The Content Crib Podcast
The Content Crib Podcast is where bold ideas meet real execution. Hosted by Eric Anderson and Chris Grosse, this show breaks down how to turn content into trust, attention into opportunity, and your story into strategy. No fluff. No filters. Just what works. Welcome to the Crib.
The Content Crib Podcast
Personal Branding Transforms Traditional Industries: Mark Kempf Shows Us How #11
Mark Kempf, author of "Unfurl Your Sales" and benefits industry veteran, shares his philosophy on making sales comfortable rather than awkward or forced. Drawing on over 40 years of experience, he explains how ditching scripts and embracing authentic conversations leads to better outcomes for both salespeople and clients.
• The concept of "unfurling" sales—a gradual, purposeful approach like a sail slowly rising on a boat
• Why everyone is in sales, whether selling products or their personal brand
• How to recognize when prospects have structural reasons preventing immediate purchases
• Building effective personal brands on LinkedIn while providing genuine value
• Creating trust through consistency rather than forced familiarity
• Using simple personalized videos to connect authentically with clients and prospects
• Why aggressive sales tactics typically result in only three outcomes—none ideal
Connect with Mark on LinkedIn (search Mark Kempf in Paris, Ontario) or visit unfurlyoursales.com to learn more about his approach to comfortable, personalized selling.
Welcome, welcome everybody. We're here with another episode of Content Crib. Thank you for joining us, and we have a super exciting guest my current favorite book that I'm reading. Today. We're joined by Mark Kempf, author of Unfurl your Sales, a benefits industry veteran who solves fascinating problems in a fascinating way, turning one of the company's biggest expenses into something employees actually appreciated. But now Mark is retired from client work and has channeled his expertise into his beautiful book and is proving that traditional industries can build powerful personal brands online. Mark, welcome to Content Crib. Let's start with that tagline of yours.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much, guys. I appreciate it Great.
Speaker 1:Thanks for having me, mark. Thank you for being here, mark. Really we love having you, thank you beautiful tagline about being comfortable on sales.
Speaker 2:What if selling was?
Speaker 1:comfortable, personalized. I love that, yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, first of all, selling is stressful, right, everything's working against you in a way.
Speaker 2:You're trying to make money, you're trying to make money, you're trying to close sales and you're trying to learn all kinds of things product and clients and so it's very difficult and after 20 years you're still struggling with that stuff.
Speaker 2:So it is so much better when you can just relax into it and do something that feels normal to you and that's just having normal conversations with people. They sell to be focused and directed, but it doesn't mean they have to be odd or awkward, and I think one of the key things actually is that when you start in sales, people give you scripts. You spend so much time trying to learn the script. You don't see anything else that's going on in the room except what you're supposed to be saying next. So as soon as those scripts are gone and you steal some sort of framework of how you want to get places, so it gets way more comfortable and then it becomes your own personal thing, right? Nobody else is going to do it like you, and that means that clients either love you or, you know, maybe they don't love you and you move on. It's just the best way to have selling done.
Speaker 1:You said it best and obviously you wrote a book. You have a multitude of experience.
Speaker 2:Can you tell us a little bit about your background and how you got to this point? Yeah, so I was in sales for about over 40 years, started in the life insurance side of things and then after about 10 years really became a group benefit expert. So I never gave up the other side. I always did executive planning. But I just love employee benefits. It's just so interesting and it's so impactful and people are spending a fortune on it and I quite often pretty much wasting it, and so I just love dealing with my clients.
Speaker 1:You mentioned in your book that we're all in sales and I love this line. Unpack that a little bit, because not everybody that is a content crib listener is in sales or marketing, but we're all selling something right. Unpack that for us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, we're all selling ourselves, certainly, and our personal brand to our neighbors and our friends and our workmates. We sell things at the yard sale, we sell things on Kijiji. We're always selling. There is a difference, obviously, between those kinds of selling and the professional selling, the high-performance professional selling, which I think is very specialized. But one of the challenges sometimes is that as a salesperson you get called out. Sometimes you say something, somebody will call you on it because they recognize that as a sales thing, because everyone has an opinion and has a sense of what selling is. And the one thing we are all selling is our personal brand. In some way, even if it's completely erroneous to how we are, we're selling our brand and so I think there's a way to do that best as well. And, chris and Eric, we see all kinds of people doing it wrong, don't we here? Awkwardly, anyway.
Speaker 1:At least they're trying right. Yeah, yeah, they're giving it the old college try, but it looks like they're giving it the old college try is what it looks like. So who do you think some of the most? Or if you were to kind of look out and see the best personal brand experts, and who do you model a lot of things that you do and why you do it.
Speaker 2:Right. Well, I'm trying to be very, uh, comfortable, obviously, and my personal brand now is, uh, just having a presence on linkedin and so people can see the book and get a sense of what it's about, uh, so I really I follow chris for quite some time. Chris is very comfortable on there, um, so I'm glad we connected. Yes, he is, um, yeah, and there's a bunch of other guys I really like Jeff Hatton, ted Olson, I think, does a great job, even though he and I aren't quite the same person, you know. Yeah, I think he does a really good job on that. And then I like guys that really are I don't want to say, hyper-personal, because I'm sure they're still holding stuff back. And Antonio Savalas, erin Anthony Stavallis is really good. There's just so many people I follow that I think do a great job.
Speaker 2:On the author side, I'm a little more sensitive, right to it, and some people do it so well. I'm just amazed at how well they do it. Mark Cox is a good example. What do they do that you like? Well, they talk. Just amazed at how well they do it. Mark Cox is a good example. What do they do that you like? Well, they talk about the book, but in a way that it's sensible. They're not just swinging the book, they're being helpful. Yeah, and I think that's the key thing.
Speaker 2:Another guy, josh Braun, who I don't know if he's really published anything specific. He publishes kind of stuff that he almost gives away, but I don't know he's actually done a book. He does a great job at it too. So I really what I've tried to do and honestly I think I failed that that's half the time which is I like to post something that is really, um, inspiring or insightful or different that would be helpful to people, and then the book is just a tag at the end of that. Right, if you want more of this, here's the book. I think that's the best way to do. It is just I wrote the book to be helpful. I think the posts on LinkedIn should be helpful as well, and I think sometimes I've tilted over where I'm just trying to promote the book, because I was so excited about the book that I probably went overboard on that, so I apologize to anyone that feels that way, I'm sure they don't, they don't.
Speaker 1:No, I mean, I'm loving it right now. I just hit the 200 page mark and I'm really enjoying it. And I want to go back to what you said about how you're posting and and I think it's important because, at this, two big ways to post on LinkedIn, well, this three do whatever you want, right, but I think the two big ones are educate and entertain. And when you say that you're educating uh things and insightfulness, do you feel like you feel like you start to build more of a rapport with people that are following you?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Yeah, I get a lot more feedback. It amazes me how the same 20 people will be following and commenting or saying something about. Maybe not commenting I'm not that hot of property, but it really is interesting when people do start to build. So, chris and I you know you reached out to me. We met uh, um online, but, um, because we respect each other right, so you have to spend some time with people and get to know what they're about, especially if all you're seeing is their face, sometime uh, really understanding um, what that means. And so I, I just, I'm just, I just love it and I love having, you know, half hour Zooms with people and just getting to know them. It's uh, it's been a wonderful time yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we talk about it all the time. I mean, linkedin is the platform that really does, you know, link all of us together over the years and how it's done. And it's amazing that, just because of personal branding, the, uh, the, the, just the, the rapport you can build and the connection, um, and actually you know where a lot of. I mean I, I would have never met Chris Gross ever in my life before. I would have never met you, mark, I would have never met all these people that I now work with, and it's because of the power of LinkedIn, the platform.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's the only one that could possibly be as good as it is, and, of course, everyone wants to be better in some way, but it still works really well. We also learn who to trust, right? We learn from comments who to trust. Who's actually talking, who's actually saying something?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'll also say I posted back and this is how we started to talk more. I posted back in November. I was going to Chicago last minute and I was looking for some tips and, mark, you were kind enough to chime in and tag your friends and all these amazing advice on places to go, and I didn't really know you at the time. But I just saw this guy, mark, with all these certifications after his name. I'm like, oh my God, this guy, this guy, what do all those mean? Really taking time out of it. But it meant something to me because, you know, you gave me food tips, you gave me who to reach out to. I reached out to the person you told. I forget his name now, but I reached. He was very helpful tom bonnell.
Speaker 1:Um, yeah, and I'm like, but that is the beauty of you, know the community you could build and then you never know that kind of relationship can who? I never thought that we'd be on a podcast together and I'd be reading your book, but here we are and it's fantastic. So I think there's a story there and there's a story for a lot of people and, uh, you can, and that's what we do. A content group too. Right when we all put these people that are cartoon characters on a screen into a room and start to network and, you know, read each other's books or learn each other's business or inspire each other, it's pretty cool.
Speaker 2:It sure is. Yeah, well, again, I'm appreciative when anyone reads the book and takes it seriously and considers it, so I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1:So have you had anybody talk about that?
Speaker 2:Go ahead yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:I was just going to say let's talk about the book Unfurl your Sales. What does it mean?
Speaker 2:I know, yeah, so unfurl is kind of a quirky word. Um, yeah, it just really is used in two common things when you unroll a flag, it's called unfurling. Or a sail in a sailboat that goes up, and the idea for me is that selling should be very, uh, gradual and purposeful and, um, and thoughtful and and not rushed or pushed and stuff. And that's really a sail going up is very slow, and when it gets to the top and it's locked in, then that's when it's effective, so that's when the wind gets in it and it fills out and people can now not only move places but also move with direction, right. So I think that's why I just like the idea of unfurl your sails but I like to play on words but also just the idea of sales being very gradual and progressive and not rushing. So one of the things I say in the book just an example is that when you're having a conversation with somebody perhaps the first discovery meeting, but sometimes it can be a later meeting and you realize there is no way they're going to buy from me today because they can't. It's usually structural right. It's not because they can't, it's usually structural right. It's not because they don't want what I've got or that I couldn't imagine explaining what I have. That would be better for them. But there's some structural reason. It's clearly why they can't buy it today. Then you just go to slow mode because you're not going to close the sale, you're not going to ask any closing questions, you're not even going to go near it because you're not there yet and it may take two years to get there.
Speaker 2:If it's a structural problem, that's just the way it is, but it's good to be able to recognize it. So, and the metaphor I use in the book is a coin spelled Q-U-O-I-N, which everyone else would think looks like a doorstop, but the ancient word is coin and I compare it to an ax, because an actual wedge is ax shaped and you know, an ax is very aggressive, right, and so much of sales and the way people are caught to do sales is very aggressive, it's very ax-like. And sometimes people are taught to sell really well and caringly, but they just can't help themselves, right? They get close to the sale, they need money, their manager is bugging them, they haven't got their quota, they get very aggressive suddenly. They don't even want to be, they just are being very gradual and slow, uplifting the sale and uh, you know, moving toward the sale and really directing people where you want them to go and where they are most helped, but in a, in a path and a speed that works for them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're very right. I mean it's um you. You just sometimes we've all experienced the throw up salesperson. You know I was in sales management for a lot of years still am to a degree and you know you just sit there with a salesperson, they have a presentation and you just feel the uncomfortable you know feelings you get when somebody you know it's the 30th of the month and they need to get this thing in, and oh and mackerel, you can pretty much assure you won't get it in because you have somebody who's you know like a golden retriever meeting them for the first time in the office.
Speaker 2:It's terrible. You guys have probably seen Kevin Casey online on LinkedIn. Oh yeah, he wrote the book. It's right over here, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's a really cool book and Kevin and I chum a bit and well, a bit online and yeah it's great. And he's got all like what you just said there, eric, about throwing up those people. That's kind of a Kevin Casey's style. He has the best of the one liners in the business. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he does, and you know, it's just. I'm chuckling back to all the stories and we all know them. That's why we're all smiling of, you know, being with certain salesmen. Hey, listen, and I've been that person before, I've been that person, just that. Yeah, like the nails on the chalkboard, oh my gosh, why are you saying that? You know, and it's really a lot of that, A lot of that comes from not unfurling, Like you said it's. It comes from just this you know, want to get it done and it's got to be done in the next 36 seconds or else.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, look, chris has already read it. But there's this one story I put in the book about me doing that, just to give the example right, that I was terrible at that stuff too. And I always say, if you go for the aggressive sale, there's only three outcomes they either say yes right away, or they say no right away. Or they say yes and then say no later.
Speaker 1:Yes right away, or they say no right away or they say yes and then say no later because that's just what you're going to get for it. Yeah and it's um, I don't care. You know, people always talk about relationship sales and all sales is a relationship. It's just how it's structured and I'm sure. Well, what do you think about? Obviously you're in, you're in the, you're in the life insurance sales business, which is 100 relationship sales. It's not a. Uh, they walk in the door and I mean you're.
Speaker 2:You're obviously orchestrating something for their family, long term, for the future yeah, and life insurance is a little bit different than the benefits side of things. But certainly you're still trying to make a connection with people and you might be interested. I've had clients on the group benefit side for over 30 years and certainly I think eight or nine for 20, 25 years and you know it's very long term. I think my clients know me to be very warm and we're very sentimental toward each other almost and we're really caring about each other. And yet I've made a point of not being too personal. Though most of them know I've got two boys and I'm married.
Speaker 2:That's probably all they know about me. Like it's just it's unbelievable how little. So it is very personal, but it doesn't have to be inside baseball either. People just have to recognize the good qualities of another person, trust them and then want to do work with them. So I find out about them some, but some I'm very close to. Some again, I could know them for 20 years and I actually don't know the names of their kids and I'm not trying to because I'm not trying to prove anything.
Speaker 1:I want to touch on trust, because that is such a huge word and so important in life in general, obviously, but also in connecting with people online, connecting with people in the sales process, and one of the processes or techniques that Eric and I talk about every day and I saw it in the book and it melted my heart was you mentioning personalized videos. I couldn't believe it when I saw it. I should have known, but I couldn't believe it when I saw it and I was so awesome and we talk about personalized videos and being different and building trust at the speed of light, and that's a huge tool for us. Do you have any examples of wins when you've utilized personalized videos, or anybody that you, you know, use it Right Because it?
Speaker 2:has success. Right, I would say I'm not that great at it generally. I'll tell you a few things that I think work really well though. So during and, by the way, I was the old guy in the office, right, and nobody else was using this stuff. So during COVID, when I wanted to connect with all my group benefit clients and I had a lot to tell them about COVID and what the insurers were up to and restrictions on travel, all that stuff, I would make a video and that it was sent to all my clients and then I started doing it. After that I would have three different topics I want to talk about usually something in the news about public health care, something else and something else.
Speaker 2:One of the things I used for prospecting was that if a client I knew had a particular interest in something like, let's say, it had to do with payroll and HR and admin when it came to group benefits, then I would put a topic in that was directed exactly to that prospect, this major prospect. So it'd be a topic that'd be good for everybody, but I wanted to send it to my prospects as well. I wanted that prospect to get that as if it was a personal message, but I would frame it within the bigger environment and then after that sometimes I would send them a video. So it's funny, I've got this one client, the one I call these my whales, not because they're so big but because there's a clients that I, or prospects that I really wanted to get as clients, the one prospect whale that I never did get.
Speaker 2:I sent them a personal video just to talk about one topic. I kept it to a minute. I wanted to make it very specific just to this one thing that was important to them and something that had progressed that conversation, and when I sent it to them, the HR director soon back to note and said Mark, that was really great, Nice try, that's cool, right, I had no problem with that. So anyway, I think it's really great. Chris, you had mentioned on an earlier podcast number three, maybe two that you only ever had one personal video.
Speaker 1:Probably not from like people, friends, etc. I've only received one sales prospecting video from one rep.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? I can't believe people are using it all the time. And just a really quick story, because I just was so impressed. We had contacted a car dealership a couple of years ago about a car that was for sale. It was just like a two-year-old car and we made an appointment with the sales guy when we could be there because it was out of town, and so about two hours before the meeting we get a personal video from him. It's a little tour of the car. He's talking about the car and said this is the car you're going to come see. I want to show you the good things about it. It's like that was just freaking brilliant. You know, that was brilliant, right, I mean it may have been like, oh, I don't want to bother or whatever, but that's okay, that'd be his. No, but I just thought it was amazing. So I think people should be doing that all the time.
Speaker 1:Well, it shows the power of it. You still remember it and you're articulating exactly what he did. It left that kind of an image and a memory for you. I mean that does it all right there.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, if I was doing prospecting now, that's what I would be doing.
Speaker 1:Yep, yeah, and we did not pay Mark to say that. No, I mean, I know there's at least a couple people that have been taught by either Eric or I on personalized videos, so I hope this motivates you to create more, because they do work. When I do send personalized videos, I overbook my calendar if I send too many, and they don't need to be just personalized. They can be saved in a content library that you could just pull like. It sounds like Mark, that's what you did, is you made some videos on certain topics and maybe they didn't have their name in them and you could repurpose it? That's a very important thing that people need to understand, because that's what I do. I have a whole library of things that are half education, half introduction, you know whatever yeah, by the way, anyone listening to this, I'm terrible at this stuff.
Speaker 2:So, like I'm really terrible at video and I'm I'm terrible at splicing and dicing and all the fancy stuff, so most of my videos I put a video on linkedin. It's me with my phone, holding it out, pushing start because I've just I'm only looking to the little lens of the camera so I can't see myself. I want to get the best image I can. I'm pressing that button at the bottom, trying to balance it while I talk and then pushing it again to turn it off, so I don't edit a thing. That's what I try to do. Everybody out there listening to this would be better at it than I am, so if I can do it, there's no doubt you can do it too.
Speaker 1:Oh no, that sounds exactly what we talk to people about. Is you know you're utilizing your phone with a personalized video? Builds no like and trust like no other tool on the planet. I don't care what anybody says.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Well, Chris knows how bad I am at it because I struggle. I love.
Speaker 1:I mean you do it right behind your, in your backyard. It's a beautiful setting and um, there's one where you're chopping wood. I like I remember these things. It's hard to like. Eric said it's you don't just remember everything in life. You know, you see, if it's to you or or had a message behind it.
Speaker 2:That was powerful. Like that stays with people, so just keep that in mind. Yeah, derek's point, I wish my videos were more entertainment driven. So, jeff hatton, I uh chat online just a bit and uh about a. I you're about a month out from publishing a podcast from tape date. Yeah, in about a month. Folk, if you haven't gone to my website or jeff hatton's, please do. There's a video about the book that jeff hatton's doing for me. All right, what a sweet guy. Honestly, what a hero for me that's great, we'll check it out.
Speaker 1:Well, if people want to check out more of the stuff that you have mark or what've done, where should they go find?
Speaker 2:that Best really is just LinkedIn. So just look up my name. I live in Paris, ontario, but if you put in Mark Kempf with an F on the end and Canada or Ontario, you'll probably hit me. There's a guy in the insurance business in Upper Michigan or in Michigan with my name. I say names, but anyway, yeah, put it on Canada or Ontario, you'll get it. There is a website for Unfurl your Sales unfurlyoursalescom. I have absolutely no impact when it comes to Google, so you have to put it right into the bar and that also gives my email address for the book unfurl yourselves. And uh, my plan, guys, eventually, is that people start asking me questions about the book and you know, talk about stuff, and um, I like to start posting the answers there, maybe doing quick personal video with the answers, and um, that'd be ideal. And um, I had a just a personal one-on-one uh with, uh, another agent that I know and uh, before this, and uh, she has some really fantastic questions. So it you know. I could just start three or four from that.
Speaker 1:That's great, yeah, and I I the book is is fantastic. If you're a sales marketing, personal development kind of nerd, like I am, I really need some more hobbies. Uh, no offense to the book, um, if you're, if you read any of the great sales books and, uh, I, this is, this is in that, uh, that echelon of books, I can't recommend it enough.
Speaker 2:So that's really high price yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm only halfway through, so okay.
Speaker 2:But that's good. That's where it's going, thank you. I was going to mention my brother. Uh uh mentioned he was writing a book and he said that what he hates about self-help books or sales books or any kind of book like that, is that the person in the intro gives the answer to the book and then regurgitates 28 times for the next 150 pages. I tried very hard not to do that. I'm not saying I was flawless at it, but I tried to keep it. Yeah, you definitely did not do that Good.
Speaker 1:Well, I really appreciate you coming on today, mark, and thank you, yeah, good, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Make sure to go out and get Mark's book or, even better, connect with him on LinkedIn. Uh, mark Kempf, in Paris, ontario, and uh, I'm sure he can maybe even send you a signed copy. I don't know, I'm I'm now setting you up for doing it, mark. Those, uh, let's say, the content crib podcast, please. Uh, hit up Mark and he'll send you a signed copy. Sorry, mark, please hit up Mark and he'll send you a signed copy. Sorry, mark, no problem, no problem.
Speaker 2:Pleasure guys. You guys are fantastic. I've enjoyed every one of your podcasts, especially the last one Just tremendous.
Speaker 1:Appreciate that. Yeah, we really enjoyed doing it and enjoyed having you on today.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay, thank you very much. Take care, bye-bye.