frankly… Episode 65: You Need to Know the Three Knows of Marketing

In this episode of frankly…

The transcript below is AI-generated and may contain minor inaccuracies. Tune in to the episode audio to hear the full conversation! 

Transcript

Dan 

Hello, welcome to frankly. 

Rachel  

Welcome. 

Dan 

Today we are talking with Alex Hultgren, who is a fractional CMO, a partner with Chameleon Collective, and a best selling author of the book The Three Knows of Marketing. So we’ve we’ve known Alex for a little while. We talked with him about kind of his career path, that that led him from the nonprofit world back into back into business school through the automotive industry agency life and now to his current role as a fractional CMO and kind of get a chance to talk with him a little bit about what that means and how how the variety works when you are fractional CMO being able to work with you know, different industries, different companies on different types of projects. And then also jump into jump into the three notes of marketing. Obviously his book, so get a good chance to talk with him about knowing your customer, knowing yourself and knowing your funnel, the three, the three kind of pieces that make up the book and why each one is so important to an overall marketing strategy. 

Rachel  

Yeah. And he talks about each of those steps and kind of what each entails. But, you know, this book really, it’s not a huge undertaking for for reading. And it’s got a lot of knowledge when we’re talking like a little over 200 pages. And I really think it’s a great book to pick up if you are, at any point in your career, truly. But you know, if you’re just getting started in a marketing career, it really helps you take maybe all those things you. Learned during your marketing or communications degree and kind of turn them into how it might work in business and just a way to to come into a company out of school and and I don’t know, impress them sound pretty smart while you’re doing it and and kind of how to approach marketing so. Highly recommend it. We we do link it in the description below and he’s just very well spoken about it and and has a lot of knowledge to share. 

Dan 

Yeah, so. So go check it out and and with that, we’ll turn it over to the author and welcome Alex here. 

Rachel  

Hi Alex. Welcome to frankly. 

Alex 

Thank you. Great to be here with you guys. 

Rachel  

Happy to have you kick us off as we always do, give us your background career path led you to your current role, which we heard in the intro is quite a mouthful, but very impressive so give us the background and tell us the story of of how you got to where you are absolutely. 

Alex 

I started. Well, I kind of grew up in the Midwest. I actually went to high school in Ann Arbor, MI, but then I went to UCLA undergrad and I thought, well, I’ll probably never go back to the Midwest cuz I was 18 and moved to Los Angeles, right, dreams and aspirations and all that. I went to Germany for a year on a congressional fellowship where I met a girl from Michigan, so as fate would happen. 

Rachel  

What are the chances? 

Alex 

Now more than me for five years, but I had to go to Germany to meet her anyway. We fell in love and and and got married. I went to DC. I ran a non profit for five years, which was with credit unions on college campuses. Very interesting job. I realized though, like the jobs that I would have naturally done next, not only did those not really appeal to me like the path they led down didn’t appeal to me either, so it’s like alright, well, it’s probably time to change gears and go back to business school. So I did, went back to University of Michigan and got my MBA from I’m dating myself and it wasn’t even Ross then it was just University of Michigan Business School. But that was a great experience and leaving business school then I joined Ford Motor Company and I was at Ford for 14 years as a part of their marketing leadership program. Now this is kind of a traditional marketing rotational leadership program where it’s great because you get to experience all the main functional areas of marketing in the business. So I spent a couple of years in product marketing working on future products. And as you know, automotive future product is like five years out. You know you’re looking at some full-sized clay model in the studio and nobody else is going to see for five years which is which is pretty cool. Then I went over to consumer marketing and I was working on the SUV portfolio for Lincoln Mercury. Launched the Lincoln Mark Lt, which was Lincoln’s second or third attempt at a pickup truck more successful than the previous ones, but still not really. You know, I think that everything it could have been. Then I went to the field. I worked with the dealers a bit. So that gave me both the wholesale experience as well as the retail experience and and really understand how things are done where the rubber meets the road. Literally, it’s easy to sit in your brand tower and Dearborn and and not whatever discount on anything but then you realize the impact that extra $500 incentive can have on somebody’s payment, and it makes a difference on whether they can actually drive away in a new car or not. So I gained a real appreciation for what the dealers do and how that all works. Then I came back and I was working in digital advertising, and I was running all the digital media for Ford in the US. So you know all the all the advertising we were doing and this was this would have been 2008, 2009. So talking to the head of four division at the time, he was like, look, I’ll be honest, Alex, Internet don’t really understand it, don’t break anything, don’t embarrass us, but here go figure this thing out. So that was that was an amazing job. I love that experience. I made some really, really good friends kind of throughout the Detroit advertising community as well as the agency. We had our agency partners at at Seen Detroit at the time. So loved what I was doing, but wanted to do more of it elsewhere in the enterprise and I didn’t really. You know, there wasn’t like a natural cause, digital was still emerging. There wasn’t really another natural position to go into from the North American side. So I worked with Ford’s leadership to create a role for me in London. And then I ran digital and social for Ford of Europe for 2 1/2 years, which was fantastic. It was personally it was great. I mean, there’s pictures of my kids in front of every monument you can think of through it. Professionally, sometimes it was completely hurting cats because, you know, I I get on these global conference calls and they’re like Alex, what’s the European perspective? I’m like guys, I’ve got 23 countries in 19. Languages. Which one? 

Dan 

Right. 

Rachel  

Yeah. 

Alex 

So the complexity of the European market was was really interesting anyway. Then I came back, I was working in the customer service division, then kind of getting their digital together because there was just a lot of really well intended efforts, we’re all kind of going different directions, so kind of pulling that together and also tying the digital efforts there back into the new car, as well as to the communications digital efforts, so we were pretty well organized between service and communications and then outbound marketing. So we cause when someone comes to Facebook for example, you know if they’re a current customer, you know if they’re looking for news, you don’t know if they’re, you know, looking for new car information. So just getting some processes in place so whatever. Jerry comes in. You know where it should go and the right people are dealing. Anyway, so did that for a bit. Then I get recruited out of Ford to run marketing for Victory Motorcycles. So we went to the Twin Cities. My wife looked at me and said you’re actually moving me to the one city in America colder than Detroit. What is wrong with you? What? 

Dan 

That’s a tough sell. 

Rachel  

Hey. Send you the balance, I  took you to Europe so you know the good with the bad. 

Dan 

Right, right, right. 

Alex 

Yeah, look at the overall average exactly right. Anyway, it was, so I did that for about a year, year and a half. Then I went agency side and I was running the Walmart media account. I was one of three leads on Walmarts media business, buying all their advertising nationwide. And then in 2018, I went out on my own as a fractional CMO, which is different than a consultant because you really are meant to be a member of the executive team, so it’s a very senior level role, you’re just part time. So there’s sometimes those are truly, you know, kind of you’re only 10 hours a week kind of in perpetuity. Sometimes it’s more of an interim role where you come in, you know, you might be up to 40 hours a week, but it’s meant to be a temporary kind of, you know, get the ship aligned, get the team structure correct, get the the tech stack correct, get all the message and write and then you can hand it off to a full time person who comes in behind you. So it’s meant to be a bit more of a, a temporary or a fractional transitional position, but. It gives you the opportunity to always try new businesses out, learn new things, new industries, and I’ve really enjoyed the variety of that. So I’ve been doing that since 2018. And I joined an organization called. called Chameleon Collective in 2020, and that’s a federation of about there’s forty or fifty of us that are fractional or interim CMOS and CRO’s and CMOS. And then there’s another 80 or 90 subject matter experts and what that allows us to do is then build a marketing team that meets the specific needs of a client. So for example, you know got a client in New York right now with a web developer with an SEO expert with a paid search expert with a meta expert and an analytics person. So everybody’s there, everyone’s on their own. So it’s a really clean, easy way to meet a client’s needs without. As much overhead of all the other pieces of a traditional agency, so that’s worked really well. And again, I’ve been with them since 2020 and it’s been, it’s been great. 

Dan 

Yeah. So really. 

Rachel  

Interesting, but I just like that business model. I feel like when we talk a lot with people about finding the right partners and how important that is for a business. And so to have, it’s a collective right, because you’re not like you said, it’s not traditional agency. I always think to call it an agency, but it’s it’s not really and you can fit the needs of every individual business that because we all know marketing teams, while there’s probably like a best practice, they usually don’t all need the same things depending on industry and size of the company, so. To have the forethought to do something like that I think is really smart and honestly, is that just another angle for? People coming into the marketing field to think about from a job perspective too, because I don’t think people realize those kinds of things exist if you only think like agency or in house. 

Alex 

Absolutely. It’s it really is a a great model and and people that are very good at one specific area like if all they do is SEO and all they want to do is. You know it’s great because there’s plenty of that kind of work to go around, you know, all the clients we have across all the different industries. There’s one guy I’ve worked with several times. It’s really, really great with setting up Amazon stores or eBay stores. So if more of an e-commerce leads what you’re looking for, we have people that just do that and you know, some people want to just do what they do and they love doing what they do. I’ve met some of the most talented copywriters I’ve ever met working at a chameleon that work on, you know, within our team. So it’s been it’s been fantastic. 

Dan 

Yeah. And when when, like you’re saying when you love what you do and you know you find your niche and you just wanna work in that role and then those are oftentimes the people who are the most kind of, most practiced, most refined. And it, like you said with copywriting. I mean, if you love to write, you want to write. So give give some examples of of maybe the types of companies or the the industries that you work in in your fractional role like where where do you most commonly find yourself? 

Alex 

That’s a great question. I really I really like the variety of work I do. It seems like a lot of the work I I tend to gravitate towards is I would say maybe automotive adjacent. So for example, recent client I had was a CRM system for car dealerships. I’m working with the company right now. That makes kind of bucket trucks, utility trucks and digger derricks and things that are more along those lines. I’ve worked for a car wash chain that was looking to expand. I worked for a tire company that was, you know, like a big a big box tire company. So another one was a convertible top replacement company. So convertible top gets old and tired after 7 to 10 years. It’s time to replace it. These guys are the one of the number one kind of second suppliers for that. So anyway, so it’s all. But now having said that, I also had a great education client working on kind of training for certification exams for engineers, so widely different than what I was doing, you know, anything with wheels on it. But but again, the marketing challenges are all kind of similar, which is why I like the variety of work you end up doing. 

Dan 

Yeah, and and maybe going back to something you talked about earlier with the with the Ford program that you were involved with, how did that kind of you know, you got to see a lot of different roles that you mentioned. How did that kind of prepare you for where you are now? Is that kind of a the gateway for you? 

Alex 

I think it was absolutely the gateway because that it allowed me to get both the depth and the breadth of marketing experience. So because I got to just sit in those chairs for anywhere from 36 to 18 months, you get to know the job. But then after you’ve done, you know, all three or four chairs, you can step back and see how they all fit together. So. I think if you’re looking at a marketing leadership role, that’s kind of where you want to end up to have sat in all the chairs and understand exactly how those jobs function. I don’t know how I would be able. To do it, if I hadn’t had that experience. 

Dan 

Yeah. And even within the company, you know, the two that stick out to me that you mentioned was like on the product side, the product marketing, but then on the dealer side and kind of there has to be that pipeline of what people are asking for at the dealership versus what you’re promoting on the product, right? I mean, there’s there’s some natural collaboration that just has to happen there for. Work. 

Alex 

Oh, absolutely. And I would say one thing, Ford was really good at was talking to customers all the time, particularly if you’re planning like a new vehicle or you just launched a vehicle, we would do a lot of surveying, a lot of focus groups to understand what people really did or didn’t like about the car or the experience. You know, one of my favorite ones we used to do was called the Escape Shopper study. And that was when we would talk to customers who had the Ford had been on their final list of two or three vehicles they were considering, but ultimately they went with the Toyota, the Chevy or something and forward. So we’d go back and ask him. It’s like, hey, where did things go wrong? What was it about the product or the experience? It turned you off and ended up sending you a different direction. And that was amazing feedback to give to the engineering team so that they would know whatever the next iteration of the product was like, we didn’t hit the mark here. This didn’t work the way they wanted it to. And there’s a real art to asking the right questions to get to that level of detail too, because if someone says, well, we didn’t like the interior. OK, what does that mean? Right. So would was it too much plastic? Like you didn’t like your sight lines and materials feel cheap. Did the seat not feel comfortable in the position? You know, your overall kind of command position for driving. Like you got to probe a little deeper to give the the the engineering team something more tangible to be able to work on and improve. Now sometimes it was what I would call a service problem, which to me is is a dealership issue which is you know. Right to sell you the true coat, rust protection or whatever, right? So, and there’s nothing as an OEM we can really do about that. Obviously, we’ll talk to the dealer that’s the case, but what was really critical was how can I make the product better next time around. 

Dan 

Yeah, and. 

Rachel  

I think that’s something that not all marketing teams are good, or put the time and effort into is understanding and I’m kind of going back to your book, which we haven’t talked about yet, but Alex wrote The Three Notes of Marketing and you talked about this in your book because what I thought was interesting was not only, why didn’t they do it, but then you talk about like the deeper intrinsic why behind their why they’re making a purchase to begin with, that might even give you more insight into their why they didn’t do what they did. Right. So you talk about like falling short, or losing the bid or prospect. So I think that was. As a marketer can think about like ohh, why wouldn’t you purchase or why didn’t you purchase or where do we lose you in the funnel? But taking it talk about like taking it that one step deeper to understand. It’s almost like the psychology of a buyer. I think that’s something you know there is some of us there’s a science to marketing and I think that’s where where you hit it, talk a little bit about that. 

Alex 

Right, I think it’s easy, particularly if a company is engineering driven or manufacturing driven to think about all the features of the product and think you can stop there because. Yes, I understand that it can. You know, the the truck can drive so fast or that you know the arm of the thing can reach so high. That’s all great. But what does that enable your customer to actually do? There’s that famous quote that, you know, nobody wants to buy 1/4 inch drill bit. Everybody wants 1/4 inch hole, right. So think about, yeah, you’re selling the drill bit. I get it. But what you’re doing is enabling them to something on their project list they’re able to do, and then what’s the, you know, the intrinsic value of that too? well-being able to finally hang the shelf that maybe my wife has been nagging me about for six months and I finally can get around to doing what I need to do. Like, there are things you can do to enable people through the use of your products. So you can’t think about it just as a list of features. That’s great. But it’s both the kind of obvious benefits, and then more the intrinsic benefits when you start getting into that level of analysis of what your customer is looking for, you communicate much more effectively and on a different level and a more meaningful. And that’s where things can make a difference, because now people start seeing you and what you’re providing as a solution to their problems is something that enables them to have a better life. And if that’s how they feel about your product, you are so much further along. Than a lot of other businesses. 

Rachel  

I think you can take that back to the marketing funnel as a whole, right? So when you’re trying to create content for top of the funnel or anything in general thinking about? Problem solving from the jump what is your audiences problem that they’re trying to solve and writing content? Or, you know, creating content that starts there? You’re probably going to hook them a little bit sooner in the process than if you just try to talk about the features of your product specifically, right? It’s got it. There’s going to be a connection. 

Alex 

Absolutely. And the thing is, the more commoditized your product is, the more important that becomes because at the end of the day, if your product function does pretty much the same as the top two or three competitors, you need to find something specific or unique you do in either the way you do it or how you solve that problem that is truly different and probably where the pricing premium compared to whatever else the others are doing. 

Dan 

Yeah. And and I think that kind of ticks off a couple of the of the “knows” of marketing that were in your book, but but take a second and and just walk us through those, the three Nos as as laid out within the book and kind of what they mean to you. 

Alex 

Absolutely. The the three knows of marketing are. Do you know your customer? Do you know yourself? And then do you know your funnel or your execution? I wanted to start with the customer because ultimately you know as I say in the book, if you don’t have any customers, your business is a really expensive hobby, right? That’s that’s the. Nature of it. So. But it isn’t just like when I say no, your customer, there’s specific things I’m asking about. Do you know who you’re going out from a segmentation standpoint, right. Who is your total addressable market and where do you want to target? Cause for most companies, whatever they’re producing or whatever service they have, there’s a lot of people they could be focusing on or could use their product, but who do you really want to focus on who’s going to love you for who you are, that’s your target customer, though, right there. The second is, do you know why they love you? Right. Do you understand why your best customers hang around, why they come back to your time and time again? Hopefully they come back to you. Otherwise, you got a whole different set of. But do you understand that and can you articulate that the other side of that, of course being why you lose customers, which we kind of like we just talked about with the escape shopper study, why is it you somehow don’t make the, you know, make the cut or even worse, a lot of companies I find focused so much on just getting more leads in the top of the funnel, they’re not paying attention to the fact that you know, it’s not a funnel, it’s a sieve. Like everyone just goes for once. And they’re done, and they don’t focus on retaining those customers, which is really where a lot of the profitability opportunity is, yeah. 

Dan 

Yeah. 

Alex 

And then finally, you know, do you understand what their pain point is? And can you articulate it right? What is the true problem that your product or service solves for them and that’s really key to understanding everything you do now after you focus on that, you know that about your customer now, what do you know about yourself? So, you know, do you know what your mission vision and and you know your core values are? And a lot of times people say, yeah, we got a mission, we got a vision. It’s on the plaque on the wall, whatever. That’s not what I’m talking about.  What I wanna know is why did the founders start the company? Why does the CEO get up, get out of bed every day? What’s the passion that drives them? And does that permeate to the entire organization? Because if it doesn’t, then everybody under you has just got a job. What you need to do is have that same the common goal and understanding of what you’re trying to accomplish as an organization and when people get that, then they buy into something bigger than just their job. Their satisfaction goes up, their feeling of being on a team goes up, it just benefits everything. Now, having said all that, the second thing is what do you really know about you? That’s unique, right? So. Who, what, why, where, when? What is it about your company? The way you can solve their problem, where you’re located? Whatever it is, it’s relevant to the customer. What is it uniquely about you? That’s that’s that’s important. If you get that Venn diagram between what? The pain points are and what the customer is really looking for and how you can uniquely solve their problem. That intersection is your value proposition. And once you get that right, and get it concise, that should go across all of your communications at every touch point, because that is who you are, and that’s something will be true to you and true to your brand. 

Alex 

Now once you get all that figured out, now it’s time to focus on execution, right? That’s when you know your funnel. So you know the channels you want to go after based on who they are, the kind of message you want to send out. The reason I did it in that order though is because a lot of times like when I start a new engagement, it always goes to tactics first, right, the CEOs like, well, we need a new Facebook campaign. Like well, you do, but before we get there, let’s go back and figure out some of the fundamental pieces of the marketing conversation that you guys have never done, cause a lot of times. 

Rachel  

You probably can stop them too, and even maybe, say at that point in time you actually don’t need a Facebook campaign, you need XY or Z because. You maybe would have what you were doing clearly wasn’t working, yyou want another Facebook campaign to think it’s gonna do it, but if we actually stepped back further, we don’t even have to spend the money on the. 

Dan 

Are your customers even on Facebook? 

Rachel  

Facebook campaign because? Yeah, right. I mean, like I think that’s you. You’re gonna take one step forward to take three steps back. So when you come in and say like, we’re not even gonna go to that first, let’s start back here and talk through this way to talk about ROI and saving some money, you might spend some upfront, but hopefully that comes back through, cause you’re doing it the right way. 

Alex 

Exactly. Exactly. Because oftentimes, if you haven’t done the marketing strategy piece, any advertising you have any campaign, you have probably doesn’t ladder up to anything concrete, not to define that value proposition. 

Rachel  

Yeah. 

Alex 

first and then everything will ladder up to that. Then it’s gonna be a lot more effective because now you’re actually speaking exactly to what the customer’s problem is and how you can solve it. Regardless of what you know, what channel you’re on, Facebook’s need one to pick on. But yeah, yeah. 

Rachel 

True. 

Dan 

But so going back to know yourself, I feel like that one sounds like such an easy one when you like think about I know my company. I know what we do. I know what we make. I know who buys it, you know. But talk about maybe why that is or why that can be a little bit more difficult and maybe some of the things that that you’ve seen work well in kind of doing some more of that deeper self exploration I guess you call it. 

Alex 

It’s a bit of a double edged sword when you talk about know yourself because. I’ve dealt with companies before, like engineering driven companies were like, well, that’s what we really need to talk about because you know, we follow these processes and we’ve got this tight team and we do this and we do this, but it’s all talking about themselves in relation to themselves. Yeah, and that company in particular had a situation where they had produced a product that was pretty cool and can solve a lot of problems, but it didn’t solve any problem uniquely or interestingly. Well it was like it could do a lot of things OK, but it didn’t do anything exceptionally well, so it was a product that was kind of designed without a customer. So you’re trying to at that point retrofit it in. Well, you could use it in this application or you could use it over there. Or you could do it. Here. Yeah, but for that it’s too heavy for there. It takes too much power for here. Like there was a there was a limit to each of the potential solutions. They came up with because they didn’t start with the customer in mind, you know, at the at the onset. So that’s the problem. When you focus too much on just yourself. Now having said that, the the flip side of that I guess is when you talk about yourself in terms of your customer, right, and I’m a big proponent of of Donald Miller and the story brands and when you put everything in terms of the hero’s journey, which if you’re not familiar with it, it’s it’s a great book, you just come out with Serbian 2.0, but basically it’s about putting your customer in the role of the hero and you become your customer or you’re a company that is the guide who can help the customer fulfill their destiny. So it’s it’s a creative, fun way to kind of tell the story of what your company is trying to do. But that process makes a big difference because that that simple shift of I’ve got to know what’s unique about me, but I’ve got to know what’s unique about me in terms of why it’s relevant to the customer. That’s something that most companies probably don’t do. 

Dan 

Yeah, because otherwise it can just be, you know, you could print a tech spec sheet and call it a day if you didn’t have to worry about that. 

Alex 

Exactly. Exactly. So again, if you haven’t read how to build a story brand, it really is a it’s a good, it’s a good read, it’s it’s a fun way to to rethink about how you frame your marketing communications. 

Dan 

1. Yeah, give it a read.

Rachel 

We talk about being a data-driven organization, meaning we really fuel how we put programs together, how we run campaigns, how we do strategy with data, right, and then you collect it as you go, you get smarter about it, you rework things. So I would love to hear kind of from your marketing perspective how marketing is an investment right, you have to invest in tools, but you got to then look at the metrics. So maybe what are you using or how are you measuring success metrics ROI, are there some KPIs you take in to each job that you’re like we have to make sure we’re looking at these right? I’m sure sales numbers are one of them, but how? Do you feel like with kind of your marketing approach and strategy that you’re getting to that ROI and figuring that out. What are you looking at? 

Alex 

I think one of the challenges with metrics, particularly with digital metrics is there are so many things you can look at that it’s distracting. You’re not necessarily focusing on only the things that are driving the business forward. So for example, the four things you know, depending on the channels you’re using, depending on how you’re going to market, it can vary, but fundamentally. It’s a pretty simple funnel really. I mean it’s it goes from awareness to interest to consideration to actual sales. What’s interesting though is most people don’t really understand how much they have to invest at each step because they don’t pay attention to how thin the funnel gets going from step A to step B. So if you start with you know, we want to sell 100,000 widgets next year. OK, great. Well, how many sales do you guys normally close? Well, we probably closed one in three, OK, that means you have to have 3000 qualified leads, right? OK. Well, then how many people do we start with before they turn into a lead? Well, usually it’s one in four. OK, well, then you need to have 1.2 million. Like you, just you gotta back it out the way.  And when you do that, people realize, oh, crap, you’re right. We have to have a lot more awareness than we thought or we need to get more efficient moving them from point A to point B right from just knowing who we are to actually being interested. So I try not to make it more complicated than that because otherwise again, it’s really easy to get caught up in particularly attitudinal metrics that are interesting, but they don’t really tell me anything tangible know is going to lead to a sale. 

Rachel  

Well, and I think what you probably find when you talk about it in that way is actually you uncover, I would imagine. Missing processes in there, right? So it’s like if we’re taking them from here, we’re spending all this money like we realized we gotta spend a lot more on awareness because in order to get them through to the bottom. But does the sales team know that? Is the sales team a lot? Who’s out there, boots on the ground doing it? You know, if you go back to even your, for example of OEM and dealer. The dealer is the one closing that deal, so there’s got to be some serious education at an OEM level of what those goals and everything is from marketing perspective to to bring it through, right. So when you think about it that way, I think a lot of what you can uncover is going to be missing connections and processes to actually hit the numbers that you’re looking to hit. 

Alex 

You’re no, you’re absolutely right. That’s. That is the key. I would say the other thing is too. I’m still focusing only on new customers, new customer acquisition, you know traditional top of the from the bottom of the. Well, the other side of things and when you want to call it a flywheel, I know there’s a lot of different models out there, but just thinking about existing customers and what can you do to sell them an additional product or more to them like one of the things when I work at Walmart is they always talk about how do you get one more visit or one more item in the cart with every visit that’s how you grow, right, without having to bring in new customers. So how much focus is there really on that? You know, at Ford, we used to talk about share our garage, so maybe they’ve got an F150, but they’ve got a Camry, it’s like, well, what would it take to make that a Fusion? How do we focus on? That so it’s it’s a different approach than just putting more advertising and doing something else on American Idol, right? So that piece is important. Same thing with loyalty and and referrals, right. Because generally if you’re doing it right, you don’t have to advertise much because your best customers, your existing customers, right, they’re your best. And they’re the ones again, you know, through word of mouth share what you do and and bring new people to you. And when you can start generating a lot more of that inbound business, let I mean life becomes easier for the sales team for sure, but for everybody, because the people that already know you and love you kind of as we talked about earlier, how many your customers love you and and why they’re the ones who are telling your story for you and that’s always going to give more credibility than you trying to tell it yourself. 

Dan 

Yeah, you’re kind of starting, you know, 3/4 of the way down the funnel already. If somebody’s best friend is saying, hey, you should get a Ford, right? I mean, there’s there’s some, there’s some level of trust that that a brand just can’t ever get to thats a friend or family. 

Rachel  

I feel like in the Detroit area we’re also a little biased in that because everybody is 1° of separation from knowing someone that works for for an automotive company. 

Dan 

And has a discount code. 

Rachel  

So it’s I forget about that sometimes cause there’s so much when you think about loyalty like there is loyalty in. Especially I feel like in the Detroit area so. It gets even that gets even harder to do in an area like this. 

Alex 

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I remember the first time I was really in California looking around saying, well, we’re all the American cars. Like, we definitely live in a bit of a bubble in Detroit, yeah. 

Dan 

Yeah, not quite the same across the country. 

Rachel  

That’s for sure. 

Alex 

Yes, having said that, I mean, you know a good strong company with with good products is gonna win in the long. I mean, I was. I was very fortunate to be at Ford when Alan Mulally came in with just kind of this revolutionary concept of let’s build cars people actually want to buy, right? Not just the same stuff, even. 

Dan 

Mind blown. 

Alex 

So and it’s so it’s such a simple clear thing to articulate, but nobody was saying that specifically, right. It’s well, no, no, this plant builds this, it’s got this capacity, we can’t slow it down. We’re stuck with this machine and this tooling for another two years. I mean that was a problem before Alan got there. That we realized first hand, which is when you make a mistake in automotive, that’s a three to five year problem you’re stuck with right because of the investment that was made in those vehicles so it it really you really want to get it right. 

Dan 

Yeah, that’s that’s for sure. Well, well, Alex, I know you’ve we’ve we’re close to time here, but we’ve got one. One last question kind of a fun one that we always like to ask. So picture yourself back first coming out of college, maybe stepping into your nonprofit role, what was, what’s one thing that you’ve come across throughout your career? That you wish you would have known at 21 or early on, you know, first coming out there. 

Alex 

I think one of the things that served me best is to always be curious and not be afraid to take the job that doesn’t sound or look as sexy, but is a chance for you to have an impact and make a difference. I think I just through luck and timing had some of those opportunities in my career, but I never shied away from them. I would. You know if if everyone wants to go to four division, well, I’ll go to Lincoln Mercury and see how that is. Or I’ll try FCSD out. I I never looked away from an opportunity to grow and what I could learn in terms of either my skill set or about an industry or something else. So I would say being curious is probably one of the the and that’s, you know, Ted Lasso, that’s not where I meant to go. But I really do think that is one of the the key things of succeeding, not just in your career, but. In life. 

Dan 

Yeah, I love it. I love it. Well, well, we’ll put a link to the three knows in in the description here, but where else can people find you? Or or where else can people connect with you? 

Alex 

I am on LinkedIn. I’m on Facebook. Yeah. And again, the three laws of marketing is on Amazon, so available both in Kindle or paperback. I had one friend of mine who refused to buy the paperback cause he doesn’t buy books anymore. He’s like when the Kindle comes out, I’ll buy that version. So. 

Dan 

Anything special for him? 

Rachel  

I kind of feel honestly, I feel him on that. I’m a Kindle girl myself, but Dan had the had the the copy, so I got the physical copy, which I haven’t had in quite some time, so. 

Dan 

I’m a ride or die paperback. I can’t make the switch. 

Rachel  

It is polarizing. 

Alex 

Was there anything else and you guys both had a chance to look at the book. I mean, is there anything else in there, any of the stories you were curious about or any other questions you might have had? 

Dan 

And. You know, I think the I think the one part that I that I really liked was the was the lost the lost customer survey that you already mentioned. That was something that that really hit home and and thinking about the right way to ask those questions to kind of get to the core of it and and you’re right about when you were talking earlier about kind of coming in with a new client or a customer, or even just seeing this in practices. People always want to jump to the action, right, jump to the tactics, jump to the strategy. But that’s what I just found at home. Most to me is you have to go through these steps if you really want to be successful and have a have a good program. Otherwise you’re just kind of guessing, checking and shouting into the void in some cases. 

Alex 

Yeah. No, I appreciate that. I one of the things I said early on in the book too is like, look what what I’m about to explain isn’t complicated. It’s just not easy, right? That’s the challenge. That’s it’s like the key to good health isn’t complicated, it’s sleep, diet and exercise, right. Actually doing it really hard, as it turns out. 

Dan 

Yeah. Right. And selling the idea of, you know, even internally within a company selling the idea of we will do this really well, but you won’t see the results until we get through step you know 1234 and five and we’re going into this the right way. I think that can be a tough one sometimes too. 

Alex 

Exactly. I mean, that’s always been the magic of trying to sell an SEO project, right? It’s like this will pay off. It’s just not gonna pay off for the next 20 days. 

Dan 

Yeah. 

Rachel  

Sure. Yeah. That’s a big piece of what we talked about with like even media relations people are like we need to be out in the media and like, well, do you have a year or two of investment that you’re willing to make and spend money on to? You know, get those results, it it just doesn’t happen quick but. Yeah, I I agree with Dan. I think that escaped customer in the surveying aspect maybe. Can you if you have another second, I would love for you to kind of go into if this it’s not the secret sauce. How were you approaching those people? How were you getting getting to them to be able to ask those questions to get that data. I think in marketing, surveying sounds like, well, duh. Like we can do it, but then they’re like, how do I find them? How do I actually get to that decision maker or find that person to be able to ask them the questions I want and then get there by into, you know, have their attention. What did that look like? 

Alex 

We had an entire team. Again, this is Ford Motor Company with a lot of resources, but we had an entire research team in house. They did a lot of that outreach. It’s interesting though with those individuals because sometimes they’re very apprehensive because like I kind of already broke up with you and now you wanna talk to me again. And why are you talking to me and let me go do my thing. But other people were very candid and open about sharing their feedback. It’s like, look, yeah, I’ll tell you exactly what I didn’t like about the car. Is they, you know, people, as long as they think you’re really listening to them. And it’s it’s very odd in the circumstances I’m describing right where, you know, same thing like if I if we were shopping between two houses and I didn’t buy one would the realtor come back and ask what I didn’t like about the other one probably not would the owner of the other house want to know? I would think so. 

Rachel  

Yeah. 

Alex 

Yeah, though it’s just I think it’s just something that isn’t done very often. So I think initially it’s more surprising than anything when. We were reaching. 

Rachel  

Right. 

Alex 

But people were, I thought we’d have to give them huge incentives or some cash prize or some won’t even talk to us. But people were more open than I anticipated they would be. 

Rachel 

You know what I think might be in the world we live in today. Everybody has an opinion and most people put that opinion online. If you think of, like, online reviews, even on Google or Yelp. But then like Reddit, like anything on Reddit, especially Twitter, like, those are two platforms. People are really speaking their opinions and and what they want, so maybe for a smaller company that doesn’t have the resources at a Ford Motor Company does start by looking your company name up or any of those threads in those places to get some candid thoughts from people on maybe why they didn’t write. People are talking online constantly and looking for opinions from other buyers or other people that have been in their shoes so I would say that’s probably a good place to start without the big resources to do a very informal kind of survey and and process that you did. 

Alex 

Yeah, I think that’s I think that’s sound. There are places where up to your point, their opinions out there, right and some of them are blowhards that are just, you know, ohh your car sucks and sometimes like, you know, I don’t this color combination was horrendous. I don’t know why they even offered it. Like, I don’t know what they’re thinking like, you know, these the wheels are too small for the outside of the body like there are things that are concrete now. It’s still some. You. But at least you can start to capture some of that, and it’s more tangible than just you know I hate those guys. 

Dan 

Yeah. Find your find your repeat opinions.  

Rachel  

Yeah makes sense. Well, makes thank you so much for your time, your knowledge. I mean, I was saying to Dan earlier, I no matter what we discussed here today, I was really excited to talk to you because you clearly know yourself if you’re willing to write it a book about it and put it out there and put it into practice. So I feel like I’ve I’ve learned a lot and I just. I think you have a lot of knowledge. So thank you for your time and and really dropping that on us today, it was a pleasure.  

Dan 

Thanks so much. 

Alex 

I really appreciate it guys. Thanks. 

Rachel  

A big thank you again to Alex for his knowledge. Honestly, his stories. I feel like he has some really good stories and and just tactical uses for the things that he outlines in this book. It’s always fun to hear about someone’s kind of windy career path. 

Dan 

Yeah, yeah. And putting each of the each of the sections kind of into context and helping you understand with those examples, I think that’s always good to kind of give it some real world context. 

Rachel  

Yeah, absolutely. Again, book is linked in the description if you. Want to check that out? If you have any questions for Alex, he seems very receptive to answering questions and talking to people, so definitely give them a follow on LinkedIn too. 

Dan 

Yep, Yep, Yep. Check them out there and on Amazon, and we will check it out next time. 

Rachel  

Bye.