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00:00:01
22: Gifting: How To 3x Booked Meeting Rates And 1.8x Win Rates
60 Plays1 year ago
How can you get a meeting with anyone? How do you get meetings booked with complete strangers? You break the pattern. Give personalized gifts - yes, physical gifts. The CEO of Sendoso, Kris Rudeegraap, walks us through why and how to use strategic gifting as an outreach strategy.
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Transcript
Introduction to Strategic Gifting
00:00:02
Speaker
Hey, what's up, guys? In this episode, we're going to sit down with Chris Rudigrap, CEO of Sandoso. We're going to break down why a strategic gifting triples meeting rates, doubles win rates, and reduces the cost of MQL by 43%. Pretty crazy stats there. The conversation is structured around three key sections. What, why, and how, ensuring that you guys leave with a pretty clear understanding of the practice, its rationale, and how to implement gifting successfully for your own B2B business.
Chris's Journey and Challenges in Gifting
00:00:34
Speaker
So Chris, how did you yourself discover how effective gifting was? Yeah, so before starting Sendoso, I spent about a decade in software sales myself. And so I was you know in in the field trying to book meetings. I was sending out emails. I was doing everything every tactic to try to book another meeting and close deals. And this was probably about ah eight or nine years ago I said, Hey, uh, these, uh, kind of email sequencing tools, tout apps, the yes, where's the mail merge tools, the outreach is the sales off started becoming so popular. I'm like, wow, it's even easier to send someone like a gazillion emails. So I need to figure out another solution. And I started writing handwritten notes and sending them out. I'd be on a call and hear a dog bark and quickly go to Amazon to find a dog toy and try to find the person's address and mail it out. Um, or I'd like steal swag from our marketing closet. When, when we had, uh, in office.
00:01:30
Speaker
times and what's what shaffy mark And it all worked really well. It was just crazy hard to but pack boxes and spend hours of my day doing that. Going to the post office or the FedEx place with tons of boxes was annoying. tracking Clicking on tracking links. So it was effective, but it was just like too operationally complex. So I was dreamed up of a better solution to make gifting easier.
The Human Connection in Gifting
00:01:57
Speaker
And so how did you, how did you know that the gifting was working? How did you know it was more effective than the cold emails or all those outreach? things Yeah. I mean, I think it was a combination of one, you know, I would send something to somebody and they would respond after I got it, or they would mention it on like the first call, like, Hey, like I saw a bunch of emails, but you know, once you sent me that, you know, dog toy, I was like, wow, I got it. You know, I got a list center.
00:02:23
Speaker
And so it was a lot of like ah more ah quantitative than qualitative, I'd say, in the early years. of ah But I think gifting has also like psychologically worked and you know forever. There's something about the human connection on giving somebody to something, the reciprocity.
00:02:44
Speaker
And so I knew like you know the the background and kind of the the overarching theme of gifting would work. It was just, could I but repeat the process to make it work for for sales for me?
00:02:59
Speaker
Yeah, no, I think i don't have we haven't done too much of personalized gifting ourselves at Black Camel Agency, but I did have an e-commerce business where i would write two I would sell bow ties. And so in those little packages, I would just write like a two like two sentences, just you know thanking them.
00:03:18
Speaker
And I swear every single review is like, oh, he wrote me such a nice message. It was so nice. And it was like, i you know, I could repeatedly, I could print this out, but no, because it's human. And it's like the fact that I, you know, that I did that for them really stuck out and created a memorable experience. Exactly. Not exactly that. You know, people getting their patterns that and and are prospected all the same way. And so if you can disrupt that,
00:03:45
Speaker
pattern It ah allows you to stand out and grab the attention. And I think in today's world, you're fighting for attention. Yeah, absolutely.
Why Companies Hesitate with Gifting
00:03:54
Speaker
So why why are companies stuck in the traditional outreach? Why aren't they doing more gifting? Why are they only doing email?
00:04:02
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I think that yeah email and ads are perceived as easier, especially if you're doing them without a platform like Sendoso, they are easier. no um and So I think you know that's one thing.
00:04:16
Speaker
I think there's ah it's also easier to tell your boss that you're running the same playbook as like Salesforce did, which is send a bunch of emails and book meetings and hire SDRs. And so you're not going to lose your job by mentioning like, hey, this is how we did it for the last 10 years. um So why dont why should I try something new? um And so I think that's another reason. And then I think there's some miscon misconceptions with gifting that it's expensive, which you know If you look at dollar for dollar, the way that I look at it in a lot of our customers is if it costs $1 to send a gift and it generates $18, well, and an ad is $1 and generates $6, well, what what should he do um or you Or if you can book a new customer you know three months sooner because you grabbed their attention with a gift,
00:05:03
Speaker
Um, and so, uh, I think there's just a lot of misconceptions. Hey, I don't know what to send. So I'm just going to send nothing. Um, that's another thing that, you know, is easy to combat with using a platform like Sandoso as the gifting recommendations. Um, and I think it's like not a, uh, gifting ah or email or gifting or ads. It's it's an ant. You should be trying all these different channels and tactics to break into accounts, to accelerate win rates.
00:05:33
Speaker
um I think that probably everyone listening isn't like, oh, I have too many pipe too much pipeline, too much revenue, too many leads. I think everyone's looking for for for more customers.
Science and Statistics Behind Gifting Effectiveness
00:05:47
Speaker
Absolutely. I'm going to come back to that one. We're going to talk about how to align ah line this with other marketing. But first, I want to go into kind of the reasoning behind it, the science of of gifting.
00:05:59
Speaker
So there was a report done by Sundoso, the revenue impact of gifting. So I want to get some state some key stats here. So outbound gift gifting boosts meeting rates by three times, 3.08 times. Outbound gifting increases win rates by almost two times. Gifting campaigns reduce the cost of MQLs by 43%. And gifting campaign ah SQLs result in larger deals that close 29% faster.
00:06:28
Speaker
So let's, I want to kind of break down yeah break um each part of those things, like kind of how that happens. So meeting rates. Yeah. So the first one, I think meeting rates is probably the most obvious of these in that fact that, you know, you're trying to grab someone's attention with a gift. If you can.
00:06:44
Speaker
you know, send something, stand out, grab the attention, book the meeting. I think that's yeah um probably the most obvious reason why people use gifting too is like, hey, I can conceptually understand how I can book more meetings. So I think that's the obvious one. The increasing win rates, you know, I think that The big thing that we we see our customers do is really ah rethink the the buyer's journey, which I think is often overlooked. You run like the seller's journey. What are what are the 20 steps we're going to do to book this meeting um or to or to close the deal?
00:07:18
Speaker
But if you really rethink the buyer's journey, and oftentimes, one of those things is how do you provide a better experience? And if you're selling in a competitive landscape, if you are standing out from that experience by sending a gift during the buying experience, like a thank you after they book a demo, or sending them instead of that, hey, just checking in, are you going to sign this contract? Instead, it's like, hey, it's Friday. Grab lunch on me today.
00:07:48
Speaker
ah Those types of experiences are going to accelerate win rates and and and differentiate too, so that you'll improve on those win rates. Yeah. And so reducing cost of MQLs. So I think email is free, but if you look at other channels like ads, events, those other ones can be very expensive. And so if you're doing if you're only running ads and you're not using other channels or you're spending too much on ads, then I think it's easy to say, hello hey, this channel can actually convert better um or is more cost-effective dollar for dollar um is how our customers look at it.
00:08:31
Speaker
And so SQS will result in larger deals. How does yeah does that work? So with it, we see this happening. is ah So a lot of companies will segment who they're going to send gifts to. And they're going to be more thoughtful about that gift. And they're going to personalize that gift. And they're going to spend some money on that gift.
00:08:52
Speaker
And so with that extra effort, you're more likely to focus on your better deals or your larger deals. And so you're going to say, hey, I actually really want to close this big client. I'm really going to spend the extra effort. And I think that's where you can result in larger deals that close faster.
00:09:10
Speaker
I think if you look at maybe another channel like email, a lot of companies might kind of squint their eyes and spray and pray and say, I'm going to just send everyone all these emails and I'm not going to go and spend like 30 minutes more and more money on this one email versus this other email. It's a bit more like, ah you know, broad and generic. So I think there's a forcing function with gift because there's some money behind it because you need to personalize it that you're going to use that on your better ah prospects.
00:09:40
Speaker
Yeah, that makes sense. we We say that a lot with with ads. The problem that we see with so many digital ads now is that you can just you know make a little square, write some text on it, and it's just complete crap. But know you can just interchange that and constantly, and you don't put any thought into it. But when you spend $20,000 for our $100,000 for a TV commercial, you're going to think that through and it becomes an amazing ad that yeah you remember that a buyer remembers for 10 years later. um so Yeah, it's a good forcing function. It aligns to what you want in the outcome, but it's also because of the input that you're putting in.
00:10:21
Speaker
Right, right.
Personalization in Gifting Strategies
00:10:23
Speaker
So in terms of of know what gift you're sending, um familiar with your framework of personalizing on the person, signal, or action, could you break that down for the audience? Yeah.
00:10:34
Speaker
and So I think a lot of people talk about personalization. um And a lot of times, specifically personalization for gifting, people think, oh, like Chris likes golf. Chris likes, you know, plants. Chris, you know, has a dog. So those are the things that I'm only going to send him. And that's really personalized around the person. And that works. And I think you should personalize around the person. But if you only are personalizing the person, you're missing the other two, which is signal and action. So signal,
00:11:02
Speaker
is really, hey, they changed your job. Let's send them a bottle of champagne and congratulating them. And so you're really not personalizing necessarily for Chris' hobbies or interests. You're personalizing the signal and why you're you're reaching out, which is that job change, and you're celebrating that job change there.
00:11:22
Speaker
um On the action side, you're really personalizing around what the call to action is and what do you want that prospect or our customer to do. So an example I use is like, hey, if you're trying to get somebody to come to ah you know an an exact golf event, you know rather than just a generic email invite, you could send them a box of golf balls with an invite.
00:11:47
Speaker
And so the gift itself is acting as a means saying, hey, come to this event. And it's relevant to the call to action. um I've seen this done well, too, for content like a white paper where it says, hey, read this white paper and and you you know enjoy coffee on me while you're reading it and and sending another $20 Starbucks gift card out. And so it's really ah the action of of of what you're taking is is personalizing it around that.
00:12:16
Speaker
And i think yeah I think it works because it's relevant. And it and so whether it's relevant to the interests, were relevant to the signal, relevant to the action, um it's all based on timing. So you're timing it right. um And then again, it's a bit bit ah pattern disruption. you know if if If you're checking out white papers from three different companies and one of the three you know sends you a gift card to and enjoy,
00:12:43
Speaker
ah Some coffee or lunch while you're reading it um Or you're invited to three different, um you know in-person events and one sends you a golden ticket in the mail ah Inviting you to say you hey you you want a golden ticket. Come check out our event Like which one are you gonna more likely remember or say? Yeah, you know what? This isn't I'll take I'll take it and I'll go yeah pattern pattern breaking so um Now some of these gifts They have different um different purposes.
00:13:21
Speaker
So swag that stays is something that I've seen you guys talk about. yep So walk me walk me through that whole concept behind behind that. Yeah, I think we we were we're trying to re-evangelize SWAG. I think everyone knows what SWAG is. Everyone gets it. ah Lots of people love it. Some people talk down on it. And so we're trying to like revitalize people's opinions on SWAG. So we think about it in kind of four key areas. One is functional. When you're thinking about SWAG, what's what's something that someone's going to use?
00:13:50
Speaker
you know is an Ember coffee mug that keeps your coffee warm. I love that. I use that all the time. Is it ah you know golf balls to to use when you go play golf? So what's functionally going to be reused um is, I think, critical. The second component is you know premium. Can you buy and give someone swag that's more premium instead of just a a regular ah you know mug, maybe a a Yeti mug is actually going to be a better premium experience for that recipient. And and so I think premium is the second. Third is, can you cleverly but brand something? So I think some people will end up just putting a big logo across the front of a shirt and you're like, I don't want to wear that. That's just crazy looking.
00:14:33
Speaker
um So instead, you know I've seen some companies like have like an animal logo, and we'll just put the animal logo like on the shoulder. It's like, oh, that's very nonchalant. ah Some companies have gone as far as creating like their own clothing brand line for a B2B SaaS company. And then and it in it's like catchy and and you know more interesting. Or you know depending on you know what one of our customers a while ago had ah this brand, it instead of putting their logo, it just said Data Nerd. And that was like the messaging on the shirt. And then the logo was really small in the corner. um Or even like golf balls, just throwing a small logo on a golf ball. it's like It's not going to hurt. So I think you know there's ways that you can be overly branded. But if you're cleverly and unique and creative about it, the brand and the logo doesn't it doesn't hurt.
00:15:30
Speaker
And I think the last one is sustainable. I think in today's world, everyone needs to think that way. So can we provide a sustainably sourced materials, sustainable packaging? We even have some cool packaging that you can plant the packaging and flowers grow. So there's a lot of different ways that you can be more sustainable with but the products as well.
00:15:50
Speaker
Yeah. I have, I have a pair of of socks given to me by teamwork dot.com and they are definitely the comfortable and the most comfortable socks that I have. They are very, they're very cool looking and it's not very, it's not very obvious that it's teamwork. It's a teamwork, but it's, you know, socks. You don't really, the more weird it is, the the more fun. Exactly. Very functional too. It's like, you need to wear socks.
00:16:15
Speaker
I need to wear socks. Yeah. yeah i'm ah I'm always losing them. My dog steals them and hides them somewhere. So I always. So absolutely. Yeah. So going back to what we were talking about earlier. So how do we align these campaigns with other marketing activities?
Integrating Gifting into Marketing Campaigns
00:16:34
Speaker
Yeah. You have any examples to share with that as well?
00:16:38
Speaker
Yeah, I think ah integrated campaigns is one of the best things that marketers can do in terms of just continuing to grab the attention or having that kind of subliminal mindshare. I'll speak to an example we recently did and how we integrated in.
00:16:53
Speaker
gifting into a larger marketing campaign and the different activities. So we were hitting um on this kind of spooky ah theme around Halloween and you know yeah are your metrics scary and bring your you know bring your pipeline back from the dead. um And so it was a fun theme all around ah Halloween.
00:17:16
Speaker
And so we created a dedicated landing page for it to drive people to a thematic landing page. ah We ran ads ah driving people to this landing page with the same kind of brand and theme. um ah We were at an event a couple weeks ago, and we're using that same theme in some of our messaging.
00:17:39
Speaker
And then we had both marketing send out pinatas that were this spooky vampire pinata. Same on theme, sending people to the landing page.
00:17:51
Speaker
And then we gave our SDRs budget to go ahead and send these out as well. And so if you think about a prospect, they could have seen an ad, they could have received an email, they could have been to the landing page, they could have seen us on a booth, they could have gotten this pinata, vampire pinata that showed up on their doorstep. All those things were all in sync with the same message, the same theme, the same kind of branding.
00:18:17
Speaker
And you know you see it once or twice, you kind of are like, oh wow, okay, I got it. um Versus you know um if you're just haphazard doing things in silos, you might not even recognize the same brand or the same message coming across twice, but this with with you know gifting and email and ads and events, um it all came together.
00:18:39
Speaker
Yeah. So i'm I'm curious if like ads usually, you know, you have retargeting ads, you know, top of funnel ad, no funnel ads. Is this a thing that people can do with gifting? You know, send them one gift and then follow up with another gift in some kind of meaningful way related to the first one.
00:18:59
Speaker
100 percent. Do you see? Yeah, I think you can tie in retargeting. with um We even see some people put in like a gift like, ah hey, take a demo, get a Yeti mug in the ad itself. um And so we've seen that work really well to integrating the two together. um We've also seen people get creative with like half gifts like, hey, I'm going to send you a, you you know, a controller to a drone and then the drone later or I'm going to send you a coffee mug and then I'm going to send you ah some ground coffee beans from my favorite roastery. So there's definitely different ways that you can tie them in.
00:19:37
Speaker
Yeah, i have I've heard of of a couple of gifting things where it's like a key to something and you have to show up to use the key. yeah This kind of gets the the the creativity juices really running here. There's so many different possibilities of gifts to send. It's not even the gifting season yet, not even Christmas. So this is great. So what are what are the most common mistakes um when people start experimenting with gifting and they take the first step?
Common Mistakes in Gifting Approach
00:20:05
Speaker
Yeah. um and A couple of things in mind. One is ah not integrating it. and And I think it's critical to use a platform like syndosis so that everything is synced to your marketing automation, to your CRM, so you can actually track the results better. yeah I think it's hard to track manually.
00:20:24
Speaker
Two is I think ah thinking of gifting is like a silver bullet. Like you're going to just send 20 gifts and you don't have to do anything else. I think you really got to be thoughtful of what are you going to do before it? What are you going to do after it's delivered and really thinking about it more holistically.
00:20:38
Speaker
um And then I think the last is, you know I think some people think, hey, test small and just do a small test and see if it works. um And I'm actually kind of against that. And I know some marketers might be like, ah, what? You don't want to test first? you're You're insane. But I kind of think about it as like maybe like working out. If you like go work out for a day or a week, you're like, oh, I didn't lose 10 pounds. Working out is dumb. I'm never going to do it again.
00:21:04
Speaker
I think you've got to go all in. if you Are you bought into this concept that your current marketing channels aren't delivering or you need to have more touch points or you need to try other ways to you know improve win rates? And if if you the answer is yes. And then going back to that analogy, if you're 50 pounds overweight and you try or you just want to get more shape, you want to get some abs and you just work out for a day,
00:21:26
Speaker
You're like, Oh, I'm, I'm over it. Yeah. Which that shouldn't be the case. It should be something that you invest in long-term. So I think that's a ah common mistake is people just trying a very small test sample size instead of being like, this is a new strategy we're going to do for the whole year. We're going to integrate in everything we do. We're going to focus on it. Um, and that's where you'll see the results.
00:21:50
Speaker
Yeah, no, this sounds a lot like what I've been saying ah for SEO. SEO is a great couple pages. It's not going to do anything. yeah you know Putting a description on one page, and if you don't do it for all the others, yeah.
00:22:06
Speaker
Anyway, I think that's a perfect comparison for marketers listening is like, yeah and I think that's, you know, um, probably even more obvious for marketers being like, yeah, I wouldn't do like, like write one paragraph on one page and be like, great, I'm going to get infinite inbound leads now. Like, no, you got to invest in it over time.
00:22:24
Speaker
Yeah.
Gifting Across Various Industries
00:22:25
Speaker
And so who who can be using this strategy? can it Is it really just for B2B SaaS agencies? Is there for a certain person where it's better for them? Yeah, we see it across the board. We have ah clients that are B2B SaaS. We have clients in hospitality, financial services, ah sports and entertainment.
00:22:46
Speaker
you know I think at the end of the day, agencies can use it for sure driving their own client or on behalf of their client. We even have an in agency mode where you can toggle in between clients. I think it goes back to like how do you effectively communicate your value proposition with a prospect or a customer, so it's really a communication medium? Or how do you grab someone's attention? And then once you grab their attention, how do you keep their attention?
00:23:08
Speaker
and so I think this is just another touch point, another channel that is often overlooked or underutilized. and and Again, I think it goes back to the misconceptions or it's just hard to do on your own without a platform. you know No one wants to like go out and buy 100 items, bring it to their you know their office or their garage and pack boxes and pack their car up. and so It's just a lot of effort if you if you're not using a platform.
00:23:38
Speaker
i do know I do know some people that like that, but only in December. yeah But not everyone.
Educational Outreach Through Gifting
00:23:43
Speaker
So I've got one last question um that I was trying to start to ask everyone on the podcast because I talk about it all the time. yeah what do you What are you guys at Sandoso doing for the 95% of out-of-market buyers?
00:23:58
Speaker
Do you think? Yeah. So we really are trying to educate the market. Um, so it's, uh, and I think, uh, probably the couple of things that pop out. One is getting on our podcasts, just like this sharing word, uh, so exists. I think a lot of people just don't know we exist. And so they're out of market because they don't know that they need to be in market or that they could be in market.
00:24:19
Speaker
I think we do, ah the other big one I think is just trying to um focus on our communities and influencers. I think engaging with the B2B influencers is a newer thing that we can expand our audience and find more people that need to know about to know so.
00:24:37
Speaker
Yeah. Now I think you guys are are solving a pretty non-obvious problem where people don't know that they are, that there's a problem with their outreach and that there's a different, different way. And this is the way. Exactly. Awesome. Well, Chris, I appreciate you coming on today.
00:24:55
Speaker
Anything else to add before we send this up? Yeah, they grab me on. If anyone wants to connect with me personally, follow me on LinkedIn. Send me an email, chris, k-r-i-s, at syndoso.com. Or if you're intrigued on what we talked about today, check out syndoso.com.