On this episode of SEO Insider, Seth sits down with Tom Martin, the founder of Converse Digital and expert at turning conversations into customers. Seth and Tom discuss their mutual background in advertising before the internet, Tom’s philosophy of spending less time selling and more time conversing, and the importance of being connected. Tom goes into depth about his strategies for B2B and B2C marketing and how they differ, his experience targeting certain industries and audiences, and the ideal client at his company. He also speaks on the importance of building trust and relationships with clients before selling to them, and how that builds a good foundation for business.
More information about Tom and his company, Converse Digital, can be found at www.conversedigital.com
On this episode of SEO Insider, Seth sits down with Tom Martin, the founder of Converse Digital and expert at turning conversations into customers. Seth and Tom discuss their mutual background in advertising before the internet, Tom’s philosophy of spending less time selling and more time conversing, and the importance of being connected. Tom goes into depth about his strategies for B2B and B2C marketing and how they differ, his experience targeting certain industries and audiences, and the ideal client at his company. He also speaks on the importance of building trust and relationships with clients before selling to them, and how that builds a good foundation for business.
More information about Tom and his company, Converse Digital, can be found at www.conversedigital.com
BluShark Digital
Welcome to the SEO Insider with your host, Seth Price, founder of BluShark, taking you inside the world of legal marketing and all things digital.
Seth Price
We're thrilled to have Tom Martin here, the founder of Converse digital. He's the king of turning conversations into customers. Welcome, Tom.
Tom Martin
Thank you. Good to be here.
Seth Price
So talk to me. A great, great, it's what everybody is trying to do, right? Talk is cheap. But, you know, we need customers. How do you, how do you do that?
Tom Martin
I mean, what we really mean by that is, you know, when I grew up in the age, I grew up the ad agency world, right. You're a lawyer, I was an ad agency guy.
Seth Price
So you were like Draper?
Tom Martin
I did not. I wish I did. I, my first boss in college, not in college, my first boss professionally was a New York ad guy back during those times. And so I remember asking him like, "Is it really what they said it was?" And he said, "Yeah, it was." Wasn't like that when I got into advertising, but for what it's worht.
Seth Price
Well, before we, before talking about you, I'll give you my. So I grew up on 23rd and 1st, pretty close to Madison Avenue. And one of my first jobs when I left the law firm to become a digital marketer, or to become part of the .com craze, I didn't know what digital marketing was. But I joined, the first startup that I landed at was, it was called FreeRide. That was a bunch of ad agency guys. One of the, the sort of principles behind it was an ad guy, old time, who was responsible for Joe Camel. And yeah, I get a lot of people may have taken credit for it, but I looked him up, it was, there was some, there was some Nexus. And he would hold his meetings at a luxury condo 10 blocks away from the office to be creative. So we would, like, you would, when you had a meeting with him, you'd schlep out of the office, down up the elevator to his luxury condo, where you would sit there and brainstorm in a much more laid back environment.
Tom Martin
Yeah, I just wanted the bar card. Really, that's, that's all I cared for. It's not now I have my own agency, I have a, I have a bar, just bar, I stopped with a card, I just put a hold damn bar in the building. It's much easier. But we do a lot of work in the liquor space. So it makes sense that we should have a lot of alcohol.
Seth Price
So, so I digress. Talk to me about, you know, the, the core, the core premise of what you guys do.
Tom Martin
You know, for us, it was, I remember, you know, starting out in bizdev, the ad agency business back then, this is pre-Internet, and you would send mailers, and you'd call people, and you'd send letters, and you do, you know, these, you know, agency pitches, RFPs, and stuff like that. And you know, nobody ever wanted. Yeah, I remember, you know, I would cold call and stuff, and then nobody would want to talk to you, you know, you're always interrupting them and so forth. And it just sort of dawned on me after Katrina hit in a kind of, because I'm in New Orleans, and it wiped out our agency, and you know, kind of occurred to me, you know, like, there has to be a better way of doing this. And so I kind of set out on a quest, which got me to a place where I am today, which is if you if you spend less time selling and more time just conversing, just trying to build relationships with people, it is kind of like a big flywheel. It takes a lot of work to get it spun up, but once it's spun up, it's pretty easy keep it going, tends to keep throwing off leads.
Seth Price
And I'm smiling ear to ear because essentially, you know, I, as the accidental agency owner, I didn't have your playbook but I wish I did, in the sense that I started speaking at conferences just because I was cheap and didn't want to pay to go and I didn't even have an agency, and then if you speak you don't pay. And, you know, as the agency started, as my my co-pilot, who's been, been along for the ride, he sits at home keeping the trains running. He's like, "Just keep going, you know the stuff keep, you know, the guy you met three years ago. Yeah, he just called you the other day." And like, every year, that wheel is going faster. And I'd like to think that we've never sold, we just sort of educate, talk, we're there. And that you know, if your people do business with who they know, like, and trust, you know that I like that way, you're preaching to the choir here.
Tom Martin
Yeah. And you know, to me, it just was always, you know, you grew up with that whole Glengarry Glen Ross always be closing bullshit. Hoop shit. Sorry, maybe I shouldn't say that on your podcast, I don't know. Anyways, and I always laugh because I always thought it was horrible. And I never found those kinds of salespeople, I never really wanted to be around those kinds of people, I never really bought things from those kinds of people, they usually just annoyed me. But if, you know, I've always changed it to you know, always be connected, you know, and that's what I always try to do is, I'm like you, I speak at the conferences because it's, it's free, and I need to go to a conference, and you know, people think you're smart if you stand on a stage even if you're a complete moron.
Seth Price
But they also want to talk to you, and like half the networking goes on behind in the green room, and the people talking to you after. We, it's just that's how life goes on.
Tom Martin
Absolutely. Well, it gets you, it gets you out there. I think, niggest mistake, at least in the ad agency business and maybe in the legal marketing it's the same way, you would know more than me, is everybody buys into this Google juice myth that you got to keep all your content or your thinking on your website, drive people to your website, get your web pages ranked, etc, etc. And I just never bought into that, you know, I was all about spread my content all over the internet. I probably write and publish and speak more for other people than I do myself. And, you know, it's because what I figured out early on was, you know, as one single little website, I can only get so much Google juice, I mean, it just is what it is, depending on what you're competing for. But there were these big media publishing sites that, you know, were huge, like Content Marketing World, or Copyblogger, or these big sites. And if I could get a guest post on their website, like, I couldn't get to page one, but that post on their site could, I started spreading stuff all over the place. Awesome, because now when you search certain terms on Google, you know, out of 10 listings, six, eight of them, are me, they're my content, either on my site or someone else's, or someone writing about me, right, or writing about what I'm, what I'm talking about, it's like, that's sweet, you got eight out of the top 10.
Seth Price
Now, like, I, it's funny, because we come from the other direction. And there are times when we have eight out of 10. But I would argue from, for local search, it's both. I'm not disagreeing with what you're saying. But you do need your property with your content on it because Google needs to see you as that local destination, not a thought leader. So again, and that's also what's really important because what gets somebody to the top of the mountain as a thought leader may not be the same thing that gets you there as a local service provider, I just, but that said, what you're doing unbeknownst to yourself are beknownst to yourself, is SEO. So one half of the game, if one half is content on your own site, the other half is authoritative links coming back in, every time you get that is a link coming in and Google saying, wow, it's the Huffington Post, and, you know, and Forbes and all these places are seeing you as the, you know, marketing expert, and these links are coming back. Not only will that drive your own site, but you know. And I'm also looking at, are you playing around on Clubhouse at all?
Tom Martin
Yeah, I downloaded it, and I just haven't had the time.
Seth Price
Agreed. But, and I built my own thing, and, I had to, I got my own club, right? Once you do that, a little bit of a, of a notch, at the time it was a little competitive to get it. But what I found was, it was, you know, yes, I don't want, I won't take the time, I don't love, one of my buddies loves it. But I go and I host a room, once in a while there are people there. But it would take a lot, lot more effort than being invited to other people's rooms, then you get their audience. So that's essentially been your philosophy, you could have done it either way, you could have created, you've been in the business 20 years, so if you created a destination site and made that your passion, but I would say people do what they love, and you clearly love the getting your stuff and get some sort of like energy or juice out of it literally, figuratively, both personal juice as well as SEO juice by putting your stuff out there. And it's just two different ways to go about it. But for your purposes, where "Hey, I know about you, I'm inviting you on this podcast," that probably wouldn't happen with just a destination, but rather, hey, this guy's everywhere. And that's what you want, right?
Tom Martin
You know, we don't, you bring up a good point, we don't really, we don't really have, gosh, I don't know if we have really any clients in New Orleans right now, never really have. Because my first agency we were, we had all New Orleans clients, and then Hurricane Katrina hit and all those clients closed. And my philosophy of "Oh, as long as I have a phone and a laptop, I'm in business," failed miserably. Because it was, I was like, Oh, that's great, except I have no clients, you know. And everybody, my biz dev database was pissed that we were a New Orleans company. So I was like, "Okay, well, this isn't going to work." So when I started Converse Digital, gosh, 11 years ago, I very, very cautiously, you know, or I shouldn't say gosh, I very purposely spent most of my time developing business outside of New Orleans, you know, and so for me that local thing's a little bit less rather than, just because we don't really have that, but it was all about getting known and getting clients outside of our market. But again, like you said, it's a strategy. It's what, what game do you want to play, right? Play that game really well and be successful. But if I was a law firm, or doctor or something that, a dentist, you know, somebody that relies on local people, yeah, obviously, I got to win the other side of that, or that's not going to help me much.
Seth Price
No, I get it. Like, ironically, I have a similar thing because my law firm is in DC. You know, I, you know, don't take a lot of clients in our region. And so it's the, we are the non-SEO-ed site in that I don't really care about local search, everything has been through word of mouth, and, you know, and that has, that, that's been our piece. We had a prior guest, the founder of Search Influence, he must be a neighbor of yours.
Tom Martin
Oh, yeah.
Seth Price
Good guy who I know sort of from the search world, he's one of the grand poobah's of PubCon. And, you know, just a great, great guy. And it was interesting, because we talked, you know, just about a lot of the building widgets of agencies, but New Orleans has all its special benefits, but also, sort of, you know, you don't know when the next flood's coming. So no, and he, similarly, you know, first got a lot of, got hit there, but I think, you know, he was very heavily in the Travel and Leisure space. And that, you know, again, we just saw that wasn't in Katrina, that was COVID. But like, you know, in legal, we haven't been hit, knock on wood, all that hard in the sense that, you know, people are doubling down online. But if you're doing fine dining, or destination travel.
Tom Martin
We used to actually do a decent amount of tourism business, and we had a decent amount of tourism clients, and it just so happened that our liquor clients kind of took off, and you know, you go where the money is, and thank God, because I've got a lot of friends that are still very much in that tourism space. And last March, April, was not a good day to be in their world. Whereas, you know, we were pretty good. Our client base is largely b2b and liquor, both of which continued to do quite well. Knock on wood. But, yeah, you know, I think at the end of the day, it's it's different ways of looking at it. But I mean, that's part of the game, right? If everybody's playing this version of SEO, and you can find a little tactic over here that gives you, you know, an edge for even a little bit of time. Okay, great. Eventually, somebody will see your edge, and they'll copy you and then you got to find a new edge. And I mean, that's kind of a whole game, if you ask me.
Seth Price
Well, I get the conversations to customers for you. Talk to me about how you use that in the b2b world. Like you're trying, bring me an end user example. Not that, I'm sure there are plenty of them, but just walk walk us through a little bit about how your philosophy plays out there.
Tom Martin
No, it really plays out a little differently if we're talking to a business to consumer client or business to business. Now, the business to consumer client, that tends to have a conversation that involves a lot of stuff around social media, and just community management. How do you do community management? How do you, how do you handle it? How do you measure it? What does success look like? And then how do you use that to draw? So we had a, we had a rum client, for instance, a dark spice rum, not a lot of people drink dark spice rum, not familiar with it. enjoy.
Seth Price
I enjoy it.
Tom Martin
Yeah, it's really good. So you know, for them, their, their conversation was, we would, would lead in social media with, with content that really wasn't about liquor necessarily. It was very inspirational, it was very much about their brand ethos, etc. which was super cool. And their brand story, and people would get into that, and they would share it, get involved with it. And they would be like, wow, this is a cool brand, I want to invite it into my world. They would like the pages and we'd start to get them. And eventually they'd see the recipe content, the different things you could do within drinks and be like, pretty cool. And it was like, it was like the old days of direct response, right? You'd nab them, you'd nurture them.
Seth Price
Right? Because if you went straight with here's a recipe, yeah, you know, but if you're like, like I didn't, you know, who knows they needed spiced rum when you get to it, when you get to the bar, what's going to, what's going to trigger that, and it's an emotive feel.
Tom Martin
It's, you know, it's like businesses, we nurture and we just nurture, nurture to actually have people on the site. You know, they would say like, they would be on like, you would see him on the page saying, "Oh, my God, well, I got in your for your content, but then I tried the product and the product's awesome. Now, I really love all the drink recipes." It was just a circle of life kind of thing. Now, b2b, it tends to be more like sales training, you know, like I'm going to be giving a workshop tomorrow for people in the, in the b2b sales world to show them how you, you I call it Sell Greatly, you know, your relationship-first transaction. Second, you're trying to have real conversations with people where you're not really talking about what you can sell them or what they can buy from you or whatever, but instead, you're trying to find some common ground, make some connections.
Seth Price
Couldn't agree more. I tried to scale that for the intake of my law firm in their training manual. They are supposed to be familiar with every area code. So if it, if it's a, you know, a 312 area code, is it White Sox or Cubs? 215, is it Pat's or Geno's? Like everybody in Philly has an, even the vegans have an opinion on that, right. Like, there's nobody that doesn't have an opinion about Pat's or Geno's, and it may be, "No, it's Uncle Sal's. And that really those guys suck. Those are too commercial, I go to the guy on the west side," you know, so it to me, I get that. So are you coming at the intersection? Are you sitting in on sales trainings like, is this, like, they're doing Sandler Training on Tuesday and you come in on Wednesday? Or how does this work?
Tom Martin
No. Most of them, if we're doing the sales training, it's not in conjunction with anybody else's.
Seth Price
Oh, you have your own sales training. Apologies.
Tom Martin
We have our own. We call it you know, we call it Sell Greatly. So like tomorrow, I'll teach them how to do social reconnaissance, and using publicly available data to literally build a dossier on your prospects. So you'll know is it Geno's or Pat's or whatever you just referenced.
Seth Price
Or may not even know that, but, or they might, but like, at least you'll know you're not walking into a vegan and asking them about Morton's versus whatever.
Tom Martin
You would be surprised what you can find out about people online. People have no concept of how much they share about themselves online and how much other people share about them. And so, you know, as far as when...
Seth Price
I have a question, does that change depending on the industry? So in legal, you know, you have some people that are online, but like, I'm the kind of, not the average guy. There are a lot of people whose web, you know, it's not a big Instagram crowd, it's limited Facebook, probably family photos, maybe some legal circles, and so you don't get as much comparatively. I'm guessing the liquor, liquor business, it's a much freer spirit. They've had a bunch of that spiced rum and you, do you see certain industries comport better with that, obviously, reconnaissance is always good. But you have an easier time in some industries over others?
Tom Martin
Yeah, definitely. Like if you're, you know, targeting younger people, people in industries that are younger, tech, anything like that. But like, what people don't realize as well, yes, the, the lawyer, you know, they're on it, they're on but they're private, right, nobody's got their stuff open. But what, what they don't, what people don't realize is, while you may have your stuff really private and really locked down, your friend may not. And the next thing you know, you're in a selfie at the Cubs game with your friend. So now I know you're a Cubs fan, because you got the hat on in New Jersey. So I know you're a Cubs fan, not because you told me but because your friend told me, that's the piece that people don't always understand.
Seth Price
I just assumed, he's a lawyer, took the lawyer side of ours, anything you put on there is discoverable. I don't care how much you lock it down. Like, you know a) did you even get it done right. But b) there's different levels of it, there's different, you know, and that, in general, if it's out there, it gets out. So you know, like, cases have been won and lost. You know, a lot of people screw up their cases, you know, you know, by you know, you forget that every. And I if, you're willing to live in that fishbowl but like, you know, the flip side of that is we live in a glass bowl, which means I was prospecting, some a company today. And I asked for references and they were giving me a hard time, so I called their references from a public-facing website. And then they got all upset with me. And so, all of a sudden, we're at a point, it's like, it's tough because we all live in this, you know, exposed world, whether we like it or not.
Tom Martin
Oh, yeah. And that, to me, again, it goes back to the whole relationship first and connecting. I mean, the secret is, you know, to make friends with people to get permission. And you know, LinkedIn is probably usually the best for that.
Seth Price
Let me ask you a blunt question because obviously, it's extremely powerful and it's used all the time by salespeople. How, it is getting so spammy, you know, to the point of absurdity, of which I'm now joining in on ways that I don't really love. But what are your thoughts? Because it's, Yogi Bear had that saying, back in the day, "It's so popular, nobody goes there anymore." You know, I'm wondering whether we're going to get to the point where people will have, you know, again, there are certain b2b spaces that it works beautifully in, but I got to think we're getting close to a tipping point where the spam outweighs the time needed to sift through it. You know, I wanted to almost do like a documentary or write a book, I was gonna respond to the first 100 people that wanted 15 minutes of my time, and if I spent money on all of those things combined, would I get an email, it's like, so anyway, I leave that out. There's my rant. I'll get off my soapbox now. But it just kills me. So when you're trying to teach people how to leverage this and utilize it, it's, it's, it's a little trickier than it used to be.
Tom Martin
Oh, I don't know if it's any. Yeah, it's a little trickier but not really because, is, the little spam email in-message you get, to me, it's no different than than the crappy cold call I used to get on your phone, you know.
Seth Price
Okay, fair enough.
Tom Martin
Yeah, the exact same reaction. At some point in time, salespeople are gonna start to figure out that stuff just doesn't work or, or it works, but God it works at such a low conversion number that you're wasting so much time on outreach that yeah, okay, so you're getting a few conversions, you'd be better off just outreaching less but higher quality. You know, so I think it's, I think that's the way I always look at it, is it's like no matter what channel you use, if you use the channel respectfully, and you really think about what was that person doing five seconds before they see your message, pick up your phone call, here your voicemail, whatever they might do, and try to honor what they were doing and not just, you know, jam yourself into their world, but just be respectful of it. And, you know, I've actually, because it helps you stand out, you're a little bit different, I've really taken to doing a lot of handwritten notes of late.
Seth Price
Very Jack Dailey of you.
Tom Martin
Yeah, I mean, nobody does it anymore. It's different. You know, it's kind of like, I remember when I first started my agencies, the first thing I did was invest in really, really nice colored linen envelopes, so that when we would send something to somebody, you know, don't care how much mail is on your desk, when a royal blue linen envelope is there, you're gonna grab it, because it's different, you know, and it's handwritten on the front, not a label.
Seth Price
So you're like lumpy mail for the high-end exec. I love it.
Tom Martin
Yeah it was, wasn't it. It works. But yeah, I mean, it's like anything else? I mean, I think it's kind of like LinkedIn groups, like probably, gosh, like five years ago, seven years ago, LinkedIn groups were a pretty good place to prospect. And then they just got to be just crap. I mean, there was so much spam, like they were just horrible. And then they just kind of died.
Seth Price
Well, what, what are a couple of your hacks? What do you like right now?
Tom Martin
I think I mostly like, I'm liking LinkedIn, but I like it, you know, I will, I will just kind of look for interesting conversations and try to drop into them. Kind of like the old days of Twitter. I miss the old days of Twitter where you could just drop in on any conversation, and so much like easier. I'm doing more just like referral based, you know, "Hey, can you introduce me to so-and-so?"
Seth Price
Like a warm lead.
Tom Martin
You know, yeah, like a warm lead. And doing more of this, trying to get back out. Like, I kind of, kind of hit the sidelines there for a while and didn't really speak a whole lot and wasn't doing a whole lot, so I've been getting back more and doing this podcast and being being a guest and trying to help create good content for other people's audiences, and letting that matriculate, you know, into, to people then reaching out on LinkedIn and wanting to connect with you or Facebook or whatever it might be. And let it kind of get going out to just sort of, you know, light my candle and letting people find me through good content.
Seth Price
That's awesome. Tell us a little bit about the agency. How can people find you and what you do, and a little bit more detail about what the ideal clients are for you?
Tom Martin
Well, they can find us at conversedigital.com. Ideal clients are those that really believe it, really fall into a place where there's a human being involved in the sales process. They don't like cold calling; they do a lot of repeat business. And we do really well with sales teams that sell, maybe not, not a super high-end product, but an educationally oriented product, your customer's doing their homework before they're buying your product or service. Our process, our system, our approach, works best in those environments,
Seth Price
Which makes sense because I look at this, I look at my little MySpace, right? So you have this group that just raised a gazillion dollars, Scorpion, like a big player in the search space. And their sales is God-awful, but it works. You know, that's get on the phone, persistence, gifts, pound, pound the numbers, and, you know, I feel that there's, you know, you know, you look at it, and the grass is always greener, but I've never, I like the philosophy of build those relationships. But my final question to you is, as an end business owner, okay, I buy into it, I love this, I agree with you, the relationships are better, especially if it's educational and it's not just an impulsive purchase, especially for repeat player. But there's also this issue of training, they always say, you want to train, you know what, you train the good people, because, you know what, if you train them, they leave, and it's like, what's worse, you don't, you don't train them and they stay. But my question here is, salespeople are ephemeral, a lot of them come and go, you know. How do you, you know, is there a way that that goodwill, if you're building something up in the relationship, and then that person leaves? How like, how do you scale that knowing that people are not wedded to a given sales team or company?
Tom Martin
Yeah, I would counter you're asking the wrong question.
Seth Price
Well, I'm sure I am.
Tom Martin
Based on a faulty assumption of you know, the old saying of we, you know, insanity is doing the same thing day after day and expecting different results.
Seth Price
Absolutely.
Tom Martin
So if you are, the reason salespeople are not wedded is because everybody's using, for the most part, the same old fashion, volumetric, high volume, always be closing approach to sales, and that tears you apart and it wears you out. So if you get into a company where that's working and you're making money, great. If you get into a company where it's a little harder, you're not making as much money, well, you're looking for the jump. Not because it's like hazard pay, right? You only want to do it if you're making a lot of money. However, as a company, if you switch to relationship based, like we talked so greatly, where the environment is not about can you make 10 cold calls today, but can you build two good relationships and it's a, it's a nicer, friendlier, if you will, where you're not constantly having to sell your soul to a cold call or, or doing 100 outreaches on LinkedIn, yet playing that numbers game. It's a quality over quantity, creates a much better environment in the workplace. Okay. So that is why the salesperson is going to stay with you.
Seth Price
Understood. It's a different, it's apples and oranges. The reason you pay have to incentivize so heavily is because it sucks. And what you're talking about doesn't, this is awesome. But when you're, you know, with that, are there certain widgets being sold, where that it is that, like, you can't afford the relationship piece, that you are better with more of a transactional, I have this product at this price, do you want it today? Like is there a line where certain products work really, really well with what you're doing and there are others that the transaction costs would make the ROI less attractive, even though it would work, you'd make sales, but you may not be able to generate the volume, or it sounds like for you, you've created and cracked a code that gets you in doors you couldn't get in no matter how many times you, you just push, you know, push your horse through it.
Tom Martin
Yeah, no, I think like anything else. I mean, there's no one silver bullet for everything. If you're selling a product that is easily demonstrated, solves a very, very painful well-known, well-understood consumer or buyer need, and you really just need to make me aware of hey, you're, you're accepting a pain you don't need to accept, I can make that go away. Here it is. It's affordable, blah, blah, blah, well, that's a numbers game. You know, that's run advertising, get a big sales force, dial for dollars, because as a buyer, I look at it and go, "Holy crap, I have, where's that been on my life? Yes, I'll buy, done." But it's a transaction? Like you're not, you know, it's in. So yeah, our response, our process doesn't work for that. I mean, it could.
Seth Price
But what I'm saying, but what's harder, is up the food chain. It's like, what you're saying is, hey, there are no simple solutions. It takes hard work, it takes connections, it takes that, and if you don't see that, if you're, you know, I don't know if you remember Being There with Chauncey Gardner, but like, you know, all these gardening metaphors, like, if you don't water, then the seeds will not, you know, sprout and you know, and it's like, you're really, you're planting seeds. You're, you're basically allowing this to grow and to have a garden, rather than, you know, just basically hunting for food whenever you need it.
Tom Martin
Yeah, I mean, you know, I think professional services, the perfect backdrop for what we're... Our process works really well, because in professional services, you're hiring the invisible. I can't test drive a lawyer, once they're hired, they're hired, I'm paying, and I'm either gonna get an outcome or I'm not, but I can't test drive it, I can't return it, it's not inventoriable, there's no refunds, like, it's a trust thing. And even more so in relationship.
Seth Price
And cold calls don't work.
Tom Martin
No, because I don't, if you're a lawyer, and you're cold calling, I'm not sure I want you as my lawyer, because I'm wondering if you're that good. Why are you calling me for business? You should have people knocking on your door not knocking on mine, right? And so yeah, I think of the professional services around whether it's a lawyer, dentist, doctor, ad guy, you know, whatever. Where we're, what you're really selling is an invisible product, and you're selling the promise of a future deliverable. And it's really trust-based. And it's really faith-based, that you know, your customers buying. This approach works infinitely better because you start out from much, much stronger place, and that person already trusts you, already likes you. And then also, if something does go wrong, because you built that relationship before you ever did business with them, it gives you a little permission to stumble. And we all know that can happen in the early days of a new client relationship, you're trying to figure out how to work together, stuff. So that environment, think that works really great rather than selling some widget that just solves a simple problem. Probably go for dial, dial for dollar model.
Seth Price
Very cool. Tom, thank you so much for your time. I hope we get to cross at an in-person conference sooner than later. Perhaps in the Big Easy. In fact, I'll be there, this, this fall for one of the first legal conferences back so...
Tom Martin
Well call me, we'll go have a beer. I have a standing, a standing invitation to anybody who comes to big conferences in New Orleans. Call me and always happy to go pop a beer and have a talk.
Seth Price
Well, I appreciate it. Take it easy.
Tom Martin
Take care. Bye.
BluShark Digital
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