Ryan O’Hara is the VP of Marketing and Growth at LeadIQ. His mission is to help the world understand how to make a good first impression when marketing and prospecting.
In this episode of The Salesman Podcast, Ryan explains the steps to building a strong personal brand so that when you call on a prospect, they pick up the phone.
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Transcript
Will Barron:
Coming up on today’s episode of The Salesman Podcast.
Ryan O’Hara:
Personal branding can actually act as a prospecting inbound engine for yourself as well. And that’s part of why this whole thing works. I’m really excited to actually talk about this stuff because every time I talk to reps about this, their eyes light up with joy thinking about the possibility of what you can do here.
Will Barron:
Hello Sales Nation. I’m Will Barron, host of The Salesman Podcast, the world’s most listened to B2B sales show, where we help you not just hit your sales target, but really thrive in sales. If you haven’t already, make sure to click subscribe and with that, let’s meet today’s guest.
Ryan O’Hara:
Hi everyone. I’m Ryan O’Hara, VP of Marketing Growth at LeadIQ. I spent years as a BDR before I moved into marketing and I’ve done the nitty gritty of prospecting. I do a lot of crazy stuff with prospecting, have fun with it.
Will Barron:
On this episode of the show with Ryan, who’s a complete legend and someone you should definitely be following if you are doing lead generation day to day, especially in the SAS or software as a service space, we’re diving into essentially that, lead generation, personal branding and how it all ties together with specific archetypes so you can create content, you can do social selling, and it all fits together seamlessly. Let’s jump right in.
Is It Fair To Say That If You’re Better Known Within Your Industry, You’re Going to Have Far Better Outcomes with Your Cold Outreaches? · [01:06]
Will Barron:
Is it a fair hypothesis to make that if you are better known within your industry, within your vertical specifically, that you can have better outcomes with your cold outreach?
“You could be as good as you want, but if you want to get your reply rates to be even higher, the personal brand element is the wild card.” – Ryan O’Hara · [01:39]
Ryan O’Hara:
Yeah, so when I look at the landscape right now, there’s a bunch of things that impact what works in prospecting. What account you go after, what contact you’re doing, what tactic you’re doing, when you’re doing it, how you would actually do that tactic. And we’ve done a lot of stuff with standardising our training at LeadIQ, with all the BDRs and SDRs that we brought on, where they go through and get onboarded. And one thing kind of is something that we haven’t been able to replicate is you could be as good as you want, but if you want to get your reply rates to be even higher, the personal brand element is a wild card that has impacted so many things for us.
Ryan O’Hara:
I’ll put it in a good example. Jeremy Levy in our team has a great online presence, talks a lot about prospecting. He’s posting stuff all the time on LinkedIn, interacting with prospects. If you look at Jeremy, Jeremy will do a lot of the same exact framework that we train our other four BDRs that we have on our team to do stuff. And he gets … literally, we’ve had him ghost write their emails before, and his response rates are always usually as high as plus 10, plus 11% over theirs. And our team’s very good by the way, like we get … no one on our team … we have a threshold, no one on our team’s getting below a 20% reply rate at any time. So we’re really strict about having creative emails, being creative with the responses when you cold call. We’re very careful about trying to keep our brand protected with the way that we do our prospecting. And I think that the element that gives Jeremy that edge, and I’m not trying to brag, but me too, I think I have a pretty good brand online that have built-
Will Barron:
I’ll brag for you. I agree with that.
Ryan O’Hara:
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. But I was going to say like both of us, when we do prospecting, get a higher response rate. And these guys are following the same exact rubric that we are, and same training, and going through the same guide that we do for this stuff. I think it has something to do with like … you know what I kind of picture? It’s almost like, what would you do if Michael Jordan wrote you an email? If Michael Jordan wrote you an email, you’d be like, holy crap, Michael Jordan wrote me an email. I probably should get back to him because it’s Michael Jordan. I’m not saying Jeremy and I are Michael Jordan, because we’re not. And I can’t dunk. But the idea is that if you know someone you’re more likely to actually respond to them. The fun part about this for me is I was a BDR, I moved into marketing, and for me, I realised, man, a lot of sales reps and stuff don’t actually know how to do this part because they look at what their marketing teams are doing. And when you do personal branding, it’s different than what a company does.
Which One is More Important: Mastering a Sales Framework or Building a Personal Brand? · [03:46]
Will Barron:
Okay. So there’s about 15 things to go at here. First one, I guess, to set the stage and to layer the priorities here, which is more effective, having a great personal brand … for the average BDR, SDR, account manager, me … I don’t even know what my title was anymore. I think it was territory manager, who was kind of knocking on doors and ringing up surgeons. Is it more important as a first step to get the framework correct? Or is personal brand all we should be focusing on?
Ryan O’Hara:
So obviously you need to be able to do normal prospecting. The thing I’m getting at is like the guys on our team, for example, might get around a 20 to 30% response rate. Last time I did prospecting for example, I did … I was doing a webinar. So I actually just did a bunch of experiments and then reported on the findings for the webinar what we did for LeadIQ. And doing same tactics these guys do, except for the webinar, I had a 51% response rate. And these guys were … I was just doing our normal rubric of personalization, doing stuff that was really clever and creative and different, talking about our prospect more than us. The only difference is my name and what I’m doing online. And I think that there is something there.
“You have to be able to do the basic fundamentals of prospecting in order to actually get responses. The thing that will get you even higher rewards and returns on what you’re doing is if you add that personal branding aspect to it. And then the other cool part that people don’t realise is that personal branding can actually act as a prospecting inbound engine for yourself as well.” – Ryan O’Hara · [04:50]
Ryan O’Hara:
So you have to be able to do the basic fundamentals of prospecting in order to actually get responses. The thing that will milk and get you even higher rewards and returns on what you’re doing is if you add that personal branding aspect to it. And then the other cool part that people don’t realise is that personal branding can actually act as a prospecting inbound engine for yourself as well. And that’s part of why this whole thing works. I’m really excited to actually talk about this stuff because every time I talk to reps about this, their eyes light up with joy, thinking about the possibility of what you can do here.
Will Barron:
So we’ll come on to inbound in a second and we’ll perhaps even wrap up the show with that, because that’s a whole segment on itself. But there’s something here that I think is important. And it was only in pondering this conversation with you, Ryan, this morning that I came across this realisation. Because I always used the example of if Richard Branson emailed me, called me, even if it was his secretary, I would be like, holy moly, kind of holding myself back from swearing then. Immediately, I’d drop everything I’m doing. I’d be, “Sorry, Ryan. Can’t record with you. I’ve got to send a … ” Maybe I’d ring you up. “I’ve got to send this incredible email. I need you your help. I need to rope you in to help me get back to him,” him or if it’s his secretary as well.
Will Barron:
So there seems like multiple layers of this though, because there’s awareness within the marketplace, which maybe is what we mean when we mean personal branding versus celebrity or actual brand. So Richard Branson is a celebrity. So we all know him by name. I’m not so aware on … she was an incredible salesperson, but I don’t know specifically whether he would be … how am I going at this? Let me pull this back. So if I was to go … if you were to email me, I’d go on your LinkedIn profile, I would see … your title’s VP, right?
Ryan O’Hara:
Yeah.
The Definition of a Personal Brand from a Sales Perspective · [06:50]
Will Barron:
I’d see VP. I’d be thinking very important person. I need to get back this individual very quickly. Now that’s one element to that. I feel like another element of this is … which is perhaps more what we’re in control of, which is the amount of attention that you have, the number of times that you pop up in someone’s feed if you’re connected with them on LinkedIn. All this adds a level of rapport, a level of trust, even if it’s subconscious. So when we’re talking about personal brand here, just again to get the story straight, are we discussing the awareness that people have about us in the market? Or are we discussing celebrity, fancy job titles, and other perceived ways of improving the potential value of a conversation before we have it, if that makes sense?
“A personal brand is a way for people to be familiar and discover you individually.” – Ryan O’Hara · [07:17]
Ryan O’Hara:
I think the way that I look at it is a personal brand is a way for people to be familiar and discover you individually. And if more people see and get eyeballs on you, it’s going to create more outbound … it’s going to make your outbound better, because those people will already be familiar with you. I’ll give you a perfectly good example with a story about it. Again, everyone listening, I’m not trying to brag. That’s not my style. I’m just telling you this so you can steal what I do and do it, because no I’m just a normal guy. Like anyone can do this stuff.
Ryan O’Hara:
This past summer Drift had a conference in Boston, HYPERGROWTH. It was this big … it was in a palladium outside, big arena, really great speakers and stuff. I went down because I wanted to see a couple of the talks that were there. And I was walking down to get seats in this one section. And as I was walking down to get seats, I sat down and this … I sat down, I pull out my phone naturally to get on the wifi, and I look and my LinkedIn notifications, it’s just blown up with like literally 10 direct messages on LinkedIn. And it’s just people that messaged me and said, “I see you at HYPERGROWTH. I’d love to meet you.” And I was like, holy crap. I feel like I actually did … like, I’m just a normal guy but all these people see me every week putting content out on LinkedIn. They’re seeing me put videos out there. They’re seeing me put blog posts and commenting on things. And because of my frequency of doing something and all the time I put into my personal brand, they just recognise me. They recognise this really awkward guy with a Muppet haircut walking down to his seat.
Ryan O’Hara:
So that’s something. There’s something there. And by the way, we turned some of those into opportunities there too. I know we got at least four opportunities from there. It wasn’t a conference where you go mingle and there’s a floor. Like there’s no expo. It was literally talks, talks, talks, and then you leave. But we still were able to generate and get some opportunities out of it because people wanted to meet me, having seen some of the stuff that we’ve done. This is a real thing that you can do. And by the way, I’d love to go into like how you actually do this. That’s kind of what I’d like to go and do for this too.
Ryan O’Hara:
But I’ll tell you one more story to try and sell you on this a little bit more. This past summer … I drive a moped and I live about 20 minutes from the coast. So there’s an ocean here. My friend and I, my friend Drew, we both were on mopeds and we [mopeded 00:09:33] to the ocean. And I’m wearing a helmet and a bathing suit. And I don’t look like how I look anywhere, on anything. And I’m driving right on Route 1A in New Hampshire. If people don’t know where that is, it’s beautiful coastline. And someone pulls over. I’m parking my moped, someone pulls over and says, “Hey, are you Ryan O’Hara?” And I’m like, “Yeah, I am.” And I was just so completely shocked. They were like, “I love your stuff on LinkedIn.” And they knew who I was, even though I’m just a normal jerk who 10 years ago lived in my mom’s basement.
Ryan O’Hara:
So I think of this stuff and I think, man, this personal branding stuff has power because … we write back to people. When I write emails to people, a lot of the time they’ll write back and be like … they’ll be like, “Wow.” Like there are people that know that I write really good cold emails and stuff. And they’ll write back to me and say, “This was a good one. I’m glad it didn’t disappoint,” because they already had a reputation for me. So a big part of this is not only being able to actually have this guide, what you’re doing outside of work, the big thing with personal branding is it should be a compass for you on how you do your prospecting too. And that’s-
“The big thing with personal branding is it should be a compass for you on how you do your prospecting.” – Ryan O’Hara · [10:34]
Will Barron:
Well, what does that mean Ryan?
Ryan O’Hara:
Yeah, so right. I’m going to go into something and some people that are in marketing have probably heard about this before, but this is super amazing and really cool. If I go and round up … I’m not trying to crap on any companies, but if I go and round up a bunch of companies, what do you think is the biggest difference between Disney and General Electric?
Will Barron:
Attention?
Ryan O’Hara:
Yeah. That’s actually a pretty … that’s a pretty good answer actually. But-
Will Barron:
I’ll take that.
Ryan O’Hara:
I think that the answer that I generally am trying to tee off there is the brand.
Will Barron:
Sure.
Ryan O’Hara:
There are people that [crosstalk 00:11:11]-
Will Barron:
People love Disney, right? As opposed to GM, big corporate conglomerate.
Ryan O’Hara:
Yeah. I’m not knocking … with General Electric, for example … I use GE as an example because GM does do a brand thing too. Like there are people that are like super fans of Corvette, for example. So I don’t want to go and say that about a car company, but with GE they make tonnes of stuff. They make appliances, they make light bulbs, they make weapons stuff. They do all these different things. The difference with GE and Disney is that Disney’s brand is way more valuable. I think if you rounded up everybody in a room and said, which one of these things are you more familiar with? And which one do you feel more loyalty to? There’s a reason people line up the door every weekend to go see every Pixar movie, but when DreamWorks comes out with a 3D animation movie, the box office numbers aren’t the same as a Pixar movie. And that’s because of the brand.
Ryan O’Hara:
People hug and like Disney because of the brand. And the reason that they like their brand is because Disney does a thing called brand archetyping. And this is the compass I’m talking about with prospecting. Brand archetyping is a framework where our mind, as a consumer, as a prospect, we have this thing where we actually consume and want to see patterns of … and we try to categorise everybody. And the idea with brand archetyping is that you can pick one of these brand archetypes. And if you commit to it the whole time, it’s a lot easier for people to feel and see the pattern that you have and get more comfortable with you. And as a result, they’ll actually start to think that they’re your friend.
The Media Friend Theory · [12:38]
Ryan O’Hara:
This stacks another theory called media friend theory. And this is a good example. We both might watch something, like I like Conan O’Brien, for example. I watch a lot of Conan O’Brien’s show on TBS. I’ll go watch clips online. I don’t really watch it online. I have a cable cutter. So I don’t … a cord cutter, so I don’t have cable, but I’ll watch like clips of Conan online and stuff. I feel like I know Conan really well because I have watched his show every day, even though I’ve never met this guy and we have nothing in common. I feel like I know you every day because I listen to your podcast. So when we’re talk … whenever we get on these calls, it always takes 20 minutes for us to start, because I feel like we’re chums and friends. And we’d probably … we’d definitely be friends if we hung out in real life and stuff, but … outside of podcast world.
Ryan O’Hara:
The idea is that with a personal brand, if you pick an archetype, you’ll be able to create more of a persona that people want to buy into. And I can … that’s a big part of how this works. I’ll tell you the 12 archetypes. Hopefully off the top of my head, I don’t screw any of them up.
The Top Personal Branding Archetypes that Drive a Tonne of Value in Sales · [13:35]
Will Barron:
Well, let’s not go through the 12, Ryan, because that’s going to be a lot to digest if someone’s listening in the car. Are there three, four of them that would be applicable to salespeople specifically? Or are they just so widespread that we need to go through them all?
Ryan O’Hara:
Yeah, so here’s the deal. There is no right archetype. The way that you pick an archetype for yourself, this is basically how you make your content online. What do you do in your videos? How do you sound in your prospect emails? What do you do on a cold call? This is your compass for everything that you do to build a brand for yourself. When I write a cold call … I mean, sorry, when I write a cold email, my cold email, I … so for me, for example, I’m a jester brand. So I try to make people laugh. I try to entertain them. I’m like Ben and Jerry’s, the ice cream company. Like they make goofy flavours and have fun and do a lot of that stuff. That’s my approach.
Ryan O’Hara:
And the reason I do that is because I looked at the industry and saw all these people that were doing stuff in sales. There’s a tonne of hero brands out there that talk about how awesome they are. There’s like … a ruler brand’s another one. Like think of Muhammad Ali, right? Muhammad Ali talked about great he was. That’s what a ruler brand does. These are examples of different archetypes. Harley. Davidson’s a rebel brand. So when someone’s like, I’m going to break the law, I’m going to be a badass. I’m going to go punch a jukebox, make music start. Obviously that’s things that rebels do. That’s what Harley Davidson does, that literally all their framing and their copy and their ads and stuff is about reinforcing that.
Ryan O’Hara:
Here’s the beautiful part, Will. Every single one of these archetypes is in all of us. We all feel like these things at different times. So if you pick one of these archetypes and commit all your content and all the stuff that you’re selling and doing to that archetype, you’re going to appeal to everyone, no matter who they are. That’s why it doesn’t work for just one rep. But the secret is you pick one archetype and you commit to that archetype with everything that you do. You don’t pick three and say, I’m going to sometimes do this and sometimes do this. You commit to one so that you get a pattern. And your email content, your cold call content, your posts on social, your interactions, your comments, all that stuff, that online personality that you have, is consistent. And it’s easier for people to frame and wrap around. That guy, I know what that guy’s all about. You know what I mean?
Your Primary Goal in Personal Branding is for Prospects to Find You Interesting · [15:38]
Will Barron:
I get it. So you’re trying to make yourself viral by giving other people a seamless way to describe you, right? Is that correct?
Ryan O’Hara:
Yeah, exactly. The idea is that you want to seem interesting. My favourite example of this is anyone here that listens and like Star Wars knows the Star Wars prequels are notoriously hated by Star Wars fans. You know why? It’s because all the star wars prequels have boring characters and don’t have good adjective … like the adjective … It’s not what happens in it. It’s how they delivered it. I can’t tell you anything about Qui-Gon Jinn. He’s boring. And he was … he’s in the first Star Wars movie or Phantom Menace. But if I go back to the original Star Wars, Luke Skywalker is a hero brand archetype. He’s got some everyman elements too. If I go to Han Solo, the reason we love Han Solo is because he’s a rebel brand. He’s a rogue, he’s a rebel. He goes against the grain. He breaks the law. He doesn’t care because he’s a badass. And he wears a vest, even though it’s not cold in space. What up with that? And then you have people that do things for like comic relief, or you have a sage brand. Sage brand’s another popular one. That’s where you’re the smartest person in the room. Obi-Wan Kenobi is a perfect example of that if you go through Star Wars.
Ryan O’Hara:
So think of that or you could keep putting out content blindly with no brand strategy. And the brand strategy you’re putting out, you’re going to be like Qui-Gon Jinn and no one’s going to care about you.
The Benefits of Aligning Your Personality to a Personal Branding Archetype · [17:12]
Will Barron:
So I will ask you to run through these very quickly, because I think the names describe them pretty easily. So I don’t think it’s going to be kind of a … I don’t want to engineer a 40 minute monologue, although I’d be probably happy listening to you. But what I will say is if you’ve got a blog post you can share on this. If not, I’ll write a blog post up and link it in the show notes to go through it. But before we run through the 12, is this a personality type that we kind of shift ourselves to be towards? For example, I would love to be the rebel personality type from the sound of things, but it’s probably not … there’s a bit of that in there, I guess, with the podcast and the underdog kind story of the show versus the bigger podcasts that we went up against and just smashed download numbers wise or kind of month in, month out. But is this something that we have to be realistic of ourselves of, I am probably this personality type or my personality type pushing me towards this archetype, so that’s what I should commit to? Or is there a little bit of narrative? Do we have a little bit of leeway involved with some of this?
Ryan O’Hara:
So what I recommend is this. What you should do, if you’re trying to pick one of these archetypes, and this is what reps get really excited about, is you should look and say, what am I already good at? What’s natural to me? So if you’re very natural at like … good example, a ruler brand’s very good at talking smack. Like they’ll talk trash. They don’t mind crapping on their competition. I don’t necessarily like that quality for me. But there’s an appeal to me. I love Tom Brady. And he’s the greatest quarterback of all time, Tom Brady’s a ruler brand and will only do stuff with high end brands and stuff with this stuff, but I relate to him still. So there’s a different way to execute it.
“What I recommend is this. Look at what you are good at and pick a couple of the archetypes that we mentioned here that you like. Here’s the second part that you have to do. Look at what other people in your industry are doing. And if they’re doing that archetype, don’t do that archetype.” – Ryan O’Hara · [18:30]
Ryan O’Hara:
What I recommend is this. Look at what you are good at. Pick a couple of the archetypes that we mentioned here that you like … well, the qualities that you like about these archetypes. Here’s the second part that you have to do. Look at what other people in your industry are doing. And if they’re doing that archetype don’t do that archetype. Look at LeadIQ, for example. And I’m not … I don’t know if I’m allowed to mention other vendors and stuff, but [crosstalk 00:18:52]-
Will Barron:
[crosstalk 00:18:53] say whatever you want. Whatever’s appropriate for your archetype, Ryan, dive into it, mate.
Ryan O’Hara:
Yeah. So I’m going to disclose this. LeadIQ is a data company. We help people get prospect data. One of the things that stinks is, there’s a tonne of these tools out there that do this. You could buy DiscoverWare, you could get ZoomInfo. I know I’m mentioning my competition here. I hope you check out LeadIQ. That’s fine. But these guys, I looked at them when I joined LeadIQ and thought, man, these companies … I love, I think they’re great. I’ve been customers of theirs at other companies and stuff so I don’t want to speak ill of them. But they don’t really have a brand that has a personality. I can’t write down five adjectives for their brand. If I go through other brands though, like a Disney, I could write those things down. So for me, I remember when I joined lead AQ, I was like, I’m not going to build a GE, even though it could make a lot of money and be a big company. I want to build a brand. I want to build a Disney. And that’s kind of the appeal of what we’ve tried to do here. And there’s a big difference between them.
Ryan O’Hara:
So for me, I think what you really need to do is you need to look at what you’re good at, and then you need to write down some adjectives, and then put those adjectives into categories. And those adjectives should be things you want to be. And if you like one of the categories that comes up and it looks like your competitors aren’t doing that individually or on a company level, take that and make that your archetype. And it’ll be a little … it’ll be a lot easier.
Will Barron:
I’ll just give another quick layer on top of this, and I’ve talked about this on the show before, so I won’t dive into it too deep. But with the Sales School, our kind of quote unquote, sales training product … if you love the podcast, essentially that’s the sales pitch, you’re going to love the content in there. New video workshop, hour long video workshop every week. I did what you described, Ryan, of everyone … the sale … well, it’s a $2.2 billion industry, the sales training industry. And it’s mostly dudes in weird fitting ill, fitting suits and women in power suits, looking at a whiteboard or a PowerPoint presentation, going through the five ways to cold call and really piss people off over the long term.
Will Barron:
So we did the exact opposite. So we don’t do sales training. We do … my take on it is that if you’re a good business person, if you’re almost entrepreneurial in your role, which I think it is safe to say you are with the creative work that you are doing, you going to do well. You don’t need to know all the weird tricks and tactics if you are a true thought leader in your space, even if you narrow it down so niche that for me, I’ve just got to be the best medical device rep covering endoscopes here in Yorkshire, kind of a two and a half hour circle around my house. If I do that, I’ve won all the business and I’ve smashed my target.
Will Barron:
So our content is all self development content, as opposed to weird ’80s sales manipulation tactics. Then we’ve got a bunch of characters, we’ve got an illustrator on board, and all the content is 100% not appropriate to be used on a corporate machine or a corporate computer, if you’ve got your sales manager looking over your shoulder, going through the content. Because of that, it’s entertaining. And we did exactly what you’re describing almost blindly. So I probably could have strategically put it together after this conversation a lot more appropriately, and added more focus. But I just did the exact opposite of what everyone else is doing. And it’s taking off. It’s doing far more revenue than kind of anything else, any other products, any other … the podcast, the advertising, everything else that we’ve ever done, the Sales School is just smashing it all. Purely down to … because I want to reemphasize this point, purely down to the fact that it’s different. It may be better. It may be just as good as some of the … there’s different sales training companies out there that I have people on the show regularly from. And they do a incredible job as well. But because it’s different, it stands out. It’s shareable. It’s semi-viral. Again within a small niche. And that’s the reason it’s having success.
Will Barron:
So with that, Ryan, and kind of just doubling down and not wanting to kind of … you were humbly trying not to pitch LeadIQ then. I use LeadIQ for the audience. I’ll say it. Of all the content … all the kind of tools out there, I use it specifically. And you might not even know this, Ryan. I don’t … I think you comped me an account a year ago. I pay for it. I’m a paying customer for you guys. So I don’t know if you knew that or not, but I-
Ryan O’Hara:
I did not know that. That makes me excited.
Ryan Goes Through the 12 Personal Branding Archetypes · [22:52]
Will Barron:
I love the product, mate. So with that said, give us these 12 archetypes and then perhaps I’ll touch on one or two of them and we can use them as an example. Or even better, you can tell us … you can give me and the podcast some direction here of where you think we fit within these 12 archetypes when we’ve been through them and perhaps what we can do better to improve my personal brand and the brand of the show.
Ryan O’Hara:
So by the way, I think that you do a great job of branding the podcast. Like for what you do, you’ve got the red colour. You talk about that. Like you’ve got some stuff that goes against the grain. It’s flashy, it’s high production. It’s very different than a corporate podcast that a lot of other people put out.
Ryan O’Hara:
So I’ll run through them really quick. There’s the ruler brand. The ruler brand’s big thing is talking about how great they are. They want people to know that they’re great. And it sounds kind of arrogant when you hear it, but it works. There’s a reason that we all know Muhammad Ali, but we don’t know another boxer that you’ve never heard of. Because Muhammad Ali talked the best. Conor McGregor’s another one, right? How often does he talk … like everyone knows who he is. That guy has talked himself into a career basically.
Ryan O’Hara:
The other one is the lover brand. Lover brands talk about being … they basically share intimate things. So you’re on the phone with a customer, you might be like, “Hey, I’m going to tell you something. Don’t tell anyone else this.” And you might say something like that. You might show … you show a lot of love. You use the word love in your stuff. Classic example of that would be like Victoria’s Secret. It’s not just sexual stuff though. It could also be like you could just show to love your customer and stuff and show intimacy. That’s the big part about that.
Ryan O’Hara:
Rebel brand, one of my favourite ones, that’s about going against the grain and breaking the laws, kind of. Good example that a lot of people … I’ve mentioned earlier is Harley Davidson. Some people put … some of the marketers out there will say that when Apple made a comeback, they did this brand archetype. Their whole tagline in the early 2000s was, “Think different.” That’s actually breaking a grammar law. Technically, if you’re being grammatically correct, the tagline for Apple should have been, “Think differently.” But their whole … what they realised is that when their … before Steve Jobs came back, they were struggling in sales. They went and surveyed the people that actually had stuck around. And the big reason they had stuck around is because people wanted to buy something that wasn’t a PC. They wanted to go against the grain. So Apple said, let’s double down on that and let’s make it so that you can pick us as an alternative. And that’s a way you could value prop by the way, your product when you’re selling.
Ryan O’Hara:
The sage, you basically … you’re all about being enlightened and learning information, and teaching, using lessons and stuff. One of my mentors, [inaudible 00:25:13] Kyle York, actually is a Sage brand. He’s always telling stories about people the he’s met, what he learned from the encounter. He uses the word less than a lot of you do, like a control F on his profile. I always use him as an example.
Ryan O’Hara:
The next is the magician. They’re all about making your dreams come true. Magicians do stuff to surprise people. They do stuff that almost seems unrealistic and crazy. Like Disney’s a good example. If you ever go to a Disney place, like a resort, or you look at their movies, every acquisition they’ve done has been all about trying to take you out of this world a little bit. And that’s part of what they do there. I don’t know if that would work for a rep here, if you can’t realistically pull it, but if you can do some cool stuff, maybe you surprise your customers by sending them something that’s really pleasant that they wouldn’t expect, or you do something that goes above and beyond what they were expecting to do something. That could be really great.
Ryan O’Hara:
The caregiver is another one where that’s kind of like a mother-like quality where … Campbell’s soup does this for example, “Hey, here have some soup.” You take care of your customers. You focus heavily on talking about it out loud in the content that you do. You tell stories about how you’re there for them if they need anything.
Ryan O’Hara:
The explorer is all about trying experiments. Jeep, Land Rover are both good examples of that. They go and adventure, think Indiana Jones for a character. That’s what you’re branding yourself as. “I tried this experiment today.” I might be wearing … I might have this whip and I’m like going around, you know what I mean? Like you might brand yourself that way when you’re doing your content.
Ryan O’Hara:
The jester is what we try to do. It’s mainly about entertaining people, trying to make them laugh, trying to focus mainly on having fun and making it a fun brand. The innocent, this is about simplicity. So if you pitch your product in a cold email and you make your copy really simple and your value prop’s just really simple, that’s kind of a good archetype for you.
Ryan O’Hara:
The hero, that’s someone that wants the ball when the game’s on the line. That’s the person that’s going to save the day. It’s a very popular archetype right now in the sales world that people do unintentionally. I don’t think they mean to. The every man, that’s all about like relating to the person, being their friend. Very popular archetype. And the last one’s the creator. And that’s about building.
Ryan O’Hara:
The thing that you do when you’re doing these archetypes, these impact your value prop for selling your company. So if I’m a creator archetype and I’m selling to IT and network engineers, I might talk about … in my value prop, be like, “Hey, I heard you’re building some really cool projects. I’d love to learn more about the empire you’re building.” Like you might word your questions in your cold email and your cold call about that. And that’s part … and then when you do your copy and you put videos out on LinkedIn, or you’re posting something on LinkedIn or whatever channel you’re using for this stuff, you’re tweeting something, the thing that you’re putting out is actually wrapped around that archetype. I’m sorry, I’m ranting a little bit, but it’s important. This impacts everything that you do if you pick an archetype.
How Much is the Effectiveness of a Personal Brand Archetype Perceived Versus Earned Value? · [28:13]
Will Barron:
Okay. So I want you to give us some consulting on where we should go with the podcast and myself in a second. But before that … then they want to wrap up at the end of the show because I’m conscious of time here, Ryan, with the inbound element of all of this. But how much of this is perceived? How much of this is, I say I’m X, Y, Z, and so the customer, the end user, whoever it is who’s a gauge of goes, oh, that must be what they are until they prove themselves differently? And how much of this … what percentage of it is perceived and how much of this is earned of … if you are the dude or the girl … I think it’s the hero who wants the ball just outside the three point mark with less than a second to go, who’s going to take that shot, how much of it do you have to earn and actually do before that’s cemented in the mind of the prospect?
Ryan O’Hara:
Yeah. So it takes a long time. So what actually made me discover this was I saw a talk, this guy, Kevin [Skerrick 00:28:51] did a talk on this. And I was a BDR at the time. And at [inaudible 00:28:54] where I used to work, we had just rebranded. We had two brands that we merged into one, and they just rebranded everything. And I went to the marketing team and was like, “Guys, we got to do this brand archetyping stuff. I’m totally convinced. It sounds cool. We got to try and do this.” And they’re like, “We just spent millions of dollars rebranding. You’re too late. Maybe next time.” And so I was like, crap, what am I going to do? And so I came up with the idea of just doing it myself. Like, oh, I’ll just try this exercise on myself and see if it works. And I ended up going with the jester brand then too.
Ryan O’Hara:
I like doing the jester brand. It’s fun for me. I like making people laugh. It feels good. I like trying to do some stuff. That’s a little outside the box to focus on entertainment. If I’m you, and you’re listening to this, it’s … you have to do it for a long time. No one … the customer shouldn’t be aware of it. So you shouldn’t be making a video that’s like, “Hey everyone, I’m an explorer brand so I’m going to explore.” That’s not what it is. What it is is you might go say, “Hey everyone, this week I tried this experiment. Let me tell you what happened.” That’s an example of being an Explorer brand. You don’t just go spell out what you are. So you earn it through doing tactics over time.
Ryan O’Hara:
I get people all the time that will message me on LinkedIn that will say, “Hey, I saw your last video, Ryan. It was really funny.” And I didn’t go and say, “This video is funny. Ha ha.” You know what I mean? I’m not a mom trying to be hip with the times or something. My whole style is meant to solidify this slowly and make you realise it through this cadence. So if you are doing sales and you’re prospecting someone, you might … here’s a way you can actually apply this, and this kind of links into the inbound discussion, but I might post a video online, someone might like or comment it. If I’m a jester brand and my video is funny, if I go write a cold email to them and it’s super serious, isn’t that going to disappoint them? Wouldn’t you be disappointed if you’re like, man, this guy has a hell of a personality. I got to work with this guy. Holy crap. And then I message him and say, “Hey, I saw you liked my video. I actually been trying to prospect your account for a little while, but I haven’t had any luck. This is what it’s been like,” And then I make a little bit or a joke or something in the email. If I don’t follow up and do the same thing, I’m going to disappoint the person.
Why Your Personal Brand Archetype Needs to be Congruent with Your Messaging · [31:07]
Will Barron:
And it’s not congruent, right? It’s difficult to build trust with someone when they’re wishy-washy like that. You don’t know which is the real version that you’re actually dealing with. This is one of the reasons I hate when I get emails or calls and it’s someone with a super corporate, straight down the line voice and vocal tonality, and there’s no joking, and there’s no room for just a conversation outside. Before we were jumping on the call, me and you were talking about RGB keyboards and computer games. That is congruent with kind of you and I and our previous conversations. And so I feel like there’s a bit more rapport, there’s a bit more trust. So it all comes back to that, right?
“I think that if you want to create trust for your prospects and have something that’s consistent, you have to be the same person no matter what happens. It’s that simple.” – Ryan O’Hara · [31:40]
Ryan O’Hara:
Yeah. I think that if you want to create trust for your prospects and have something that’s consistent, you have to be the same person no matter what happens. It’s that simple. And the fun part about this is this becomes your compass to produce content later. If you’re a rep right now and you’re struggling to do the social selling stuff, or you’re engaging and commenting on posts, or you’re putting out content every week and posting something, it could take a little while to come up with what content you want to do. But if you know, I’m going to put out this content, it has to be funny because I’m a jester, I picked the gesture brand, or I’m putting out this content. It has to be about how I’m building something this week, because I’m a creator brand, whatever you pick, it becomes a guide and compass for what you actually do with your content every week, and it becomes faster for you to think of content.
Ryan’s Thoughts on Where Will and the Salesman Podcast Should Prioritise in Terms of Brand Archetypes · [32:22]
Will Barron:
So Ryan, you know our content, you’ve be on the show a bunch of times. What should we be heading towards? Because I feel like I’m about seven out of the 12 of those archetypes. If you were my sales manager, because as you know, I still sell the advertising podcast … the advertising on the podcast and other products as well, so I’m still selling every single day. What should be my personal archetype? Which obviously is indirectly or directly, is tied in with the brand of the show and that, where should we … what should our compass be?
Ryan O’Hara:
So I look at you and I’m … I know you outside of the podcast and we always talk like for an hour before we actually record these things. I think, given your background, like I know you were into drumming and you’re into gaming and all this cool stuff, I actually think you’d be a really cool rebel brand. Like you’re not very corporate-y, which is cool. I love that you just go and speak and do these things. Like you could go against the grain. And what that would mean is basically you kind of lead the charge on telling people new information. And the frame work of anything with a rebel brand is, “Hey, you’re doing it that way. We need to break that rule. This is the way you actually should do it.” And it’s all about rules being made to be broken.
Ryan O’Hara:
I think a lot of the content you put out there unintentionally turns into that. The titles that … like you’ll go do an interview with like Jack [Kazakowski 00:33:35] for example, good friend of ours. And you’ll go do an interview with him. And your tagline will be, “This is what people are doing wrong. This is what you need to be doing instead.” That’s usually the framework of that. That’s a typical rebel brand. It’d be an easy transition for you.
Will Barron:
Good. Well, I think the mid show, I actually said, I’d love to … kind of that was the one that jumped out at me as the cool one to go after. So I appreciate that. And hopefully … I’d be interested with the audience to see if they see … this is now conscious in my brain moving forward, if they see this and they can relate to it moving forward.
Ryan O’Hara:
I don’t think that a lot of people in the podcast world either are doing that. So if you did a landscape of all the other sales podcasts, that you shouldn’t listen to [inaudible 00:34:16], you should definitely listen to Will Barron is good. No, like if you were going to go look at all the other podcasts that are out there and take a landscape of it and you wrote down those words, I don’t think there’s any of them that are like, “Hey, you’re doing this wrong. Do this.” So yeah, I mean, that might be a part of it. It’s kind of like adding a little bit of attitude into a little bit more too. But I think you’d be good at that, knowing your … like there’s an appeal that we all have listening this podcast, to counter culture. We all do it. Even if you’re listening to this and you’re like, I don’t really break the rules, there’s still something that you’ve probably done. There’s a reason punk rock is a genre for music. You know what I mean? People listen to punk because it was counterculture when it came out originally. And the same thing applies to all this other stuff too. So you got to think about that stuff.
Building a Personal Brand Around a Particular Archetype Should Stem from the Things We’re Already Doing · [35:00]
Will Barron:
And we’ll come on to inbound and wrap up with this in a second bit I went to watch Less Than Jake, Reel Big Fish, and someone else the other day, and I know you’re into kind of pop punk and these kind of bands as well. I did a Instagram story kind of as we were there and I got so many messages of people going, “I didn’t know you were into this kind of music.” So even stuff like this, that’s going on in the background and your hobbies perhaps even fall into it. It’s another way to build relationship, build rapport with individuals on a deeper level by doing things that you’re already doing. Right?
Ryan O’Hara:
Yeah. I think a big thing here is like, look at me for example, when I was younger, I remember … when I was in high school and college, I remember being like, man, I wish I could write comedy, but I don’t have the courage. I don’t know if I’m good enough at it. And I literally am a coward. It’s not practical for me. You know how many people you hear go and try and do that for a living and then never make it, and then they live out of a box and they’re poor and they’re living in their parents’ basement, and they’re like 50? I didn’t want to be that. So the cool part though, is I can do the jester archetype, not have to be all out on like ha ha funny for a living, and still make a good living out of it and make people like LeadIQ. And it works.
Ryan O’Hara:
There are people that … it’s not manipulating people either. I actually like … I want to get on a call with someone. When I book a call after qualifying them, I want to laugh with them on the call. I want to yuk. I want to be able to be honest with them so I can … the cool part too, is you build a better rapport with these people too, when you do this. So that’s the magic behind it. And every time I tell people about this, they get really excited and jazzed up about it because it gives you ideas and says, oh, I can pick this archetype, this is my brand now, this is what I’m going to do. And it’s very easy to execute on once you pick one.
How to Build a Personal Brand That Drives Inbound Leads · [36:50]
Will Barron:
Love it. Well, what I’m gathering from the conversation Ryan is congruence. That seems like the most important thing here, going with your … some of it’s probably going with your gut as well. But final thing to wrap up, how does all this translate into inbound? Because what we’ve talked about so far is basically pushing a message, a narrative, winding it into conversations that are perhaps already ongoing. But how does this translate into the holy grail of B2B sales, which is people coming to you?
Ryan O’Hara:
All right. So there’s three things that I’m going to talk about really quick. The first is it’s really important for you to work with your marketing teams at these companies. Marketing and sales teams fight all the time, and it’s really sad. It happens all the time. What you need to do is you should want to be a face of your company. And if you’re a marketing person, for some reason listening to this, you need to make your reps faces of your company. If you think your rep isn’t good enough to talk out there to the masses, why are you hiring them as a sales rep? They shouldn’t be talking to customers. That’s my perspective on that. So you need to make your reps extensions of your brand as a marketer. We did that at LeadIQ. Every single person that we work with next year, I’m hiring a content producer to literally go sit down and help reps bang out content all year.
Will Barron:
Wow.
“If you’re going to be producing content, one of the things you need to do is if you put it out there, you need to prospect the people that are engaging with it and let that drive some of your accounts.” – Ryan O’Hara · [38:00]
Ryan O’Hara:
So once a week, they’ll do a 30 minute recording session, record something and they’ll cut and splice and do all the work for the rep, because that’s working for us. You need to make your reps part of your brand. The second part is, if you’re going to be producing content, one of the things you need to do is if you put it out there, you need to prospect the people that are engaging with it and let that drive some of your accounts and stuff. So if I go put out a video and let’s say, Will, you came in and liked, commented on the video, I’m going to go find Will Barron. I’m going to go get his contact information. I’m going to prospect him. Whenever I mention that content, I’m going to follow up on …
Ryan O’Hara:
Good example, about two weeks ago, I made a video that was … it was called Seven Prospecting Tips. And it was a complete joke video. It was fake prospecting tips that you never want to do. One of the things that we did in the video that people laughed at is we said, “If you’re really a sales baller, you should send a contract in your first cold email.” Like just send a contract and say, “Hey, waiting for you to sign. Thanks.” and it was a complete joke. Don’t do that. If you’re listening to this, I’m completely joking. If you watch the whole video, you know that it’s a joke, because I tell you at the end it’s a joke. But we had a bunch of people like it. I think it got like 10 or 15,000 views. Any person that we saw that commented or liked it, we prospected. Our reps sent contract emails to them to prospect them as a … knowing that they watched the video.
Ryan O’Hara:
So like if someone liked the status or liked the video, they’re get now getting an email from our reps with a contract. So they’re in on the joke and they feel like … a lot of them just wrote, “Ha ha,” back, “Baller move.” And then they write back and actually pitch them. So you can use this to drive up who you’re prospecting throughout the day and you’ll start seeing people get direct messages and recommend you and tell people about you. And that’s how it drives inbound.
“When you post anything online or you’re posting content or videos or whatever you’re doing, you should always have a call to action.” – Ryan O’Hara · [39:42]
Ryan O’Hara:
Another thing you can do, is when you post anything online or you’re posting content or videos or whatever you’re doing, you should always have a call to action. So don’t just go post something and say, “Hey, thanks. I’m talking, blah, blah, blah, blah. See you next time.” Instead say, “Shoot me an email here,” and give your email out at the end of a piece of video that you do. If you do a blog post, have a button, maybe it goes to your calendar if you’re using calendar software. If you’re a marketer or you have your marketing team helping you, make a landing page just for you. Ask your marketing team to make a landing page just for you, and drive people there. Any of these equations can work really well for you, but that’s how create inbound. And the cool part is, if you set it up properly, it’ll all go into your name anyway in SalesForce and stuff.
Will Barron:
Perfect. Well, I feel like we cut it a little bit short there. But that’s probably … we’ll do a part two that … if you’re free, we’ll do a part two of this episode. We’ll dive into inbound into more details. Because there’s about 478 questions I could ask on the back of that, especially on the CTA, the call to action, element of this because something that’s I regularly screw up on myself. I’m happy to put stuff out there to have conversations, and not direct it to somewhere that’s a useful place for both me and the potential customer to go to. So I’ll jot that down and we’ll have another conversation about that in the future, Ryan.
Ryan’s Advise to His Younger Self on How to Get Better at Selling · [40:53]
Will Barron:
But with that, mate, I’ve got one final question I’ve asked you about 14 times now. I’m going to ask you again and in the show notes of this episode, I’ll go back and review your answers and we’ll do a list and see how similar they all are. But with that, Ryan, if you could go back in time and speak to your younger self, what would be the one piece of advice you’d give him to help him become better at selling?
Ryan O’Hara:
Wow. That’s deep. I think the biggest thing that I wish I had done years ago is had a little bit more empathy for what my prospecting customer is going through. Just so … full disclosure for people listening, I’ve never been a closer, I’ve only been a prospector. So I went up the ranks in prospecting, not in closing. But when I was prospecting, I used to try tactics all the time where I thought that like, oh man, I’m going to send a song to a prospect, but the song would be about my company and not about the prospect. And then they wouldn’t respond and I’d be like, I don’t get it. And now that I’m older and wiser, I realise, oh, if I had done the same amount of time and thought that I put into the prospect email I sent to them, but made it more about them than me, I would’ve been in a better spot. So be empathetic. Think about what … put yourself in your prospect’s shoes.
Parting Thoughts · [41:56]
Will Barron:
Amazing stuff. Well with that, Ryan, tell us a little bit more about LeadIQ, where we can find you, and then where we can find you on LinkedIn, because I want everyone to obviously follow, and follow from the selfish perspective of seeing what Ryan is doing correct, so that we can just copy it within our own archetype and do something similar.
Ryan O’Hara:
Ooh that’s pressure. So you can go check out LeadIQ. We’re helping a lot of people with getting contact information enriched. We go take first name, last name, company, name. You can go on any website. LinkedIn’s one of the more popular ones because people want to get their stuff into their CRM. You hit one button, it’ll push it to the Salesforce. You use Salesloft, or Outreach, or one of those guys, you can push it right into that at same time. And it’ll go get you all the contact information for the prospects you’re going after.
Ryan O’Hara:
For me, you can go. I think it’s Ryan M. O’Hara on LinkedIn. Like if you search linkedin.com/ryanmohara, or you can just look for my name. I’m on there. There’s a lot of stuff that we put out. Another thing that I’d recommend is if you’re just starting out, hit me up and I’m happy to talk to anyone. Just talk to me on direct message on there and we can chit chat about some ideas if you’re getting stuck or you want more information about this. Because a lot of people … I feel bad, but if you work in sales, you don’t necessarily know everything because you haven’t had a chance to learn this stuff. I’ve had plenty of time and money thrown my way for trying to experiment with this stuff in marketing. And now I’m trying to help reps do it individually.
Will Barron:
Perfect. Well I’ll link to all that in the show notes over at salesman.org. And with that, Ryan, I genuinely enjoy these conversations with you, mate. I will say for the audience as well, it’s Ryan’s day off and he is hanging out with us. So we all appreciate it, Sales Nation appreciates it, mate. And with that, I want to thank you again for joining us on The Salesman Podcast.
Ryan O’Hara:
Thank you very much for having me. I appreciate it.
