DeanHouston’s Colton Stombaugh (Director of Digital Marketing) sat down with Walter Bonnett (GM & E.V.P. of Strategy) and Ryan Lenihan (Digital Marketing Director) to discuss Account-Based Marketing. DeanHouston’s Inspire Podcast offers fearless B2B marketing insights aimed to inspire and provide value to its audience. For more information on DeanHouston please visit deanhouston.com.
DeanHouston’s Colton Stombaugh (Director of Digital Marketing) sat down with Walter Bonnett (GM & E.V.P. of Strategy) and Ryan Lenihan (Digital Marketing Director) to discuss Account-Based Marketing. DeanHouston’s Inspire Podcast offers fearless B2B marketing insights aimed to inspire and provide value to its audience. For more information on DeanHouston please visit deanhouston.com.
everybody got a Colton Stombaugh with the Inspire Podcast. In today's episode, we're going to dive into data. And what that really means for marketers in 2020, I'm joined today by two excellent guests, Ryan Lenihan, digital director, digital director of digital marketing. Now, jeez, someone already is going to be a good one, but, Ryan Lenihan director digital marketing. How you doing today, Ryan.
Ryan:Thanks for having me.
Colton:Walter Bonnett, a general manager at Dean Houston West and also vice president of strategy all around. Good guy too. How are you doing today?
Walter:Well, with that introduction, I mean, doing better. Thank you.
Colton:That's what we try to do here.
Walter:I know.
Colton:So, you know, again, getting back to the topic that we really want to discuss and you know, a little bit to why you guys are the right people educate our audience--data. You know, we throw this term around all the time as marketers. We hear it every day. But I think most marketers would probably say they're not leveraging it to its fullest extent. So what does data mean to you guys and how, and why is it so important in today's digital first marketing culture?
Walter:Ryan, you want to take a shot at that? Do you want me want me to take a crack at it? All right. You know? Yeah. So, data, you know, has been around for a long time and, in today's world, it's even more critical that, organizations, people understand all the, you know, ones and zeros, the bits that are flying through the air and the collection of that data, is going to be monumental to the future of their business and what what's more important than just the data, right? It's just information is what you do with it, the actionable data, the understanding of that data and how it relates to your business, your customers, and trying to make sense of it. And the way we make sense of it is through, analyzing that data, trying to, bring out the, the, you know, behaviors and the predictability of that, of that data. And, and, and then as marketers trying to, really get the right information at the right time to the right person. And, and that's really what we do with the data that we receive.
Colton:Okay. Right. I think you hit a big thing there. Ryan, we'll pass the ball to you here. You know, you mentioned a term there and I think this is really key is actionable. Right. You know, we, we talk about data all the time till we're blue in the face, but if you're not doing anything with it and it looked good, isn't it? You know, so I think about that and how to make sure data is actionable. Ryan, I mean, what, what does that mean to you?
Ryan:Yeah, and I think Walter hit on a lot of good points and for me, a lot of times, and a lot of our clients before we started to get into this, you know, data driven marketing is, it, it validates the story that we're trying to tell. And, we can use those data points to help tell the story and become hyper-targeted or super focused. And our marketing efforts that, you know, in the past, we may not have been able to do. So we were able to collect this data, analyze it, craft the story, and then generate a digital and overall marketing plan. You know, based off of, you know, either historical data or, you know, current, you know, trends and, you know, things like that. Right.
Walter:You know, and I'd just like to add, you know, data is information, right. But then what you do with that information and how you execute it, how you create that story becomes communication. Right. And, and, and it's the delivery of that communication to that right person. That's going to help you move the needle or help get your message and engagement that you're looking for.
Colton:You know, and, and when I think about that and like taking that into an actionable utilitarian package, I mean, there's gotta be some big obstacles there. You know, we hear about data cleanliness, data health, you know, Walter, you mentioned getting the right message to the right person. Well, how do you do that if your data is right? I mean, what do you guys see when it comes to getting a data set from an organization that maybe historically hasn't been data driven? Are there obstacles there? What does it look like to make sure data is clean and accurate? You know, and, and what's the benefit of going through that process,
Walter:You know, and this is one of the, one of the biggest challenges that we have in the industrial B2B space is that you have, um, a lot of B2B industrial companies, becoming more digital they're, they're transforming themselves into this digital world. And part of that struggle is, is the data that's collected, um, and, and the data that's collected on their customers. So what we are often faced with is, dirty data, incorrect data, wrong information, information that hasn't been updated. And one of the biggest basically fundamental things that I always start with is how clean is your data? What does your data look like? You know, what are you doing today? What's your baseline. And we find ourselves oftentimes more than not having to help our clients clean that data, scrub it. I know Ryan, you've done a lot of that and I don't know, you probably run into the same challenges that we have.
Colton:I think it's story time here, Ryan, we're gonna, we're gonna need when you're good ones. Cause I know you're one of the guys making big plays in this area.
Ryan:Yeah. And, and Walter, you kinda, you, you kind of touched on a lot of high level things there and a lot of important things that we kind of do from a, from a data cleansing process. And, I can give an example. We had a client in a construction market that I would say their data was probably 15 to 18 years old. They didn't have anyone internally that kind of owned or managed it. They kind of took their, their orders and customers as they came in. So, part of that process was kind of sitting down. It was obviously a collective effort, which, you know, we can kind of discuss. And, um, we, we utilize multiple tools that kind of, you know, clean the data, you know, find the right, you know, either customer contact points. And we, kind of went through that process hand in hand. This was kind of, over a three month period and the, the baseline, the word that you used Walter was kind of finding what their baseline was. Originally, they said their baseline, they thought was about 32% of their client information or customer information was accurate. After we went through this data scrubbing process, we got it at least today, and this is still an ongoing process and it will continue to be an ongoing process is about 87% accurate. By the time we completed our initial, with scrubbing.
Walter:So think about that for a second. So when you first started, 70% of their data was unusable. Now, now how much, how much, how valuable was that data to them? Right. I mean, in a moment in time, like five, 10 years ago, maybe the organization wasn't thinking like that, but now any data that you collect, any digital touch point or connection that we can have to customers is super valuable. So having your data as accurate as 87% is phenomenal. And, and one of the key things you said is this is where I think a lot of organizations fall is that, they don't assign ownership to the data. They, a lot of companies end up buying these, these, you know, a hundred thousand dollar multimillion dollar CRM. And, and they're looking for software to fix their problem. You in more often than not, it's not the software, it's the mental mode or the mindset of the organization that says, Hey, you know what, we're going to get serious about data. We're going to assign owner. And part of your job is to make sure that the integrity of our data and information, and then from that, the communication is sound. And that is one of the critical elements. And I think this company you're talking about, they actually assigned someone to own the data. Is that, is that correct? Or is that another client?
Ryan:No, they did. That is the same, the same instance. And that's really where the turning point occurred because you're, you're a hundred percent correct. If we can clean your data, we can get it, we can get it 87% accurate, but if you don't assign someone internally to have accountability and kind of that ownership piece in five years, you're gonna kind of go back to where you were. So part of where we come in is we clean the data. We help, we help get it into an actionable state and that help you create the internal processes to continue to manage and own that CRM.
Walter:And, and then here's, here's another dimension that, a lot of companies are challenged with is, is your route to market and the collection of data. So it's a very, it's a, it's an easier process when you have a direct sales organization, right? Because you have a salesperson direct to customer, but when you have a channel in the middle of that, whether it's distribution or whether it's sales reps, the ability for that organization to collect the data and to have a clean database is very challenging because they're working with a channel. Okay. And so in those instances, if your route to market is through distribution or some type of channel, it's even more important to assign someone the ownership of that, of that information and to, to actively pursue, the touch points that exist to try to keep that data or collect it.
Colton:Yeah. So, so the big things I'm hearing there, you know, just to sum it up, make sure I'm understanding it guys is, is it's one thing to approach data and yay. We've got it. But to do it effectively, it requires regular ongoing accountability. Is that a, is that correct? And Ryan, you, you described a little bit like working closely hand in hand with, you know, an internal partner to make sure that that data was staying accurate. What are, what are the, some of the specific tools or ways that you work alongside that individual to make sure that this ongoing effort is, is reaping rewards.
Ryan:Yeah. And there's obviously a lot of tools that you can utilize to, keep your database or your data clean. Um, obviously we utilize, tools like Kickbox that basically validates the, the domain of an email authentication, which is kind of our starting point, because basically that'll tell you is if that contact still works at that company or that customer, we use programs like kaleidoscope, which is a tool that basically, validates to do data points, to see any redundancies or any duplicates in the data that you might have. So those are really our starting point tools that we use to kind of clear up any, you know, I don't want to say dead contacts, but any, any contacts that may not be active. And then we kind of come and meet with that internal partner and start going through, and this is where some of that manual labor kind of comes in and highlighting some of the key contacts or companies that they might have. And then we go through the process of, you know, that account based marketing, where we start geo fencing or geo-targeting these contacts and start validating that their, their records are still accurate.
Colton:I think you just hit something huge area. You know, my job is to just help you guys segue from, from digital marketing buzzword to digital marketing buzzword today, you know, you brought up the idea of account based marketing there, you know, and, and back to that idea of actionable use the data, especially in a B2B high ticket technical products environment, I mean, account based marketing. I think for the past two, three years, it's probably been one of the most buzz words. And it was often described as the future of industrial marketing. How are you guys now? They, you know, you've explained that we clean this data and get it ready to go put it in an actual state. How are you taking that data and deploying it in a way that, that is in the spirit of what we call account based marketing,
Walter:You know, Cole, I wanted to add one more point before we get into the, account based marketing approach and, and, and part of, um, having clean data, having, using your internal, resources to do that. Oftentimes too, there's an external request that happens. And, going and, you know, our clients would typically, they would go and find a list provider and they would give them all these lists, right. And that's how they end up with some of these bad, names. So you would pay$5,000 and you'll get 10,000 names in a certain industry. Well, in today's world where you have data privacy and you have a changing dynamic that's going on with those types of organizations and lists, it's even more important to align yourself with, data partners. And I don't want to come data list partners, but data partners that can give you really solid, clean, contacts. And, and, you know, that's an important thing to note also because there might be people out there who think, Hey, I can just buy a, spent$5,000 and get 10,000 names. And what we're finding is that no longer works. And so you have to change your approach, not to, you know, not, not to get know, talk about the ABM stuff, but I want to, to that point.
Colton:No, no, I think that that's a good point. You know, when, when there's a lot of people out there trying to sell your data, you know, it's fair to say, be careful for counterfeits, right. And make sure that you're, you're not getting things that aren't relevant because I mean, just circling back bad data in bad output. And then everything that you just talked about, Ryan and Walt is for not, you know,
Walter:Yeah. And then going back to the actionable data, which is what we all love. And we all talk about, we all geek out on is this ABM thing. Right. And, and, you know, that's really what excites me, from a strategy standpoint is, is, you know, doing some of these account based marketing initiatives with our clients and, you know, and this word account based marketing sounds, very sophisticated and sounds complicated. And, and, you know, Ron and I were talking to other day and, you know, I told him, look, man, you know, I'm a little bit older. I don't know if you can tell I come from the old school, but old school days, man, account based marketing strategies, all that was was, is just finding the person that you needed to get in contact with finding the decision. You make an influencer going up to that person, making a handshake, introducing yourself to them and say, Hey, I've got a solution that I think is going to help your business and these ways, and really have the consultant. Well, you know, that was done in the old days, right? Like face to face. And now we have these new digital tools and these digital mediums that you're seeing, the, the essence of how used to be done, just transform to a new medium, which is what account based marketing is today. So a lot of companies, a lot of marketing managers and directors, you know, they get this idea that it's a, you need to be super sophisticated and it's going to cost tons of money to do it. When in reality it really isn't as complex or as expensive as you might think. I don't know what you guys think about that, but what are your thoughts before we get into the nitty gritty of the ABM?
Colton:I think that that's a very interesting thing, right. And what you described there's yelled at, and there isn't anything new under the sun, right. You know, is, is you think about it and we try and use this, this new buzz word, ABM and account based marketing to describe something that's newer revolutionary, it's really following the fundamentals of sales and marketing that successful companies are followed for decades, if not centuries and, and you know,
Walter:Amen brother, Colton. Amen.
Colton:Well, I know, I know you can, you can speak, you know what, I, especially when I hit on that centuries, you know, whip there, but, you know, Ryan, you know, if you're, you're, you're not watching this on YouTube and, maybe you're, you're just listening. Ryan is probably the most baby-faced senior digital marketer you're you'll ever see in your life. So I'm going to pick on you a little bit here, Ryan. Right? So account based marketing and as new world where we've got access to good clean, actionable data, what does that look like? You know, maybe I'll ask you the same question I asked before. You're the one making plays in his space. Tell us a good story.
Ryan:Yeah. So Walter actually hit on it. This, the account based marketing strategy has been around for forever. And basically, you know, I'll give an example of another, a client of ours in the construction space that, their data wasn't as rough as the example I gave before, but they still needed to go through that data cleansing this process. And once we got their data in an actionable standpoint, their sales guys came to us and said, you know, we really need to start doing account based marketing. We need help with our, our sales regions. So what we did is we, we created a strategic plan and a strategic automated workflow that, you know, took the data that we had and created targeted messaging and their specific regions and created this campaign that hit, you know, the different, you know, needs and objectives to their end users in each of the markets and the campaign itself results in about 1.2 or one point$4 million in sales, which is fantastic. But what it ultimately did is it found there, it found them, you know, a new way to communicate and market to existing, but also new customers in those regions that I don't want to say eliminated the need of cold calling, but it gave them a new platform for them to generate leads and then honestly, sales qualified leads. So it's a great story of how we kind of took what they've always done in these regions with flyers and more of the print based marketing and turned it into a digital campaign, took, cleaned up their data and gave them a platform that can kind of live and breathe on its own.
Colton:Yeah, that's a, I mean, that's incredible on mean. I get another result there, you know, 1.4 million in sales off of this campaign. I mean, that's huge. Now, if you don't mind me, can I ask a few questions to try and reverse engineer that for those? So, you know, you took this clean data and then use that to drive digital communication. Now I'm assuming, and it's okay to tell me I'm wrong. Most people do that. So you took that list and then ran that through maybe a email marketing, marketing automation platform to start to get that initial signal out to this new clean list, that qualified account.
Ryan:Yes. That is accurate.
Colton:All right. So, okay. So next step, tell me where I started going wrong is you're able to look at, you know, email performance, data engagement, and then depending on what those individual contacts at those accounts did, maybe get that information to the sales team or continue to follow up with more contextual information, again, all in a relatively set it and forget it fashion.
Ryan:Yeah. And the one thing that I will add to that as we also, we were running other digital communications like social media or paid advertising, and we kinda of coordinated it all together using custom GTM event tracking, which was tied into our automation system. So it wasn't just email communication. We kind of took all of their digital communication efforts and tracked to kind of what we wanted to do was ultimately tell the buyer persona or the buyer customer journey, right. And to do that, we coordinated all of their digital communication efforts. And then ultimately utilized a system within the automation called lead scoring within their activity, reached a certain threshold. We were then able to automatically not manually automatically deliver that contact and what pieces of content they interacted with to the salespeople in real time.
Walter:And Colton, I think one of the things that, that make account based marketing strategies work and effective it's relevancy. And I think Ryan would say that by understanding the persona, understanding the customer journey, and having a message curtailed, you know, the content is curtail to that audience increases your relevancy and your hit rate. And that's why, you know, I think you have a successful campaign there where someone's, you hit that person at that right time. He says, you know what, I'm ready, I'm ready to make, take the next step, you know, versus the old way where I'm just shooting out information. And I'm fishing with nets. Now what we're doing is we're spearfishing. Yup. Right. And, and it's all about relevancy and the content that's curtailed to your target audience. And that's, that's one of the key elements. I think,
Colton:I think that spear fishing, it creates a really strong visual, right. Highly targeted knowing where the, the good parts of the pond are, where there's a lot of good meaty fish, you know, but, but historically, maybe a sales person could only do that at one time. It's almost like we're helping people Spearfish with drones.
Walter:Right. you know, and, and, um, yeah. Even if you don't get the immediate Spearfish or you don't get the immediate sell, what you do is you prepare the, the, the battlefield, you prepare the audience, right. You, so when they do engage that salesperson, they're already subconsciously down the path of marking and making a purchasing decision. So when they do engage with the sales person, we'll have that conversation. You you've given them enough information to make a decision to say, you know what, John, I'm going to take that next step, you know? Well, yeah, I do want to have a demo or I do want this next step. So even if you don't necessarily get the immediate sale, what's happening is the downstream effect of your content strategy is having an impact on your audience. And you're preparing them to take the next step when they're ready. So that's also an important function.
Colton:I think that's incredible. And I think you really, everything you talk about their Walt, you really boil that down in that, you know? Yeah. Maybe you don't get the immediate sale when you're on a campaign like this, but that longterm value and that longterm priming that you create with your audience. I mean, I think that that's what marketers for decades and centuries have been describing is brand. Right.
Walter:Yeah. And here's the thing too though, is, you know, sales by nature have a short term view, right? Like they, they typically say, Hey, you know what, I need to make a sale right now. I have a three to six months, um, view on, on their space. Marketers have tend to look at, you know, you know, a little bit longer horizon. Okay. And, for us it's about building engagement, right? And, and the type of engagement that we want to build is really what you're doing is you're building a trusted digital relationship with that end user or that, that target audience. And you're saying every time that I send you a piece of digital information, whether it's an email or social media, or you go to my landing page, or you go to whatever digital touch points, which are establishing his trust, which establishing his value, and what you're establishing is relevancy, which is, which is why it's critical to understand your customers to, and the customer journeys that they're taking to build that, to, to, to basically help manage that funnel, that sales funnel that exists, that digital sales funnel.
Colton:And Ryan, you brought this up, but maybe I'll ask you to expand on it a little bit, you know, as you, you talked about how, you know, you laid out this, this relatively sophisticated digital and content architecture that you, you know, for that client, you were talking about that you helped build out. So you described it and synthesize it in a very simple way, but you did say at the heart of that was that customer and buyer's journey. So what does that look like when you're getting ready to do one of these campaigns and deploy it, Ryan, how do you use the digital market or referenced that buyer's journey? How does that help drive your psychology?
Ryan:Yeah. And this is also where that, that internal partner, you know, the client also comes in because understanding even just the buyer's journey, not so much, you know, the buying process, you know, kind of obviously helps formulate that. But, you know, once we kind of sit down and have that strategic discussion about what the buyer process looks like, we can kind of digitize it, right? We, we, we create sort of indicators of what pieces of material or what, what pieces of content maybe relevant to them in the different phases. You know, like if it's the consideration or the awareness, you know, it kind of depends. So like if they're in an awareness phase, we create very specific content to kind of give them the pros and cons or the benefits of the value of what the product might be. And as they move through the funnel, depending on the client and what product are selling, it's going to be different for each client in each product. We then can tailor that content and trigger different automated communications based off where they are.
Colton:Now, how deep does that persona exercise go? I mean, you know, are you going as deep as to think about who that ideal customer is, what their job title is, what their pain points are, what their motivation.
Ryan:Oh, absolutely. And that goes back to the data cleansing, you know, the cleaning process we started the very beginning of this podcast is part of that discussion with the internal owner is understanding what are those core pieces of data that we need to start mapping out that persona? So job title, you know, do they have purchasing decisions, where they are geography, you know, geographically so that we can start, you know, crafting that story in the buyer persona to market to them.
Walter:Right. And let me, let me interject here. One key element to understanding the buyer persona, because you might not exactly know what it is, right. So, so how do you know, how do you, how do you find what that persona is? Well, what we do is we use content and by the type of engagement that happens with our content, we can begin to make inferences and deduce certain type of, you know, persona arc types that we want to build. So if, for example, we have a maintenance piece of content out there, and someone is consuming that maintenance piece of content. I can deduce that, Oh, this person is probably in the maintenance department or is interested in some type of operation maintenance. Or if I have a piece of content that's more geared towards management or executive level, right. You know, or maybe an operations, you know, how to, how to run efficient operations. I can deduce that this person is interested in operational content. So now we can begin to skew the content in ways that fits that person. So the more that that person consumes content, the more that we know about that, that person. And then this is how we define the persona along that journey.
Ryan:That's an excellent point. Yep.
Colton:Well, on it, it almost seems like the intersection there, right, as you talk about like the old way of marketing and sales and the new way that intimate and deep understanding of the customer and who they are is like that beautiful, happy, medium, heavenly point where there's so much collaboration and value.
Walter:Yeah. Know me, understand me, understand my needs and wants, right. That's the basic fundamental of sales in the sense of like people buy from people that like, and why do I like you is because you listened to me because you understand me because you know that my kid plays soccer and my wife wants red shoes and understand me. And don't, don't, don't give me, you know, information that I'm not going to need or is, is irrelevant. Give me the relevant information and create that trusted digital relationship. And what's amazing in today's world is that we, we can bring that precision type of marketing, that geo-focused type of marketing from a state to a County, to a city and onto a zip code, right? Like we could narrow down that, that target to a person and, and customized content around that, that, that geography space that we're targeting, or we could, we could juxtapose the market information that that person is looking for. Right. They might be looking for something in water waste water, or in chemical or in aerospace and defense. Well, if we could geotarget that down to the areas where we know where those, those fishing ponds are and just focus in our messaging around the chemical. And we know that this area is about chemical, and we know that John Smith is the chemical engineer and he likes these things. Now you can begin to hyper focus, your targeted message and your hit rates even increase higher.
Colton:That brings it all back to the beginning, right. It starts with clean data, clean data equals precision per se, equals customer engines. Right.
Walter:Yes, yes.
Colton:That's kind of simple. So, you know, I know we've got about five minutes left here, and I think that the high level overview on like clean data and the application of it has been incredible. You know, I'm sure a big portion of our audience probably had a few light bulbs, you know, pop up above their heads. And I always like to end these with, with one question here is what are some of the biggest challenges that you see companies face in this space? What are the things that maybe through trial and error on your own part, or just some of the things that you've seen that are a little scary? What are the things that you always recommend that we avoid when we're thinking about data driven, digital marketing?
Ryan:I, I can go, and then Walter, you kind of get to it. I have to, my biggest too is just how, consumer behavior changes, um, with time and making sure that you stay on top of that. But my biggest one is really the data privacy, you know, things change very quickly. You're seeing States like California, Vermont, you know, really everyone slowly adopt, kind of that European European privacy act for digital communication. So making sure that, you know, we as digital marketers and our client advocates, you know, we stay on top of those, you know, rules and regulations. And, you know, we learned that, you know, as things changed, you know, there's always ways to pivot and make sure that, you know, we're still staying within those rules, but we're still delivering the end user that the, you know, the right time, the right place. And most importantly, the, you know, the information they're looking for. So from,
Colton:Say, right, I think you just previewed what, what our next conversation with you is going to be. I think that, that, that data privacy thing is, you know, and, and I'm sure we could probably go another 45 minutes talking about different ways that you're working to get that figured out, but, audience, don't, don't worry. We're going to definitely be bringing right back to dive into that. You know? Well, what about you, man? What, what are, what are, what are the biggest things you recommend that people steer away from when they start to get out?
Walter:Well, you know, what, what I would suggest is, you know, right now during these, these times, right, everyone was quarantined, we got this pandemic. There's no better time than to clean your data now. Right? Do some spring cleaning right now, short term, get that out of the way. So when you, when it does open up and you come up the Gates, you have some, some clean data and you can begin to do your marketing. What, what I see as the challenge in the future for companies, as they transform themselves into this digital age, there'll be companies that make it and companies that don't, and the companies that are make it, they will understand their data. They will have to understand their touch points. Why, because companies that are going to emerge in this new digital age have to have clean data in order for them to interact and engage with AI artificial intelligence. Right? And so artificial intelligence will give advantages to companies. And if you don't have clean data, you're going to be behind the eight ball. I would also say, is that having the understanding of data, right? You've heard the term big data tossed around, but what does it mean from a customer perspective? Are you understanding their behaviors? Are you understanding the patterns? Are you understanding their needs? Can you, can you create an innovate from the understanding and data that you're collecting? Can you, are you, are you able to have your listening ears out there and, and, and began to create customer centric product from the data that you collect? Right. And so, at the very root of all of this is having someone own the data, having someone that says, you know, what, I'm going to have clean data to execute sales and marketing initiatives. And I would steer clear away from just the old days of just buying these lists and then just do an email blast. That's not going to work anymore with the data privacy we just talked about. That's why partnering with someone who understands all the rules and regulations around privacy, having an organization that understands your business needs and exactly what you're looking for and give you that precision, where in the old days, maybe you were wanting to have quantity and 5,000 lists of a certain market segment was very gratifying today. It's not about the 5,000, it's about 500 quality that has been verified and qualified. And if you can get that and then nurture that you're much further along than the competition. So those are the things that I would, I would add. I think that that's a, that's an incredible, kinda closing thought there Walt is, you know, now, now is the time to start cleaning your data, you know, and, and the reason being is, is going to become a very competitive landscape. When you think about things like the uncertain future of business travel, and the fact that it might be hard for a sales person to go make an unsolicited sales
Colton:call, you know, which used to be the backbone of a lot of B2B, you know that, there's a lot to think about there.
Walter:So we're going to come out this, and it's going to be a new world, new businesses, and people that, and organizations that are able to adapt and able to swim in this data, ether that exists and navigate it are the ones that are going to be able to leapfrog the competition companies that don't understand that that are going to be left behind. And it's going to accelerate even further because of what's happening now, because you're going to see companies that understand their customer base. And these ideas of virtual trade shows these ideas of having distributor trainings online, these ideas of having customer engagement tools to understand your customer better. So listening behavior dynamics and all that stuff, it's going to be more prominent now than ever. And what we're going through right now, it's society is an accelerant to all of that.
Colton:So I think we can sum all that up in four short words, and I'm sure everybody on this podcast would agree, you know, and you're thinking about data, four simple words find yourself a Ryan.
Walter:Yes, find yourself a Ryan.
Colton:Is that I think that, that, that urgency element really, really thinking about, you know, there's going to be two companies, companies that adopt this and the c ompanies a nd what that means is so critical. A nd I didn't mean to put you on the spot there, Ryan.
Ryan:No, you're all good.
Colton:I, and I you got any, any final closing thoughts. So I think it'd be tough to Trump, Trump, Walter,
Ryan:No, I was going to say, Walter, you spoke that, that was beautiful. That was perfect way to kind of close this, close the data conversation. And, it was great.
Colton:To the audience out there. You know, you have any questions about this, you know, how to reach us, you know, happy to continue the conversation with ya, you know, directly, you know, but, but Walter, Ryan, thanks so much, man. I think this was an awesome conversation. I feel fired up, you know, and inspired. Hopefully some other people out there in the universe feel the same way, but something tells me this is the first of many. So,
Walter:No, this is awesome, man. Thank you for, for hosting it. Thank you, Ryan, for being a baby-faced, genius, lead generation and management, and, in the background, uh, you'll see, uh, Ryan has a, a map of Kentucky and he's a big Wildcat fan. So hopefully we can get back to the, NCAA basketball tournament here and, get to see some basketball soon.
Ryan:Yeah. Thank you everybody. Thank you, Colton. That was great.
Colton:Have a great one. And we'll, we'll talk to you soon. Yup. Bye guys.