A Deep Dive into Relationship-Driven Selling with Trevor van Woerden

Overview

Trevor van Woerden. Trevor, a seasoned marketer, joins host Kerry Guard to discuss his journey in creating engaging content and his experiences in the world of sales.

Tune in as Trevor shares his insights on building relationships on LinkedIn, the importance of empathy in sales, and the transformational power of the Challenger Sales approach. He also delves into his live streaming shows, "Unleasher Show" and "The Hotness Unleasher Show," and how they have connected and impacted the LinkedIn community.

Kerry and Trevor also tackle the evolving landscape of marketing and sales, discussing the responsibility for revenue generation and the need for collective accountability. So sit back, grab a cup of tea, and join us for this insightful conversation with Trevor van Woerden on Tea Time with Tech Marketers!

Transcript

Kerry Guard: Hello. I'm Kerry Guard. Welcome to Tea Time with Tech Marketing Leaders. Oh, Lee, I have a show for you, y'all. Welcome to the show. We are live as, I wouldn't say always now. I am booked until January and into January, I have a show booked for January 18th. This is happening.

And what a show we have for you this week. I had somebody cancel me last minute, but don't worry. We will reschedule with her because that is going to be an amazing conversation around go to marketing strategies. While she's got Multiple happening at once. We wanna learn how Nadia does that. But in the meantime, back at the ranch, Trevor Van Worten has agreed to step on in and help me out. He was supposed to be sometime in, like, November, and I was like, hey, Trevor. What you got going on this Thursday?

I got tea time going on. And so he has bumped up early and, prepared early, and I'm so, so grateful, Trevor. Welcome to the show. Hey.

Trevor van Woerden: Thanks, Kerry. I love it. I'm so glad to be here a year and a half later. But, hey, you know what? I'll take it. Even if early on your schedule. I'm gonna I'm I'm happy to happy to be here. It's just

Kerry Guard: It's overdue. It's long overdue. It's time.

Trevor van Woerden: It's time.

Kerry Guard: It's like it's like the universe spoke to us and said, sorry, like, as we were excited for Nadia, but we need Trevor, like, right here, right now.

Trevor van Woerden: And then simultaneously filled my cup with stuff I that's on my mind and relatively new stuff as well that I haven't really talked to very much about because, you know, me, I'd like to talk pretty much all the time. So, you know, super great, super good timing. And I I have to say too, I'm completely impressed that you are booked out until mid January because, literally, I had to I had to take a break. I I had to shelve my show. I just I just couldn't do it. I just had to just, like, oh, wipes. So I'm so I was just thrilled, like, To get back on cam for a minute and be here and hang out and not have to do all the planning and do all of the stuff. Right? So I'm so good with that.

Trevor van Woerden: So happy to be here.

Kerry Guard: I'm so excited to have you. Well so will you tell us, Trevor? I wanna jump on in and, like, tell your story from my perspective, but I'm gonna hold. I'm gonna hold, and I'm gonna have you tell your story. What do you do, Trevor, and how did you get there?

Trevor van Woerden: Man, that is a story. Well, there's a few stories in there. I've riffed a few times with a few people, you know, Peter Wheeler. I was laughing with you in the pre live with Adam Mandarovich who I was on his podcast a while back. I don't know if you've watched it or watched Adam's Stuff, but the guy, man, he's he's he's great. And and so he he let me just go wild for, like, 40 minutes straight, but and then I talk my story on the early a lot. So who Who am I today? Today, I am a 25 plus year seller, of Marketing solutions, mostly. I have been in the Internet business since 1990 Sex or 7 ish, give or take**.**

Right? I don't know. Somewhere in there. Back in back back In the in the prehistoric days, back when you could just literally call an agency and say, hey. You wanna buy some impressions? They say, impressions? What's that? Yeah. I want some of that, right, back in those days. You could sell to Microsoft and just on a on a piece of paper. Man, it was fun. Yeah.

So so have been, mostly a seller. That's mostly how I identify, but down deep into the woods of trying to help marketers, do do more. So I've sold mostly media in a variety of contexts. So, you know, CPM style campaigns, CPC, PPC, CPL, you name it, all that stuff. Everything under the sun, newsletters and advertorial and stuff like that, right? So the Current sort of version of all of this is the emergence of the creator, right, of the creator model, the creator Who can come out and make stuff on their own, like holy crap, right? I don't have to wait around for a .com to hire me, Right. I could go out and just make stuff, and discovering that is part of the emerging story that I have to tell. Right. So discovering that came heck, what was it? A year plus? May? It would have been April ish of 22 When I popped into, Tea Time with Tech Marketing Leaders that you were hosting with Danny Wolfe, and I've told this story a few times.

But you and Danny are totally the, you know, the double o g in my life, the original, original gangster, right? And It was that moment when when you and Danny were talking, and Danny said, you gotta join the conversation. And I'm like, what? What? I don't just have to I I don't have to kowtow to my to my clients at every turn. I don't have to say they're, oh, you're right because we gotta get this deal done. No. I was like, Hey, I can have an opinion. I can say I I have an opinion. I have an I have authoritative voice. I've been in the market long enough.

And, yeah, so here we are, right? And have been kinda, you know, continuing to bang around And have become much braver in, my willingness to assert, My own sort of opinions, take ownership of things, be wrong sometimes, most of the time, but, you know, hey, How else do we learn? So that's where you find me today. Embracing this whole creator movement, trying to make the most of it, Trying to make it easier for creators to do what they do. Meanwhile, also working with, you know, b to b tech companies and helping them with their, you know, build more awareness and demand for their offers.

Kerry Guard: That leap for you. And what were you doing before? And then you heard this show of Danny and I hanging out and talking about picking up the mic and talking to your audience. And now and so what what was the actual change for you? What do you do now? So what did you do before, and what do you do now in terms of that shift?

Trevor van Woerden: In terms of how I show up digitally, it it really Fundamentally changed, so I can actually kinda look back. It was October of 2019 That I decided I needed to start, like, creating my own stuff. And I know this because I've gone back to look. Like, when was my 1st real LinkedIn post? Straight in with and we could focus on LinkedIn because, you know, in b two b, I mean, I mean, yeah, there is other creator platforms. Right? And I'm so late to the YouTube, Twitch, IG parties. It doesn't get TikTok, whatever. I don't fit into those worlds, right? So I fit into the LinkedIn world, right? So let's just accept that that's When I talk about social, that's what I'm talking about. Left Facebook because it wasn't beating The need for connection or at least the opportunity that I had.

So October 2019, I started this thing called B2B Content Marketing Inspector. Okay. Still out there. You can watch it. And basic basically, what I did is I went out and I and I reviewed I I had a bunch of assigned accounts, all B2B tech companies. Okta was among them. Certain people in the audience may be may be interested in that. Cyber Reason was another one.

Gosh, there's a whole bunch of them. Sentinel won probably. Any case, so I was, like, 60, I think, I did. And I would go out and I would just like assess, like, hey, this is what your this is what I can see as an outsider. Right? I could I could I could see, like, you're doing this is what your LinkedIn page looks like. This is what your this is what your all your your content looks like. This is what your Twitter looks like. All this, you know, and I would comment on it and do like a 4 or 5 minute video.

Lighting was terrible, audio was Not bad in retrospect and I this was over the course, that's that Q4 of 2019, I just cranked them out, right? And I got like nobody. Nobody commented, nobody liked it, nobody watched it, it was just it was just terrible. And I kind of had to step back. I was like, what? What? You know, and then the pandemic hits and then Infuse Media's business really took off, right? It just fundamentally shifted because everybody was work from home at that point. And so I was really internally focused on just trying to, run with that need. So really it kind of shelved That sort of creator, motion. But it was still kind of in the back of my mind because it built this idea, but didn't Clue into the fact that I needed to support other people's content. Didn't didn't get that.

I just saw it as a megaphone thing. And and I saw LinkedIn as a as a as a taker's paradise, if you will, Right, where you could just go in and pitch lap and because for a while it kinda worked, right? If for a long time you could, You know, I had some automation running. I did this connection campaign and I literally went from, I don't know, 400 or 500 connections to, like, 2,000, You know, just, like, in in the space of because you could run these these automated connection campaigns that would that would rip at Unlimited levels, virtually unlimited. I couldn't even exhaust them, but they were dead. Like, they didn't know me, they didn't wanna talk, they had no I don't know, Moe, why they accepted, but that was just the culture then, I guess. So, I mean, they were pretty targeted, you know, even, you know so I have a lot of people in my In my, my connections list to our, you know, demand generation marketers. Right? They They're they're there and and, but we're not talking. So I continued to kinda pursue this, I don't know, once or twice a week kinda maybe posting schedule of a lot of talking head sort of video stuff, And and that was fine, but it wasn't really getting me anywhere and it wasn't until so Brandon Lee showed up and Brandon Lee is Is a is a guy who, has a product called Fist Bump and Fist Bump As a tracker for social prospectors and he keeps track of what you've done.

And it it was it was called Funnel Amplified at the time, but I found him and I really kinda dug what he was talking about. So resonated with that and tried some of it, But it was still coming off as very sales sales had a sales vibe to it. Stalker ish. Right? Still sort of like, You know, you can do this thing where you comment on somebody's post but it's like, hey, great post, call me about this, right? It still It wasn't authentic. It didn't have that flavor to it. But he was instrumental in kinda opening my mind to like What could or should be done, and then you and Danny come along. Right? And you and Danny come along, you're like, hey, meet people where they are and talk about what they want to talk about. Talk about Talk about your own thing that isn't just the thing you're selling.

And then the Social Saturday Movement Hits. And and I know that's kinda controversial today, but I had a moment. In May In May of 22, it was not that was not controversial. It was awesome. Right? Because it it it represented all these people who Who who who who wanted to connect. And and and I I gotta think it was like and I and I think I've shared this with you privately, but it It was like being at the in the Sahara Desert, right, for for for years, like, crawling through the sand. You know, like, lots of water, you know, just like, die. And, like, nobody wants to talk.

Work from home. But, yeah, my family and local and friends and stuff. Okay. Fine. But professionally, k, we're in these little boxes, And what's happening is, like, digitally, we're getting less and less and less or fewer and fewer and fewer responses to our outreach, particularly as a seller Doing marketing. We can get to that. But, like, all of a sudden you're just like in this in this in this desert Where I can't even function, you know? And and and so then social Saturday comes along and, like, people are actually talking. They're talking back and like, holy crap, your slides.

The people wanna, like, like, like, wanna say hi, engage. And Danny, like, she says, hey. Because I had complimented your your thing your Tea Time, and and Danny comes, come watch my show, come watch my show. And I'm like, Okay, you know what? Okay. It's so great, you know, and And and it was at that point of, say, wow. Holy cow. There's real life people here who actually Oh. Wanna have real life, even if they're digital conversations, still wanna have them and Are interested in my take and are really here.

So That really fundamentally changed, changed everything. And then, so then as the Social Saturday, began to kinda wind down after about 3 months. So by late August, it was sort of on its kinda like I don't know. It sort of peaked, and We were heading into fall at that time.

Kerry Guard: This was just last year too. I mean, it wasn't it was it was, you know, about a year ago.

Trevor van Woerden: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was definitely flash in the pan, right, for me at least. And and, you know, interesting thing, kind of a side note, is that I had made friends with this dude, Kelvin Stone. And Kelvin was in, South Africa.

Right? He was a consultant, and and and he was one of these guys, like, I really felt like I had kinda gotten to know. He had he was really Excited because he got a he'd gotten a real time consulting gig that paid real money, and he was kind of in the digital marketing space. We could sort of talk about that. And then he died. Yeah. It was just ultra shocking. Like, I was just blown away by by by by that, and I had no and I still, to this day, like, I, like, I probably should get counseling Or something or create a community over because I didn't know how to deal with it, right? I didn't know, like, what was the How do we handle that? Right? I mean, I know him. I didn't know him in person, I didn't know his family, I didn't know his friends, didn't know anything about him really in his real Live.

Yeah. Yeah. But we had become friends. I mean, we had traded late DMs. I knew he was kinda struggling, and I I don't know How he died, I I, you know, I know he had had a, some some personal struggles and and none of my business. Right? I'm cut out of that loop. Right? And so I have no I'm not gonna go to South Africa, right? I'm not gonna go find out, right? I'm not doing that. So it's like, How do we process this digitally origin originated relationship, the D.

O. R, right? My favorite my sort of favorite acronym. Right. Yeah. And when a death occurs yeah. That's gonna happen. Right? And it already happened. I've already processed that.

So anybody's out here listening, then they've got a door and somebody dies.

Kerry Guard: Remind us what door talk about it, Josh. Digital.

Trevor van Woerden: Right? It's real. Digital. Yep. Digitally originated relationship. Right? So for for us non digital natives, Right? Which I'm not. Right? So digital emerged during my adult life. Mhmm. This is a different type of relationship, right? It has different sets of rules.

Trevor van Woerden: Now my kids, half of their friendships are online, right? So That's it's it's native for them, but not for me, and so it's important for me to kind of distinguish, like, okay. And a lot of these relationships are not gonna become real life.

Kerry Guard: Although it's a dream of mine, Trevor. I will meet you in person. It'll be glorious. Or vice versa.

Trevor van Woerden: Well, because you're in Guernsey, I gotta get this.

Just have to because of well well, you've been you've been to the Seattle region. You've you've you've been around. Alright. So, sorry, I digressed. What I was getting to was that by August of last year, I was I was taken by doctor Jim's, live shows. Right? And and you were podcasting at the time. I had tried podcasting myself, and I was like, seriously, bro? No.

We're not doing that.

Kerry Guard:  Help. Yeah.

Trevor van Woerden: Because the editing was just killing me, and I I did. I needed help. And and and, you know, I had show I talked to you about that and it was like this I don't know. It was just it wasn't that I didn't like the concept. I still like the concept, but it was It was just too hard. It was too hard to do. Too hard to edit. It would take me an entire day to make an 8 minute podcast.

Trevor van Woerden: I just and I had no budget. I wasn't gonna hire somebody. So, So, anyway, so August comes around August comes around, and I'm like, hey. Let's try lives. Let's just try live streaming. Let's see what happens because I feel like it's harder to me.

Kerry Guard:

I was like, lives over podcasting. I love it. Yeah. Newsflash, it's easier.

Trevor van Woerden: Really?

Kerry Guard: You thought it was harder? I mean, it's a little bit more of a preparation for it. Like, it's so much easier.

You and I both prepped for this episode in particular, but the back half it's way he's here. Yeah. Yeah. Fun fact.

Trevor van Woerden: Yeah. Like, we can just have Have a real conversation and accept that what's out here is out here. Right? It's all good. I I'm I'm a big live streaming fan, so my My gratitude goes to Steven Ng and Julie Morey who met me live. Actually, Julie Morey, Who was my guinea pig for going live the very, very first time? I used to use Zoom to to go live, don't recommend that, Don't recommend, having to hook up all the keys and all that other junk. It's very difficult, we don't want to do that. So eventually got Trained on Restream by Tara Lafon Gooch, who was very generous with her time and showed me how to make it work. Hooked it up and away I went.

Did a few episodes, with, with Zoom, but it was Heard that. I jumped right on Restream. I jumped on Streamyard train, and I got enemies or something.

Kerry Guard: I no. That's not true. I jumped into Restream for, like, Yeah. Hot second from 1 episode. And then it was trying to charge me for all of, like, just little things. So I was like,

Trevor van Woerden: Really, Restream?

Kerry Guard: And so I hustled back to StreamYard pretty hard.

Trevor van Woerden: Really? No. Yeah. Well yeah. And then I I actually did I was with Restream for a full year and have switched to re to StreamYard now, Mainly because I like the flexibility of the Canvas, and so there's a few things that that well, one thing that I've seen Restream do, and there's probably a few other things that I haven't really figured out yet, but When I forgot to, cancel my renewal Yeah. Boy, they played hardball.

And they they did Restream, Restream. Restream wanted the money. Like, they wanted the $208 or whatever it was. Even though within 15 minutes of that renewal going out, I told them, no. We did this was a mistake. We don't want this. They were like, no. Sorry, bro.

You're you're you gotta You gotta pay it. And I'm like, what? No. I was I'm gonna I'm gonna fight it. And they finally they let me off the hook. But at the same time, I was like, guys, This is who you are. This is your culture. This is how you do business. We're we're done.

We're not we're not we're not gonna play that game. So, Yeah. So I'm I'm I'm all in on StreamYard. I I like this interface. It it it works, You know, it's dependable. You know, Restream's pipes are are clunky.

Kerry Guard: Like, they I think they cut some corners it's on stuff that you can't see on the front side and but so you're doing you're doing live streams

It is a bummer. You had 2 shows. You had, the unleasher show, which I was a part of, which I didn't really under the hotness unleasher.

Trevor van Woerden: Yep. What's interesting about the hotness on the show is that on leisure show.

Kerry Guard: And I didn't really understand it.

Trevor van Woerden: And I was like, alright.

Kerry Guard: I'm just gonna go along for the ride here and see what happens. And I had I had a lot of reservations outside or looking in.

Trevor van Woerden: Yeah.

Kerry Guard: And then you join a guest on it, and the energy, which on both sides is sort of this unreal magical thing that is literally unleashed that you don't see coming from a 100 miles away, and it's this energy that you can't describe or understand until you are part of it. It's wild. I don't know what

Trevor van Woerden: That's really fascinating feedback. I haven't heard that before, but that's that's

Kerry Guard: Well, I just I'm in.

Trevor van Woerden: I'm buy I'll buy it. You know?

Kerry Guard: I So you have, like, 6 people in the show, And each person nominates 3 other people that have impacted their network in some way. And they they didn't even see the people I nominated have never heard of this thing either. Right? And then they wake up in the morning on a Saturday, and they're like, my name has been called, and I'm part of this thing that has over a 100 comp 1,000 comments. What was it that day? It was wild. It was insane. Yeah.

Trevor van Woerden: And so I think it was, like, 12 or 1300 or

Kerry Guard: Yeah. It was wild. Figure out what it is, and they won't really understand it until they're a guest on it 2. Like, it's just this sick loop it's this wonderful thing where it's not about it's not about you as Trevor. It's not about me as the guest. It's about the people we nominate and bring in and call out and say, you've impacted my life and here's the impact you've made and who would you nominate? And then it just keeps going, and it's magical. But you don't but until you're part of it, you don't understand the the gravity of its magic.

Trevor van Woerden: That's that's So awesome you just described it that way because, you know, I, I I'm I'm it has overwhelmed me too. Right. Like, I didn't see that coming. I didn't know. I it's not gonna have it planned out. I just sort of rolled with it, and It it it kinda took on its own sort of thing. Right? It was really about the audience. I mean, the whole premise of that show was to take LinkedIn's Model and turn it upside down.

Right? Because the whole LinkedIn model was look at me, me, me, me. I'm all so great. I've got my it's I'm the CEO. I'm the CXO of blah blah, you know, whatever. I'm so great. I've just, You know, it has been like, put up my resume and walk away. And I was like, wait a minute. Let's turn that upside down and say, To unleash hotness is to pay attention to other people's work, another person or their work in an intentional way.

Let's just do that for an hour, Once a week, not when it first started, and then it changed to once a month. But it was still, like, how do we how do we stop taking looking at ourselves and look at somebody else For a minute. And, you know, it it kinda hit, and it wasn't really ever about I know it kinda comes across as me, as sort of me trying to, like, does that work for you?

There's hell of a lot easier ways to build your network than that. Right? It's not the most it was. Yeah. I mean, it's on the ice right now, but it it Had I had to ice it. Right? I had to because I just couldn't keep up, but but the the I mean, you can build your network More efficiently if you really want to, but it I really, you know, really loved it. And what has emerged, as a result was so I put that on on I I managed I did 15 episodes the 1st season, it was every week, and I was totally exhausted by Thanksgiving of last year And then, took a break, and I wasn't sure I was gonna be able to get back to it. And then I have these 6 friends who showed up, so and I'll name them, and they're not here right I don't see them in the chat, but, I'll name them. So it's Nathan Hill, Adam Spacht, Susannah Dawn, Sam Sierra, Amber Williams, and Nadine Hair.

Right? They all showed up and they said they formed a club and they said, We want The Highness Unleashed Show back, and we're gonna make a show about where'd Trevor go. And and ever since then, we've we've we've all been best friends. So we have this DM chat room, and we keep up. I mean, it's It's crazy busy all the time. We're this is constantly going in there. We, and it's because they came they, like, they collectively came together and and And so we Yeah. We want this thing back, and so I I I brought it back, right, and I managed to e eke out 5 episodes of which The you were on the last one, but then but, hey, it got bigger. It got a lot bigger by that last one, and all of a sudden, that vision That vision exploded in terms of what we could do with it because I realized through that process of wanting to connect with each guest.

Right? Because each guest wasn't really they didn't know me really At that at that point, because I was really just trying to stretch and define people to show up. Didn't really know what the show was about. I didn't know them as well as I wanted to. I couldn't speak into, like, Who they were or why, you know, they would resonate with the rest of this audience or anything like that. And then it became clear that we needed to do these

Kerry Guard: That was awesome. Yeah.

Trevor van Woerden: Warm up episodes. Right? And so you and I did that. Right? Mhmm. Yeah. See, it was kinda like this even. Right? We're just talking, just kinda going on about what what we do and why we do it and so on. And, yeah. And so so that as soon as it became apparent that that that needed to be part of the show, there were 6 guests.

Kerry Guard: Yes. You really know all in that show.

Trevor van Woerden: Right. Tried that for the first time. Yeah. So we had so we had so we had 4 sponsors, six Guest and then the main event. Right? So it was like, oh, bro. Okay. So we're talking, like, 7 show 7 or 8 shows, Something like that to make us kind of this whole composite, deal.

Trevor van Woerden: How was I gonna pull that off? And Without, like, a without a monetization component to it, and I really wanted to be careful, with that because I didn't want that part of it to, I don't know, undermine the the original kind of mission of of the show, getting away of it. So I just kinda thought, alright.

Kerry Guard: This has gotten to be you're bringing it back.

Trevor van Woerden: Bigger than I can really handle right now. So, it's still there. Still Yeah, absolutely, it's coming back. So, I'm planning to implement that whole idea Sometime in probably mid December. I should start actually recruiting now. I got a few ideas for who I wanna bring in. But I think it's the guests are gonna be mostly creators at this point. Just because of who I want to have on the show are people who are into it, right, people who are really active here.

And I think that that group is pretty small, but We all have so much in common. You know, we speak this common language. We sort of experience the same pressures. We know that some of the inter Some of the gossip and and and the players and the and we see the same stuff. We experience the glitches of LinkedIn. The ups and downs of the algo, right, we get all of that. Yeah, right, it's where we bonded. So like, hey, Let's continue to to explore that and turn it into a community.

Turn it into something that is Has has an identity, like, so Ken Donner, for example, Savor the Flavor. Right? That guy, that dude's personal brand is is is he back? Right now, I love Ken, right? Ken is he's so no, he's not back. He's stuck over on YouTube, Right, so, I'm like, I'm, you know, I miss him around LinkedIn, but he, you know, whatever, he got himself banned somehow and, okay. Well, that is a thing. That's a risk, right, that we have to take when we're when we're when we're messing around with With, you know, property we don't own. I could get banned. You know, then what? So then it's like, okay, How do we continue to find each other? How do we continue to engage? How do we find trusted environments to to do that? And so creating some structure around, you know, Hot and Stone Lacer Show is important to me, so I'm kind of, Obviously, I'm working on that and, recruiting people who are really active and committed to it. So, And, you know, we're out here.

I met I came Nathan Hills got his own show, Tilted Bench. Found, Danielle Danielle Amy yesterday. Like, Holy crap, man. She's fire. Like glitter is just I only and I was I was 20 minutes late. I only got her for the last 10 minutes. I just almost fell out of my chair. I just passed on like, where have you been my whole life? You know, her energy was just outstanding and, you know, it was like, wow, okay, I need more of that And, you know, so, like, some people, they just, you know, kinda continue to bubble up and and get seen.

And I think this This context, this kind of live show interface allows us to more deeply, more spontaneously. I know I was trying to make a video yesterday, couldn't do it. Just couldn't do it. I couldn't I couldn't I didn't trust that I had the right tone, the right kind of complete message and ultimately decided I just need to just need to talk about it, honestly, like, in a q and a sort of thing, like, in a dialogue, because I I couldn't just punch it out with a with a scripted, you know, 2 minute video. It just wasn't working.

Kerry Guard: I love it. And in April or May, Simon Chow was like, you gotta go live, and I was like, I don't know what you're talking about. He's like, no. No. No. It's gonna be okay. You gotta go live. And I made the leap with Tara Pollock, and I haven't looked back since.

And it has been such a game changer. In some ways, it's harder, a little bit more pressure, but in most ways, it's easier, way more liberating because we have comments. We have people here who are joining us. We got, Abimbola who's been on your show, multiple times in terms of both live and in the comments. Hi, Evan Bolo. So good to see you. We got David Ketchin who's joining us in what a beautiful comment of a charming way. And we're global.

Trevor van Woerden: Oh, he's in New Zealand. He's one he's he's one of my favorites.

Kerry Guard: Global. So it is it is a beautiful thing to go live here.

I gotta know let's dive into your ethos. The whole reason why we've came to this conversation, which has really been about meaningful relationships and how that impacts our marketing and sales at the end of the day. And so you've built

Trevor van Woerden: Mhmm.

Kerry Guard: With a little probing, a frame. You've been doing this for a while, but you finally put, like

Trevor van Woerden: Yep.

Kerry Guard: I'm calling it a framework, Peter Wheeler. I'm calling it a framework.

Trevor van Woerden: Yeah.

Kerry Guard: You finally put a a definition

Trevor van Woerden: Around it and how you go about doing

Kerry Guard: What you do to cultivate these relationships and ultimately lead as a center of influence. So tell us what what that is, and then let's break it down.

Trevor van Woerden: What's cooking? Okay, so, you're totally right. So, a lot of this, Has been true for me for my entire sales career. So starting in 1996 or whatever when I was hired by Merck Pharmaceuticals, like, So the whole thing, that whole that company is built on George Burke's guidance saying like, look, do what's right for the patient and the profits will follow. Alright. Super famous. Like, this is a One of the all time sales quotes. Right? When I bought that hook, line, and sinker, right, I was just like, okay, that means I don't have to be a used car salesman. I don't have to I I don't have to do that pushy persuasion thing.

I just do the right thing and we're good to go. And so I've carried that with me, and And it doesn't always translate to being the super sales leader of the universe. Right? It it but it has translated to me sustaining a career for 25 years. One that I'm proud of and one that has, as, you know, has kept me alive and has provided for my family, so and one that I feel good about and I sleep well at night. So fast forward to Last year, last summer, Kate Irwin, who is lovable and divine on this platform and you don't know her, she's amazing. She was also heavily influential, in my life.

Kerry Guard: Okay. Let's tag her.

Trevor van Woerden: She's got this song, and I know you've seen this before, Karen, because

Kerry Guard: I am. Yeah.

Trevor van Woerden: Okay. It's it's alright. Because you're because you're in media. Right? So alright. Alright. So have you ever received an email from a media seller saying, do you have any incremental Incremental budget at the end of the quarter. And I and the thing is I've sent that email. I've sent that**.**

Okay? And And so she she she puts this to to to to made it into a song. Right? So if you find her Kate Erwin, e r w I n, You put it up on on you go to her, her profile. She's got it up there. Holy crap. I mean, I laughed Out of my chair. Alright. So this is context. Right? So she's talking about this book called, Sell Without Selling Out by Andy Paul.

And I read it last summer while I'm camping. I'm like, this is it. This is the ethos to which I, that that I follow, that I am that I am bought into. And it's functionally, hey, do unto others as you'd have done unto you. Don't Quit with all this persuasion nonsense. Right? Be influential. Absolutely. Right? Be educated, be cool, But don't

Kerry Guard: Like, what?

Trevor van Woerden: I think we've all felt free to give us some of these things like junk. Alright. Don't don't just don't. Oh, you know, it's like, Gosh. This is just great example. So sales a sales trap is where you would say, like, like, You like, you know, you like drinking clean water? You know? You like clean water, don't you? And then you're like, well, yeah, sure. So, you know, and and then you're like, well, why don't you know, here's this here's the clean water for you, and you you have to buy it because you're like, well, no. I don't want that.

I want this other dirty water. Right? So you you get into these traps or you're Or or or the classic, you get you get actually trapped on a in a, on a bus through a timeshare presentation. Holy smokes, where they're like, hey. You spend x 1,000 of dollars per year on your stuff. Wouldn't you like to spend less? Well, yeah, absolutely, I'd like Wouldn't you like to stay at a great resort like this? Well, yeah. Absolutely. I'd like to spend less at a great resort like this. Well, then here you go.

We're like, well, shit. I didn't wanna spend $15,000 Yeah. Today, you know, well, why not? This is what you said. Right? You have to listen to me.

Right. And, so it's that kind of stuff, right, where you You set people up to into agreement cycles and and instead of actually just solving the problem that they have when they wanna have it solved. So, I actually went out I I I I had it on Kindle, and, and he I was on page, It was page 52 or 50 something of his book last night, of Andy Paul's book, And it was the 1 question about why you. And this really has kinda come back to me. And it was why, Like, I have so many options that I can buy, particularly like in SaaS, for example, right? We have, like, so much commoditization, so many tools do Very, very similar thanks. And, you know, perform very similar functions. So why should I buy it from you, Trevor, you, Karyn. Why should I buy Agency Services from from you? Right? Or, you know, whatever it is.

And That really got down into me, right, last summer. I was like, oh, why should they? Like, why why why do they Karen, if I'm just acting like a sales guy who's just doing sales guy stuff, even the social prospecting piece, What was different about me? What did I bring? What was my different what was my personal differentiator In in our market to make people wanna say, well, yeah, I'd rather buy from you, Trevor, in a, lead generation, Right. Buy infused media than, you know, from somebody else who's selling, you know, something that I can't really discern to be, you know, different. And why would I do that? Well, because I've I've gotten to know you. Right? I've gotten to know you digitally, and so that's that's kind of been the the, you know, the impetus for a lot of how I show up here, right, which is to be as authentic as possible. So when we we That's this ethos, this ethos of treat people right, treat people and Sol with with respect And know that they're coming to a conversation in a with a prepared, Right. With an idea of what it is they need, what problems they have with a lot of lot of research already done. So park that. Well, see, that's the thing. And so as we as I started to really kinda dive into this, Was in a conversation earlier this week with a friend who was talking about the some enthusiasm for the challenger sale. Right? So, the Challenger Sale is a, or the Challenger Sales Model methodology is a recognized framework or method. I use those interchangeably even though technically they're not, but, process, if you will, an approach to how to sell. And it's based on this idea that you take control of the conversation and that you challenge your prospect to to to think differently about the problem that they have and so thatand then you can guide them to your your solution. Kind of let them discover that your solution is Is the one that to purchase. Well, it done well, it doesn't come across. You're you you you take this role as a teacher. Right. You're you're teaching them to and it's it's intentional. And so to the degree to which it's intentional, it's perhaps manipulative. But they're all kind of manipulative in the end.

Right? So the the idea then is that I was like, okay. Wait a minute, guys. I was I was trying to, like, make peace with this, and I I couldn't I couldn't because it what it didn't do, none none of these and there's and I went out. I found this this great blog on HubSpot. Right? There there are No la no fewer than 12 sales methodologies. Right? There's SPIN, NEAT, conceptual, snap, challenger, Sandler, medic, Solution inbound target account, command of the sale.

Kerry Guard: And if anybody's gonna find a good list, it's gonna be HubSpot.

Trevor van Woerden: Yeah. That's just that's just a list of HubSpot Yeah. Found. That's a lot. Okay. Okay. Great. So so I was reading through those, And I'm like, wait a minute. This isn't jiving because one of the things that I have been saying for the last, I don't know, forever, has been The Sales Source Opportunity Mandate, okay, is Yeah.

Trevor van Woerden: So basically saying, like, look, sales, you've got to go out and create your own man, your own ops.

Kerry Guard: Gotta go find your honeypot.

Trevor van Woerden: You gotta go find your honeypot. Got a marketing team here, but you know what? They're not accountable to your honeypot. You go you're the one. You got to drive it. And if they're not doing it, not our problem. You fill your pot yourself. Okay. And you gotta make piece of that.

So and and and I was have I've struggled with that. I have struggled with that because I think that that represents an over an overinvestment in sales capacity Relative to marketing? Okay. So marketing's ability to fill this to to keep sales running in front of Of, of a demand curve, I think is a healthier, environment. And Than to say that I'm I've got a gigantic team of hungry reps who can never who are never full And who are never happy and who are constantly chasing stuff and going rogue and doing whatever they feel like. I would much rather have fewer reps We're just flat out working 20 hours a day, making money hand over fist, happier as happy as happy can be, And just killing it. Okay? That that to me is awesome, but that's not happening. Okay? Nobody's buying that. No nobody.

K. This idea that sales carries its own opportunity creation pipeline is is a big deal And is I think it's permanent. So

Kerry Guard: Wait. Let's sit there for a second because I think this is really important because there is lanes that we're supposed to be in as marketing and sales, or is there? And I think this is coming to a head right now of whose responsibility is it to revenue at the end of the day. And I think a lot of us are starting to argue that it's all of our responsibilities regardless of how we need to get there. And both marketing and sales serve a purpose, and the purposes of both are changing.

Trevor van Woerden: Right? I I think to a degree, yes. I I I if you had asked me this a year ago or maybe 8 months ago, I just said that there is this blended, This this sort of this blended revenue attribution Idea, but I I have moved away from that recently and I have moved more towards saying, More more toward a traditional definition, right, which is kinda what I was trying to get to, which is like, look, If you've got if you're not hitting your numbers, cut your sales team. Right? Get the right size that sales team. Quit Quit building so much capacity into this team that it can never be satiated and and is and is so Expensive, right? Because senior AEs are not cheap. Mhmm. Alright? They're they're that is an and and and the reason they're not cheap is because they're actually They're they they were not gonna work for free, and they have to literally bust their butts to get any kind of real business going because they've gotta go and create it from scratch. Because The system, the demand system in a commodified market of SaaS solutions is hard. Alright.

Especially if you're in the in the whatever the lower third Gartner quadrant, right, and you're hustling against somebody who's at the I mean, these things are real and and And or a product that doesn't really solve a problem. Okay. It's just got a set of features. Okay. I mean, these are things you gotta deal with. So I think that if we're gonna back into we all need to share this revenue number, Then we need to hold product more accountable. We need to hold the executive team more accountable. We can't just throw it all at the feet of GTM and walk away.

Right. Go to market, because that's not fair, right? We have to own that the product isn't well made, it's Not solving a real problem or it is, and great. We can hustle. And and that that success shouldn't all be late at the feet of GTM either. Gong. Alright. That whole GTM team does not get to take all the credit. Product gets a lot of credit for when for that for that thing.

Alright? Salesforce, Google. Right? Any of these tools that came out, Outreach at the time. Right? It it when it came out, I mean, it was awesome. Right? Solved a huge problem. It was a great product. I'm not gonna say and and and so when we divorce product from the the whole outcome set, I don't think that that's fair. So I said a lot there. I don't know if I really hit it.

Kerry Guard: No. But it's fair. I think I think it's not just putting all of revenue on marketing and sales, but looking at it as a collective, as an organization, and saying how are we as an organization going to meet these goals, and what's all of our collective responsibility and accountability to make it happen. And I think that it's a lot of pressure on marketing and sales that maybe product and leadership feel we just they just keep pushing marketing. They they think marketing and sales is the answer. Mhmm. And it's a yes, and.

Like Yeah. It can only be the answer if the product is solving the real problem that it's supposed to solve, and and is there an audience, and is there a private market fit? And and sometimes that's lost. So I think that's a good question.

Trevor van Woerden: Yeah. And I think that from a from a business standpoint, we need to ask is, is our sales team fully tapped? Right. Is our sales team are their calendars fully booked? Right? Are they struggling to keep their appointment Slots filled, right? And if the answer is yes, then we need to be either cutting back on our sales team or we need to be hiring, Doing more marketing or have a better product, right? Because this is kinda where I was headed then, and then and until the and if the answer's no, We actually do really truly want sales to be out doing 1 to 1 marketing, prospecting, also known as prospecting, cold calling. K. Then these these sales frameworks, you know, that we've just talked about, Snap and Spin and Whatever, challenger. Don't matter because they're not accounting for what it took to get to the table in the 1st place.

Kerry Guard: Right.

Trevor van Woerden: Alright. Because everything that that sales rep had to do to get to the conversation, To have a Snap, Spin, Challenger, whatever converse sales pitch was shaped by the work that it took to get there. So I can tell you right now that if I got a referral, that's a totally different conversation than if it was an inbound, Which is a totally different conversation than if I went out and I I was able to create a connection somehow on LinkedIn, which totally different conversation. I met somebody at a trade show, totally different conversation. Right? So these all of these frameworks are are are are all kind of up in the air all the time. Right? So and none of them account for how did we get there? How did we get to the opportunity? So to your question, Long, long, long answer was Bridger. Right? That's what came to me yesterday As I was trying to encapsulate, like, how are we gonna approach this? How do we take the sales methodology frameworks, Can I use those 2 words together? It's methodology framework. Anyway.

Kerry Guard: Ethos, all the things.

Trevor van Woerden: Ethos. How do we take the ethos of Andy Paul, right, The sell without selling out. How do we take this, just be cool, right? Don't manipulate, be influential, be authoritative, solve problems, And combine that with, holy smokes, your approach at the table is influenced by how you got there. Okay. And so the 1st idea was bridge, right? And I, you know, so I went out to Chat GPT and I said, Hey, Chat GPT, Got this idea. Got bridge on my mind, right? I wanna go because the sales rep is having to bridge this chasm, right, of Buyer over here, product over here, and our job is to somehow

Kerry Guard: Bring them together.

Trevor van Woerden: Bring them together. You know, I like to say, we we facilitate the transfer of value between parties. Okay. So we're doing that. Okay. And how do we bridge that? And so I went to chat to you, she said, Bridge. Okay. Can you give me a here's here's the thing I want.

Trevor van Woerden: Here's my here's my word. Can you acronymize it? Right? And and ChatJee, but she's so good at that. Right? It's so good. And and it did. Right? And as I was going through this, I was looking at it. I was looking at its first responses. I'm like, oh, you know, you're kinda missing collaboration, cocreation, Which are really, I think, key to this ethos. And I was like and then responsiveness, then it became Bridger.

And so Bridger, I think in my mind was a more of active, right? It's like, what am I as a sales rep Doing. I'm not I'm not a I'm not a bridge. I'm a bridger. I'm facilitating this This connection, this breaking a bridge and making it all happen. So I kinda got excited about that and so it's an acronym and I'll kinda lay it on Here. So it was

Kerry Guard: Hold on. Before you get there, I wanna be really obnoxious

Trevor van Woerden: Okay.

Kerry Guard: And call out because I think this is a huge shift that's coming. We're totally gonna run over folks, but don't worry. We'll put it up on all of the things. We'll make clips out of it. You will have it in all of the ways. So you have to sit here for an hour and a half because we will run over, and it's gonna be glorious. I promise. I wanna stay here for a second.

And if you're here with us, please comment because I can't see you unless you're in the comments. You're hanging out, and you're asking questions, and you're having your own conversation. So get in there and make it happen. Alright. Coming back to this. Before we get into the acronym of what Bridger stands for, the point of this and the the differentiator here between this and the spins and the all those other acronyms you named of the world from a sales perspective, and you said it, but I wanna double down on it, is that you are actively, as a salesperson, going out and creating relationships outside of what market like, marketing is providing the air cover and the visibility, but to build trust as humans has got to be a 1 to 1 interaction that cannot scale through marketing and automation. It has to come from human to human interaction. There's some marketers who are going out there and doing it and doing it really well, and you are one of the salespeople that I've seen do it and do it really well.

And I love that you've created an ethos around how to help other sales folks think about this. Get out of your lane, Get out there and make relationships and figure out what people need. And I hate to break it to y'all, but you might not be the solution, and that's okay because if you can point people in the right direction of the solution that they need, they're gonna remember that it was you that helped them regardless of making the sale. So okay. I'm off my soapbox. Coming back to you, Trevor.

Trevor van Woerden:

Alright. I wanna expand on 2 things you said. So the first is relational. Right? So the relational thing gets gets beat up because challenger says the relational seller is not as good as the challenger seller. Flat out, point blank says, boom. If you're a relational seller, you suck. K? So that's that is an issue in this in this whole sales framework, you know, universe that we live in. Right? Well So you're not supposed to create relationships? That's what it's saying.

Apparently not. Apparently not. Apparently, by the time you get to the table, you're not supposed to be creating relationships, but how the hell will you get to the table if you didn't create a relationship? Right? So it's like, Right. So it's like this. Okay? And then and then, and then I got so excited, I can't remember what to say. Oh, the, I'll come back to it. No. Damn it.

I can't remember. The the, you said something else really good. Dang it. So, again, the relationship piece is It's Keith. So I'm gonna say to reps, look, I'm almost there. I was near bound. Okay. So it's it's saying, like, look, we these These marketers and and sellers, yeah, we're all in this together.

I came across this idea of Nearbound. So Nearbound is a is a It's an idea. I think it might even be a company. Anyway, it's, but even that isn't really accounting for How you achieved your your sales talk opport your chance at that talk at that at that How you got there. And how you got there influences everything. And I do wanna say hello to Ken Diner because Ken Diner showed up from YouTube. I see that. There it is.

I see you, Katie j, Savor the Flavor. Right? Savorthe flavor.

Ken Diner is he's he's he's he's the best. Alright. So And we

Kerry Guard: got Ramathula as well. Yeah.

Trevor van Woerden: I don't know Ramathula, so we're good there, but, I love it. Alright. So Bridger Is this idea that we can take all of this great stuff, right, these these components of Challenger that we like and other things that we don't like, and we can challenge Challenger, Right. We can, you know, think about frameworks. We can think about how we're gonna do our demo, how we're going to listen, how we're gonna Ask do discovery not ask dumb questions, actually ask intelligent have conversations, treat people like humans, but also account for what it took, Right. To to get that to happen. And so to to your point, yes, it it's Tough battle. It's a tough battle, and it's a digital, we're living in a digital context too.

So, you know, I was on the Whiskey Wednesday call after our after party last night, and Topher Evans blew out his number. Right. He's a he's a sales guy. I hear he's kind of in sort of parallel communities and he did that by actually going in person because he has a limited geography to his accounts. Old school, totally old school. And that's coming back, I promise, that is coming back because it is the challenge of for the digital seller is that it is infinitely easier to just not reply, right, to it to Outreach. Right. How does a digital seller deal with that? Right? How do you just try and try and try and write the perfect email, Perfect subject line.

You know, this just gets talked about and then nothing. Even to establish contacts, even to establish prospects, Why is it that they just gone? Right? Disappear. Because it's easy to do that and it's easy For that client, that prospect to even once established, can just Detach instantly. And it's much, much harder to do if you're in person, which is really that old school Method. Right? But you, like, you're in Guernsey. What sales rep is gonna call on you in person? None ever. Right? If you're in London, a totally different story. Right? Totally different story.

You'd have reps crawling all over you. If I was tell you what, if I was a media rep, I'd be living in London right now. That's where I'd be. But the, if I wasn't already disestablished in my little my little digital office here. But listen, Bridger is this idea that, Go ahead. Have your ethos. Have your framework. Have your thing.

But you if you're not accounting for Adjustment based on how you got to the table, then you're missing 80, 90% of the entire Tire puzzle. Even if you got there because you're because the PE firm, you know, had a relationship, right? That's going to be a different conversation, right? Or VC or your founder introduced you, or or or is your college chum? These are all different.

Kerry Guard: The scripts are dead. You can't follow you can't just show up to any conversation with the same script. You really gotta

Trevor van Woerden: I know.

Kerry Guard: You do. So let's talk about the bridger method then.

Trevor van Woerden: Okay.

Kerry Guard: And because it starts well before you get to the table.

Trevor van Woerden: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So where does it start

It starts right there. Right? It starts with, b. Right. So b. I love chat GPT. Isn't this so great when it can just help? Right? So this was so I give the concept. Right? So b. So Build, right? So that's what that stands for.

It's build. It's it's forge that genuine trust with prospects and you set out like, hey, look, not gonna manipulate you. We're not we're not we're not gonna do that, right? We're gonna build a foundation of trust, however That comes if it's a referral from your money, from your VC or your PE firm, or your founder or whatever, or if it's old college buddy, or if it's, you know, personal friend or whatever, You're gonna you're gonna build that trust relationship. Alright. So then the r was like, okay, that happened. Right now we're at the Oh. Right. So now we're gonna we're gonna dig into the what the unique challenges are.

We're gonna show empathy and understanding. Alright. So then the I is gonna fire. So this is coming from Andy Paul, but it's also kind of the challenger sale a little bit, which is like you wanna dream bigger. Right? You had a problem, but now we wanted the sales rep's job is to kind of spam that. Right? Like, what is that ideal outcome? You got the pain, and you got you got pain behind the pain. Right? It's like, what's the real where's can we deal, like, attack the beer? Yeah. Right.

So where's the the onion.

Yeah. How do we peel that back? How do we inspire a vision of caramelized onions, baby? Right? We want those. Oh, good. Who doesn't want that? Right?

Kerry Guard: Slow and slow.

Trevor van Woerden: Slow and slow. You know? Just add a little sugar, make it nice, put that in a new add a burger. I mean, it's all good. Right? So you want that. Right. And the sales rep's job is to kind of plant those seeds. It's not in a manipulative way, but it's still that's our job. Right? We wanna make it, In an authentic, you know, way, do that.

So it's an that's the inspiration component. You know, Discover, right, is kind of stepping back a little bit, but still actively listening And really making sure that that are we on track? Okay. We can inspire all day long. Right? But if that ain't gonna fly, you know, it's your $15,000, you know, dream of a of a of a of a timeshare. Okay. Yeah. I want that. Oh, I don't have the money.

You know? Okay. So let's just get back on the bus, take our 5th of, you know, whatever.

Kerry Guard: you know You gotta be in alignment so you can start all day, but if you're not in alignment.

Trevor van Woerden: Yeah. So discover and accept. Right? So then guide. Right? So serve as that trusted adviser, and this is In line with a lot of sales frameworks, right? Challenger among them. Right? You you have to, like, be the guide. Right? You don't want to be the hero of the story. They're the your client is the hero. Right? We get that.

Right? They are solving their you're just guiding them kind of along. You're the you're the Obi Wan. Luke is the hero. Right? It's like these are these are old, You know, and and well established, you know, roads that we we travel on. And and then we wanna engage, right? So engaging when we have the We're at the table. We've got agreement. We've inspired. They want to do it.

Okay? Then we collaborate and we fill in all those blanks. We we we are able to address the details, Right? And we're able to to say, yeah, okay, this this is the thing you gotta think think about, right? And so I deal with this all the time and infuse, okay, it's like, Well, how many leads per account do you want? Oh, you want you want 3? Well, why would you only want 3? I only want, like, 10. What do you mean I want 10? Well, because. Because this is, you know, because why would you attack an account and only 1? Anyway, we get into that. So, it's like these little details of saying, we gotta Gonna get get down in the weeds and you're as a rep, you have to be able to do that. Right? So that's the e. And then respond is, Don't blow off your client, for Pete's sake. Don't take 3 days to get back.

I mean, this is Tim Davidson's favorite part. Right? Tim Davidson rips on this Every day that he possibly can, which is why do I have to wait 96 hours to get a a calendar offer? Right.

Kerry Guard: You shouldn't have to go. Leave a call. We we don't get off the phone until we have the calendar set up for the next God. I mean, is this no brainer?

Trevor van Woerden: Or or or or or when your client emails you, respond to it Today. Like, now.

Kerry Guard: Yes.

Trevor van Woerden: K. Don't don't sit around and wait for 3 minutes.

Kerry Guard: You don't have the answer. Like, it don't like, if you go off and ask somebody to get, like, the initial response and you you have to wait over it, like, don't wait to have the answer. Let them know that they've been seen and heard and that you're figuring it out, and then tell them when you're gonna get back to them.

Trevor van Woerden: That's that's rep 101 right there. It's rep 101. And so many reps just, you know, oh, you're small fry. I don't you don't matter. You didn't you didn't follow my

Kerry Guard: Oh, those small fries matter, and they matter today because they grow until tomorrow and the day after that and day after that, like

Trevor van Woerden: Well, and in a digital context, you never know. You never know who

Kerry Guard: And then they leave go somewhere else. Yeah.

Trevor van Woerden: Yeah. Yeah. They they they're they're at at company company nobody, and then and then all of a sudden they're working for Fortune 500, and you're like, oh, mhmm. Sorry. I guess I I guess I missed that up. So, anyway, that's Bridger, b r I d g e r.

Kerry Guard: I love Bridger, and what I love about it most is the b part is the build part. I want to sit there for a minute and unpack that with you because I think the the the r I d g e r part is familiar. It takes practice, especially the active listening part and not responding immediately to everything that you hear. I'm so bad at that. I, like, oh, I I immediately go into I don't I don't fight or flight. I I problem solve. Like, that is my I immediately wanna start problem solving, which is not how you actively listen. Sorry.

Hate to break it to y'all. That's not how you have to listen. But I wanna sit in the b part because I think that's where your secret your personal secret sauce, the Sharva Van Werten, sits that I that I think we all need to as both marketers and salespeople. And more marketers are starting to do it, which is brilliant. And maybe salespeople are doing it. I just can't see it because I I'm not as active in that community. So you're seeing it more. But this idea of building your own network and finding your own honeypot and being comfortable in the uncomfortable Of creating those relationships, knowing that 90% of them aren't gonna be anybody you work with, but you just don't know where it'll take you.

Is that fair? Did I I sort of said that off the cuff, but

Trevor van Woerden: No. I think it's I think it's super fair. The the what came to my mind Just when you were saying that, is I met a guy, Andre Faggi, works for PandaDoc, and I met him by virtue of My, intentional, you know, work to find people who, you know, might possibly be a customer. And he and I have hit it off, right? We're friends now, right? He like he's awesome, right? He's totally great. And one of the things that he he said, And not because he's gonna be a customer, just because he thinks and he's and he's responsive, and I dig that. Right? And and one of the things he said was like, we get hung up on Convincing ourselves that we can only talk about the thing that we're employed to talk about, Particularly in a in a transparent context like LinkedIn. Okay. So, where everything we say is like, anybody could see it, basically, so They don't, but at the same time, it's okay.

It's okay to reveal that you got lost In the dark while trying to get to your recital, whatever what you had. Right? That was awesome. Okay. It was a great story, and it wasn't anything to do with MKG Or anything. It was about you getting lost in confusing streets in Guernsey in the dark. It was awful. But it endeared me to you. Okay? And and, you know, Andre is talking about the pretenders, and and I was like, yeah.

The Tenders, I get that. I I, you know, the you know, I'm I'm down with that, with with what he was where he was headed, and I got to know him a little better, and not because I wanted to manipulate that into some kind of sales opportunity, but mostly just because I thought it was cool and I wanted to connect over it, right? And So I I'm celebrating this idea so that that's where my brain went when you said that. It was like, don't be afraid to To to talk about things that aren't necessarily within our job scope, and I'm not seeing that from sales yet very much. Okay. I see that from people who have to sell something, e. G. Like a coach, right, or a solopreneur kind of person Oh! Who's got a lot of, you know, personalities going, But but they don't have permission. So, basically, what I did to deal with that is I actually functionally split my personality on LinkedIn.

I set up a business page that was Trevor at Infuse Media, and so that allowed me to have a Singular sort of focal conversation about demand gen, about those kinds of topical on point, Like, why I was there making why I was relevant to that conversation so that it didn't so that person didn't have to, like, connect all the dots. Right. But then I could also say, like, hey, if you wanted to connect start Connect Dots. If you wanna go there, come over to my personal profile. I'm talking about everything else. You know, I'm talking about my physical fitness challenges, talking about live streaming, talking about whatever, talking about Kids and and and and other stuff, you know, within a safe context of

Kerry Guard: Owning a van, all the things.

Trevor van Woerden: Yeah. All the stuff, owning a van, minivans, why minivans are great. Getting getting tea thrown into my into my window.

Kerry Guard: How appropriate. Sounds like inappropriate.

I think that's those are the conversations. Those are the moments that make us human. And so I think there's 2 sides that you're talking to here. One is the engaging part on actively listening to the people who are telling their stories and in engaging in those in an authentic way of from a from a vulnerability, authenticity, and, even your own, you know, connection way of, like, adding to that and experiencing sharing of your own experience of something you may have gone through in relation to that, right, joining the conversation, as Danny so eloquently put it, almost a year a year and a half ago at this point. Yeah. Right? So join the conversation that's already happening. And then on the flip side, something that you do so beautifully is creating the conversation. Right? So that's what hotness unleashes been.

That's what the early has been is your way of bringing and that's what tea time is for me. Tea time isn't about I try very hard not to make it about me. Can't help myself but to experience share because I'm human. But it's really about the guest and their experience and what they bring to the table, right, and amplifying those voices and creating those opportunities for our audience to be heard. And so I think it's gotta be both, and I think it's really hard to ask salespeople who've been stuck in these frameworks for so long to give them permission to break out And to step on marketing's toes

And go create 1 to 1 relationships and build that trust so marketing can create the air cover for you, but as a salesperson, like, you're the hero at the end of the day that gets to go build that rapport and help people find the thing they need to do their jobs better. And that might be you, and that might not be you, but at the end of the day, they're gonna remember the person that helped them get there.

Trevor van Woerden: Yeah. I certainly hope so. Right? I mean, that's the idea. Like, we wanna be remembered. We wanna leave, You know, some good, you know, some good crumbs. Right? And and even if we didn't get picked that time, you know, we wanna like, yeah. I contributed Positively to this to this outcome. And, yeah, even if I failed to get the deal, right, so that was our topic today, right, your of your of your post today, like, I didn't get the deal done, but okay.

Trevor van Woerden: Well, what did I do? What how did I contribute? Did I contribute at all? And if I did, then I can feel you know, I can I can take some some respite in that and how can I maybe get the deal next time and if I'm cool, then there will be a next time? I can take I can have faith in that.

Kerry Guard: What has been some of the outcomes for you in this journey in closing out here. Right? So you made the sleep to be more relationship driven, to break some of the rules of the frameworks to build your own ethos. And we're all about outcomes as marketers and salespeople. We have to we have we have to abide by numbers at the end of the day to say here's the actions we took, and here's the outcomes of those actions. So can you help us understand, like, what this has been for you on both the personal business side in terms of those outcomes.

Trevor van Woerden: Well, I think if we look at one outcome, this the one that we're having right now, this experience. Right? That you are A bonafide card carrying owner of a marketing agency, okay, hosting a show called Tea Time with Tech Marketing Leaders. So here I am, a seller being invited to appear on your show, which has been live for 3 years. Okay, that's an outcome that I'll take that, right, because we've created a relationship Chip. And it's one where I think it if I can be perceived as or accepted as As a marketer, as a seller, but still with a mark with really wanting to to pay attention to the needs of the marketer, Then great. And from there, it's the depth and the frankness of the conversations That I'm having. Now the tech business has just been under assault, right, for the last year. Mid June of 22 is when it started, and I know that for a fact because I was there watching it when it happened.

And It's been terrible, right? And so many of my clients and buyers have been laid off, okay? And yet I still have relationships with them. Right? I was I you know, we we trade, you know, DMs. You know, Lisa Hackbarth was on your show. Right? That was That was a referral that I made, right? Danny and I, you know, we'll trade DMs, and and many others, right, where we're Able to have this real dialogue where and and that did not happen, okay, a year ago. Right. That was not in the cards. There was none of this going on, and so I feel like To the extent that that some of these cycles come back around, you know, I'm I'm in a position to to have, you know, frank, Trusted conversations. So those foundations have been built.

I think there's sort of extraneous issues that are, have impacted the real, you know, the the real, Like business outcomes, that hard revenue, those card contract numbers, but at the same time, you know, I'm, You know, I'm I'm on track to to make make hit quota, right? So, hey, what what more what more rep can can a more can a rep what more can a rep ask for, really? I mean, you could ask for a blowout, but, you know, I I blew up my last 2 years, so it's like, hey.

Kerry Guard: In a downturn, in a tough year, you're still hitting your quota. That's Yeah.

Trevor van Woerden: I'm on track. I'm not there yet. I I I hit it early last year, and then this year is is is tougher, but I'm on track. So we'll we'll take that. Yeah. Yeah.

Kerry Guard: Amazing. Trevor van Woerden. Oh, my gosh. Overdue. About damn time. In closing out, I do have my people first question. Which one am I going to ask? I have 3 of them. I'm going to ask I'm gonna start with, have you picked up any new hobbies in the last few years given COVID and the change of the world? Just, you know, what's important to you outside of work these days?

Trevor van Woerden: What's important to me outside of work These days I've been pretty transparent, so it feels like it's it's overdone already, but I put on a ton of weight When I, got started, like, seriously in getting into LinkedIn and I've cut it. I've managed to get that under control. So that's a big hobby of mine. It takes a lot of time and energy and, have Have so it's more than a hobby. Right? So I I got my scale, I weigh the food, do the portions. I follow this book Wow. By this dude, Peter Atia, who I'm following, a t t I a, and so he advocates a high protein, you know, diet, so I'm doing the weights and Oh! All that, so a lot of my energy is going toward not dying, Basically. So yeah.

Kerry Guard: It's paid off. Like, you've made some towards your goals, you've made some serious progress in a short period of time.

Trevor van Woerden: I have. I've I've, I've been really, successful in that, and I and right now, it's actually It's a critical time because it as I I'm starting this month two and a half, right, so it's July 23rd I started. Now that I'm kind of in this the slower phase, right, like all the early gains are okay. Got them. Awesome. Now how do we build? How do we how do we how do we keep going when it's going, it's gonna get tough because I've got birthdays, I've got Halloween, I've got Thanksgiving, Christmas, I mean, you name it. There's lots and lots of obstacles here. So I'm into it, right? So I I I bought my Rogue Gecko bike, my you know, the air the air bike.

Right? I got that. I got it hooked up. I got a heart rate monitor coming on Sunday because you Funny thing about this Rogue bike is that it blows this air on you, right, this wind, so you don't sweat. Right? You're constantly cool. You're air cooled. So

Kerry Guard: Oh my gosh.

Trevor van Woerden: So the feedback is limited. Right? You don't you're not saying, oh, how hard am I working? I don't know because I just got this wind on me. I'm in a I'm in a turbine.

Kerry Guard: See, like, a video. It's like your. Yeah.

Trevor van Woerden: Yeah. It's like that. So and my daughter was on, and her hair's long. It was just like, she sound like this. So, anyway, that's it. That's that's a hobby that I have, I'm I'm deeply invested in right now.

Kerry Guard: Oh, what a dedication. It's a it's a battle. It's yeah. Because it's it's the it's getting started, which is always the hardest of any new goal, and then sticking with it when it plateaus or doesn't quite make the gains that you're like, why is this not happening the way that it was?

Trevor van Woerden: Gaining. Yeah. How come I'm not doing it so fast anymore? You know? Where's my where's my £2 a week? What did I gain? What happened?

Kerry Guard: Damn. Alright. Last question for you is if you could travel to anywhere in the world without staying in long lines or the TSA or whatever is in our way at any given moment. Flight cancellations. Let me tell you all. Flight cancellations are freaking real right now, but let's pretend none of that exists. Where would you go and why?

Trevor van Woerden: We'll have a shell. Absolutely. Without with that Without hesitation. I know it's like you can throw a rock to it. Yeah. No. That that's been on my bucket list since The day I saw it as some as a little kid in a book. And I've been to France a couple times, been to London once, been to Guernsey, never been to Molchan, Michelle, and I don't know.

Trevor van Woerden: It's, like, fascinating. You get built a built a castle out on this island in the Tide Flats. It's It just blows my mind. I wanna go there so bad, and yet it's always been, like, just kinda what you said. If I could just, like, Plop myself, dude, like the, you know, Beam me up Scotty kind of thing. I do it. It's just I don't even know how to get there. You know, it's like It's so far out in the middle of nowhere, and and there's, like, no buses.

Trevor van Woerden: I've try I've researched how like, the process you gotta Yeah.

Kerry Guard: You gotta drive.

Trevor van Woerden: Gotta get on a charter and spend a bajillion dollars, or you can take, like, infinite number of connections to sorta halfway get there. I mean

Kerry Guard: Well, so here's what you're gonna do. You're gonna fly to London, come to Guernsey. We're gonna take the boat over together, and then we'll all drive up. We'll get you there.

Trevor van Woerden: Can't wait. Yes. I've worked.

Kerry Guard: Hour drive. Yeah.

Trevor van Woerden: That's what I wanna do. I can't wait to get there.

Kerry Guard: Amazing. Trevor Van Werten, folks. Trevor, for people who want to find you, follow you, connect with you, all the things. LinkedIn?

Trevor van Woerden: LinkedIn. Totally. Yeah. That's that's where I am, And, it's it's always open, and I pretty much respond to my DMs. I mean, you know, I Unless you're obviously just

Kerry Guard: So much more.

Trevor van Woerden: Me, and then and then we have a then we have a non ethos match, we're we're good.

Kerry Guard: Well, you'll you'll teach them how it's done. So learning opportunity.

Trevor van Woerden: Yeah. I'll give them a chance to to to do something different and then yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you for having me. It's been a thrill it's been great just to Yep. My head off.

Kerry Guard: I love it. I Right. Makes sense.

Trevor van Woerden: On the same page.

Kerry Guard: I'll make it happen.

Trevor van Woerden: Do it.

Kerry Guard: So good.

Trevor van Woerden: Alright. Thanks,