Episode 314 - Tom Shapiro

Episode 314: Tom Shapiro
“Is It Time to Rethink Lead Generation?”

Conversation with Tom Shapiro, the CEO of Stratabeat and the author of “Rethink Lead Generation.”

(Check out the 1st interview with Tom on Episode 82 and the 2nd interview on Episode 170.)

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Transcription of the Episode


Transcription
****Please forgive any and all transcription errors as this was transcribed by Otter.ai.****

[intro music]
Shark 0:16
Welcome back and thank you for joining A Shark’s Perspective. I am Kenneth "Shark" Kinney, your host and Chief Shark Officer.

Shark 0:22
Let me tell you about an amazing sponsor who helps make this show possible. I hope that you'll take a look at Drips, the founders of conversational texting where they use conversational AI to help you reach customers where they're most responsive, and that's on their phones. And working with major brands like Three Day Blinds, Liberty Mutual, Credit Repair, and Gainesco, Drips is leading the way for some of the biggest brands in the world to improve engagement rates and outcomes for their prospects and customers.

Shark 0:47
And now back to the show.

Shark 0:49
It's time to rethink lead generation, especially the way B2B companies think about attracting customers in a way that cuts through all the noise. Are you copying what your competitors do for so called Best Practices and then relying on paid traffic to fix it? Or are you relying on creative behavioral and lateral ways of thinking in an organic matter in order to connect with consumers and rethink lead generation?

Shark 1:13
Glad to welcome back a friend and now a three peat guests on the show. Tom Shapiro is the CEO of Stratabeat and now he's out with his newest book, "Rethink Lead Generation." Definitely encourage you to check out earlier episodes 82 and 170 as well that feature Tom.

Shark 1:29
And on this episode, we'll discuss how to rethink lead generation for B2B, organic versus paid advertising, so called best practices, behavioral science, Antonio Damasio, and meatloaf for salmon, the Eureka myth, the Einstellung effect, the lateral thinking framework, SEO, content, marketing, organic growth, Brady and Belichick, wild animals in Tom's backyard, and a lot a lot more.

Shark 1:51
So let's tune into Shapiro three with a shark who's glad to be here for more than 300 shows now on this episode of A Shark’s Perspective.

Shark 2:03
Tom, welcome back to a sharks perspective, we just didn't get enough of you on episodes 170 and episode one, or 82. So we needed a three Pete trophy. And in lieu of a trophy, you'll actually just get a coupon for 10% off your next purchase of Applebee's. So congratulations. Coupon expires next week, but I should be able to get it in the mail sometime over the weekend. But seriously, welcome back. And thank you for joining us.

Tom Shapiro 2:29
Thanks so much, Mark. It's great being back.

Shark 2:31
Well, so let's talk about your new book. Congratulations, again in order. Rethink your lead generation. Tell us a little bit more about the book and the impetus and how this really followed up off of your last big success. Rethink your marketing. Yeah, thanks. Yeah. So

Tom Shapiro 2:45
rethink lead generation is all about how you can grow your leads for your business, right. And the big challenge that a lot of b2b marketers have today is that consumers are, are more educated than ever before, the more sophisticated, there's more competition, many markets are completely saturated with competitors now. And so the b2b marketer is really challenged, to cut through all the noise and to break through and really connect and engage more deeply with their audience. But here's the thing with b2b marketers, what do they typically do? They typically do what they've done in the past, right? And they just continue. And if they change things, it's usually just maybe tweaking around the edges, right? But tinkering around the edges just doesn't work. That is not what unleashes growth, you know, they might copy the competition, they might look at it, what the media is hyping. But you know, all of those things, you know, it just doesn't work. And so what does work? What What should it be to be marketer do today in order to increase their leads. And what I am arguing in the book is that it really comes down to extreme creativity, lateral thinking, and marketing innovation. That is the true way to unleash growth. That's a way to break through all of the noise in the market, and really to captivate your audience, grab their attention, and drive them towards becoming a lead.

Shark 4:15
Let's dive into the book a little bit further. Why do best practices suck?

Tom Shapiro 4:21
Yeah, best practices really do suck. So they suck. Because essentially, if you were following best practices, and all of your competitors are following best practices, you're going to get lost in a sea of sameness, right? You are going to be very similar to all of your competitors. Now, in a b2b sale, typically, the buyer will be evaluating at minimum three or four or five different options. In other cases, it can go up to 10 different options that they'll be evaluating. And so if everyone is following best practices, you're in trouble, right? Because everyone is going to be so similar. And so oftentimes, what you need to do is look at best practices and recognize them. But then consider different options. Consider what if we did the opposite? And it might be laughable, right? It might be counterintuitive, but oftentimes that when you'll come across an idea that really helps you break through, that's when you come across an idea that helps you win the deal. And just, you know, it makes it so clear that you're so differentiated from all the competitors. But yeah, best practices just leads to sameness and sameness leads to mediocrity.

Shark 5:33
Agreed, you interviewed over 20 marketing leaders for the book, and we've been friends for some years spoken on the circuit together. Any reason why there weren't 21 marketing leaders interviewed? I didn't. I searched and searched, but I couldn't find my name anywhere. So please explain.

Tom Shapiro 5:51
Well, sure, I got a lot of your knowledge.

Shark 5:58
In the book, good, good, say very good, safe. Yeah. Forward would have would have helped. But so how should we go about understanding that everyone is irrational?

Tom Shapiro 6:11
Yeah, so um, this is this is something that we focus on as an agency a lot is applying neuro science and behavioral science and psychology to marketing. And what surprises us is the number of marketing teams that don't do this. And the reason why it's so important to do this is, you know, we're all humans, right? And, you know, we follow certain patterns. And those patterns are dictated by the construct of the brain. And so So how is the brain constructed? Well, it's actually a supercomputer, right? The human brain is actually 30 times more powerful than the world's most powerful supercomputer. Think about that, that is a lot of horsepower. And when someone is making a decision, whether they're going to sign up for your webinar, or whether they're going to, you know, download your white paper, whether they're going to talk with your salespeople, whether they're going to take a demo, however, they're going to engage with you, that's a lot of less a lot of processing that's going on in their brain, right. And so if you're a marketer, and you're not looking to tap into that brain power, and to connect with them on a subconscious level, you're kind of crazy. And I say that because there there have been studies done, where it's been found that a purchase decision is about 90 to 95%, based on the subconscious. And so if you're not seriously focused on connecting with your audience, on a subconscious level, good luck, you know, you're gonna have a very difficult time moving them to action. And that's the thing, you know, yes, you can market to them. And yes, you'll win business. And yes, you know, you can survive. Absolutely. But are you really going to move as many audience members to action as possible? And are you going to move them to the actions that matter most, it's just going to be more difficult for you. And so the more that you can understand how their brains operate, and then you can connect with them more deeply, you can engage with them more deeply. It's just a much, much more powerful way to be marketing, you know, that the the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio ran some interesting studies of people who had damage to the part of the brain that triggers emotions, right. And so these people couldn't feel happy, they couldn't feel sad, they couldn't feel angry, they couldn't feel emotions. And what he found was, they had a really, really, really difficult time making any type of decision, especially purchase decisions. And so you know, even something as stupid as like, Oh, what am I going to have for dinner tonight? Should I have salmon or should I have meatloaf? Well, salmon is very healthy, that's a great choice but meatloaf, I love me love. But salmon, you know, if you you know, season it the right way with rice. It's amazing. Oh, but meatloaf. I remember my grandma making me meal. And they would endlessly waffle, right. And so it's like that with any type of decision. And if there if someone comes to your website, and they're making the decision of whether to contact you, whether they want to talk to sales, whether they want to sign up for your webinar, whether they want to engage with you in any way, if you are not evoking an emotional response out of those people, you are making it physically and mentally more difficult for them to take any of those actions. And that's why, you know, people are irrational, but you need to connect with them on a subconscious level in order to guide them towards taking action.

Shark 9:26
So then how do we go about dismantling the Eureka myth? And tell us a little bit about what the Eureka myth is? Yeah.

Tom Shapiro 9:34
So, you know, anytime in our society when people are talking about innovation, they tend to think that there's this one lightbulb moment, this one eureka moment, and that's when innovation happens. And Steven Johnson, the author, and you know, TED speaker, came out with a book where good ideas come from which is amazing Highly recommend it to anyone, even if you're not a marketer, I would recommend it. It's brilliant. And it talks about the evolution of innovation and where innovation really comes from. And he shows that actually, it's much more iterative, a process, and you keep building upon prior ideas. And that's where real innovation happens. And so, too often, marketers will think, Okay, we just have to have one brainstorming session for half an hour. And then that's it. And then we have lots of creative ideas, when actually, what we need to be doing is building a culture of innovation. You know, it needs to be something that's just built into your DNA. And if you're going to be brainstorming, brainstorm a lot, brainstorm all the time, if you have a brainstorm for a specific client, don't just have one have multiple brainstorms, because again, like Steven Johnson points out, it's all iterative, right? It's based off of prior knowledge and ideas, and then just keep innovating and innovating. And so what I would argue is, if you want a competitive advantage in marketing, then you want to inject as much innovation as possible, right? Because then you're you're very differentiated from your competitors, you offer more value, you stand out, you're more memorable. They're just in innumerable benefits to being more innovative than your competitors. And that, you know, and that's how you add value. That's how you created a very special company. But if you're going to do that, you can't be under this, this myth of the eureka moment, because you'll never achieve it, you'll never get there and your marketing will never achieve the brilliance and excellence in the innovation, that it really should.

Shark 11:41
Great points. So another early topic to talk about that I love is cross pollination, when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. It's unclear who originally said this, but it's also accurate. The Einstellung effect is a cognitive bias in which a person say a marketer is predisposed to solve a problem in a specific way they're used to doing it, whatever they've done in the past is going to be their inclination for solving challenges. It goes on talking about cognitive bias, but it's a great point. We talked about this a little bit earlier. But why do you think that so many people fall into this, which again, sort of moves a lot of that into best practices that suck?

Tom Shapiro 12:16
Yes, yeah. So you know, when you stick with what you know, it's very comfortable, that is the default setting for, you know, human behavior. And so we do have to make a concerted effort to change. And, you know, there are many different ways that you can do that. And it's not always obvious that you should be cross pollinating ideas, you know, we feel better when we surround ourselves with people who think like us and talk like us, and have the same ideas and values. And then you know, we all feel good about ourselves, right? We're, it's self reinforcing. But from a marketing perspective, and from an innovation perspective, it's the worst thing that you can do. Right? I mean, there are lots of people out there, lots of audience members, and they are going to be different. And the more that you can be cross pollinating ideas, it has been proven that you will be more innovative, you will be more creative, it's much easier to achieve lateral thinking success when you do that, you know, there have been different studies done, where I'm looking at specific cities around the US, and the cities with the most immigrants, by chance happen to have the most patent applications. And, you know, when you think about that, you know, from a, from a corporate standpoint, that's invaluable. You know, a patent is recognition of innovation, it's just, you know, bringing it to light, bring it making it actionable. And so, you know, the fact that this is so prevalent and so obvious, yet, so many marketing teams don't go out of their way to cross pollinate ideas to get ideas from the outside, right, get ideas from your customers, from prospects, from partners, from consultants, from agencies, you know, they tend to what do they do, they tend to go into a conference room, right? Or at least pre pandemic, now, they go into virtual conference rooms, and they surround themselves in this cocoon of like minded people who talk to each other every day. And so they fit into certain patterns, they fit into a certain groove, and that feels comfortable. And so when they think that they're brainstorming new ideas, it's really only a sliver of their potential. Whereas if you bring in ideas from the outside, you know, when you are actively or even proactively looking to bring in ideas from the outside, you know, it really changes everything. And, you know, it introduces idea that you never, ever would have thought of in in your insular world within your marketing team.

Shark 14:55
It's a great point. And one of the things that we need to do to break free of that is be creative. So talk, I really think a lot of this book, can rapture reps this thought around it as the lateral thinking framework for your lead generation. Yeah,

Tom Shapiro 15:09
yeah. So let me explain the framework and then. And then we can go through several examples of how this comes to life in actual marketing scenarios. So what we do is okay, so we'll do a lot of brainstorming, right. But not everyone knows how to do brainstorming that how to do it in a way that's going to generate fantastic ideas that really move the needle for your business. And so what we do is we have a very formal structure, where we can itemize as many ideas as we want in a matrix, right? And in that matrix, we'll also look at for every single idea, every single idea, no matter how crazy it is, we'll look at okay, how quickly can this be done? How easily? Can it be done? How, what's the cost of doing this? What's the revenue potential specifically, and then, you know, you look at all of these things, and you calculate an ROI. And so we do this for every single idea. And it makes it so dang easy to find the best ideas, right. And the brilliant thing about this is, let's say you have an event that's coming up, and so your time limited, but you still want to be very creative and come up with innovative ideas. Well, because you have the time factor, how quickly can this be done in your matrix, then that helps you frame what's possible. And if it doesn't meet your timing requirements, you know, then it's automatically disqualified. But let's say that you you have all the time in the world, but you have a certain budget that you need to stay with it. Same thing, you know, the matrix covers all the bases, it helps you stay within a realistic framework. So it's not just crazy brainstorming where you know, you're coming up with wacky and crazy ideas. It's not that it's very realistic, it's very pragmatic, but you still get to come up with really, really substantial ideas. Let me give you a couple examples. So I was working at a company. In a past life, where

Tom Shapiro 17:07
we had a lot of business, everyone was so busy, it was crazy. But the problem was a lot of the busyness was on small projects. There were tons of clients with tiny projects. And so myself and a couple of colleagues looked at this, and we said, well, you know, you look at all the time we're wasting on these tiny projects. And it's really substantial. Whereas we have clients like Adobe, for example, where it's like, okay, software, you know, huge, they have releases all the time, they multiple products, plus, they have multiple releases all the time. And each contract for one project with, say, an Adobe, or or an equivalent type of software company was hundreds of 1000s of dollars. And you compare that to the tiny projects where maybe it was like, you know, $1,000, and it was just so ridiculous that we said, look, let's fire let's fire every client who is not like Adobe, and will only keep the Adobe's of the world. And we wound up firing the majority of our clients and growing by 250%, within two years after that, as a result, right? You know, it's a crazy idea to fire most of your clients, right? That's pretty radical. It's not typically the first thing that comes to your mind when you're grabbing your coffee in the morning. Right. But, you know, by going through this framework, we were able to see that that's where all the ROI was right? We had to do it, it was yes, very counterintuitive. It was lateral thinking, let's fire, let's go out and fire most of our clients. But it led to dramatic growth. And at the end of that, that two year period, the owner of the business was able to sell the business for a multiple of annual revenue. And so you know, he, he, he made a heck of a lot of money. And he's a great guy, he deserved it. He was, you know, he's just a fantastic guy. He's a friend. But, you know, it takes lateral thinking to come up with something like that. I'll give you another example. So we started talking with a company about just bringing them more leads, right. And so one of the things that we're going to do for them was blogging. Lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of agencies do blogging, right. I mean, that is a very, very common practice, very standard. And so you might think, well, how can you brainstorm about blogging? Well just come up with topics. So. So this is where lateral thinking comes in. We said, the first thing we need to do for this client with blogging is blow up their website. That's the first thing we need to do. Right? We need to focus on their branding first before we even write one word. Why? Because their branding just wasn't going to do it. We could we could create Shakespearian blog posts right? And it would not have made a bit of difference if the branding was off. And so they wanted to target fortune 500 accounts And we looked at the website, we said, There's no way in the world fortune 500 accounts are going to take you seriously with this website, we have to completely redo it. So we guided them through a complete, rebrand. And they only had two case studies at the time. And both were honored. I don't know, like Joe's pizza shop. I mean, it's stupid, right? And so so we said, no, no, you know, you have big accounts, we're gonna go out. And we have to have massive case studies, really impressive case studies of your biggest accounts. And they said, Well, you know, they won't let us name names. And we said, we don't care. Like, let's not name names, but what we have to have a massive library, proving how amazing you are awesome, you are right. And so we built that put that in the website had tons and tons of stories to tell. We guide them through a complete revamp, every single word of the website, complete revamp. And then we started blogging. In blogging, instead of just coming up with like, 700, word blog posts or 1000, word, blog posts, ours are like 345 6000 words, each, each. So it is a ton of copy. We were like, we're like, the Library of Congress, you know, every single week, you know, it's just, it's just a river of words every single month. And on top of that, then we come out with very, very detailed research that we use as lead magnets right. On top of that, what we also focus on just as much is okay, yes, we're gonna optimize this, and we're gonna optimize it like crazy, right? But let's say that that's 50% of our focus, the other 50% of our focus is going to be making it awesome. How do we do that? Storytelling videos, stats, you know, on and on and on, to make the experience just crazy good. And so we helped this company go from very little traffic, we increase their their organic traffic by 3,151%, within two years.

Tom Shapiro 22:08
So, you know, you don't you don't do that by just approaching blogging, looking at okay, well, how many blogs? Do you want a month? No, that ain't that ain't gonna get you there. You need to think laterally, you need to think about other things. Like, okay, yes, we're gonna optimize the heck out of but at the same time, we're gonna make sure, yeah, we have videos, we have, you know, graphics, we have, you know, unique, original research, we have all these things that, you know, we have tons of storytelling, we have quotes, you know, you have to make the experience amazing, because then even without any concerted effort on link building, people are going to be linking to you like crazy, which is what happened? How

Shark 22:51
can someone start being able to change the way they think about this, especially from a marketing standpoint, considering that a lot of what you're talking about is also organic? It's you're not talking about paid advertising. And this is, for a lot of people that haven't had money, they get it to spend, but if you if you haven't invested some money, I mean, these are fundamental changes in the ways that a lot of marketers, at least the way you're explaining it should think,

Tom Shapiro 23:18
right, right. And I'm glad you're bringing up this point. So the entire book, it does focus on organic methods of growth, right. And that's what our agency does, as well. We focus on organic, whether it's SEO, whether it's content development, content, marketing, whether it's conversion optimization, ABM, behavioral intelligence, all of these ways of doing things without without, quote, unquote, spending money without paying for a click, without paying to play. And that's, that's really the the crux of the book is when you're talking about innovation, we want to earn trust, right? We want to earn trust, with advertising, you're not so much earning trust with someone, right? You're paying for a click, you're renting a click. And if you stop paying, then it goes away completely. Whereas with organic, even if you completely stopped today, you're still at full speed ahead tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, you know, it compounds over time. And so, we would argue that when you want to focus on marketing, innovation, and extreme creativity, it really plays well in the organic space. That's where you can really maximize these concepts the most. And so that's, that's why we focus there. Now to your question of how do you how do you get, you know, executives to understand the value of doing this of shifting to more creativity and less reliance on say advertising per se, because yeah, advertising can be very reliable, right. So what I would say is, if you really want to maximize your revenue, you know what you really need to do every year regardless of what you're doing. Even if you have paid media as A big part of your budget, you always always always want to be eliminating the bottom 20% of your marketing every year, right? Just look at what's performing and what's not. And look at the bottom 20% That's not really performing and completely eliminated. It's interesting, you know, a lot of companies what they'll do, or a lot of marketing teams, they'll still keep it around, right? And they just they hesitate letting go, right? And so you see a lot of nonperforming marketing is the same with, with blog posts, you know, you see a lot of companies that will let all of their blog posts live forever, and never reevaluate and say, You know what, like these 300, blog posts suck, we get zero traffic, we're getting zero value out of them a 301, redirect them so that Google has higher crawl efficiency and understands exactly, you know, where we're strong. And we'll get rid of the stuff that's not working. And so that's the first step is we need to have agreement with executives, that there has to be some elimination, there has to be some, and then the question is, okay, well, what do you do when you have 20% of your budget to spend, right? You know, we would argue, you can parallel path what you've been doing in the past with experimenting, right? With launching new initiatives that are more creative, that do follow lateral thinking that more are more innovative. And so it doesn't have to be an overnight thing where you're putting 100% of your budget into these bold moves, right, you're putting all your chips into the center of the table for 100% of your budget doesn't quite have to be that way. Right? If something has worked for you in the past, stick with it, but then experiment on the side parallel path. And maybe these experiments are going to be the new normal for you. Maybe those are going to outperform everything else. And so that's what I would say in terms of if anyone is hesitating and resistant to this idea of being more creative. It doesn't have to be all or nothing.

Shark 26:55
Well, the book is a great way to get them started to rethinking that if you will not print a play on words, but it is a good way. And there's a ton of great content towards the back talking about SEO, website content marketing. It's a great deep dive. But Tom, it's that time in the show. So we talked about this before. And I've asked you this, I think a couple of times, but your favorite shark was a hammerhead back was like two and a half years ago when we recorded one together back when conferences in person were a real thing. That's right. I don't know if you've heard about COVID or not, but it's been in the news. But uh, so one of the questions though, that we're going to get into with the five questions, the five most interesting and important questions that I'm going to reference back to though since we met I asked you Tom Brady or Bill Belichick back on the I think the first episode and you said belcheck Tom went off to win a Super Bowl. Would you change that answer now? Or would you still stick with Belichick?

Tom Shapiro 27:56
I think I would go with both of them now. I think I still believe in Belichick. I do. And I think that given time he'll probably win another Super Bowl without Tom Brady. Tom Brady is insanely amazing and you know obviously I'm in Boston we love him. So I would say I couldn't choose at this point today I couldn't use they're both both amazing.

Shark 28:24
Well I'm a Cowboys fan and I'm still....Tom's the goat so the numbers speak for themselves. Alright, we're gonna get into the five most interesting and important questions your last day. Are you ready? Yes. Because we're talking a lot about organically generation this is an obvious question for you number one, organic food or local food local good answer. So for the I read this on I think it was food.com for the health conscious consumers Yes, USDA organic food is better for you because it's GMO and pesticide free. However the mass produce refrigerated and internationally transport exotic fruit does not likely have the same nutritional value as an in season local fruit for example. Very interesting. So so number two, we're talking about what DiMasi owes choices were meatloaf or salmon

Tom Shapiro 29:22
Well, salmon but with a caveat. Salmon if my wife prepares it, okay. She she's an amazing cook. I don't know how she does it. But yeah, I've never had salmon as good as hers. I've never had chicken as good as her. I mean, she just she knows how to cook. And it's better than even restaurant quality. So I kind of hit the lottery with with dinner in my life. I'll go with salmon.

Shark 29:55
Number three. We were talking a little bit about the matrix earlier. So I really enjoy Keanu Reeves a lot of his movies. I'm not gonna ask you the matrix one versus anything else, but I will say, the matrix or John Wick series. The Matrix. Yeah. Despite the fact that the others were kind of goofy, but if you'd ask me point blank, I would even blink a little bit on that. So number four, which would you rather see out in the woods? wild deer or wild turkey?

Tom Shapiro 30:31
wild deer? And

Shark 30:33
Wild Wild Turkey are in your backyard? Yeah. So yeah,

Tom Shapiro 30:36
both in our backyards. So, so, yeah, you know that we have turkeys visiting us all the time. Wild turkeys, right. And they come in flocks of like, 1517, they'd like to hang out together. And that, but we also have deer in our backyard, too. And so um, you know, we'll see, I would say we see them equally as frequently as the other. Obviously, the deer are not in packs of 15 or 17. There is usually like two or three at a time. But yeah, the deer are a little, little nicer than having these these spots of crazy turkeys running around. We

Shark 31:11
can also get wild turkey in a case. So it's your local liquor store. Alright, we've already discussed on number five biscuits and cornbread. So we're going to switch this up a little bit fried chicken or fried catfish. Oh,

Tom Shapiro 31:27
that is a tough one. I love both. I love both.

Shark 31:32
I'm basically asking cuisine questions from Cracker Barrel. The choices come up. Oh,

Tom Shapiro 31:40
I I love those. Oh, I don't. I don't know it. Can I? Can I take both?

Shark 31:48
No, you got to pick one. Which one? Does your wife prepare better?

Tom Shapiro 31:53
I like it. Like I said, I've never had chicken as good as how she prepares. So I'll go with the fried chicken.

Shark 32:00
Okay, fair enough. All right. So Tom, where can people find out more about you get a copy of this book, and a lot, lot more.

Tom Shapiro 32:06
So people can find me at Tom shapiro.com. They can learn about me there they can learn about both of books. So rethink your marketing as well as rethink lead generation. And also strategy calm is our agency. So as mentioned, we're a b2b, organic growth agency, providing things like SEO and content marketing and conversion optimization, design ABM, things like that. And so strategy comm for that. And also I would encourage people to connect with me directly on LinkedIn. So you know that I always welcome people reaching out there. And and also happy to answer any lead gen questions that people might have. So I would say, look for the book, either at Tom Shapiro calm or you know, you'll find it on Amazon as well.

Shark 32:57
Tom, thank you so much for being with the skin on A Shark’s Perspective.

Tom Shapiro 33:01
Thanks so much Shark.

Shark 33:07
So there was my conversation with Tom Shapiro, the CEO of Stratabeat and the author of "Rethink Lead Generation." Let's take a look at three key takeaways from our conversation with him.

Shark 33:17
First, I was just talking about this on the last episode. Best practices suck, it creates a so called sameness with what your competitors are doing, you know what would happen if you did the opposite, and uncover new ideas, something Tom post, as he said, best practices lead to sameness in sameness leads to mediocrity. Amen to that.

Shark 33:36
Second, something that Tom and I both talked about on stages, when we're presenting at conferences, apply behavioral science to your lead generation, a lot of the decisions we make are made on a subconscious level. So tap into that not nearly enough marketers are talking about that, but really lean into the psychology of why people add to why people buy, understand how their brains operate in order to connect better through neuroscience.

Shark 34:00
Third, as Tom said, people don't often cross pollinate ideas. And we fall into these same habits and we surround ourselves with what's comfortable, even in business or marketing will be if you will, and don't just rely on the ideas that make you feel comfortable with your immediate surroundings. It's hard to get marketers let alone executives to change their ways, innovate through creativity, and not just advertising. I'm more of a fan of advertising as part of that mix than Tom is. But Tom makes great points on the organic way that we need to rely on creativity. He simply reminds us to eliminate what's not working. Got a question, send me an email to Kenneth at a shark's perspective calm. Thank you again for the privilege of your time, and I'm so thankful to everybody listens.

Shark 34:43
Thank you to my sponsor, and the amazing team at Drips.

Shark 34:46
Please consider writing a review and letting me know your thoughts on the show. Reach out send me an email.

Shark 34:51
Experiment innovate be curious like a shark and join us on the next episode of A Shark’s Perspective.
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 This episode of “A Shark’s Perspective” Podcast is brought to you by our incredible sponsor, Drips.

 
 
Picture of the La Jolla, California coastline.

Shark Trivia

Did You Know that you can Swim with Sharks in La Jolla Cove….

….especially during the warmer months with hundreds of Leopard Sharks that swim in the shallow waters of La Jolla shores near San Diego, California? Snorkelers can regularly find them in waist-deep water. These harmless sharks are in La Jolla year round, but usually stay in the deeper waters from November to May. From June to October, they regularly swim inwards towards the beach during their mating season. The peak months are August and September where hundreds of sharks swim near. They generally live as far north as Oregon and as far south as Mexico, but La Jolla is unique to where they have been observed breeding.

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