(888) 815-0802Get the Meeting! with Stu Heinecke [Episode 735]
Stu Heinecke, author of How to Get a Meeting with Anyone and Get the Meeting!, joins me again on this episode.
Key Takeaways
- Russ Klein, CEO of the American Marketing Association, calls Stu Heinecke the Father of Contact Marketing. Stu admits to naming it. Stu is also a Wall Street Journal cartoonist. Cartoons offer a point of agreement.
- Stu used cartoons in direct mail campaigns for Rolling Stone and Bon Appétit and set records for responses. He wanted to penetrate the rest of the publishing industry. He put together what he called a ‘contact campaign.’
- He sent a cartoon to two dozen VPs of big publishers. He needed a 100-percent response rate. All the contacts responded and became clients. Stu started a multi-million dollar business from an investment of about $100.00.
- Contact marketing means reaching out to a relatively small group of top influencers. Stu sometimes uses ‘big boards’ that cost him $250.00 each to reach a contact worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales.
- Get the Meeting! is a field guide for How to Get a Meeting With Anyone, full of examples and case studies of what people have done to break through the noise and get in touch with people. Personal meetings have an impact.
- Stu talks about using personalization for gifts. Wide personalization uses the correct name and address. Deep personalization uses profile scrapes from social or AI tools to learn about your contacts before gifting them.
- Andy appreciates the human angle. Relationships are about humans. The customer is always thinking, “Why you?” Contact marketing makes you memorable. Daniel Kahneman taught about the power of peak events.
- Do your contacts love the way you think? Don’t fall into the landscape of identical competitors. How can you be one percent better than everyone else?
- Pocket campaigns involve engagement devices, such as multi-tools, imprinted with your contact information and a second step to get something more or to watch a video (that places a tracking pixel on the contact’s browser).
- Stu shares an example of a pocket campaign of a Z-CARD® that folds out into a cartoon poster. The marketer got a sale from the fourth card he shared.
- Poul Nielsen, a physical trainer, has a rubber card that was printed while stretched on a jig. You stretch it out to read it. People show it around. Poul gets three or four new clients for every card he gives out.
- Do something fun that resonates with the receiver. Make yourself memorable. One meeting can change everything. Without meetings, nothing happens.
Episode Transcript
Andy Paul
It’s time to accelerate. Hey friends, this is Andy. Welcome to Episode 735 of accelerate the sales podcast of record and have another excellent episode lined up for today. Joining me as my guest on this week’s show is Stu Heinecke. Stu is the author of a new book titled Get the meeting, which is a follow up to his previous book, how to get a meeting with anyone and your calls to us, joined us on the show to discuss that book a couple years ago. Now Stu is considered the father of what is called contact marketing, which is the art of getting meetings with top influencers who can really have an impact on a decision that you’re trying to win. And this week’s episode, Stu and I are talking about his new book, which is really a field guide for his first book, how to get a meeting. And it’s a beautiful book full of illustrations, which you would expect from Stu since he’s a cartoonist for the Wall Street Journal, as well as precise instructions for how you can put together contact marketing campaigns, I mean, down to even how to instructions for how to fold a box, which I thought was fascinating.
Today, Stu is gonna talk to us about contact marketing, he’ll give us some great examples to inspire you to use it. We’ll start by talking about why contact marketing is all about getting more personal, which you know resonates with me it’s about being more human with buyers, we’ll talk about why contact marketing is so effective in reaching out and getting meetings with these key influencers, and how the authentic personalization you use, creates impact and true differentiation. And then we’ll get into specific examples of contact marketing campaigns. This is used with great success, including one of my favorite tactics from the book or strategies book, when he calls pocket campaigns. You know, the bottom line is contact marketing is doing something fun that resonates with the person you’re trying to reach out to, you know, it’s a way to make yourself memorable, because one meeting if you can get that one meeting, it can change everything. So we’ll get to that and much, much more. All right, let’s jump into it. Stu, welcome to the show.
Stu Heinecke
Glad to be here.
Andy Paul
It’s always a pleasure to have you on so. It’s been a while since your last book actually was the occasion of the last time you’re here. Yes. So we’re gonna talk about your new book today. Yes, yes. Fantastic. I got your new book called Get The Meeting, which is a follow on to a book I really enjoyed, and I enjoyed this one as well. But enjoy both your books, the first book called How to get a meeting with anyone. And maybe just a little refresher course to get started, because you’ve invented this category when the great way to own a category is to cool, invent, invent a category, and the category you’ve invented is called contact marketing. So, explain to people just to refresh your memories, what contact marketing is.
Stu Heinecke
Sure, well, actually, I gotta say, I was just the lucky guy who got to name it. But I surely didn’t invent it.
Andy Paul
I know, but take the credit.
Stu Heinecke
I love it. And in the new book, there’s a foreword by my REST client, the CEO of American Marketing Association, and he called me the father of contact marketing thinking, great, that’s cool. Let’s do it, man. Yeah, let’s do it. So yeah, so how do you get a meeting with anyone came about because I discovered early on in my career, and I’ve got a crazy career. I’m one of the Wall Street Journal cartoonists, but I’m also a marketer, I should say I’m a marketer, but I’m also one of the cartoons. That’s right, to put it the right way around. So and I discovered real quickly that cartoons were incredible marketing devices. I mean, they were engagement devices, I guess, a better way to put it. They’re the best read and remembered parts of magazines and newspapers. I knew that from readership surveys. And when you think about the nature of humor, it’s about truth revealed in a twist, it’s all it is. Although that’s, you know, not so simple to do, but or create but, but if you think about it, everything we find funny, we’re laughing and then we go, Oh, my God, that’s so true. It’s like that. It is like that, right? I know, someone has been through that, right? So here’s this device that you can put into a campaign that gets more attention than just about anything you could put in print and really, almost anything you could put on a screen as well. And, you know, people love them. I guess you could play with it. Hear and Say that they’re really drawn to them.
Andy Paul
I suspect that’s not the first time you’ve used that
Stu Heinecke
No, I’m embarrassed to use it. But they are drawn to them. And and then So then the next thing that happens is, they’re if they read it, they like it, they’re if it’s funny to them at all, either they could either laugh out loud or they could go, huh, that’s what you know, or that’s cool. What’s happening there is that you’re planning a point of agreement. And it’s a very, very powerful, very, very persuasive element to use in a campaign. So I knew this was going to be great to use in direct mail. That’s, that’s where I thought I would use it. And I wanted to create direct mail campaigns for publishers, magazine publishers at the time. And so I wanted to use the mixture of cartoons and personalization, so that each cartoon would be about each recipient. So I very quickly got to two test campaigns going, one for Rolling Stone And the other for bone appetit. And they both beat their controls meaning that both set new records actually for response. That’s it. Okay, great. I want to bring this to the rest of the publishing industry, here’s what gets more relevant because I want to, I want to, I want to penetrate the rest of the publishing industry. Like, no, just just a small thing. Sure. And, and I realized, well, what I need to do is I need to create, I need to put together a little campaign I didn’t know what to call it, so I called it a contact campaign. Mm hmm. Because there was just no name for it and, and the contact campaign consisted of an eight by 10 print of a cartoon, each one personalized to each recipient. And that’s my device. So it’s a personalized cartoon eight by 10 print, right of the letter that said, Hey, this is the device I just used to beat the controls for Rolling Stone and bone appetit. And I think we should put this to the test for your titles. And that campaign went out to about two dozen VPS and directors of circulation, or consumer marketing and, you know, timing, asks the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, etc. So we just two dozen people, and I, you know, sometimes if I’m giving a speech to a group, I love asking them to guess what kind of response rate I might have gotten, you know, keep in mind in direct mail, they used to say that a 1% response rate was was a respectable risk. Like, that’s typical writers no such thing. But if I got 1% that would be a disaster of 24 people, you know, like, that’s like, you can’t measure that, right? If I got a 10% response rate, that’s two and a half people, you know, it’s just I needed to get a 100% response rate. And then I knew then that there was this other backstop from courtesy of contact I mean of direct marketing where we’re in they would say that hundred percent response rates were absolutely impossible. But that’s what I needed. We’re both involved in sales, then it is possible. Right? And, and so that’s exactly what happened. I got a, I got through to all of them, all of them became clients. It was worth millions of dollars to me because it started my business when it all came from a campaign that I spent about $100 on that went to 24 people, and it changed everything, right. And that’s kind of the nature of the contact market of contact marketing, not the cartoon part necessarily, but, but just that you’re reaching out to a small group of relatively small groups of people, it could be just one person and you could do a campaign to just one person. But otherwise, I mean, more typically, you’re putting a campaign out to maybe the top stratum of, of, of accounts in an AB ABM model, for example. So it’s a small group of people. You might spend a lot per person. Some campaigns cost me my, my big boards cost 25 or sorry, 25 $250 apiece to send these things, but you know, if it’s each if each contact is then worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Sure, that’s a great investment. You know? Yeah, well, that’s that’s sort of the genesis of what let’s say that’s my contact patch with contact marketing. But I soon discovered people have been doing the most amazing things out there. One of the units is almost like collecting blooper stories. There’s so many blooper stories out there and there are also all kinds of really, really fascinating stories of what people have been doing to break through.
Andy Paul
Yeah, and I think that’s really I look at this, this book is really sort of the field guide or a tactical guide to your first book, right? Because, you know, yeah, it’s chock full of examples and case studies, what people have done to us, various engagement devices, I guess, as you call to, to break through to break through the noise and, and to get in touch with people.
Well, the first question really that that’s sort of interesting when you sort of think about it, is, yeah, breaking through is hard. But we think about a meeting, and not to be too old school about this, we don’t think about meeting as being something face to face is, yeah, via a lot of business session sales, there’s, they’re, like, care to meet people these days. Right. They want to do everything virtually, and so on. And I think that, yeah, I think that, personally is in this world. We’re trying to do more things virtually, which is, there is a virtue in doing that without being redundant, is that the ability to actually get in front of someone in person has so much more impact, if done correctly. And so thus, I see this hopefully is this book is a way to get people to think again about Yeah, we really do need to get out of the office, and actually go meet these, as you said, these really targeted decision makers or influencers or stakeholders, whomever we need to meet. And yeah, in some cases, they may say I yeah, I’m a little reluctant to meet. I want to spend time. We can’t do this via zoom. It’s like, oh, man, now look at Steve’s book and say, yeah, let’s Yeah, let’s find a way to meet in person because the impact is gonna be 10 X or whatever it is a meeting on zoom.
Stu Heinecke
Yeah, I absolutely agree with you. And, and, you know, I want to make a comment about what you just said, some people might think that’s old school, I think. I think calling anything old school is old school.
Andy Paul
You know, I know it’s stupid, right? Just because I just, I try to preempt, trying to preempt people thinking, yeah. Don’t Don’t
Stu Heinecke
fall into that trap. Because, you know, let’s say direct mail was just people that things follow cycles? We know that.
Andy Paul
So I think what’s never gotten out of fashion, it’s actually meeting people in person.
Stu Heinecke
That’s right. Yeah. That’s so powerful. You’re right. That’s right. That’s the gold standard.
Andy Paul
And I think this is where you know, companies are doing themselves a disservice. Because Yeah, granted, we’ve changed the economic model, we’re changing things, selling things on subscription. But if you’ve got a customer that will recourse for years is going to give you a million dollars worth of business. Get on a freakin airplane and go meet them. And if they’re reluctant, sometimes they are headed by my timer. Hey, we’re gonna do business with you. Yeah, no, no, get on a plane, find a way to get engaged with that person and go meet with them. It’ll solidify battle, your odds of getting the business will solidify the relationship.
Stu Heinecke
Yeah, it makes all the difference. I mean, I, you know, have clients, big clients that, uh, that it took quite a while before we met actually. So we did do the business before meeting but you’re right. When you meet someone in person, everything changes.
Andy Paul
Yeah, I mean, it’s great as great work. We’re using zoom as we record this. I mean, yeah, I love zoom. I use zoom. A half a dozen to a dozen times a day. If I could meet people in person, then critical time so it’s really a Important. Always do that.
Stu Heinecke
Yeah. Yeah, I agree that that is what you want to do.
Andy Paul
Yeah. So this book, and we’re gonna hopefully get some examples where it goes through this idea about Yeah. How do you break through the noise? How do you capture someone’s attention? How do you activate their interest in what it is that you’re doing? And you have a variety of categories you talk about that’d be interesting to me. Give some examples for people just to make it more real for them. But the categories I started like the examples in maybe you can recall, gifting is one I think is underutilized. So let’s let’s start there. How can somebody effectively use this idea of gifting and their services like Sandow and others that are out there that enable this and make it much easier to do but, give us some examples of people who use gifting effectively to serve as that breakthrough and engage with somebody?
Stu Heinecke
You will, you know, two things come to mind really quickly. One is that
personalization is often a feature in admin, it should be a feature and gift giving, they ought to be relevant. Yes. Right. And so one of the chapters in the book and the meeting is devoted to the new, the new landscape of personalization. Because here’s the thing. You know, when I was creating all those direct mail campaigns for the publishers, and I was using personalization within the cartoons, that is a form, I guess I called it wide personalization and in the book had to call it something. So wide personalization is the regime in which you just don’t need to know the name of their dogs or when they went to school. You just need to know their address and you need to know how to spell their name. Right correctly, right. And then and then there and then the address, you know,
Andy Paul
Yeah, so Exactly. So in that case, in that case, you were taking so people just listening this way I know you’re going to show an example, but mostly Just consuming us via audio is a wide personalization. This example is look, you had a cartoon that fits this purpose use the same cartoon, but personalize the name. So that then you consider wide personalization just so people get that, okay. Yeah, so that’s
Stu Heinecke
why personalization. And I was just going to hold up an example. This is a form of big board I’m gonna back up so you can see it. Right. Made of half inch. Yeah. Or whatever kind of foam core Yeah. And then the back message and but you know, if I hold this up close, you can see that it’s, you know, starts out it’s a bunch of cowboys out on the range at night around the campfire. And when I say ever tell you fellas a story of Billy a kid. Yep, sure did. very excellent. Very good, wild daymond John’s,
Andy Paul
and your cartoons. Your cartoon style is very, Gary Larson, farsighted.
Stu Heinecke
fields fun stuff. Yeah, it’s fun stuff. So so you know.
So that’s, that’s, that’s, that’s wide personalization. And it’s very effective and scalable and something they’re, they’re great, actually great advantages to both wide and deep personalization. So, deep personalization, by contrast, is the new regime or new regime of personalization where we get to do profile scrapes. And we, we, we can use AI tools like seamless and nimble to find out a lot about people before we ever reach out to them or you could just do some pretty watchful,
watchful eye.
You just you can be watching
Andy Paul
Yeah, just just your social and then following
Stu Heinecke
Yeah, you can watch for social I mean for trigger events and you can find things just a little details that you can hone in on and use to create a gift, right that really gets someone’s attention. So in that case you’re looking for, I don’t know what drives the person or what they are? What are they talking about thinking about? Certainly that is what they are planning? What are they? What are they looking at, but you might also, it might also be helpful to find out the name of their dog. You know, it could be that or it could be, because if you’re going to send a gift, then you want to send something that’s relevant. And that’s the way you find out what’s relevant about a person you don’t know yet. Well, right. And so I think,
Andy Paul
Well, it’s a fundamental human right. And this is this is the thing I want to get Yeah, back to and, and, and spend some more time on because I think this is really one of the things that is most appealing to me about what you do and what you work on and, and so on, is that, you know, it really reinforces this idea that in business, whether it’s sales wherever, because we’re trying to make build relationships, it’s it’s about humans. And so I said the thing that I love about this contact marketing people follow me No, that’s young humans. All starts at that first moment, right? This it’s all about. It’s all about relationships that we develop with people that we’re trying to answer the question and everything we do, we’re trying to answer the question why you? Right? Because that’s that’s what the customer is thinking, Oh,
Stu Heinecke
yeah, that’s a great way to put it
Andy Paul
why you and I think with this, you know, these tactics, contact marketing gifting, we’ll get into pocket campaigns, I love the pocket campaigns idea and so on, is that you’re making yourself memorable in a way, and that is absolutely essential to to winning people’s business at the end of the day. And so yeah, Daniel Kahneman did a bunch of stuff work on this idea of peak end theory of, you know, people go through a decision and they make a and then go through an experience and at the end, they go back to make a decision about the experiences they they look at the peak event, you know, during that experience is one of the two factors They factor in most into their decision. Yeah, how you contact somebody could be it could be the peak event and your whole engagement with them to getting an order that is memorable. We can,
Stu Heinecke
Yes, we can be one.
Andy Paul
Well, we tend to think these things have the only the only events that count are the ones that are so valuable to Laden, right, that helped them understand their business better or commercial insight. And it may just be No, I just remember when Stuart reached out to me, that was really cool.
Stu Heinecke
Well, you know, you have to include, I mean, you have to be relevant, you have to bring value that is timely, relevant, right? You have to do that. But, if you’ve also reached out in a way that gets people saying, Oh, my God, I love the way this guy thinks. Thanks. Right, right. I love the way you think I got to connect and I want to find a way to work with you. Yeah, that’s, that’s perfect. What a great way to start a relationship.
Andy Paul
Absolutely. And then, you know, if you go by the assumption that I largely do is these days increasingly that the landscape is filled with competition is largely identical in almost any market segment. There’s, if there’s one competitor that tomorrow, there’s two next week, there’s three the week after those four, because now the bear session in tech space, the barriers to entry are so low. How do you make yourself stand out? And it could be as simple as what happens in your first interaction using one of these strategies as Sue talks about in his both his books, but in the classroom, get the meeting, that, that make the difference between the differences, you have to assume you only win by 1% you only have one 1% different than better than a Rails once that 1% could just be how you reach out to him. So we talked about gifting and so let’s go through pocket campaigns. And I love the examples in the book are great, but tell us what those are.
Stu Heinecke
Well, so you know, the way that we meet people generally is either we’re reaching out to them, I mean, it’s also inbound, when, if we’re meeting in person, we’re it’s outreach, but then it’s also it’s So just also just chance meetings. Or it could be meetings at networking events or seminars, etc. It’s all those places where you give out a business card. You know, and you hope that you made a really great connection with someone who’s actually someone you want to do business with. Well, I just find the whole notion of giving out a business card to be not gonna call it up. I mean, I’m actually looking at old school. archaic? Yeah, not old school.
Andy Paul
I was just at a conference in Vegas last week, I think I gave out three cards. Yeah, but I connected with a lot of people on LinkedIn and so on. But if I had a pocket campaign, that would have been different. Yes.
Stu Heinecke
Yeah, it seems. So here’s the deal. Here’s the difference. Um, you know, right now, business cards are in sort of a, they’re in kind of an arms race, who can make it look more interesting, but they’re all they’re all based on the strategy of, I want this is here to make me look, of course, it’s the hand of contact. details, but otherwise, it’s to make us look important, wouldn’t you say and impressive and clever and so on? Well, and I think that’s kind of the I think they’re actually largely inert. And, you know, if people were even handing out business cards, if someone were just typing in their details in each other’s phones, all of that’s a missed opportunity. Right? And, and, you know, you and I know we’ve, we’ve both encountered people who hand out a business card and say, Whoa, wait a minute, I’ve never seen a business card like this. It could be a fold out with a with a with a paper sculpture that comes out or, or
multi tool, right,
give me all kinds of other things other than what you know, all the card companies want to sell you and so I started with that. What made those things so different? And what made them stand out? What I realized is that they were all engagement devices, every one of every one of the ones that I’ve gotten that I thought, oh my god, that’s so cool, is it was so cool because it was different. It’s the end Engagement device. And you know, for those who are viewing this on camera, I’m going to show you one that kept showing up in Google searches for coolest business cards. And it’s a, it’s a multi tool that’s got a metal. It’s kind of thick metal, this one but right. It’s credit card sized. And it’s for a bike repair shop. And you notice, there’s no i don’t know if you can see it, but there’s no hold up mostly. There’s no logo on it, right? It’s no, there’s no traditional trappings of branding actually on it. Yeah, so just the guy’s contact details. But here’s the thing. This this little multi tool is the is the business card for the owner of a bike repair shop
Andy Paul
that you can actually so people can see is that stamped metal, you can actually it’s probably
Stu Heinecke
it’s a wrench. It’s a wrench. It’s different sizes of wrench, and you can change a tire with this thing you can. You can tighten spokes. Yep. So you take that with you. And wherever you’re riding your bike, you can Use it, fix it out on the trail. That’s pretty cool. And so we’ve, we’ve developed that a little bit further. So here’s, here’s a, actually, I want to describe it. Well, I’ll use your words, here. Here’s another multi tool, and it comes with a sleeve. So there’s a little bit of branding on the sleeve. But when you pull it out, you see that? Well, it’s black, but it’s got, it’s got my excellency clients. campaign anyway, has it as his contact details. And on the reverse, it has, it has a URL to go to. And you go for tool directions on how to use this tool. So you go to that page, and it has a video that shows you how to use the tool, different functionalities of it. But here’s what’s happening, it’s setting a pixel so that the tracking pixels so that from that point on, we’re going to you . For whoever it is that handed this out, we’re going to start appearing wherever you go on the web wherever the recipient or the web. Well, business cards don’t do that. They’re inert. They don’t do that. So essentially what it is, is it’s it’s, it’s a campaign that you still, you still dispense from your pocket. It’s an involvement or an engagement device. It’s, it’s either an invitation to play or use the device. And there’s always a second step, or let’s say, a jump offer. It’s not a promotional offer. But a second step, where you go to either get something more or you learn how to use the tool or something, there’s something more that you go to the drazi to to a jump page, where a tracking pixel is set. And now you’ve enrolled them in your persistence tracking in your contact marketing campaign. And you can actually then, by doing that, you pull out of your pocket, give it out, and they go through that process. It becomes a campaign that you can measure response and ROI on, right.
Andy Paul
So, Are there examples of companies because one of the things that that oftentimes you sort of want and, and especially maybe in instances where the salesperson is still uncertain about exactly what they do is cards that serve, you know, answers very precisely and concisely. Hey, what do you do? write some explanation of the business or the value proposition or something. I mean, so what have you seen clever about that?
Stu Heinecke
Well, here’s another one. Got. You have one. Yes,
I got one. So, this, this is Bruce Johnson’s
card. Well, it’s his pocket campaign. So you know, it looks like a card, right. And on the back, there’s a cartoon. And what Bruce does is he sells business insurance. And when he goes to networking events, I think most people who are selling insurance probably run it the same, the same response to one of these You’re sitting at the table. My name is so and so what are you doing? I saw my cell insurance. Okay, what do you do over here?
Andy Paul
Why not sure it’s convention we all sell insurance.
Stu Heinecke
That’s true. So what we did for Bruce is, this card is not just a card, it’s a z card. And in fact it opens up there’s a whole folded up poster within between the two cards right the front and the back. And it’s a portfolio of cartoons of a business and insurance together. And so it turns into this little you know, item of fascination Brendon. people share they pass him around on the table and Bruce told me that the fourth, the fourth card or pocket campaign that he handed out, turned into a sale. And that’s really cool. I am cool business cards mean they have cartoons on them or I can put together really cool business cards, but I’ve never ever experienced the sale. From the Handing out a business card. Right. Right. And Bruce did because the fourth one he handed to him. So no, that’s, that’s pretty cool. They showed it around the office and they kept showing it around. And and, and ended up calling Bruce Two months later with a with an order and
Andy Paul
and have have anybody use like, yeah, the pocket campaigns like as part of a direct mail campaign I mean to actually send them
Stu Heinecke
out. So that’d be interesting too, I guess.
You know, I guess you could. Well, the thing is, I don’t know what you want to do. We’re gonna think about that a bit. Okay. They can be kind of expensive, but the multi tools. The z cards are I think about $3 apiece, and, and the multi tools are about 10. Now, mind you, if we think of those as contact campaigns, well, those are cheap contact campaigns. Yeah, that’s why I asked if, if we think of them as business cards, they’re totally expensive. They’re ridiculous, you know, right. But I think really in essence, it’s a camp. It’s an engagement device that leads you to the next step online. And from that point on, you’re now enrolled in a persistence campaign, a digital persistence campaign. So it could be any form of that. And I’ll just tell you one other story that I think is really amazing because it shows that you know the value of having something that you can hand out that really causes people to get engaged. And that is I’m holding up a piece of brown sheet rubber and and so one of one card I was painted on that
Andy Paul
rubber. Remember this from the book? Yeah.
Stu Heinecke
Yeah. So it was printed on that rubber but it was stretched on a jig. So you know, printed and then taken off, the jig once the ink cures and dries. And so now all the contact details are squeezed together.
Andy Paul
Yeah, it looks like it looks like a black box on the
Stu Heinecke
ground or like a balloon that’s not blown up, right. And so people just naturally do they just grab it. things to stretch it so they can read it. And so the guy whose card This was telling me about how he would, let’s say he was at a pub, likes to go to pubs a lot. So he’s at a pub, sits down at the bar and starts talking to someone and they get into a conversation. What do you do? What do you do? And they get to the point where they’re their business cards. And this isn’t an ambush. Without that little rubber card, they automatically grab it, stretch it, and reveal It’s Paul Nielsen’s card, he’s a fitness trainer. And guess what he already has you exercise guys
Andy Paul
are working out
Stu Heinecke
here to pull on the thing. So people enjoy it so much. It’s a visual metaphor of the value or let’s say the fun that Paul brings to working out. And so there they’ll ask, oh my gosh, can I keep this shirt of course is my business card. I’m gonna keep yours. So then they take it. This is one of those cards that they keep in their pocket rather than throw in the box where all the rest of them go and show it around because they Colleagues that’s gonna stay in your pocket that rubber is so
Andy Paul
well. But I think you raised an interesting point, though it is through all these things with gifting and pocket campaigns, and the book is full of other categories, how to use video unsolicited proposals, which is a really interesting one as well. Kind of early boss that was a big, big fan of that thing was, quote early and often and yeah, it’s a great way to engage people is that they’re fun. This is Yes. Is this something that not many people I think are having fun in sales these days. I mean, you think you think about the, you know, rank of SDRs that are tasked to make, you know, 5100 calls a day. And it’s thankless hard work right? And not terribly fun. But the reason why the turnovers happen so much, but, but this is an opportunity for people to say yeah, here’s something we can do creatively That actually is fun. And yeah, that resonates with the receiver as well as the giver.
Stu Heinecke
Yeah, I was gonna tell you, here’s the effect. Of course it’s fun to do. I mean, I’ve for all throughout my career, but I’ve been the guy sending cartoons, you know, I can’t wait till they get it, you know half and, and have the conversation but so it’s fun to do but but here’s the effect of that fun thing on the recipient, Paul Nielsen’s card back to his story, when people would take that card and show it around at the office. Well, you know that they look at this card of God from this guy and they pull it out and we pull it out and they stretch it because they all stretch it right. Look at that. See you already have been exercising. They’d have a good laugh. And, and. And here’s the effect that it had. Every time Paul handed out one of his cards, he’d get three or four new clients. That’s unbelievable. I’ve never I’d like I told you before, I have cool business cards, you know, they’ve got cartoons on them and so on. I’ve never had anyone you See my business card and then do business with me?
Andy Paul
Because of the car? I can. I can. Yeah. Isn’t that amazing? Mito? Yeah, that’s it, isn’t it? So that’s why that part was really intriguing. Because, yeah, if you’re anybody who travels at all right in business and you, you sit next to somebody on the airplane and variably start talking, unless you’re able just put your headphones on right away. And hey, what do you do? What do you do? It’s, well, this is I’ve gotten business from that. And it wasn’t based on my business cards. It’s based on the conversation, but you make yourself more memorable. Certainly. Yeah, yeah. And I think that’s, that’s so much what we’re trying to do these days to break through the noise. This is not just to break through the noise, but to break through in a way that you are memorable to them. And, again, this ultimately boils down to us as people and the difference that we’re making in the lives of the people we’re talking to. And being memorable is one way to do that.
Stu Heinecke
Yeah, it makes all the difference in the world. And you know, I’ve got a favorite. When I run ads for my books, I’ve got this one favorite head. learning that I use, which is one meeting can change everything. And it really can. If you think about every great thing that’s happened in our lives, everything it all starts from meeting and making connections with someone who changes your life.
Andy Paul
Yeah. Oh, absolutely. No, absolutely.
Stu Heinecke
I don’t have meetings, nothing happens.
Andy Paul
Well, that is true to write. Can’t we like to say nothing happens to sell something? Well, you’re not gonna sell something to meet with somebody. So let’s get right down to the basics.
All right.
Well, Stu, it’s great talking to tell people how they can find out more about your new book and connect with you.
Stu Heinecke
Well, thanks for asking it. Yeah. I’ve got two books out one get and they go together. One is not meant to replace the other. So how to get a meeting with anyone is it’s been out since 2016. It’s got 20 categories of contact marketing campaign types, you need to know about those if you’re going to use contact marketing. And then and then the new book gets the meeting as a companion to that. It’s a group of case studies with photography this time. So you get to see what these campaigns look like
Andy Paul
illustration. Sorry, I got
Stu Heinecke
stuff in there
Andy Paul
really a field guide on the first book, I think
Stu Heinecke
Yeah. Yep. So those are available anywhere books are sold. And as far as reaching me, Well, you know, I’d love it when people connect with me on LinkedIn, tell me they heard, let’s say, heard me talk on your podcast, that would be a wonderful, great way to get through. Or if you read the book, something like that. So contact me and connect with me on LinkedIn. That’d be great. And I guess I should also mention that I have a podcast as well how to get a meeting with anyone on the podcast, and we talked to people all the time about this, these crazy stories they have and what they did to break through to people that have changed their scale.
Andy Paul
Mm hmm. Perfect. All right, wherever has podcasts and stuff, so um, you can’t be alive, right? He can’t be alive and not have a podcast. So it’s pretty much pretty much a condition of life, but All right, let’s do as always fantastic talk to you and I look forward to it again.
Stu Heinecke
Thank you so much, Andy, great to have you. Great to be on the show.
Andy Paul
Okay, friends, that was accelerated for the week. First of all, as always, I want to thank you for joining me. And I want to thank my guest, Stu heinicke. Join me again next week as my guest will be mercy bell. Mercy is a principal at dogpatch advisors. And we’re gonna be talking about intentional outbound. You know, it’s all part of what dogpatch advisors call outbound operations, which takes the burden of prospecting from reps to give them time to explore human connections creatively, and you’ll definitely want to check this out, so be sure to join us then. Now before you go, don’t forget to check out the sales house. Success in sales and real life is all about selling to humans, and sales houses my growth training platform, b2b sellers, just like you will really want to learn how to more effectively Definitely sell to another human being. So for more information, visit salesforce.com. And we’ll look forward to seeing you there. Alright, thanks again for joining me until next week. I’m your host, Andy Paul. Good selling everyone
