Rockwell Automation: Chris Luecke – Building Your Sales Team’s Brand as a Manufacturer

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Chris Luecke of Rockwell Automation shares some of the first steps to take – and obstacles to overcome – when building a brand with online content.

Danny:

All right, hey, so for today’s episode listen, I’ve got a really awesome guest. I’ve got Chris Luecke here from Rockwell Automation and he’s going to talk to us about building your personal brand. Chris, thanks so much for coming on IndustrialSage.

Chris:

No problem, thanks for having me, Danny.

Danny:

Yeah, so I’ve been wanting to have you on here for a while because I came across you over the summer. It’s like July, this was like July. Funny story. It was like July or June, sometime in there.

Chris:

Okay.

Danny:

I was here at the studio super late, and I was, I was drinking a beer or two and I came across you on I think you were on a podcast. My gosh, I can’t remember the name of it. It was maybe CSIA organization with Tony…

Chris:

Yeah, yeah, Tony Verhoeven, he does…

Danny:

Tony Verhoeven, that’s it, yeah.

Chris:

Yeah, he does an industrial automation show out of Madison, I think, is where he’s based.

Danny:

That’s it, yes, and I totally came running out and I was like “wow This is awesome!” And I was just totally, I loved the whole episode. It basically talked about, what I want to talk about here is kind of like this whole thing you’re doing: this Manufacturing Happy Hour, which I think is really awesome. So before I get too far down the weeds maybe you can just explain, like, tell us a little bit about your background, and then what is this whole Manufacturing Happy Hour thing that you’re doing?

Chris:

Sure, so I’ll give you a background, because at the end of the day, I’m just your average account manager, I work for Rockwell Automation. I serve equipment manufacturers out here in the Bay Area, where I’m based. I’m an engineer by degree, I got an engineering degree from Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and once I got that I knew I wanted to do something that was a bit more people-facing. I’m an extrovert at the end of the day, and I stumbled upon sales engineering and account management as a career with Rockwell right out of school and just seemed something that allowed me to utilize my technical background and also get creative with how I would go about driving new business, building relationships with my customers, and after doing…

It was probably the six-year mark where I’d been doing account management for a while and I’d recently moved to the Bay Area and a couple of things were going through my mind. The first thing was, I love my job having a lot of fun, but I feel like something’s missing. I feel like I’m not necessarily taking advantage of my total skill set. I used to play in cover bands, and I’ve always enjoyed being on stage so there is that little personal creative element to it. At the same time, and maybe more importantly was, when looking at the market that I serve out here in the Bay Area, as you can imagine, you look at all the tech companies out there, it’s a lot of young folks in their 20s, early 30s that are these, they’re the decision makers at these businesses. And I was thinking to myself “How can I reach this audience more effectively?” because I had been working in Houston for four years prior to being out here, where you kind of had the opposite end of the spectrum. A lot of tried, true, senior folks that work in the industry for years and years where that personal face to face was the way they wanted to engage.

Danny:

Right.

Chris:

But I looked at it out here, younger generations, they want to consume information on video or podcast, or whatever it may be. So I had this crazy idea where I’m like, “You know what? I want to do something that’s fun and approachable.” So I was sitting in my apartment on a Saturday afternoon and I pour myself a little beer and I got on camera and I sent a little pilot video out to a bunch of my mentors within the company and like, “Hey, I’ve got this idea and it’s going to look really similar to this. I’ll be talking about tech.” I think I was actually sitting right here, when I recorded that video and I just said, “Hey, how about this idea where we talk about our technologies and issues that are impacting the manufacturing industry over a cold one?” And people loved it, and it started off as a video newsletter, then started sharing it over social media a bit more and more, over the past two years since I started it in October 2016, it’s really grown, not only from just a video series but into a manufacturing industry community that’s both virtual and physical as well. That was kind of a long answer to your question, but, that’s really kind of the history and my background and how it evolved into being Manufacturing Happy Hour.

Danny:

No, that’s a great answer, and I love it. It’s Manufacturing Happy Hour, I love the fact you’re taking something and doing it differently. Especially that sort of, you were talking about how you were in Houston what were you doing in Houston? You said previously that you were working somewhere, or?

Chris:

Yeah so I was still in Houston working for Rockwell Automation.

Danny:

Okay, alright.

Chris:

I was just serving primarily folks in the energy industries and mechanical industries at that point, but the real… but it was that kind of juxtaposition of the type of people I was working with out in Houston, then out here in San Francisco, where I’m like, “Wow, I really have a totally different customer base out here.” Not only out here, in terms of demographics, and whatnot, but as a result from that just how they consume information as well, which is really why I started gravitating towards video over the past few years as a medium to engage my customer base and quite frankly a broader audience from a different angle.

Danny:

Yes, I know, totally makes sense, we talked about this all the time on IndustrialSage. As your B2B decision maker, I mean this is a, Google came out with a study in 2015 and they said that at that time this was three four years ago now, that nearly 50% of your B2B buyers are millennial. Well, let’s go forward now, we know that’s going to transition, and that’s, going to be the majority– I would probably argue that it is the majority now.

Chris:

Sure, yeah.

Danny:

And so, I think that it sort of behooves you, if you will, to say, “Hey, we have to figure out how to get our message out there.” Because, like that you were talking about before that the… the business isn’t relationships, because it very much is, but the traditional way of getting your message out there is different, the biggest and the best, it doesn’t necessarily cut it, anymore.

Chris:

Yeah.

Danny:

Yeah, so one of the things I’m curious about, this comes up a lot, and we’re hearing about it a lot more I was actually talking to the client the other day, and we we’re talking: “Listen, you guys really need to make sure, you need to have your sales force out there, like actually engage on LinkedIn, I mean maybe even doing videos whether that’s, like, public or even like, through your prospects and just using it as a medium to engage.”

Chris:

Mm-hmm.

Danny:

And they were like: “Yeah, I don’t… we’re a little nervous about that, to be honest with you.”

Chris:

Yeah.

Danny:

“Like, we’re nervous because what if someone says something crazy or I don’t know?” So what I’m curious is you kind of did that pilot and they obviously they were like, “Yeah go for it,” but was there any initial like, “We’re not sure about this,” or like how did that go?

Chris:

Yeah, good question because I think, especially with a large corporation, that can be a concern, like how is that message going to be received? And do the folks in the field, are they going to be able to give that message appropriately? And the reality is, as sales folks, we’re tasked with understanding what our company’s messaging is and how that’s supposed to be translated. So, I guess the first thing I’d say is I was really taking that in, just kind of repackaging a little bit, a fun way that fit my personality. I think the other thing was, and this is probably the case we were with a large company like Rockwell, than a small company, where you can kind of try new things a little quicker.

Danny:

Sure.

Chris:

I had mentioned that for I think it was about nine months, I didn’t really share what I was doing on LinkedIn yet. I had the YouTube channel, but I was really just using it as a video newsletter to immediate customer base, so we’re talking like an email list two hundred something people large, and that was really like a testbed was to see was message resonating with a small audience. And since it was, at that point, after nine months or so, and after I had some momentum, that’s when I put it on LinkedIn and started saying: “Hey, what does the broader community think about this?” And the reality is you can step back a little bit, if you need to say I had my messaging was off by a little bit, if someone wanted to say: “Hey Chris, we’re with Rockwell’s marketing department and we’d like you to maybe rephrase it like this or take this off.” That’s something you can fix easily enough.

I will say on the flip side of that, the benefit – and you were talking about how you were talking to folks about doing LinkedIn and maybe doing video – the benefit of getting content like this out there, I think really outweighs the risk. Because when I put a video out from let’s say two years ago when I was shooting some of my first videos, those are videos that people can still find on the internet today, and that’s something that I did two years ago, that’s now evergreen content. And I’ll give an example since we’re on an industrial podcast, one of my most popular videos to this day is still how to select between a managed versus an unmanaged switch. It’s a topic people are Googling, comes up all the time, it’s on YouTube, so it’s one of my highest viewed videos because it solves a problem that customers are still facing today in the industry. So, again, kind of long answer that, but it really goes to show that there is- there are steps you can take to make sure you are getting the right message out there and get some feedback to make sure it’s resonating with the audience right. But once you’ve got that down, the benefits totally outweigh the risks.

Danny:

Absolutely, I would agree 100%. I mean there’s some great things there, talk about creating content that’s evergreen, that’s awesome. Because instead of like maybe ad sales, or say a trade show for example. Not to say that they’re not valuable, they’re absolutely valuable…

Chris:

Sure.

Danny:

But you kind of make your mark there and then it moves, and we all know you come away from an event or something and you’re all excited and then the next day you’re like: “Wait what? What happened?” Because you’re into the next thing and you’ve got content and you’re able to build this library that people continue to search. And then the other thing you said which I think was awesome was that your highest traffic video was solving someone’s challenge. That’s like the foundation of a strong content marketing campaign, it’s just answer your prospect’s and client’s challenges. Be providing value to them instead of saying “Here’s everything that we do and I’m going to sell you this and this and we’re amazing,” and it’s like…

Chris:

Yep.

Danny:

That’s awesome, that’s awesome.

Chris:

And yeah, to springboard off of that, even though I work for Rockwell Automation or certainly a Rockwell Automation Technology Spin to the series, at the end of the day I try to never to title one of my videos like “New Features of The PowerFlex 5.5” or something like that–

Danny:

Because what does that mean to the viewer?

Chris:

Exactly! It’s always something like “How to use a drive to increase your uptime,” or something along those lines, all about uptime, productivity, helping customers solve the challenges they have in their fields.

Danny:

Yeah, no that’s awesome. Let’s talk about a little bit of the result. What have you seen as a result from that? More deals, more awareness, like what does that look like?

Chris:

Yeah, I’m happy to talk to that, that’s a good question I’ve got another two part answer to because there is a short term element and there is a long term element to it as well. So, lets go I’ll start with the long term, I’ll start with the macro at the end of the day I’m 31 years old, I’m pretty still in the infancy of my career if you think about it. You kind of mentioned at the start in terms of personal branding, I wanted to create a lot of evergreen content that would benefit folks for years to come. Then I could build upon as I go along, so with any, let’s be honest any marketing effort it’s not this one to two month, even one year type thing. You’re really thinking, “What’s the three to five year plan?” So I’m really trying to grow this over a period of time.

Now that said, I have seen… it’s good to keep track of, what are those like short term victories that you see along the way. And a couple of the ones that I would bring up is the fact that we were able to bring this, this video series and turn into a manufacturing industry community. At the end of the day when you use the term “manufacturing happy hour,” that caters itself to doing an event at say a brewery, or a winery, and bringing a bunch of our forward thinking customers together and getting them to collaborate with one another. Because one of the things I saw in our industry is I didn’t see people taking advantage of referrals as I’ve seen in other spots like here in manufacturing it’s like, we’re so used to the account manager going in and pitching the product and whatnot. But what I wanted to do is help my like mutual customers help them, help solve each other’s problems because similar to Amazon, when you’re online and looking for that four and a half star review I wanted them to exchange best practices and really just be raw and real about what they were seeing from our solution so that way they could see, okay this has worked for this person maybe this’ll work for me too, then at the same time it has been a lead generator.

I can think back and this is one of the reasons as you mentioned that LinkedIn is such a powerful tool when I posted videos on LinkedIn anyone that like that likes that video or comments on that video all of a sudden everyone in their network even if I’m not immediately connected to them can see that video and there have been leads and just and not just leads, but really new opportunities like within, the sales cycle where you talk about in sales, the role of the sales person had changed people pretty much now everything about my product before I walk in the door to meet with them. Because they can go online, Google, product profile, whatever it might be. My job is to get in there early to be able to help them understand how our products apply to problems they are having. So in doing videos like this and just having a broad range of people encountered on LinkedIn there have been leads and opportunities and wins quite frankly that have popped up as a result of these videos being out on the internet. Is it still something that I would like to see grow and still be a bigger thing? Sure, but again these are some of the short term wins in what I look at as a long term strategy.

Danny:

No that totally makes sense and I love it. You’re talking about playing the long game and that is when a lot of people can get very short sided, especially in our culture today. It’s very quick, fast food, I want it now. I mean God darn you can go to Amazon and order whatever in two days, or even in an hour. Depending on where you are, we have a very short attention span not just from consuming media but just a sense of, I want to see results and I want to see them now. I know you talked,a really key thing you said is that it was nine months that you’re slowly kind of building this thing out with your customer before you even went onto LinkedIn and even between then and now it’s been what? Two years? You said October 2018 or 16 that’s not a short term play And a lot of people, I think, struggle especially in marketing and especially even more in sales. That it’s very transactional and I have to see the ROI I have to see it now but the things that you’re talking about provide so much value evergreen content that’s going to live on there for years.

Chris:

Mm-hmm.

Danny:

You’re helping provide value, right? That is huge I mean your talking about building the manufacturing community so you can bring in customers that share best practices and solutions and bring innovative ideas to the table that kind of help each other and it’s just like, “Look I’m just providing this venue this community here.” That is awesome, that is really as you talk about that role that the change of the salesperson in sales to facilitate and really be that the solutions provider, the trusted advisor. And it all starts with providing value. And I think you’re doing a fantastic job of that.

Chris:

Yeah there’s an individual that I met that I imagine some people watching this might know, and his name is Gary Vaynerchuk, and he has a book. Well he’s got to book out and you’re probably familiar with this too, it’s called “Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook.”

Danny:

Yeah.

Chris:

And for those that might be watching this and are familiar with it, at the end of the day he’s basically saying provide 90%, just like giving value, give value with no expectation of return. And then 10% of the time you can ask for something in return as a result of that. And another thing he brings up is the idea when he’s talking career he’s talks about having macro-patience in the long run, but micro-speed in terms of being, in the case of “Manufacturing Happy Hour,” I’ve got to get a video out every week so I’m consistent and things stay fresh, but am I expecting a return or a new order on of those videos like the second I put it out; Absolutely not. It all adds up to be patient and seeing how this plays out over a like five year, 10 year period of time.

Danny:

Sure yeah, absolutely yeah no I love it. Jab, jab, jab, jab. Provide value, provide value, Provide value, Provide value… I love it, I love a lot of the stuff that he said. So I’ve got another question then so for somebody who’s out here saying, “You know what? This guy Chris, I think he’s onto something. I’m kind of interested in doing something like this.” What things have you learned or what tips would you give that person saying, “Hey do this, don’t do this, run away…”

Chris:

Yeah, great great tip and this is, I’ve been trying to maybe come up with a little bit of a structure and formula to some of the things I’ve done, I would say one of the biggest things is let’s say they work for a company like myself. You’re working for a large company and you’re trying to get information out to your customers in an innovative fashion. Just try it with your little customer base, first.

So one thing I say is whether you’re doing a video or whether you’re doing a vlog, or doing a podcast when I create a message on Manufacturing Happy Hour I really have like three elements to it. And that is one, I tell my customer up front what they’re going to learn. I say, “Hey in this video you’re going to learn x.” So that way the expectation is set up, right up front where, “Hey for the next three minutes this is what you’re going to be learning about.” SO that way the person knows, “Hey this applies to me,” or “I’m just going to move on to the next video.” Which is fine, I want to make sure I’m respecting their time and then we make sure we give three key pieces of information. Whether that be a success story related solution, whether it’s some features and benefits, some background and the problem it solves. I tell my guests, like, “You know what, this is a quick video all we have time for is three things tops. So I know your solution does 10 things really well but pick the top three and that’s what we’re going to focus on.” And then finally I end with a call to action. Where it’s like “Hey, check out this free tool, or if you want more information go here.”

So I really try to use that formula for my videos but you could do that with a blog post as well, and the reason I bring this up is everyone has the tools they need to do these things right away. Like the first time I did a video I had no microphone I literally set up my iPhone on like a selfie stick that I propped up with some books and I hit record Because I think people use the equipment as more often than not an excuse to never get started. And my biggest thing is like, “Hey just do something whether it’s recording that first three minute video, whether it’s taking a picture of what you’re doing on a daily basis and just posting it to LinkedIn with a story related to that.” Like if it’s related to your field people love seeing that content right now. Just getting a peek into what someone’s day to day is like, so just find… realize that you have the tools in front of you that you need to make great content my biggest piece of advice is to just get started. And if you can simplify it into a quick one-two-three formula. Like I presented I think that’s a way that people can get over that intimidation and get started today.

Danny:

I love it I mean you hit the nail on the head just getting started and that intimidation can be nerve racking. There can be a lot of fear. “Oh people are going to laugh at me, or i don’t know what if I say something stupid. Or what if I don’t,” there’s a million and one excuses you can have Yeah I love your advice just kind of getting out there and do it, do it.

Chris:

Yeah and to kind of summarize it what I’ve been telling people recently is like “Hey if you just get started you’re going to separate yourself from 99% of people that found a lot of excuses to never get started. And then on top of that if you stick with it for even three months, six months, whatever it is, you’ve just separated yourself from the 99% of people that go started but quit too early. So it’s, as far as personal branding goes, if you can start something and stay consistent with it, that is still a very rare thing out there. So I would challenge anyone listening to this if you’ve got an idea that you’re looking to, jump on and you think it might work give it a shot and see how it goes.

Danny:

Yeah, I love it this is awesome Chris listen thanks so much for for coming on, for sharing your story how you did this, some tips here if anyone has any questions and want to reach out to you what’s the best way of getting in touch?

Chris:

Sure, I would say right now LinkedIn is a great spot to find me I’m just Chris Luecke on LinkedIn but to connect with Manufacturing Happy Hour directly my first call to action would be subscribe on YouTube, subscribe on YouTube, and if you want to find us on social media where we’re also pretty engaged in conversation both at Twitter and Instagram we are @mfghappyhour so just an abbreviated version of Manufacturing @mfghappyhour that’s on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Danny:

Perfect that’s awesome, so we’ll make sure that all that information is in the show notes so that people can find you.

Chris:

Mm-hmm.

Danny:

If they’re listening on iTunes, or watching the video we’ll have that there, that information as well, but Chris again thanks so much for coming on. This has really been awesome, I’ve learned a lot. You’ve kind of got me excited to keep doing these, this video thing.

Chris:

Hey no, I’ve seen your work guys like you doing the same thing inspire me to keep rolling as well, and I really appreciate the conversation that you led today Danny it was an honor to be on the show.

Danny:

Well thank we’ll keep rolling, both of us. So, thanks again man.

Chris:

Sounds good, thanks Danny.

Danny:

Take it easy! All right, so, man that was a really awesome episode. I can’t tell you how excited I was to have Chris come on I mean this has come up a million times we get people asking about this all the time I hope, hopefully you got a lot of value out of this from what Chris was talking about like the importance of really building your personal brand, and the importance about really think about the long game, not the short game. Let’s not be super transactional about it, things have changed the way that people buy, we talk about it all the time. It’s completely changed the role of the salesperson now has completely changed. You’ve got to be that trusted advisor you have to provide value, and really think about how to build your personal brand, how that’s so important and you have the tool to do that. Do something different, take one thing that you watch, you learn from this video, put it into action today, okay? So that’s your homework for today.

Thanks for watching and listening. If you listen on iTunes I would love a review you can do that if you have any questions. You can reach out to us at industrialsage.com/questions, we’ve got the answer there for you. We love to see shares, your likes, and your comments on social media, so until then I’m Danny Gonzales thanks for watching IndustrialSage.

 

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