Episode 40: Getting in the room with banks

[00:00:01] Hello and welcome to New Era FinTech Podcast. Today we are talking sales, sales and marketing. This is based on one of the posts I have published on LinkedIn today. I was moved to write it

[00:00:17] after an outreach from a sales director, a very polite lady who added me today on LinkedIn. I said, thank you for the ad. She said, I have been following you for some time and I have been following your posts. I said, thank you. Great.

[00:00:36] I said, I see your sales director at a FinTech or vendor working for selling services to banks. She said, yes, yes, yes. I said, I hope you have got your marketing, I hope it is all working and you are getting connected.

[00:00:52] And she was saying, well, it is actually quite difficult. I said, well, you know, it is important to do this, do that, do this. She says, I know, I know, I know, I was reading your post. I said, well, can I help? And she said, well, maybe.

[00:01:12] I said, well, I have been doing some workshops all last year for FinTech companies that are trying to organize their marketing and their sales effort, unifying it and focusing very carefully on winning and getting in the door to get a client.

[00:01:29] And the discussion we had reminded me that I may be very good, ladies and gentlemen, dear listener, dear viewer, I may be very good at telling other people what to do. One would hope that is the case. But am I any good at following my own advice?

[00:01:44] So I realized today, no, not very good at all. Because I said, look, I do these workshops. She went, oh, right. Ladies, I didn't really know. I hadn't communicated this at all. So I'm doing this episode here, both in part to promote me, to promote these

[00:02:06] series of workshops that I'm doing, because I realize I've done a terrible job at that. So for clarity, you can hire me and I will help you formulate how you reach out to and ideally win conversations with banks, bank executives.

[00:02:26] So today what I'm going to do is I'm going to give you a compressed version of that workshop. Most of the work I do is back and forward. It's interactive. And it's a series of advice sessions and discussions and strategic ideas.

[00:02:43] And then it's over the course of perhaps two, three, four weeks in particular. But it usually starts with a bit of a broadcast. So that's what I'm going to do here. So I'm going to broadcast to you in a compressed way and you can try me on.

[00:02:58] So this is an amalgamation of many of the posts I've done on LinkedIn and also a very brief, a brief summary of how I tend to like to run these workshops that have resulted in really good success.

[00:03:14] Now success for me, by the way, success for me is putting the sales person in the room, any room, any word doesn't matter, in the room with a target bank executive. That's success. Now in many cases, it may result in a negative conversation.

[00:03:37] I've spoken to them and they're not interested at the moment. That's okay. That's okay because now what we've got is a relationship. So we can keep talking now and again, at least we've bonded. We've got relationship. They're not ready. They don't want it. It's not appropriate for them.

[00:03:53] Great, great. We can cross them off the list. The major frustration for many of the FinTech I'm speaking to is those conversations, they're not having those. If you're not talking to the customer, you're certainly not winning customers. Here's how I like to play it.

[00:04:14] So I'm going to give you a fictional example of a FinTech. They've got a couple of clients already bank customers and they say, bank as a service or licensed product or something like that for a bank. And they say, some category somewhere in banking.

[00:04:31] And they typically, they've been funded for a little while. They are operational. They got revenue. In some cases, they're quite mature. They've got quite a number of customers, but it's just getting to more banks. So you may, in this fictional example, let's assume there are 20 companies,

[00:04:50] 20 banks that you care about. You've done your profiling, you've done the public data and you said, look, do you know what? There's 20 banks in Europe that I want to talk to. There's way more, but I'm focusing on the big ones, the tier ones or twos or threes,

[00:05:07] because that's particularly, for whatever reason, there's 20. And there's 15 banks in the Gulf that we want to target. Other banks may approaches we may discover, we may trip over. Some banks, great. That's fine. That's fine. But there's 35 banks that we are targeting this year.

[00:05:34] Now, if that and most organizations have some kind of kickoff, here we are in January, the end of January, and many, many sales kickoffs have taken place in many fintechs where these conversations have happened. So we've got 35 banks in two geographies and that's where we're focused.

[00:05:57] At each bank, there are two or three people that we as a fintech care about, two or three people that we need to speak to in order to make a sale, minimum. To begin that dialogue, it is the chief digital officer. It is the chief information officer.

[00:06:16] It is the head of digital. It is the head of innovation. We always win when we connect to the head of innovation and then whatever. You roughly know the personas. Each bank's a different label for many of these people.

[00:06:32] It can also be those below, so the head of VPs, SVPs. You've got a job title, a job title or two. So there may be two or three. Let's go for two people per bank. That ideally this year, you need to speak to. Now that 35 banks, 70 people.

[00:06:57] It could be more than that, less than that. But let's play with me. So now we've got a list. We have our list, 70 people across 35 banks. We put everybody in our fintech, all the marketing, all the sales in the room. We're agreed, 70 people.

[00:07:17] Those are the ones that we care about. They've got names. Bob so-and-so is the head of digital at bank name. And then we've also said his colleague, Linda Watserface, and she's the VP of digital services. So we've got to start somewhere.

[00:07:38] We know our product appeals to that particular type of profile. So there are two candidates, okay? Right. And we've done quite a bit of research to say those are the people we want. Great. Your job, your mission, put the sales people in the room with 70 people this year.

[00:08:00] So stop everything. Stop everything. I'm looking at you marketing in particular. I'm looking at the sales, the SDRs. I'm looking at anyone connected to sales and marketing. Stop. The number one priority for our company is conversations with each of these 70 people. Now did you hear me? Conversations.

[00:08:24] Not emails, not promos, not white papers, not reports, not stuff that, you know, not emails, not advertising. Right. Conversations we need to take. Our sales person, whoever it is, needs to be in front of these people. What will it take this year?

[00:08:47] Now ideally, ideally if we can meet 70 people, 35 banks, we can hopefully by the end of the year have signed five banks, three banks. It's a long sales cycle. And have had conversations with 35 banks, all 35 banks.

[00:09:11] It may well be 15, 20 of them are just not ready, not interested at this time. It's okay. It's okay. It's okay. Right. But all of our sales and marketing activity, huge amount of it, all of it or some of it,

[00:09:25] but all of it is you were very clear that list of 70. How do we have conversations? Now, it can be a phone call. It'd be amazing if it's a phone call. A phone call is very cheap, very quick, very easy.

[00:09:38] The problem is those 70 people are preconditioned at the moment to not take calls. They don't take phone calls. They ignore LinkedIn sales messages. They just don't, they don't tend to be open to sales calls.

[00:09:53] Many of them, if you speak to them, they'll say, I don't do sales calls. Sorry. Now, they do want to know what's happening in the market, but you're just, especially if you do have my phone number, I just, oh, geez, I will not answer. I will not answer.

[00:10:07] So how you put your salesperson in the room, in a room somewhere with these targets, this is a science bit. That is what I want to talk to you about. Okay. So let me, I've got my presentation up here. I'm just, I won't bother sharing it.

[00:10:27] I'm just going to go through each of the points that I tend to like to make on workshops. So we are super clear, I think, right? Sales and marketing, the only thing we want to do is put our salespersons or person in the room with these target individuals.

[00:10:49] That's it. Nothing else. What's quite exciting is that actually when you're talking to the sales and marketing team, sounds quite easy because it fundamentally is, right? We have to take a conversation. We need to speak to these guys. Okay. So how do we do it?

[00:11:08] Well, step one cold call. And I have to correct myself because quite a few times I've said, oh, cold calling never works. Quite a few sales people in the market, in the teams I've been working with,

[00:11:21] going, oh, actually, we want our second client or we want it does work. Okay. So cold outreach can work. Okay. But why you're watching this video and why I'm producing this video and why I do these workshops to great success is because cold calling doesn't work very well.

[00:11:42] Right? It's about relationships. So I wanted to highlight that a direct outreach can sometimes be useful. Right? Sometimes, but not necessarily. Look, there is scope also for managed cold calling or I call it managed direct outreach.

[00:12:05] And that's where you don't know the person, but you purposely begin engaging with them on social media, LinkedIn in particular, right? Many of that target list, okay? Remember we know their names because we've researched them on LinkedIn.

[00:12:21] Many of that target group will be active, not all, but will be active on LinkedIn. So there is a way, there is a methodology of engaging with those individuals carefully, purposefully, constructively. Right? It does not happen all the time.

[00:12:39] It does not work very well when a senior executive, a target, they publish on LinkedIn saying, were you delighted to announce this new feature on, you know, that enables compliance this or live sign up or whatever. And then you see any comment below going, hi, hi there, John.

[00:12:59] Hi there, Abdullah. This is very exciting. Congratulations. I wonder if you have thought of using this kind of tool to really improve your blah, blah, blah. I would welcome a comment, please. Okay? No. Be really careful. Now there are going to be some, is it in Dorfons?

[00:13:18] No, what's the other one yet? People will feel good that you're commenting, but then they read the comment. So manage direct out, you can actually create a relationship with some of those 70, you can if you're purposeful about it. Okay? So I wouldn't write it off.

[00:13:37] That is one methodology. Some of them will respond. I know I am quite keen on that. I quite like that, right? As long as it's purposeful engagement, right? So you're engaging with me because you want to be in the community around me, right?

[00:13:52] So whatever I'm saying, you're then commenting, contributing. And then at the right time, there's another science bit, at the right time you, you know, and hi, I wonder if we could have a conversation, right? But you've warmed me up. Okay?

[00:14:05] I'm not a massive fan of that because anyway, look, it can work. Now a key, key point for remember we want marketing and sales to move mountains to get 70 people in the room or get in the room with one, you know, at least one of

[00:14:25] these 70 people this month and so on and so on and so on, right? Conferences. So conferences and when I say the word conferences, I see everyone in the room go, oh yes, yes, yes, we know this.

[00:14:37] And I said, well, wait a minute, wait a minute, what do you do at conferences? And they go, well, you know, if someone's speaking, you know, well, well, you know, sometimes we'll go along. That's if we're allowed to. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.

[00:14:53] Again, it's really interesting being the external and challenging. Do you know, I will tell these fintechs, do you know that every public conference that is happening, many of your larger, larger international best practice, big, big, big tech companies have got detailed analysis

[00:15:15] on what's happening at every conference and who speaking where. And you can see if we're really yes, yes, yes, like serious, serious knowledge on what's happening. So we've got those 70 names. Okay. Okay. We want to know where are they speaking, when are they speaking? Right.

[00:15:33] What conference are they speaking at? Because if they're going to be at a conference, that's probably one of your best opportunities to go, hi. Two or three minutes, that's your extrovert salespeople. It's what they do. It's what they love. Right.

[00:15:46] But it's you got to position them and they've got to have this knowledge. The amount of salespeople I meet who they're allowed to go to two conferences a year. What? You know, also I'm not allowed to go to that. Why? Oh, there's no budget. Sorry.

[00:16:02] Why is there no budget to go to this? Well, just, you know, there just isn't budget. Okay. Right. But you're going to make five million a year from this bank if you can sell them. Right. And there's no budget. There's no budget because it's been spent elsewhere. Okay.

[00:16:20] So step one is how do we put the salesperson in a room, in the room with one of these targets? Well, if they're speaking at a conference, salesperson should be there. All too often, all too often. It's last minute. We didn't know. Did you know?

[00:16:35] I know, I know. Quick, quick, quick. Flights are incredibly expensive. There's no early bird rates. Right. Managing this is really, really important. So conferences are probably the quickest and easiest way of getting one of your targets, being able to press a flesh and say, hi, how are you?

[00:16:54] I wonder if we could take a few minutes. And if you can get that individual, that's that now we're down to the salesperson. Right. And it's their problem now because they're in the room. Okay. Yeah. To take that dialogue, qualify and see if there's an opportunity. Right.

[00:17:07] To take a further dialogue. One of my favorite techniques at conferences, and by the way, let me just labor this. It's useless if your salesperson isn't there. Right. What were you dreaming? What were you thinking?

[00:17:22] And the amount of times I've had to go to CEOs of these fintechs and go, what are you doing? There's a very big investor I spoke to in a prominent fintech recently. And I said that the sales team were telling me that they're not allowed

[00:17:40] to go to this big event. And I think I went, yeah, yeah. That's unusual. It's because that same investor said, don't spend the money. Don't spend the money. Often we view salespeople as not that important. Right. Now, if we just come back again, Mr, I'm laboring it out.

[00:18:06] The only thing we want to do this year, 35 banks, 70 people, we want to speak to them. How are we doing that? Well, put the salespeople on the plane. Right. But we're armed with all the right information. Okay. This needs to be almost super organized, super organized. Okay.

[00:18:27] So you know that person speaking and maybe they're speaking. There might be three or four from your targets at this event. Okay. Now how are we going to bump into them? How are we? This is really important stuff.

[00:18:39] My favorite technique, kind of cold technique is as I'm presenting, I'm doing my keynote. I finish and up comes the thank you slide. And I say thank you. And then there's a very polite, polite, polite applause.

[00:18:55] And then, the poor guy or girl speaking from a bank when no one asks any questions. That's a killer, an absolute killer. Right. I've just spent 20 minutes sweating, sweating. Yeah. Maybe not sure if I'm connecting with the audience, really quite concerned. He's filming it. She's videoing it.

[00:19:20] I don't really know how it's coming across. So it will be great to get some validation please. So thank you for the polite applause which you have to give. Right. That's great. And then the organizer or the compare or the moderator says thank you. Thank you, Ewan. Yeah.

[00:19:34] Very good presentation. Lovely, very insightful presentation. Are there any questions? All right. Are you with me here? Are there any questions? No. No, silence. Or maybe there's two questions. Right. If you're trying to target me, stand up. Right. Make sure you're in the audience.

[00:19:53] Stand up and ask me something useful. Something useful please. Right. I will be absolutely delighted. You asked me a question about, please don't say hi. Hello. I'm from vendor name. And I wonder if you are using vendor name style products in here. Right. Don't promote yourself.

[00:20:15] It's perfectly fine to say hi. Hello. I'm Bob from FinTech name. I wouldn't necessarily say and we do blah, blah, blah. I just say I'm Bob from FinTech name. And my question is right. What's your prediction? How do you see things in the marketplace developing?

[00:20:34] You were talking about this. Do you think it's going to go this way or that way? Or what's your point? Blah, blah, blah. Something nice, something helpful. I am going to be absolutely delighted. Okay. Now look, this is known. I'm just when you package it all together,

[00:20:47] it can be quite effective. Of course, when I'm speaking to audiences in these workshops, I definitely know this. Of course they know this. Right. But it's just useful to be reminded. Right. It's a very, very good technique.

[00:20:59] And then once we've all finished and there's usually a queue of people wanting to meet me. Right. Because I'm also target for a whole lot of other vendors. Right. I'm going to be a lot more disposed.

[00:21:11] It's not guaranteed, but I'm going to be a lot more well disposed to say, oh hi, hi. Thank you for your question. Thank you for your question. Here's your two minutes. What's on your mind? Now we're down to how good your salesperson is.

[00:21:26] But now we're in the room. We're talking. Great. Okay. Now my next point on conferences. Okay. When the target is speaking at a conference, as I say, it's one of the most effective ways of doing the bump, bumping into the target or multiple targets.

[00:21:45] How can you control the situation? No, a little while ago I met a high profile conference and I bump into a sales guy who's looking down at my navel and I realize he's reading my badge. He goes, oh yeah, you and you used to be at Nordea. Yes.

[00:22:00] And I can see him going, oh. Because the program is hunting. Hunting around trying to find people to meet. Target banks. And he says, there's people here. Do you know anybody? And he's hunting. Poor guy. He's been sent over. Good. He's at the conference.

[00:22:17] He's been allowed to go to the conference. But zero support. Zero support. None of the target banks that he's looking for are actually speaking. They're there. Right. In fact, he mentioned some names. I go, yeah, I did see him and did see her. He's panicking.

[00:22:35] You can't find them. He's trying to, right? Now just let's just go back. Right. We've got 70 people, 35 banks that we must meet. We need to meet this year. Right. Here's the sales guy. He's at the conference. Which is good. Unfortunately, those targets who are also at the conference

[00:22:56] aren't speaking for various different reasons. So you can't easily locate them. How do you control the situation? Well, for this guy, the only thing, his only option is running around looking at people's navels, trying to find someone from Danske Bank or someone from UBS. Right.

[00:23:16] I say, have you not? Why don't you just, what's your marketing team doing? He goes, we haven't got any budget. Right. We just speak to the organizer, talk to the organizer, sponsor something that will help you out. They said, no, I haven't got any money. No budget.

[00:23:35] So this poor guy was sent to the event and just, on you go, do your sales thing. Oh, no. How frustrating for everybody? What do you do? Control the situation. Okay. This is where you speak to your marketing team and marketing team, come on. Come on.

[00:23:53] Control the situation. Now what I mean, sponsor it. We want to meet these 35 banks. We want to meet these 70 people from these banks. Okay. That's our prime goal. Now, once we're in, they might be the wrong person, but we've got to see them. We've got to meet them.

[00:24:12] Okay. Control the situation. Speak to the organizer. How can I, hi there, hi there. My objectives, my objectives are to meet blah, blah, blah, and blah. And the organizer says, well, we don't actually do that. But would you like to sponsor our lanyards?

[00:24:29] And would you like to do this? And you can sponsor this and do this. That now we're into marketing expertise. Right. You control the situation. What can you do? Can you put someone on a panel? If he is speaking, if she is speaking,

[00:24:40] can you make sure that maybe your CEO has to fly in? Because sometimes they won't put a sales guy on a panel. Or can you sponsor this and by doing so, you get that. You're very clear with the organizer, what can you do to help?

[00:24:55] How can you help me influence? Could you broker a meeting? Can you tell names? Can you tell him and him that we want to meet? And could you facilitate that for us? Now, most organizers, event organizers will, especially if you're coming with sponsor dollars,

[00:25:13] will be interested to try and help you. In many cases, you can even control it even more by saying, right, hello, Mr. Conference Organizer. I would like you to arrange a round table with the following. A, B, C, and D banks, please thank you. And how much?

[00:25:30] Maybe they say $20,000 pounds, $100,000, $5,000. Now you make a decision, right? Because we just said at the start of the workshop here, right, the start of the year, we want 35 banks. We want to meet and we have to press the flesh. So what will it take? What will it take?

[00:25:49] I need to have those dialogues. So control the situation with conferences, right? I think this is a missed trick. Okay, now, related to conferences, could you host a dinner? So, yeah, especially some of these big conferences where it might be unreasonable or very, very expensive to sponsor stuff.

[00:26:12] Why don't you host a dinner? Book a restaurant, host a dinner. Invite friendly executives along to that dinner, right? You know that target A, B, C, and D, they're coming. They're at the conference, they may be speaking. And of course, you still want to do the questions

[00:26:29] and bump in and try me, right? But we want to cover as many bases as possible and try and meet them, right? So we're also doing a dinner. Let's do a dinner. Okay, book the restaurant. Invite some friendly executives, people who are already clients, right?

[00:26:43] Maybe they ask them, do you know so-and-so? Do you know so-and-so? What networks? What strings can you pull to see what you can do to try and invite these guys, right? Your targets to a nice dinner? Okay, look, there's a whole host of techniques here,

[00:26:59] but this could be very, very useful, right? 20 minutes over some nice food, breaking bread with one another, right? You can really qualify people. So conferences are very, very important, but it's the techniques around that. Again, all in service of putting the sales guy

[00:27:18] in the room with a target, okay? Right. Now, at this point in the workshop, I'm then having to ask permission and say, now look, is it okay if I go nuts? Can I be really crazy? And you can see some people going, oh gosh, yeah, go on then.

[00:27:39] I'm going to be really crazy. Why don't you run your own conferences? Now some fintech vendors do this and they go, yeah, fine. Good, okay, right. Now how are you using them? So we'll get to that in a minute. Why don't you run your own conferences?

[00:27:57] Most fintech, I speak to go, what? That's right. I say, run your own conferences. Why? No, that's expensive. Is it? Is it really? Right, run your own conferences for your clients. Right, so quite a lot of companies do this and they can be really viable.

[00:28:18] A really great opportunity to meet customers, upsell them and keep them as customers, right? Keep some good dialogue, do some swapping of stories and ideas and best practices and so on. And then it's also really good to say, hey, potential target, would you be interested in coming?

[00:28:35] It's even better if you can send these guys notes, right? Saying hi, would you be interested in speaking at one of our conferences? Is that there's techniques as approaches to how you would do that, right? But it's a very different dialogue on LinkedIn or by email

[00:28:52] saying hi, would you like to come and I wonder if you'd be interested in sharing your best practice at our conferences coming up, right? That's a lot different to the executive, your target, than hi. I wonder if you'd be interested in revolutionizing your blah, blah, blah sales email.

[00:29:10] So run your own conference, invite customers, your existing customers. Who else can you invite? What other aspects and people from the community can you invite? What can you do to build buzz, excitement on LinkedIn and across the marketplace so people start talking

[00:29:28] so that individuals from your target bank are hearing about you, hearing about the conference, the topics and so on. And ideally so you can use that leverage your conference to attract somehow these individuals to get them in the room.

[00:29:46] Okay, I do think this is a really, really missed opportunity, especially with your existing clients, right? Every single one of your clients knows other people working at other banks. They just do. It's that, you know, it's people's careers develop, right? Have you asked? Have you talked to them?

[00:30:07] Have you given them the opportunity? So it's all very well saying me saying yes. Yeah, I know Bob at the other bank, your target, I know him. That's not really that helpful. Okay, it's about what do we do with that? How do you enable me to help you?

[00:30:22] Hey, you and we're planning this event when you're a customer would love to have you come and speak. And by the way, anyone else you recommend could give us a great perspective on the marketplace, any other banks that maybe don't use our service,

[00:30:33] but you have got some really good best practice. Yeah, I say, yeah, I speak to Bob over at SOTN. Look, I'll give him a call, right? So running your own conferences, most of them take look at me as though I'm nuts.

[00:30:46] Too expensive, too crazy, we don't know how to do this. Look, just do an afternoon. In fact, a round table is a mini conference, right? You start with a round table. Okay, right. I like to talk about round tables as a methodology of engaging those targets, right?

[00:31:09] They are really, really useful for a number of reasons. Round tables typically are evening meals, sometimes morning, sometimes afternoon, whatever the culture you're pitching really likes. So for example, in the UK, in Nordic countries, after work is really good.

[00:31:28] Other cultures not so much, other cultures prefer during the business day, right? For example. But often round tables, dinners happening in the evening where there might be a 60-minute discussion over on digital transformation trends, hosted by a vendor.

[00:31:47] But then of course it's just free for all, just have a nice chat, meet some people, great contacts. Of course you hear from the vendor. So as an executive, I would be very open to round tables. Not everybody is, right?

[00:31:59] But off year 70, one would hope the vast majority would be interested and open to participating in a round table if it's pitched to them correctly, if it's pitched them right. If you're creating the right environment, again with a round table, might be a nice restaurant.

[00:32:17] It may be at various different headquarters. One option is to really talk with your existing customers. There's nothing better. You're trying to pitch a number of banks on your list in Paris, and one thing Tech was speaking to, they have a huge client in Paris. Very well known.

[00:32:39] I said, well why don't you fill them and just take them for dinner? Take them for dinner. By the way, have you ever done this? No. Sorry, let's just take a step. These are our client of yours, yes. And have you broken bread with them? What?

[00:32:53] Have you had a meal with them recently? No. Okay, in the last six months now. Okay, right. Well that's a failure. Right, why not? Okay, right. Well we'll come to existing clients. That's another thing. But we want to get these 70, okay?

[00:33:09] We want to press the flesh, put them in a room. So you haven't had the number one, number three bank or whatever in Paris is your client and they love you. Yes. Right, let's invite them. Okay and why don't we say to them, look do you know anyone?

[00:33:26] Right, is there anyone else? We could invite for example. It's not a one-off, right? Start hosting round table dinners on a regular basis. Okay, across Europe, across the Gulf, wherever your targets are. Right, start beginning. It's not a failure if you don't get these guys, these targets immediately.

[00:33:46] Because sometimes you have to create the conditions. Sometimes you have to do the first one. So that you then create the conditions so that other people say, oh yes, the last one was great. Come along, come along. Now if you've got a 10-year relationship with someone,

[00:34:02] right, maybe you've been interacting with them by LinkedIn, maybe that's the time you say, hey look we happen to be in Belgium. Or we're flying into London. We've got this round table, we're just talking, we're bringing a few existing clients and players together like so and so,

[00:34:14] so and so and so and so they're coming. You'd be most welcome, right? Again, how do you put the sales guy in the room? So round table is a really, really interesting one. Now another crazy, create your own podcast. Most people think I'm nuts.

[00:34:39] Look, could you create your own podcast for your vendor, for your fintech? Probably not, don't call it fintech name podcast, but maybe something about the business of transformation or digital this and that in banking. But create a podcast, interview your existing customers immediately, immediately, interview them, right?

[00:35:04] Tell interesting stories about how your customers are using your software, your services, right? Just do that anyway, that's really important. But then you can begin to consider to use that vehicle to invite, to again, some will be very interested to potentially come and speak on your podcast.

[00:35:24] Some may be very happy to do it remotely, but some may really, really like the idea of doing it physically even better because we can, right? But how can you use a podcast, can you leverage a podcast to create the conditions to create relationships with these targets?

[00:35:40] Yes, right? Many of these targets that you're speaking, that you're aiming to speak to, part of their job is to be public facing. Some of them won't be allowed, okay? But some very much will.

[00:35:53] Again, we're looking at any way, any way to put your sales guy in the room somehow, right? So tell interesting stories about your existing customers and use a podcast as a methodology of engaging with the marketplace and then your targets.

[00:36:11] Now, one of the challenges I always get here is, oh my gosh, yeah, how are we going to, yeah, that's who's going to watch it? Okay. Well, the first thing is all of your employees, right? You've got 30 people, that's got an audience of 30, right? Yes.

[00:36:26] Ah, but you know, that's, that's terrible. Say some more. Yeah, you know, it's only going to get watched by 20 people. Okay. It's only going to get watched by 100 people. Because if you, if you add in your employees and then the people that they know and linked

[00:36:44] in that are in the industry and so on, 100 people. Okay. All right. Why is that a problem? Okay. Because actually some of the most valuable content is content that's pitched and targeted to a particular niche, right? So guess what? You and your clients are already a key niche.

[00:37:01] If there's only 17 of you listening, that's okay. One would imagine it's 70 people that care, right? Now, the more that you build this, there is an aspect of they will come. But really it doesn't, we're not really worried about the audience. It's some massive audience. No, no, no, no.

[00:37:16] We're worried about are you telling the stories that need to be told? Right. How are you then communicating them on your social media channels? Right. You've got the podcast and then you can communicate around that. Okay. Don't worry about the audience. Okay. Niche is perfectly fine. Okay. Right.

[00:37:34] Now, another option here. Another option. By all means create your own. Okay. Or get someone else to create a podcast for you. Hello. Right. I'm available. I could do that. I can help. But I say that as an example there, right? Reach out to me.

[00:37:53] I'd love to discuss it. Right. But get someone else who knows what they're doing, who can create this stuff and you tell them you make it for me. Right. Be careful, you know, hiring your agency and paying a crazy crazy amount of money.

[00:38:08] Oh, we'd like a podcast that's half a million, half a million up front. It's not expensive this stuff. Right. It's about time. Okay. But can you get someone else to create a podcast for you? And then you become the owner or you're the sponsor.

[00:38:23] Sometimes for, for Fintech's, you know, when your strategy is to reach these people in any way, this is one of the ways that you can do that. One of the ways as long as there's things to do, there's a bit more detail here. Right.

[00:38:35] But you know, it may well be far and forget as in get someone else, make this podcast for me. 10 episodes, please. Interview. You hear the three customers already and we have these targets. Perhaps you could you reach out and see if they'd be interested in speaking

[00:38:51] because we want to create a relationship. Blah, blah, blah. Right. Can they facilitate warm introductions? Now why not? So that's one option. You can create your own, get someone to do it for you or guess what? There's lots of other podcasts out there.

[00:39:06] Many of them may be targeted, you know, at some niches that you care about. Of course there's many Fintech ones, but can you engage with an existing one? Right. Many, many existing podcast production people such as myself and others would be delighted

[00:39:22] if you, if you arrive with a fistful of money saying, Hey, hi, can I sponsor your next series of 10 episodes? Yeah. And could they be about our niche? Yeah. By all means. Great idea. Do you happen to know these are the banks we're trying to target?

[00:39:38] Do you happen to know anyone? Oh, yeah. Yeah. We know him, her, her, her. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That'd be great. Okay. Now we're talking right now we're looking at ROI because remember we're not measuring sales. No, no, no, no, no.

[00:39:52] Our fundamental problem is getting in the room to do the handshake. Right. So could someone else, could an influencer, could an existing podcast or can they help you? Right. Look at that. Okay. Then a final point, be on the ground again this, this one really, really exercises me

[00:40:14] related to what I've been saying about attending events. Be on the ground. Now let's go back to our list here. Let's pick a European city, Berlin, headquarters of a number of banks for example. Right.

[00:40:28] I will then say to the marketing and sales team who, who, when's the last time you were in Berlin? Okay. And they go, but why should we, we don't know anyone there. Okay. All right. Do you know IBM? Yes. Okay. Right. Have they got an office in Berlin?

[00:40:51] Yeah. Okay. What about McKinsey? Oh, we have no McKinsey. Okay. Great. Accenture. Oh yeah, Accenture. Yeah, they do a lot of implementing. We know Accenture very well. Okay. Have they got an office in Berlin? Okay. All right. Okay.

[00:41:04] And three of your targets from your list are in Berlin. Yes. Okay. You haven't been to Berlin yet. When's the last time, so you've never been? Like not, not in recent memory. Okay. Can you get on the plane? No, we haven't got the budget. Okay.

[00:41:19] Why don't you have the budget because you're spending it on all this other stuff. Now what's, what's cool for us? These people, we want to meet these people. Okay. Well, you need to be on the ground. Right. Conferences. Yes. Podcasts. Yes. Roundtables. Yes.

[00:41:34] But fundamentally if you've not been on the ground. Okay. What relevance have you got? Right. Now, most FinTech that I, I have worked with in, in a sea level capacity, right, where I have been the buyer rarely do they have their headquarters in the city that I'm in.

[00:41:54] Okay. And it's really cool if you happen to be in the city, right? It makes it very easy for me to go. Yeah. Hi, we can, you can pop into the office. Right. I'm quite obviously, yeah, yeah, you're popping. Right.

[00:42:04] If I know you, if we've got some degree of relevance, right, some degree of engagement, even if I've met you and we, we, we, we managed to say, hello, you know, oh, I'm very busy. Sorry. At a conference.

[00:42:16] Maybe I bumped into you at a roundtable, but I didn't have time to speak. Right. But if you're flying into my city, you know, and, and, and you, and I've got a warm impression of you, maybe I think, yeah, yeah, look,

[00:42:27] I can do half an hour or even better if you say, look, can you do 20 minutes kind of popping for coffee? Just, just wanted to say hello. Yeah. Right. So if you've got a warm engagement, yes, yes. Right. But guess what?

[00:42:40] You're not going to meet me or them if you're not getting on a plane. Okay. So fly into the targets of city, pull all those strings. Okay. The extension McKinsey, et cetera. Right. You already know them. Okay. These guys are network like crazy.

[00:42:59] Can you have a chat to them? Hey, look, I'm flying in. Why? Well, I'm flying in to visit one of my potential customers or I'm flying into research, the city. I'd, you know, can I buy coffee? Right.

[00:43:09] So IBM is going to say yes, extension is going to see it blah, blah, blah. Right. Okay. Hi. Do you know anyone at these institutions? I wonder, is there something we could do together? Can we, can we work together? You know, is there a collaboration opportunity here?

[00:43:24] And do you know them? Now guess what? A lot of these, these locals will know your targets. Okay. Do you have any friends or networks, you know, in the city that you're not thinking about? Nine times out of 10 when I'm doing these workshops, someone will go, ah,

[00:43:40] oh wait a minute, wait a minute. You know, our, our investor knows, you know, our so and so, right, make those connections. Okay. Get your salesperson in the room somehow. Now when your organization, when you're FinTech, your great marketing team,

[00:43:58] your great sales team, when you begin to focus your energy on this, right? It gets very, very exciting. This is why I love it. Right. It's a nine times out of 10. We go, oh my God. Yeah. Of course. Of course. Yes. Well phone him, email him. What's that?

[00:44:15] You know, my friend's sister, they are there. Okay. And now it might sound silly, but this is how it's done. Right. We want those warm relationships. And you know, there's nothing better than being on the ground. Okay. Once you're there, hey, I'm hosting a round table.

[00:44:30] Hey, I'm doing some drinks event if that's appropriate. I'm doing a meal here, but you know, you've got to help your sales guys. This is the marketing team need to be helping, right? And making sure the budgets are around that, you know, the focus here

[00:44:42] is that list of people. How do we get you in the room? And then business can continue after that. Okay. Now the last, last point I wanted to make was resources. I don't mean people. I mean, you know, things available to you.

[00:44:56] How have you got a fintech lab near Copenhagen fintech? For example, it's a really, really good resource for a lot of companies in Denmark. And then a lot of companies trying to come in to Denmark, right? The fintech lab because they were a hub. Right.

[00:45:12] If you ask Copenhagen fintech, do you know anyone at Danske? Yes, they do. Right. Do you know anyone at Nordea, Sudbank, etc. Yes, of course they do. Right. It's their business to know. Right. So how have you spoken to them? Have you leveraged them?

[00:45:28] Now if, if you are looking to work in Denmark for some Danish banks, I'm just using Copenhagen fintech as an example. Thank you, Thomas. Thomas is the guy that runs Copenhagen fintech. Very good guy and a great team at Copenhagen fintech.

[00:45:42] If you happen to reach out and you're not a Danish company, but you're looking to work and connect with some of the banks there. Well, you know, I would imagine, I can't guarantee it, but I imagine that Copenhagen fintech would be keen to assist,

[00:45:55] especially if you're interested in sponsoring something or becoming a member or helping them. Right. If, of course their function is to help Dane and Danish companies. Right. Okay. Fundamentally or any companies working in that market, but if, what can you do? You do to assist. Doors can open.

[00:46:13] Okay. So think about the fintech labs, innovation labs, government sponsored things, university engagements and so on, university labs and things, right? Accelerators. Okay. These are all great sources of connections. Right. Is there an accelerator running in the city? Right. Talk to them.

[00:46:33] In some cases you may need to sponsor or you may have to have a membership, but doors can open very quickly to these people that look really far away. Chambers of commerce, international chambers of commerce. Don't forget your embassies. Right.

[00:46:46] So will whichever country that you, your fintech represents, Italy, Spain, UK. Right. There's a network of embassies all across your target areas. Right. The Gulf, etc., etc. Okay. How are you leveraging those? Now they're not free necessarily. Okay. Yes.

[00:47:07] Of course they want the, they're there to help promote enterprise. But you sometimes need to make a contribution. Okay. But there is nothing better guys. Right. So when I, I'm sitting there on LinkedIn or in my email as your target and I see an invitation from the

[00:47:24] consular general or the somebody someone at the embassy of blah blah. Dear you and the ambassador would love, we'd love to hear, we're hosting a round table. We're hosting an event on the topic of whatever digital banking. Yeah.

[00:47:39] In three weeks time, two weeks time we'd love to have you there because you would be interested in coming along. Right. Yes. Probably. Yes. I am. Right. So how can you leverage that? Now sometimes these are expensive. Sometimes you've got to pay to help the embassy.

[00:47:54] Well, is it worth it? I don't know. Test and learn. Maybe it's too much money. Okay. Maybe you don't want to do something on your own dedicated. Because that's how it tends to cost. Maybe you need to wait until they're doing a fintech evening or something like that.

[00:48:13] Right. But you know what? Take a dialogue with the embassy, take a dialogue with the person in Berlin, the person in Rome, right? Reach out to them, talk to them. Investors I mentioned, right? Investors are very, very, very networked. I mean, it just, it pains me.

[00:48:29] This is why I find it so exciting when you're going through this in workshop time, everybody's going, oh my God, oh my God. He's there, she's there, there. Use these networks. We want to get to these 70. Other customers. Right. I think I said this already, right?

[00:48:47] But you're existing customers, no people in other banks. Right. How do you unlock that? Right. How can you encourage those relationships to be open for you? Remember we want the sales guy in the room. Other fintechs that you know. Other partners, other potentials, other implementation companies.

[00:49:09] Talk to them, talk to them. Vendors, other vendors, other suppliers. Who do you buy your data center space from? Are you AWS or are you, you know, Microsoft? You're here's an interesting question. Does Microsoft have anyone in Berlin? Does Microsoft have anyone in Rome?

[00:49:29] Does Microsoft have anyone in Copenhagen? Yeah. Yes, they do. Does Microsoft know anyone at that bank, at that target bank in that country? Yes, they do. Now, what's it going to take? Okay. If they don't, if Microsoft doesn't know you, then that's difficult, right?

[00:49:47] But do you know Microsoft? Do you spend money with Microsoft? Just giving ideas, right? So other vendors, other suppliers. Are you using this? We want to get to them. Okay. Now, look, I've been hammering you. I hope this has been valuable.

[00:50:02] A good flavor of the type of workshops that I offer. I give this freely. I just, it isn't wonderful when business is done, right? It makes me feel good. It's so exciting seeing those connections happen. So I hope this has been useful to you.

[00:50:19] If I can help you, I need a little bit of help from your marketing colleagues. I need a little bit of help from your marketing colleagues and your sales teams, right? Because I have been the idiot here, not following my own advice.

[00:50:30] So that's why I thought I should be blatant. If I can help, please drop me a note. Let me engage with you and your teams to really explore these ideas in detail. If not, I hope some of this has been useful. Please send me any feedback.

[00:50:48] If you'd like to get in contact with me, I am UNEWAN at Nedned.partners. So UNEWAN at Ned.partners. And I'd love to assist. But thank you, thank you, thank you so much for taking the time and your attention on this particular episode. Bye-bye.