[Fully Managed] Jason Myers from Austin Lawrence Group Ep 63 – Transcript

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Hello everybody. Welcome to the Fully Managed Podcast. This is a podcast where we explore and discuss marketing and business tips to help assist you in your business journeys. I’m your host, Daniela, and I’m Penji’s partnership coordinator. I’m joined here today with a very cool guest, Jason Myers from Austin Lawrence Group. Hi Jason. How are you?

Jason: I’m doing great.

Daniela: I’m doing great too. I don’t know why I was gonna say I’m with a very special guest, Daniela.

Jason: I’m with a special guest.

Daniela: I’m my own guest for my own podcast. But thank you so much for joining today. Very excited to have you. To kind of break the ice a little bit and get some context on you. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself, who you are, about Austin Lawrence Group and everything else?

About Jason Myers and Austin Lawrence Group

Jason: Sure. So my name is again, Jason Myers. I’m the Chief Revenue Officer of Austin Lawrence Group. We’re a demand generation agency that specializes in SaaS or software as a service companies. Let’s see. What else do you want?

Daniela: Okay, that’s very cool. So how long have you been working at Austin Lawrence?

Jason: I’ve been at Austin Lawrence for a little over four years now.

Daniela: How did you actually get started there? Was it, did you get started with the beginnings of this or were you sort of brought on when the company was a little bit more advanced?

Jason: No. So I actually was doing some fractional CMO work with a company and got kind of hit with covid and at the same time, I had met the owner of the agency in a networking group and just liked what he was doing and so offered to join the agency in terms of business development. And that’s where we are now.

B2B and SaaS Marketing Strategies

Daniela: Cool. That’s like, that’s a very interesting journey. Now, I know that Austin Lawrence specializes in helping B2B companies, right? Because it’s mostly with SaaS companies. What do you think are the unique strategies that your agency develops to help B2B and SaaS companies stand out in that space?

Jason: So in the SaaS world and probably some other B2B companies as well, but definitely in software you have what’s emerged over the last 10 or 15 years called the Predictable Revenue Model.

And that was originally came out of a book from Aaron Ross and out of Salesforce published in 2011. And what it did was it tried to compartmentalize some of the sales functions into more of a factory setting, I guess you could call it. So in other words, we have marketing that’s supposed to serve up leads and you have a business development or sales development rep follows up on those leads, nurtures them. Calls the people and tries to set appointments and then hand over those appointments to an AE who closes the deal.

The problem with that is that that model worked really extremely well when there wasn’t a barrage of content out there. So in the year of 2010, 2011, there was not a lot of noise. And so getting to the inbox was easy. People still picked up the phone. And today the problem is that the buyer has changed a lot of how they buy. So they don’t necessarily go to Google first thing. Back 10 years ago, we were talking about how, I don’t know, 70, 80% of journeys start at Google, right? You’ve probably seen that stat today. I don’t think that’s true. Because people are talking to peers. They’re in the social networks or communities. To go to third party sites like G2 or Trust Radius or whatever. And in any industry, people are looking up reviews and things online before making a considered purchase.

So the bottom line is buyers ignore you because their inboxes are too flooded with stuff. If you go on Google, most of the content up there is pretty mediocre at this point from vendors. And anyway, Google’s shifted to focus more on AI snippets and the larger publishers. So if you’re trying to do an organic SEO strategy today, you’re really gonna struggle with that because it is just not moving in that direction.

So all these things have caused a lot of problems for the companies that have made investments in the predictable revenue model. So we have these SDRs that are having trouble getting their foot in the door because nobody wants to talk to them. And you know, you have AEs that are used to getting appointments set for them, so they’re less likely to go out and prospect like they would’ve used to. Then you have marketing in general that is struggling to serve up content that moves the needle. So people just don’t pay attention to it anymore, especially with email marketing or even advertisements. So cutting through that clutter is the big problem today. Right. So that was a long explanation for what’s wrong. And so what are we doing differently?

So on a lot of fronts. First of all, we’re taking a look at messaging first and foremost because the biggest problem for B2B companies that sell to usually committees, buying committees is that they lose out not a lot to competitors, but to no decision.

What that means is that if somebody isn’t, doesn’t think that this is a problem that’s big enough that it’s worth solving, they’re not gonna take action on it. And when you have a buying committee, you have to convince everyone in that buying committee, not only did you have a problem, but you have a problem that’s worth solving.

Now, back to messaging, right? Almost no messaging addresses or talks about the problem or getting agreement on that problem in the messaging. And so I review like hundreds of websites and advertisements, and things like that. And in the B2B world, like overall, like I would say upwards of 80, 90% are just ineffective. Because they’re not talking about anything that is gonna catch somebody’s attention.

So, for example, if you’re putting out a LinkedIn ad, if you’re not talking about the problem, if I don’t immediately recognize that as a problem that I have to solve, I am not doing anything with that ad. I’m not downloading your white paper. I’m not clicking into your landing page. I’m not doing anything. I’m moving right past it. Same goes by the way for your email outreach, for the web messaging on your homepage, for all the content. Like if you create blogs, if I don’t identify with a problem that has to be solved, I’m not reading it, I’m not engaging with the content, and therefore you’re losing me and you’re potentially losing me to a competitor that is better articulating the problem. And so that’s the risk.

Daniela: And better giving you a solution. Right.

Jason: Right. Once you engage them, right, like then you can talk about the reframe as Challenger says, like how you’re solving that problem differently. But you gotta get them engaged. That’s the first step and most marketing just doesn’t do that because it’s crap. We’ve relied for too long on people just finding us magically. And those days are over long time ago.

Impact of TikTok and Changing Marketing Landscapes

Daniela: I’m curious, with everything that is going on with TikTok getting banned, I’ve like tried to keep up with the news. But it’s all over the place. So I’m not sure if they decided on it happening or not, but I know that it’s really close to happening as far as I’m concerned. And I know that the B2C industry is very concerned with this because a lot of B2C marketing happens on TikTok right now.

Jason: Yep.

Daniela: So I know that like, economically speaking, a lot of businesses are concerned for this, but I’m wondering in something that’s a little bit more business oriented like SaaS companies are, or B2B, which is, I think the marketing needs to be a little bit more targeted and a little bit more intentional and focused. Do you think that these type of measures and these type of changes are affecting it in any way or are going to change the way that you are gonna do marketing or are they gonna affect marketing in the SaaS world, or do you think that it’s more for like the B2C world?

Jason: So, that’s a great question and I’m gonna answer it a little bit differently than the way that you asked it, but I think I’ll come around on it here. So first of all, in B2B World, we’re still trying to figure out how to use TikTok. Right. So some have kind of figured it out, but for us, you know, when they say it’s going away, we’re not that concerned about it because really, like in B2B World, it’s YouTube, it’s Facebook, it’s LinkedIn like primarily, and Google like pay-per-click.

So we’re not, so if the platform goes away, I don’t think anybody in B2B is really going to be that concerned about it. However, it had, it’s had a big impact on the other platforms and I recommend the book Gary V just wrote, I think about a year ago, called Day Trading Attention, and it’s really changed a lot of our thinking in terms of how we do marketing and advertising and all that.

But what he says in that book is basically because of TikTok, all the other platforms are now going the way of TikTok in that it used to be that LinkedIn or Facebook or whatever would serve up content to your context or your connections. So it was all about building followings to get your content shown. TikTok changed that in that they want to keep you on the platform, which now all of them do, but more on that in a second.

But, so to keep you on the platform, they’re gonna keep serving you up related content on things that they know that you click on already, right? Like so, and you’ve probably seen that. Especially on YouTube or TikTok or whatever, like you click on something and then I’m getting served up more videos on that topic. Usually from that same person, or whatever the tag is.

So algorithms are moving that direction that I think that’s what’s important about TikTok, right? Because that means that any singular piece of content has the potential to go viral, and that’s a huge opportunity. So how does that change the way that we market? And this is why I’m kind of covering it a little bit differently, right? Because we want to market the way that B2C companies have been doing that on TikTok, right? Like we want stuff to go viral.

So we have to think about, what’s gonna be shareable? Like what do people really want to consume? What’s educational content that that is worth sharing in? In B2B World is really more about thought leadership and education and those kind of things, and how to be helpful and add value. That’s how you get things to go viral. So, but that’s a big opportunity. So the platform itself doesn’t matter.

So if TikTok goes away, we’ll just use the same concepts on another platform. Something else will emerge. It already is with Facebook reels and YouTube shorts. So we’re not concerned about that, but you do want to treat content a little bit differently. So it’s not just about putting content out there. You’ve gotta put things out there and test because if you can test it organically, and this is the point that the book makes, Gary V’s book, if you can test those concepts, then you know what resonates, then you can take the guesswork out of advertising and everything else.

So if I can get something to go viral on LinkedIn and I understand why, then I can build an ad around it and put some ad dollars to extend that concept, and now I’m not wasting money. I know it’s gonna resonate. That’s how it’s changing. It’s kind of flipping the whole, I don’t wanna say agency model, but the whole model of how we’ve guessed essentially about what our clients are gonna care about. And instead now we have the opportunity to test and learn, and save money.

Daniela: Yeah, I mean, I totally agree. I always ask this question ’cause I’m curious. I think a lot of there’s like a misconception that this platform is mostly for young people, which it is. And it is very like youth focused and a lot of the content is for youth, but I think it has had a big impact in the marketing world, even if it’s not directly right.

So I think any changes that happen within that platform, whether it’s the banning and it going away or staying and then getting fuller force is gonna change, is changing a lot of the landscape the same way that Facebook did when it started. You know, like, so I always wanna ask this question to people to kind of get their perspective and also depending on what sort of niche they’re in, right?

And I have seen some SaaS companies dipping their toes in TikTok marketing, which is really interesting ’cause I never thought I would see them gravitating towards that route. It’s very interesting. I think I saw Zendesk, I don’t know if you’re familiar with that platform. It’s for customer service. They started doing a lot of like TikTok marketing and very like, also very youth focused. You know, they were doing like fun trend videos and I was like, it’s really weird because I’ve never pictured Zendesk to be wanting to like target this sort of certain group of people.

Jason: Clickup is another one to look at. They do a lot of really creative advertising and I know that they’ve got some TikTok ads as well. But I really like their model and if there’s any question of, to whether creativity wins the day or not. Clickup went from 60 employees to over a thousand in about a year and a half, so let’s say, yeah, it works if you do it right.

Identifying the Best Clients for Austin Lawrence Group

Daniela: Yeah, totally. And I think it’s just like a matter of targeting, I think there’s a lot of people who want to get in on the hype, but it might not be the best fit for them, right? If you’re a small business owner, if you’re a startup, like, I think it really depends on the industry and the niche. Which actually brings me to my next question. I know that you primarily focus on SaaS companies. You know that B2B, but within that world. What businesses do you think or industries do you think benefit the most from the expertise that you can offer at Austin Lawrence, from everybody that you’ve sort of seen come through since you’ve been working there.

Jason: So really anybody that’s B2B that has a sales force or a sales person has to connect with a prospect before it becomes a deal on the table can benefit from our services because that’s what we’re, that’s the true difference between B2B and B2C marketing like in B2C. I’ve gotta drive that whole process myself because it’s not cost effective to put a sales person in front of it.

But then we’re also talking about lower dollar issues as well. So on the B2B front, or where you have a salesperson that’s usually bigger deals, they’re much more complex. They take some prescription before it becomes an opportunity. And the reality is is just, it’s just harder today for salespeople to get in front of enough prospects to make their quotas. And so that’s really where we are the most benefit.

Lead Generation and Communication Challenges

Daniela: Yeah, I think like lead generation is always a challenge. And then I think what I’ve noticed is that you can get leads, you can get prospects and you can get potential clients, and then the next step in difficulty is converting them. Right? That’s always a place that’s difficult for people, and I think now more than ever.

Jason: And we’re starting to think lead generation as a term is kind of going away. We’d like it to, we call it demand capture. And it’s the idea that, you know, three to 5% of anybody at a given time may be in a buying window, and that you, when you’re doing any kind of direct response, advertising or marketing, it’s to capture those people. But then what about the 97 or 95% that aren’t in the market yet? But you need to educate or create clients.

And that’s where a lot of companies hiccup because they’re concentrating on that short term. They’re not doing what they need for the long term. And so they’re always having to fight, getting in front of customers. And as it gets harder every year to get in front of it, that’s why the revenues start to go down because they haven’t done the hard work of creating customers over the long term.

Daniela: Yeah, I think that’s a huge problem nowadays and I think it was just like oversaturation of content. It doesn’t help because I think we have a lot of jaded customers who are just don’t have the patience to learn more, right?

Jason: Well, that’s right. Like there’s a lot to look at, right? Like your content, like I said, you can’t get away with just putting content out there. It’s gotta be good and useful.

Daniela: Digestible. And the way

Jason: That you find it is you put a lot out there and see what resonates. And then you put the development dollars and time around the concepts that really resonate.

Effective Communication in B2B Marketing

Daniela: I actually have a question about communication. I think when I’ve ever spoken to people who are in the SaaS world, B2B world, a common problem that I’ve noticed or pattern, and correct me if I’m wrong, but I think a lot of people have come across the problem of communication because I think because it’s a little bit more high level. A lot of buzzwords are sometimes used, right?

When it comes to the conversation of SaaS companies and a lot of like, I guess, more complex discussions can begin to ensue. A lot of marketing feels very high level and sometimes even though the target audience is a business owner. That business owner might not be an expert on that specific topic, or they might not even know that they need help with that problem, like where you spoke earlier about, or that they even have this problem, right?

And so I’ve spoken to a lot of people who are in the B2B world that tell me that they are constantly trying to figure out how to better communicate all of this in a way that is digestible for the customer. But it also gets that point across. Have you experienced this? Have anybody, has anybody at Austin Lords Group experienced this? How do you address this issue? If that’s the case?

Jason: So, short answer is yes. As you were talking, I think biggest problem that I see in terms of communication, quote unquote, is that, yeah, marketing jargon will sell nothing. Neither will vague language, and that’s what 80, 90% of the stuff that I see out there.

So if you’re talking about, you’re the number one AI platform, nobody cares. You’re making claims that nobody cares about. If you’re saying things like, we’re gonna streamline, automate, accelerate, all of those things are wishy-washy language. They don’t mean anything to anybody. So more dead ahead language is actually better, right? And better if you can put a statistic behind it or show an outcome. Like, what if you could save 30% on whatever is, you know, that’s typically what we save for clients, et cetera, et cetera.

That that kind of messaging fares a lot better than hey, we’re the number one in the category because nobody believes that. So yeah, I think there’s a huge messaging problem out there.

Daniela: Yeah.

Jason: As to why it is that way. Like my speculation is that we, a lot of marketers have taken their cues from bigger players in the market. Like for example, HubSpot and or Salesforce. And their situations just don’t apply to you. Right. They first of all, HubSpot started a long time ago with content when there wasn’t any content. They were one of the pioneers in content marketing, and today the picture is just much differently. So if you’re borrowing messaging from those big companies, it’s not gonna work for you.

So you gotta, you know, the really, the, what you should be doing is you should be interviewing customers, for the jobs to be done. If you’ve heard that language, and what that means is that you really gotta find out what’s typical across, say 10 clients as to the reason that they bought from you. And it’s gotta be a struggling moment.

Pain points aren’t enough like everybody talks about selling to pain. I’m a huge Sandler disciple, so I love selling to pain. I understand it, I wrap that into marketing. But I’m here to tell you today, it’s not enough. So, to give you an example, I may have a problem or I may be in pain because I can’t wake my kids up in the morning to get them ready for school. Am I gonna buy a product to solve that?

So in other words, I may have that problem, I may agree it’s a problem, but if it’s not worth solving, I’m not doing anything. And so you gotta create those compelling cases as to why I need to solve this problem now before I’m gonna be paying attention. And that’s what you want to do.

Daniela: Or if it’s not worth investing and solving. Right. Because I think everybody wants to see if they can solve that problem without money first. Like, lemme see if I can get my kids in line and then I’ll think about buying something. Right?

Jason: That’s another issue. And way too often do we engage in demos and things like that in the software world where like, we’re getting somebody that might agree that it’s a problem, they take it and they, it’s not big enough problem to solve, so it just dies and they lose to no decision. And that’s what’s happening like over half the time when they lose deals.

Daniela: Yeah, and I think it’s, I think it’s a lot of like the case of also when you ask, I don’t know how that phrase goes, but it’s like when you ask a person about transportation. And then they say they want faster horses instead of like cars. And you have to like give them a car. Like, no, you don’t want a faster horse, you want a car. Right.

Jason: Well, right. And that kind of goes along with the challenger sale methodology that we like a lot. In terms of messaging, because it starts with getting problem agreement. And then once you once you attract the people that agree that this is a problem that’s worth solving now I can easily point out deficiencies in the ways that companies try to solve it today and then provide your reframe, and that’s how you’re solving it differently.

That’s the challenger model. And we think, and it works not only for one-to-one conversations, but it also works in marketing messaging. That’s what we should be striving for, is how do we attract people that agree this is a problem because, then I’ve want, you know, like makes my job as a salesperson a hell of a lot easier.

Daniela: Yeah. And I think just like more believable.

Jason: Well, sure, yeah. Because like, if they’re, if a prospect is reading all of your information and they’re like, yeah, I agree, this is a problem. I really like the way that this company’s solving it. How hard is that gonna be to close that?

Daniela: Right. Yeah.

Jason: And are they gonna be looking at competitors? They may be doing, maybe doing it because their procurement requires them to look at two other companies. But I guarantee if you’re the one that educated them, you’re not gonna have a problem with the competitors.

Daniela: They’re gonna be a lot more willing to trust you.

Jason: Well, you’re right.

Rapid Fire Game

Daniela: Well, Jason, it’s been so cool to talk to you. I think you have like a really, I always enjoy talking to people who clearly have a lot of experience because there is a lot more weight to the words that you say. I also speak to a lot of different kinds of people and I think your knowledge and expertise have been really great. Before I let you go though, I do have a game prepared for us. I don’t know if you’re down to play.

Jason: I’m down now. Let’s play. I don’t even know what it.

Daniela: So we’re winding down a little bit. Let’s forget about marketing. Let’s forget about B2B. Let’s forget about SaaS companies for a second. And I’m gonna ask you 20 questions, or I’m gonna attempt to go through 20. And then we’re gonna do a rapid fire, one minute timer on my phone. I’m setting it right now. And as soon as the minute is over, we’ll see how many questions we got through, and if you got through 20, you’ll be the winner. The first winner that I have on the show, nobody ever gets through 20 questions, so that’s a little bit of pressure for you.

Jason: That’s rough. It feels like the end of password.

Daniela: Yeah. Literally, like I, you were like, this is the hardest part of the interview. All the other questions, they were easy compared to this. Okay. So ready?

Jason: Yep.

Daniela: All right. Let me start it now. Coffee or tea?

Jason: Coffee.

Daniela: Early bird or night owl.

Jason: Early bird.

Daniela: Favorite social media platform?

Jason: LinkedIn.

Daniela: Go to karaoke song.

Jason: Pass

Daniela: Books or podcasts?

Jason: Books.

Daniela: One word that describes you.

Jason: Trued

Daniela: Dream Vacation Destination,

Jason: Mexico

Daniela: Most Used app on your phone.

Jason: Email.

Daniela: Favorite emoji.

Jason: The Wink

Daniela: Hidden Talent,

Jason: Jazz piano.

Daniela: Go to Comfort Food,

Jason: Chocolate

Daniela: Superpower you’d wanna have for a day.

Jason: Invisibility.

Daniela: That was the timer. Not bad, Jason. We got through 11 questions.

Jason: Oh, that’s not even close to 20.

Daniela: Well, you know, I’ve had people who’ve done worse, so if. I, I had one person who got through like five questions ’cause they thought about the karaoke song too much.

Jason: Yeah, that’s a tough one.

Daniela: I know. I wouldn’t be able to answer that either. Like, I mean, I guess now ’cause I ask it, I would, I would probably prepare something, but

Jason: Yeah, I need to prepare for that answer.

Conclusion

Daniela: Yeah, on the spot. I couldn’t think of it. I don’t do karaoke, so I totally get it. But don’t worry. You did great. Thank you so much do for doing this, Jason, today with us. Before we end the show, I do wanna give you the space to plug anything that you wanna plug. If anything that you said resonated with our viewers, the space is yours to tell them where to go right now.

Jason: Yeah. So if you’re a B2B software company or in B2B and feel like you need some help with messaging. We do offer a free review. So I’ll go look at your messaging. That could be for ads content, website or whatever, and suggest some things that hopefully will help you convert more qualified leads into sales conversations.

Daniela: It’s amazing. Yeah. I will be adding the links to this at the description of this video. And for anybody who is on the listening side, go to the video and you’ll find the links. Thank you everyone, and thank you Jason for doing this today. I will see you on the next episode.

Jason: You bet. I enjoyed it.

Daniela: You’ve been listening to Fully Managed, brought to you by Penji. Check out the show notes to learn more about today’s guest and to learn more about Penji the Human First creative subscription service. Head over to Penji.co. And by the way, if you’re still listening, it would mean the absolute world to us if you were to share this podcast with a friend, and of course, subscribe.