal early on in the conversation is we talk about goals and missions and we talk about, based on our first chat, here's kind of all, here's four or five goals and missions that we derive from that conversation, right? And typically those are built from the challenges they're facing or they faced in scaling the channel, their priorities, their objectives, you know? And so we talk through those to make sure that we're aligned on. those goals and missions. And I want to make sure that we're aligned on those as soon as possible in the conversation, because that way they're like, dude, this guy listened to me. He heard me. They really want to work with us. Right. And we genuinely want to work with them. Right. There's we turned down a lot of business because it's not a good fit. It's not the right product, not the right vertical, too small, whatever it is. But when there's a brand that we want to work with, you got to put your best foot forward. Right. Like What do they say? Success is where opportunity meets preparation. like, dude, prepare, spend time, you know?

Jordan:37:30
Yes, sir.

37:35 · Why Personalized Proposals Change Everything

Jordan:37:35
Absolutely. Take the extra. I mean, in your case, it's, it's, you know, 45 days. It doesn't always have to be 45 days. If you're out there listening, it could just take, you know, an extra day or two to personalize it. I'm sure Mike, you go in really, really great detail on your proposal, which obviously, you know, the success speaks for itself, but long story short, if you're out there, B2B sales, customize and personalize your day and proposals. Okay. And then we'll end on this question here, over your career in business and even in sales, what is one piece of advice that you would give yourself to get to where you are today faster?

38:16 · The One Piece of Advice to Get There Faster

Jordan:38:16
if that makes any sense.

Mike Barron:38:18
Yeah, that's a good one. How would I get here faster? I mean, in hindsight, I wish I would have done this sooner, right? Like I think that...

I think if you're so okay, here's my answer. For anyone out there that is like, know, how can I get there as quickly as possible? you know, if I do start my own thing or venture out on my own, what's the most important thing I need to focus on or understand? It's this, it's client acquisition, it's sales, right? I think every business out there needs to build itself on a proven and effective sales process, a new client acquisition strategy. I've seen really talented people, really knowledgeable experts in my space fail in starting an agency or their own thing because they can't figure out the sales piece. So that's what I would tell myself is learn how to sell as early on in your career as

Jordan:39:32
That's great advice. is absolutely great advice, my friend. If you can sell, you'll never go broke. Mike, it was a pleasure having you. Obviously, super knowledgeable guy. We would love to have you back on in like six to 12 months to see how things are going, see if anything has changed within the business. So yeah, if you're open to it, just let us know.

Mike Barron:39:37
Yeah, I agree. I agree.

Mike Barron:39:52
Yeah, our conversion rate is going to be like 15%.

Jordan:39:55
We hope, man, we hope. I'm rooting for you. Audience, we love you guys. We'll talk to you

Mike Barron:40:01
Thanks, Rutan.