The Importance of Solving Lead Execution Issues In Your Organization | Episode 117

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Today in IndustrialSage Episode 117, Kevin Brown of LeadSmart Technologies joins us to talk about how to fix the ‘black hole lead crisis’ in your company.

Danny:

All right, so let’s jump into today’s episode, I have Kevin Brown, who is the co-founder and CEO of LeadSmart Technologies. Kevin, thank you so much for joining me today on IndustrialSage.

Kevin:

Happy to be here, Danny, thanks for having me on.

Danny:

All right, so for those who aren’t familiar with LeadSmart Technologies, tell me, tell us, who are you, what do you guys do?

Kevin:

Well, we like to sometimes describe ourselves as a business accelerator platform. So we’re a SaaS software company that builds three different components, we combine three different components that people typically use within their business that bring three critical issues into business growth.

The first part of it is a CRM system, which is a little different than what most people would realize in the past, from their experience using CRM. We’ve taken out a lot of the clutter, we’ve really put processes and workflows and things in, to streamline the CRM process. But, typically, when somebody comes back, we can use a trade show or an event of some sort as an example, somebody comes back with a large amount of information, oftentimes that gets dumped into Excel, it gets sorted, part of it goes into their CRM, part of it’s dumped. And then it just gets sent out, typically by email, to their channel partners, their internal sales team, their manufacturers’ reps, their distributors, their distribution network.

What LeadSmart does, is it takes that data and then we have a marketing automation component of it as well. So we take that lead, work with marketing automation tools, to turn that into what we like to refer to as a sales-ready lead, as opposed to just a lead, right? Somebody’s not coming by to win the golf putter, or see the pretty girl, we like to describe it as a sales-ready lead.

But then when it’s, this is kind of where the magic happens, as I like to describe it is, when that lead is now ready to go to your channel partner, whether it’s your sales team, your direct sales team, or it’s an independent rep, or broker, or agent, and then onto your distribution partner, your distributor, that’s where our channel management component of our products, as I mentioned, there’s three components to it, CRM, Marketing Automation and Channel Management. And we automate the process of following that lead from where you got it at the show or event, to them becoming a customer, or them opting out and being somebody that just goes into a nurture cycle in your marketing program.

One of the biggest challenges people have in business, right, is, we like to phrase it as the black hole lead crisis. You get all these leads, right? Marketing wants to know what Sales is doing, Sales says, “Oh, those leads aren’t that good.” We’re in this vicious cycle that happens, and the executives that wrote the check for that show or event are saying, “Somebody tell me about our return on investment!”

Danny:

“What did we get out of this?” Yeah.

Kevin:

Right. Exactly right.

Danny:

Yeah, I like that, the black hole lead crisis. I’m going to use that, I will, I’m quoting you guys for it. That’s awesome.

Kevin:

It’s copyrighted. Just kidding!

Danny:

Excellent, so, all right. So tell me, it sounds like an awesome tool, it sounds like a lot of people could use that. Tell me the story on your background, and why you guys started this.

Kevin:

Yeah, so there’s three of us that started the company, my co-founder Tom Burton’s the Chief Operating Officer and Steve Snapp, our CTO. We’ve had lifelong relationships, just about Tom, in fact, it’s kind of scary to say, but Tom and I are actually friends since kindergarten!

Danny:

Oh, that’s awesome!

Kevin:

Isn’t that crazy? And so, but we’ve done a number of business projects over the last four or five years together, and Tom has a technology background, he’s started and exited multiple software companies, he’s a old school coder, and then Steve, my other partner, we’ve been involved in doing CRM-related work together about 15, 16 years now. We worked together, first time I think in 2003, he came into a company I was involved with, a manufacturing company that I had been involved with, and Steve developed our CRM system for us.

And so, really the background of the company is you and I have talked about before is I’ve spent 25-plus years in the industrial world. I started working for a large national distributor in the industrial safety market, and when I was right out of school, spent a number of years there, left that company, started a manufacturer’s rep agency. So, I spent 10 years before I sold that company in 2003, I spent 10 years in that middle portion of the distribution network, as the independent rep who represented some pretty large organizations. We handled some products for DuPont as an example, for California, Arizona, Nevada, and Hawaii. We’re a West Coast-based company in Southern California, and I was that guy in the middle of the food chain, that got those leads from the factory. In those days, they came sometimes by email, but they still came by fax, in the early ’90s and through into the early 2000s.

But I was the guy that had to work with the distributor and find out what was the right distributor to get the lead to, and then try and follow up, try and get word back to the folks at companies like GOJO and DuPont and so forth that we were working with. And it was just always a struggle. So I dealt with the problem as I could, being a distributor rep, then I dealt with the problem as a manufacturer’s rep.

And then in 2003, I exited my manufacturer’s rep agency, and invested in a manufacturing company. So now I was the guy that was paying the bill to go to the trade show, generate all the leads, sending them out to my manufacturer’s reps, and got them onto the distributor, and I had to deal with the black hole. And now the black hole was my money! And it was a whole different segment for us.

So I’ve continued to watch this the last eight to 10 years I’ve been working mostly on a consulting basis, and doing some advising work with companies in the distribution world, so both industrial, industrial safety, environmental, electrical, the electrical market, and the consumer electronics market as well. And everywhere that I’ve been, we’ve had the same problem. A couple of years ago, I sat down with Tom and Steve, my two co-founders, we were talking about this significant problem. Tom and I were doing some consulting with an offshore company that was coming into the US market, we were helping them with some digital marketing, some traditional marketing, and some go-to-market strategy work with them, and they needed a solution to deal with the leads that we were helping them generate, and that’s the genesis of LeadSmart.

It was, the three of us sat down, and frankly, it was Tom, my co-founder who said, “You know what, we’ve built parts to this already, we’ve put these pieces together, let’s finalize it, form a company,” and we commercialized the product, and really launched at the beginning of this year, with the idea that we can help people solve the problem from getting the lead to turning it into a sale, and automating the process all the way through.

Danny:

Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. There’s a huge need for that right now. I kind of want to talk a little bit about that challenge. Obviously there’s a lot of challenges in there, but specifically, that working with your dealers, your distributors, from lead tracking to following up, there’s a lot of different ways of being able to do that. What are some tips and some tricks or some ideas that you have around to really sort of facilitate that, make that a little bit easier?

Kevin:

So, what’s interesting in your comment, and I’ll throw something back to you, and let’s play a little volleyball here. But I would suggest you’re 100% on track when you start talking about lead attribution scoring and different things like that that you can do on a marketing site, right? And there are phenomenal ways that we can see activity, through the Marketing Automation component of LeadSmart, we could do all that.

The challenge I believe that people have, and in one of our first discussions we talked about this a little bit, which I believe is critical, the world has no shortage of agencies that can help with lead generation and marketing and so forth, and there’s great companies out there doing that, obviously. And you know that.

The challenge is, if I’m an industrial manufacturer, and I hire a lead generation organization, but I can’t execute on those leads, and turn those leads into, we use the term lead to revenue, if I can’t turn those leads into revenue, how long am I going to stay working with that agency? The agency could be performing perfectly. Bar none, there’s no issues with what that agency’s doing. But if I don’t have the ability to put that through my network, and turn those leads into dollars, how long am I going to keep that group around?

So, from a marketing standpoint, you know what, you’re exactly right, there are great ways that we can do that. What LeadSmart does a little bit differently, is what we say, is okay, now that we’ve done the marketing tools, we’ve got a lead generated, and we continue to nurture it, and we continue to watch and track, and engage with it.

We move now over and get that lead into the sales network, and what LeadSmart does, is it automates that process, and tracks what, we really track two things, and this is a big differentiator for us. We track the lead activity. So we can see on an ongoing basis, is that lead coming to a webinar? Are they clicking on a link going to a video? Are they opening our emails? We have all of that data there, right? We understand that. But what historically has been missing in what you’re asking about, from those tips and tricks, what historically has been missing is, okay, now I’ve got it out in the field, what’s the field doing with it?

And what LeadSmart does is LeadSmart scores and tracks and manages two things, one is what is the lead doing, we can track that. But two, now we can track what activity is going on with our field sales network, our manufacturer’s reps, our distributors, are they having activity? Because what LeadSmart does, is it sends out, out of the box, LeadSmart does it once a week, we can make it daily, weekly, monthly, it sends out an email that has hyperlinks with it for every lead that’s been assigned, to a manufacturer’s rep, a salesman within a manufacturer’s rep agency, your own sales team and your distribution partners, they get that email every week, and it shows them, we use a series of red light, yellow light, green light, based upon the timing since the lead’s been contacted, and then we use another series of icons that actually shows the engagement of the lead.

So if I’m the manufacturer’s rep, for XYZ manufacturing arm of the distributor of the product, I’m getting an email every week that shows me all of the leads that have been assigned to me, it shows me in that list engagement level of the lead, are they continuing to be engaged, and then it shows me by red, yellow or green light how long it’s been since I contacted them.

Danny:

Absolutely, that sounds great! That sounds fantastic, because, you know, there’s a lot of stories over here where, you mentioned that you go to a trade show and you’ve got leads, or maybe the manufacturer’s developing leads on their side, and they pass it on to a dealer, or a distributor, and then, crickets. Or I’ve heard horror stories, where you send your leads, you send your leads, you send your leads, and then nothing. Like they sit there, and nobody does anything with them. Or, depending on how it’s set up, we have really no way of having any attribution to have a sense of did that actually, did they close that deal? We don’t know. Because they’re buying in bulk, and we don’t have the insights in that data to be able to see that.

Kevin:

We live in 2019, almost 2020. We have access to so much data. But if you can pull all that data together, in a single location that says, “I know exactly what’s going on with my business, and my business as it relates to you, my distribution partner, whether you’re an independent agent or you’re a distribution partner that’s selling the product.” Where you can sit down and say, “Not only did you sell this much, and we partnered on these sales opportunities, but, here’s all of the leads that we’ve sent you in this period of time. Here’s how they’re all categorized.”

You’ve either been really successful, and maybe you haven’t. We have real actionable data, so that we have these meetings, we leave these meetings, saying, “Here’s what we’re going to do moving forward,” because we know about what our marketing efforts did, and we know what the sales efforts did, either successfully or unsuccessfully, and it’s all tied to a series of simple reports, because we brought all the data together in a single location. That’s what starts making more business changes.

Danny:

Absolutely, that makes a ton of sense. So if by current years, obviously that stays top of mind.

Kevin:

It does, yeah.

Danny:

And there’s a whole myriad of ways of being able to do that. The other piece was providing that lead data, and say, “Hey, this is what we’re doing for you guys. “This is our value to you, “and this is how we’re doing “to help facilitate business to make it easier for you.”

Kevin:

Right, right. I think – sorry to interrupt – I think you’re right. But we could not be more on track with that, because everybody’s busy. The more technology we get, the busier that we all get. And if we can have ways that we can filter down or we can distill information, down the table to be communicated between partners, it just becomes critical, because everybody’s clamoring for our time. Your phone’s probably buzzed 10 times in the time we’ve talked, mine’s been doing the same, everybody wants our attention. Until we start talking about that relationship of a manufacturer and a distributor and whoever’s in between them, nobody has free time.

So how do we put tools in place, and processes in place that really refine the time that we get from each other, to maximize those opportunities? And, you know what? As a manufacturer, if you’re giving, it’s not just about having a great product, right? If you have a great product, that’s wonderful, but you still need to keep everyone’s attention. And you still need to stay top of mind with them, so that they’re out talking about your product. And you can now prove to them, if you have the right data, you can prove to them why it’s advantageous to do that, and be putting more energy into you and others, because you’re able to track and manage.

Danny:

Okay, so I’m going to drill down a little bit more on that whole top of mind piece. What are some concrete ways that these manufacturers can say, “Hey, this is how I’m going to stay top,” I mean, obviously, we said, okay, we share data, let’s be able to say, “This is what we’re doing for you, these are the leads we’re generating for you.” What are some other ways that me as a manufacturers say, “Okay,” that are outside the box, “Let’s not compete on price, all right?” Because that’s going to be the number one, right? We’re going to go to that. What are other ways that I can stay top of mind?

Kevin:

Well, I think the reality is that, here’s my commercial for you, and let you deal with his. The reality of it is, is there are just so many tools now that we can stay in front of customers, right? Whether it’s, I can tell you that yesterday, you opened version seven of LeadSmart Insights–

Danny:

Yes.

Kevin:

Our weekly newsletter, I know that you opened it!

Danny:

Yes–

Kevin:

Because I have a report that told me. I could now turn that into an actionable call, or a reference or whatever we wanted to do with that. But there’s so many avenues, right? So whether it’s our email marketing, it’s trade shows and events. But trade shows and events that are super-well planned with a design structure of what they want to accomplish, right? How many meetings do I have with them, as each of my team members have, coming into that? What are our events, and what’s our followup then, right? And it’s not just, hey, we come home from a show and we send an email off that says would you like a catalog? It’s, what are we going to do with that? What’s actionable during the show, what’s actionable after that show or event?

And then we start talking about video, which, you do such a great job of developing content, that all of us that follow you on LinkedIn see regularly. Video is the thing right now. That’s why we’re not recording a audio podcast. I’m in my office in Irvine, California, you’re in Atlanta, it’s like we were sitting next to each other. These tools are available, and people are busy, right? But we’re developing content right now that can be consumed from somebody on their phone, on a tablet, on their laptop. They could show it on a monitor in an office. It could be consumed however they want.

So I think that that omni-channel term that’s sometimes used that we’re getting multiple approaches, and for a manufacturer, really where you want to be is, you don’t want to be just top of mind with your customer and your end user, you want to be top of mind with your distribution partners, and if you can be top of mind with both of those, you win, because your distributor’s going to be more engaged, because he sees what you’re doing with his customer, the end user.

So he would be remiss not to give you the attention and be top of mind, because he knows that you are killing it with the content that you’re developing, video, email, whatever the traffic that you’re working on to develop the content you’re working to develop there, is if you are top of mind with the end user, and you’re doing similar outreach to your distribution network, you win.

Danny:

Absolutely. No, man, I love it, done! I think that this was a great episode. No, I mean, Kevin, there’s a lot of great things that I can unpack from this. I mean, as we’re wrapping, parting words? Parting words?

Kevin:

Oh, man. I’m going to share a phrase with you that I use about our business, right? So I spent my career selling physical hard good products, and now I’m a technology guy. In the technology world, we talked about that, I use the phrase all the time, it says, people want outcomes, they don’t want more software.

Danny:

That’s a great thing.

Kevin:

And I think it’s the same way when we talk to people in the industrial world. People are looking for outcomes from your widget, whether it’s a vice, a hydraulic hose, a hard hat, a safety vest, whatever it might be, your end user is looking for a great solution. How do you inform that end user, and get them clarity on your message? It’s about marketing. Once you do the marketing right, and use some of the tools that you talk about regularly, in your ongoing episodes of this show, when you get that going right, and then you put technology in place to manage and track that it’s actually happening, you get to win the game, or at least be in the top place on the game, because you’ve touched people at all ends of the network by providing a great product that you already know how to make.

But when you put the right marketing tools into that, and then the right management on the sales process, it really makes a difference, because you have insight and data. I use the phrase regularly, relating to our product LeadSmart. Because LeadSmart gives manufacturers both visibility and accountability into their sales process. And you have insight that has visibility and accountability, you know, you’re in a great spot moving forward. So, I think people that are watching this content, hopefully can look at the marketing tips and tools that you provide on a regular basis, starting to injecting those into their business to grow.

Danny:

Awesome. Kevin, this has been a great episode. We’ll put your contact information in the show notes. So if anybody wants to learn more about you guys, they can totally do that. I don’t know, are you big on LinkedIn, or Instagram, or Twitter or anything like that?

Kevin:

So, Twitter, we’re getting better with, and I should say that Instagram we’re getting better with, we do quite a bit on Facebook, Twitter. I’m pretty simple, I’m @LeadSmartCEO on Twitter. And I’m extremely active on LinkedIn, it’s pretty much every day.

Danny:

Awesome.

Kevin:

So all of our company content goes out through all of those channels.

Danny:

That’s the place to be.

Kevin:

Yeah–

Danny:

Okay, Kevin, thanks so much! It’s been awesome.

Kevin:

Thanks for having me.

Danny:

Anytime.

Kevin:

Thank you.

Danny:

All right, okay. I’m going to try to remember what to unpack, because we covered so many great things. But you know what? I’m going to recap it with what actually Kevin mentioned right there at the end, and I love it. And he said, and I wrote down, “People want outcomes.” That’s the big thing.

Let’s look at the business objective. Let’s look at the results. Let’s look at what we’re after, not necessarily the meet. You know, in a previous episode, we were talking about how there’s a million different technologies and different things that you can use, and sometimes we can get all, “Oh, I could use this, and I could use this, and let’s look,” and at the end of the day, we need to create those outcomes.

And making sure that we have all the right pieces in place. I love how Kevin was talking about just sort of that lifecycle of generating leads. You generate that lead and then you develop them, and then you pass them off, and then, I’ll have a look at my notes here again, we have the “black hole lead crisis.” Listen, I think we’re all guilty of that, we all know that that can happen. So, how do we fix it? Let’s fix it. Let’s get that solved.

Maybe there’s a piece of technology we need to bring in. Maybe a LeadSmart technology could help solve that for you. Maybe, maybe not. Let’s look at ways to, how do we stay on top of mind for our distributors? Kevin brought a lot of great insights on how to be able to do that, making business easy for you, making sure, when you go do events and trade shows you actually have a plan.

So anyway, so you go on and on and on. Great episode, a lot of takeaways for me. People want outcomes, that’s the big thing for me. Always think from a strategic standpoint. What we’re doing and where we’re going, what’s the outcome? Let’s start with what we want first, and then reverse-engineer it. Half of us are engineers, right? I’m not an engineer, but there’s a lot of engineering types here.

So, anyways, that’s it, I’m going to stop rambling. Thanks so much for watching this episode of IndustrialSage. If you have any questions, I’d love to answer them for you. You can reach out to us, IndustrialSage.com/questions, and be on the lookout for a bunch of other episodes we’ve got, every single week. We’re going to be creating these and sending these to you like we have for the last two and a half years. And that’s it, I’m done, thanks for watching. I’m Danny, and I’ll be back with you next week, on another episode of IndustrialSage.

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