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Starting B2B conversations – a conversation with Stuart Carver.
30 Plays8 days ago
Stuart Carver is a director of Industry a business to business (B2B) lead generation and commercial events planning company.
When Stuart sent Abeceder managing director Michael Millward an email which Michael was not expecting about what Industry does, Michael decided to invite Stuart to appear on The Independent Minds to explain the USP of the Industry approach.
During their conversation Stuart describes his own journey with Industry, from wide-eyed new starter exploring the science of first contact marketing to celebrating some extraordinary successes.
Stuart offers advice to anyone who has a job that involves opening communications with potential customers and describes some of the mistakes that people make.
Michael reflects on Stuart’s advice and his own experience in numerous companies. They discuss the importance of aligning internal and external messages.
More information about Stuart Carver and Michael Millward is available at abeceder.
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Being a Guest
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Independent Minds' Podcast
00:00:05
Speaker
Made on Zencaster. Hello and welcome to the Independent Minds, a series of conversations between Abysseedah and people who think outside the box about how work works with the aim of creating better workplace experiences for everyone.
00:00:22
Speaker
I am your host, Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abysseedah. Today, my guest Independent Mind is Stuart Carver from Ideas Industry.
00:00:34
Speaker
We're going to look at the ideas industry. As the
Promotions: Zencastr & Ultimate Travel Club
00:00:39
Speaker
jingle at the start of this podcast says, the independent minds is made on Zencastr. Zencastr is the all-in-one podcasting platform on which you can create your podcast in one place and then dispute it to the major platforms like Spotify, Apple, Amazon, and Google.
00:00:57
Speaker
It really does make creating content so easy. If you would like to try podcasting using Zencastr, visit zencastr.com forward slash pricing and use my offer code, Abysida.
00:01:10
Speaker
All the details are in the description. Now that I've told you how wonderful Zencast is for creating podcasts, we should create one. One that will be well worth listening to, liking, downloading and subscribing to.
00:01:25
Speaker
Very importantly, in this episode of The Independent Minds, we won't be telling you what to think, but we are hoping to make you think. Today, my guest independent mind is Stuart Carver from Ideas Industry.
00:01:42
Speaker
Ideas Industry is based in Newbury, which is also home to a major horse racing course. If I was going to go to the races, I would book my travel with the Ultimate Travel Club.
00:01:53
Speaker
It is where I get trade prices on flights and hotels. You'll find a link and membership discount code in the description. Now that I have paid some bills, it is time to make an episode of The Independent Minds.
Guest Introduction: Stuart Carver's Journey
00:02:08
Speaker
Hello, Stuart. Hi, Michael. How are you I am very well, thank you very much. I'm in Yorkshire, where it is just starting to snow. But January, what do we expect? But it's it's very cold here. You're very lucky. We've just got rain here in Newbury. Oh, never mind. You'll survive. I'm sure I'll be fine. But it's not it's not pleasant to look out the window and and look at. No, but we're...
00:02:30
Speaker
We're going to look at to the ideas industry at the moment. But before we do that, please could we start by you telling us a bit about Stuart Carver and how you ended up working at the ideas industry?
00:02:44
Speaker
Yeah, sure. So, um'm you know, I did the kind of the usual route, school, then um was lucky enough to go to university. ah came out of university and a couple of jobs and got interested in direct marketing.
00:02:56
Speaker
Unfortunately, i got made redundant from the the role I had as ah as a national marketing manager for for a carpet cleaning company, believe it or not, and saw the opportunity at Ideas Industry come up.
Stuart's Role and Experience at Ideas Industry
00:03:10
Speaker
You know, went to go have a chat with ah Mike, who's one of the directors, still is one of the directors. He showed me what it was that industry does or did. And I was impressed. ah I'd never seen anything like it.
00:03:23
Speaker
and And kind of having had a little bit of experience in B2C direct market, I'd never seen anything as effective as what these guys were doing in B2B.
00:03:34
Speaker
And I've been here ever since. I'm coming up for my 13th year with the company. A couple of years ago, I was lucky enough to get um offered the opportunity to buy into the business. So I've been a shareholder and a director now since 2017 and touch wood.
00:03:51
Speaker
It's been going well, even through the ah this interesting interesting blip of COVID. Wow. So you're you're one of the bosses now. It's almost as if we're talking about marketing.
00:04:01
Speaker
I liked it so much I bought the company. Yeah, yeah, yeah. From T-boy to head boy, whatever you want to say. That's great. So
Innovative Client Engagement Techniques
00:04:10
Speaker
when you say you were impressed by Ideas Industry, and I would suggest that people do take a look at ideas-industry.com, the website, there's an awful lot of information in there. But summarize for us what it is that Ideas Industry does, and why that sort of separates you out from everyone else.
00:04:30
Speaker
So I think kind of one of the the main challenges, no matter what business that you're in, is how do you start conversations with people that you don't know and and and net new customers?
00:04:41
Speaker
What we specialise in is plain text, one-to-one emails, and they look really, really simple, but they're designed and constructed in such a way that they don't feel like a sales email.
00:04:54
Speaker
They feel like just a natural one-to-one conversation that engage people time-poor strategic decision-makers on a topic and and do exactly what it says on the tin. it It kick-starts those net new conversations.
00:05:11
Speaker
And then once you've got into a conversation with somebody about a business issue, it's then much easier to move them through the funnel in a consultative, almost collaborative way where you're working on their challenge together, as opposed to some of the...
00:05:28
Speaker
um kind of more ubiquitous email marketing strategies that you see out there where people are almost trying to sell straight off the bat. That's not what we do.
00:05:40
Speaker
You know, it's all about how do you engage and create high value conversations with people that you want to get tonight. And I couldn't believe it worked.
00:05:51
Speaker
licenture how many times have you been subject to that type of approach without actually really realizing it so to speak because what you're talking about is building a relationship with people isn't it rather than selling to them yeah no exactly that you know and and that's how b2b sales has been done and will continue to be done in my opinion you know it's not about shifting boxes, it's about establishing a relationship with somebody and then conveying a, you know, a e value add.
00:06:25
Speaker
Otherwise, why should they get it from you as opposed to somebody else? Yes, there's key words in there, which are things like the value add that you give to the client rather than just simply this is how much it is, this is the price. and Once you start talking about price in those sorts of ways, you can only drop the price.
00:06:46
Speaker
I think the relationship, from my limited experience running a business, The relationship is more important. If you start talking about prices, then you're commoditizing what you do.
00:07:00
Speaker
and And when you do that, you are reducing the value and the perceived value of what it is that you do. So you can only sell on price. Also, I think it's kind thinking about the way that that people and particularly businesses buy. The way that I kind of like to think about it is if you're running a business or you're responsible for a business area or business unit and you've got a problem or an issue, you would go out and solve it.
00:07:27
Speaker
You know, you do a little bit of research, you'd speak to a couple of vendors or partners or suppliers, whatever you want to say. you begin to define and scope out what a solution looks like, and then you'd go to implement it.
00:07:41
Speaker
You know, what we're trying to do is help people target those businesses that don't necessarily know that they've got a problem or that
Case Study: Kajima Campaign
00:07:52
Speaker
there might be a better way out there to do it.
00:07:54
Speaker
And you you do that by demonstrating credibility and knowledge, you know? So just for example, wherere we're running a campaign at the moment for a company called Kajima.
00:08:06
Speaker
um And they've got a software product called business um Bookings Plus. And it's all about helping schools ah lease out their facilities um outside of school hours in order to to to generate more revenue.
00:08:19
Speaker
So really interesting product and proposition. But a lot of the schools simply don't know it's there. So, you know, you can go out with a whole, you know, this is here, buy it now, blah, blah, blah, blah. blah blah Or you can talk to them about the challenges they've got.
00:08:35
Speaker
you know, you've got facilities, you may be looking to increase revenue. simple way to do that is to lease out your swimming pool outside of school hours. This is ah this is a solution that could help you to do it. Would you like to find out more?
00:08:50
Speaker
That's a much more engaging conversation than, know, buy Bookings Plus.
00:08:58
Speaker
It's talking about education of the client, ah sharing your knowledge, educating people, making them aware of different ways in which they can address a problem that they may not have realized that they have or have the potential to encounter in the future.
00:09:15
Speaker
And looking at the ideas-industry website, there's an awful lot of potential activities that you can help an organization with related to marketing of one form or another.
00:09:27
Speaker
But how do you integrate all the different possible activities? How do you integrate them all? Typically, we we we don't really, you know, we we tend to work with clients on a strategic and tactical basis around a ah kind of a singular proposition or a product or a service that they're looking to take to market.
00:09:47
Speaker
And quite often clients will come to us and say, look, this is what we want to do. This is the sort of budget that we've got available. This is the result that we're after. What would you recommend?
00:09:58
Speaker
And then we can come back to them with a plan. Usually, and I'd say kind of the the majority of the work that we do, like 80% plus, is on that net new lead generation side. So we do tend to have a lot of conversations around emails.
00:10:15
Speaker
But there that there's another side of the business that does B2B events, and that could be you know something simple like driving attendance to a webinar. We did do a a lot of cinema events a couple of years ago that were incredibly popular, and stuff like Star Wars and a lot of the Marvel films, that sort of thing, which is another great hospitality add-on, if you like, to try and get customers and potential customers in a room.
00:10:41
Speaker
That's it's very interesting. You started your answer there by saying, we have a client who comes to us and tells us what they want to do. And that word do made me think, do you mean they they tell you the activities that they want to engage in, don't but email marketing events, whatever it is, or do you have to get them to forget about what it is they want to do in terms of
Collaborative Marketing Strategies
00:11:05
Speaker
activities and focus on what it is that they want to achieve as the outcome?
00:11:09
Speaker
and then allow you as the experts to work out a strategy that will help them achieve those objectives? So that really is a good question.
00:11:21
Speaker
And the answer is a little bit of both. You know, sometimes you're driven by what the client wants and the client is the boss and the boss is always right. And other times you get really good collaborative conversations where you can look at a campaign or a piece of activity in quite a blank piece of paper in collaborative way and and come up with a real you know interesting solution. Like we're working on a project at the moment um for an EA vendor enterprise architecture.
00:11:51
Speaker
And it looks as if that that's going to involve email lead generation, appointment setting, in plus an in-person event. And that's an activity that's going to run over a quarter.
00:12:03
Speaker
may even run globally in in in different territories and markets. So a really interesting campaign. But the flip side of that coin is it's a client that we've known and had a relationship with ah probably the best part of the 12 years that I've been at with the business.
00:12:21
Speaker
And we've always got great results for her. So there's a lot of trust there in terms of understanding where we think that they're going to get the the biggest bang for their buck. When you mentioned the film events, it reminds me of the accountants that we use at Abbasida.
00:12:37
Speaker
They have a ah marketing structure, which means it's very difficult for me to sort of consider working with any other accountants. It's just like, if there is a new James Bond film launched, ah the accountants, as they take over the local cinema and invite us all along to a James Bond evening to see the latest James Bond film and put our dinner jackets on and, and you know,
00:13:00
Speaker
um Eat lots of sugary sweets as well. But it's a great event and it's a great community type of event. Nobody talks about accountancy. Nobody talks about you know tax returns or you know profit and loss accounts or anything like that.
00:13:15
Speaker
But it is a great way of building the connection between the firm, the values of of the firm itself and its clients. So I'm well up for any type of cinema cinema event with ah with a supplier.
00:13:32
Speaker
Put me on the list, please, Stuart. Put me on the list. No problem. I'll make sure we'll put on the list for the next one. We talked about all the different things that that you can do in terms of marketing and the specific things, but how do you balance the different types of activities? So there is a a but but there' is a coherent strategy and the the potential client is seeing the right sort of messages in the right way at the right time.
00:14:00
Speaker
how do you How do you make it all gel together? Really, because we're working on um campaigns strategic and tactically, you know we tend to focus on where our efforts are going to generate the the most r ROI.
00:14:14
Speaker
um And that typically tends to be email, telemarketing and events, whether they're in person or online. And it's it's using those tools really to to try and generate as many, ah hate the term, but I'm going to use it now, sales ready leads that we can, that can just be fed to the next stage of the process.
00:14:36
Speaker
And again, I think a lot of the clients that we speak to, they've got quite disjointed and almost siloed teams that are responsible for marketing and internally generation.
00:14:50
Speaker
qualifying those leads is as the right sort of people and the right sorts of companies to be working with. And then the sales function who are kind of plugged into leads that come from marketing, but are also responsible for feeding and watering themselves.
00:15:06
Speaker
You know, the best clients, ironically, are the ones where we can sit in between those two teams and say, right, from marketing, what is the the message or the proposition?
00:15:17
Speaker
And from sales, what does a good lead look like? What sort of conversations do you want to be having? And if we can join those dots, you tend to get a really effective campaign where you're generating people that are ready to be passed to sales teams and can move through the funnel at speed.
00:15:35
Speaker
That's a really interesting way of describing it because having been so the HR manager for it sales and marketing team within a large technology organization long time ago, but you do very quickly become aware that marketing can be talking about one thing and sales want to be talking about something else.
00:15:55
Speaker
and the joining of the dots between the two functions so that there is more of a coherent and focused and message going out to clients at the at the particular stages of that cycle of going from the first time that somebody hears about you to the signing of the first contract and then also delivering on that contract.
00:16:18
Speaker
needs to feel, i think, more coherent, but also more natural. Nothing in that process has to feel as if it's been forced or created to create an impression.
00:16:30
Speaker
It all needs to be very genuine, authentic, and natural to make the whole sort of process flow. And I like this idea of like joining the dots between sales and marketing so that the the customer sees the full picture.
00:16:46
Speaker
rather than just individual parts of it? I think personally that's one of the the most important things that we do when we work with a client and we um put together ah a strategy and a campaign plan um is that joining the dots. And it's so simple that it's quite often overlooked.
00:17:04
Speaker
i ah If you've got a marketing team on the left, talking about a message and then it gets past the sales and they start talking about something completely different, it's easy to understand why their leads sometimes just drop off a cliff or opportunities drop off a cliff.
00:17:22
Speaker
and So one of the things that we're really careful to do when we're working with clients is making sure that the person, the team that's following up on the leads that we generate understands what the key hooks
Ensuring Consistency in Marketing and Sales
00:17:36
Speaker
are in the lead generation emails so that they can touch on those points when they're speaking to customers on the phone or doing follow-up comms. And again, that sounds really simple.
00:17:48
Speaker
And it is, you know, if you get somebody interested talking about APIC, To then bring that topic in again on the phone conversation and then then again when you're speaking to them in the meeting, and again, you're going to have this really natural progression from lead to nurturing to appointment to opportunity to sale.
00:18:07
Speaker
And you'd be surprised how often that doesn't happen in real life. Possibly true, but I can tell you're very passionate about it. you're tupping Your passion's coming out and tapping your pen on the desk. So you're obviously very passionate about this.
00:18:21
Speaker
And I can see how the focus on the return of investment, the ah ROI focus, is more important to you than actually the individual activities, which because the marketing person enjoys this or the the customers asked for this.
00:18:38
Speaker
I can see how your focus on the whole process and the return on investment is what drives the services that you're delivering into your into your clients.
00:18:49
Speaker
And you've got on your website three case studies, which I think are dynamically different but demonstrate the sort of work that you can do.
00:19:00
Speaker
The first one is some work that you did on Star Wars 9, The Rise of Skywalker, which you have pictures of Empire troopers yeah standing behind the bar. So all the bar staff are dressed as the as the baddies.
00:19:13
Speaker
But that's that's one type of marketing activity. And then you've got another type of marketing activity, which is an online cheese tasting event, which blows my mind and what that might involve.
00:19:29
Speaker
But then also you've worked with Marks and Spencers on their seasonal business hamper um promotions. And it just shows this the short sort of diversity of the range of work that you're doing. But I'm thinking, what are the similarities What are the differences between all of all of those?
00:19:50
Speaker
Why is it that one organization can deliver that wide range of different types of projects? In short, he says, thinking about it, it was all about how do we reach out and communicate with our customers?
00:20:03
Speaker
So I'll just go through them one by one. you know The M&S for business campaign was all about how to reach out to well-being, reward, benefit, marketing, commercial, it is in big companies that had the potential to spend, I think it was a hundred thousand pounds a year on either gift cards or hampers.
00:20:25
Speaker
But there was no relationship with these guys. the The cheese and wine tasting was probably our go-to lead generation strategy for our clients during COVID.
00:20:39
Speaker
And again, it was how do we get face time and build relationships in a time when nobody's able to to leave the house? And then the the the cinema event was um very similar, but in ah in a kind of, I can't remember if it was pre or post COVID world now.
00:20:57
Speaker
um we've We've done them both before and and after the lockdown, but yeah in person. So it's all about, again, if you were to ask me to boil it down to one key idea, building relationships with with people that you don't know.
00:21:14
Speaker
And how do you do that in an engaging way? Yeah. Give them a reason to want to like you. Give them a reason to have a conversation, you know, and and that's what it's all about. ah You have to imagine that you've gone along to an event, you don't know anybody, and there is someone who's going to welcome you, take you into the event, introduce you to people that you will find interesting to make sure that you have a good time at that event, which then means that you want to go back to the next event that that organisation or that person organizes and eventually build a relationship with them which goes beyond the event or just yeah it's it's as we've been saying all the way through so starting the conversation building the relationship and then commercializing that relationship very much yeah
00:22:04
Speaker
It's really very, very interesting, and it's what makes it most interesting, I think, or more interesting, is the open-mindedness of your approach in terms of, know, this is what we exist to do, to start relationships between suppliers and customers.
00:22:25
Speaker
And what we do in order to do that can be one of a multitude of different things. But what we recommend and agree with the client will happen is most likely to be the activity that will deliver results or return on the investment. And you get the feeling that, you The ultimate thing is like that return on the investment. I can imagine all sorts of conversations happening in your boardroom about return on investment, return on investment, and meetings with clients where it's, what is going to be the return on the investment for this rather than, it's just, oh, this is a nice thing to do.
00:23:01
Speaker
What's the return on the investment?
Focus on ROI and Client Relationships
00:23:03
Speaker
What's the return on the investment? For us, that's really important. you know there There are a lot of agencies out there that will work with clients on a retainer basis. We don't do that at all. Everything's project by project, which again, lends itself well to the to the sorts of things that we do on a ah tactical and strategic level.
00:23:22
Speaker
But you know in short, if a campaign doesn't get the right result for the client, they won't use us again. So how do we stack the deck so we build good relationships with our customers by delivering as strong at r ROI on um on the project as we can?
00:23:40
Speaker
Well, that is a whole new, different conversation in terms of, and I totally agree with you, if you don't deliver results for the client, then they won't use you again. But if you've built that relationship with them, they will, excuse might be the wrong word to use, but they will accept that not everything is going to work.
00:24:00
Speaker
And sometimes things might not go as planned. No one is perfect. But that is a whole new different conversation, which unfortunately, we don't have time for today. But I've learned a lot.
00:24:12
Speaker
Thank you very much, Stuart. No problem. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and experience with me. It's very interesting to find out about marketing and within the context of the work that you do on this focus on the return on investment.
00:24:26
Speaker
You've helped me create a very business-focused episode of The Independent Minds. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me on. It's been great fun. Thank you. I am Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abysida, and I have been having a conversation with The Independent Mind today Stuart Carver from ideas-industry.com.
00:24:46
Speaker
You can find out more about both of us at abasida.co.uk. There is a link in the description. The description also includes links to all of the websites that have been mentioned in this episode of The Independent Minds.
00:25:00
Speaker
If you're listening to Fit For My Age on your smartphone in the United Kingdom, you may like to know that 3.0 has the UK's fastest 5G network with unlimited data. So listening on 3.0 means you can wave goodbye to buffering.
00:25:14
Speaker
There is a link in the description that will take you to more information about business and personal telecom solutions from 3.0 and the special offers available when you quote my referral code.
00:25:26
Speaker
At the Independent Minds, our aim is proactive positive aging. Knowing the risks early is an important part of maintaining good health, and that is why we recommend the annual health test from York Test.
00:25:39
Speaker
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Speaker
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00:26:09
Speaker
You can access easy to understand results and guidance to help you make effective lifestyle changes anytime via their secure personal wellness hub. There is a link and a discount code in the description.
00:26:23
Speaker
I'm sure that you will have enjoyed listening to this episode of The Independent Minds as much as Stuart and I have enjoyed making it. Please give it a like and download it so you can listen anytime, anywhere.
00:26:35
Speaker
To make sure you don't miss out on future episodes, please subscribe. Remember, the aim of all the podcasts produced by Abbasida is not to tell you what to think, but we do hope to have made you think.
00:26:47
Speaker
All that it remains for me to say is a big thank you to Stuart. and an even bigger thank you to you for listening. Until the next episode of The Independent Minds, thank you and goodbye.