Blue Collar Culture

Business Results the Old Fashioned Way

Bert Martinez | Using Marketing to Find Employees

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In his work with clients ranging from Fortune 500 companies to small businesses, Bert Martinez has perfected a marketing strategy that converts prospects into customers with ease… and spurs growth as a result.

He says that this is especially important for those small businesses because they are the ones that struggle most with creating impactful, effective marketing. 

One of the issues is that they don’t really know who their customers are and what needs they have, even though they are usually confident that they understand their target market.

We talk about that disconnect, as well as…

  • How to use marketing to attract top talent to your team
  • A step-by-step process for fine-tuning your marketing campaigns
  • The importance of your sales “culture” – and how to create it
  • A better strategy for identifying your ideal customer 
  • And more

Listen now…

Mentioned in this episode:

Transcript

Ryan Englin: Hey and welcome back to another episode of the Blue Collar Culture Podcast. I'm your co-host Ryan Englin and I'm here with Jeremy Macliver.

Jeremy Macliver: Welcome back.

Ryan: And today we are very excited about our guest Bert Martinez. He is a marketing Jedi. He's worked with companies like Google and CBS as well as over 1000 small businesses to solve their marketing challenges. Bert helps businesses convert marketing into customers. He's known for laying down growth strategies in a single conversation. And at the end, we'll let you know how to get ahold of him. But hey, Bert, thank you so much for being here.

Bert Martinez: Ryan, Jeremy, thank you for inviting me. I'm excited to be on your show and, you know, have some fun.

Ryan: Cool. Well, hey, I'd love to start this off by just getting to know a little bit more about you. So if you wouldn't mind, tell us your story over your professional journey, how you got to where you are, and maybe some things you've learned along the way.

Bert: Ah, man, that's a lot.

Ryan: Give me the Cliff Notes version.

Bert’s Journey (Cliff Notes Version)

Bert: Yeah, definitely the Cliff Notes version. Well, you know what, I started my career in advertising. I was selling for my parents started the first Spanish paper in Houston, Texas. And kind of by accident fell into that and was promoted right into the sales department because my parents needed somebody to help with the sales. And that's kind of how I got into it. And then just over time, I fell in love with marketing. I fell in love with advertising.

And what I have come to realize that advertising and marketing, if you will, is, in my opinion, one of the fastest ways to wealth in America because if you're good at marketing, you can not only grow your business, you can help people grow their business. You can, you know, if you know how to market, you can literally write a check as big as you want. And marketing is one of those areas where small companies struggle with.

And when I say small companies, we're talking, you know, 300 employees or less, really tend to struggle with their marketing, with their message, with taking an ad and converting it into a customer. So anyway, back in the day, I started there and just organically fell in love with marketing and was able to get better at it and take classes and learn from some very, we call it highly successful marketers. And that's the cliff notes.

Ryan: Cool. Well hey, I think that's a great way for us to segue into our topic. So as you know, the title of the podcast is Blue Collar Culture. And we spend a lot of time talking about company culture. We talk about how to build healthy, successful teams. How do business owners and business leaders, how do they get results from their people?

Such a challenge, but right now, we're really dealing with low unemployment. And it's hard to find people. In fact, I think it's been that case for the last 20 years, it's been hard to find people. It just feels like it's a lot harder right now. And one of the things that I do with core matters is our services lend itself towards recruiting using marketing. So we're not just using marketing to find customers, we're using marketing to find good employees.

Bert: Absolutely. You know, I'm glad you brought that up because, yes, on more than one occasion, we have set up a marketing funnel to recruit insurance agents, real estate agents, to recruit all sorts of talent. And I think you're right that it's always been hard. I think now it's harder. It's become even harder simply because there are so many job opportunities.

And some of these job opportunities are ridiculously incentivized, meaning they have the, you know, we were talking before the show, you know, so they're doing the crazy stuff where you, you know, you're working just three or four days a week and you can work from home in your underwear and you have a nap pod there in your cubicle. And they're just throwing, they're really just throwing money trying to hopefully find somebody that will stay with the company longer than a week or two.

Ryan: Absolutely. And that's where culture really kicks in. I mean, if you look at the surveys that are out there, if you look at any of the studies, it's very clear that people don't take jobs for money. They don't leave jobs because of money. They're taking jobs for other things. They're leaving jobs usually because they don't get along with their boss. But the reason that they're there working Yes, they all need money, but it's not about these fringe benefits and all this extra stuff that we throw at them. People want to feel like they're a part of something bigger than themselves, and that's what it really comes down to.

Bert: It does. And one of the things that you guys probably know this better than anybody, because I've seen this on more than one occasion that is your company's culture will outdo your company strategy. So culture really is everything. And if you don't know how to create a good culture, then you're going to struggle.

Jeremy: Yeah, absolutely. No, we've had a couple of our other podcasts, we've even got into how does that affect the sales cycle. How does it affect a lot of areas in the organization just because our ability to adapt, build momentum, you know, and I know you said earlier, if you can market and promote, well, you basically write that big check. Well, to actually get that check to the bank, we actually have to have employees to take it there and get them processed.

So, you know, and then I, you know, Ryan works at the marketing piece of it from the, you know, how do we hire them and get them in there. And then I'm looking at it from internally. You know, often we forget that there's a whole brand inside the company that we need to be clear on how are we articulating the vision, the way that we're handling stuff, the way we're communicating internally, the dynamics of the team are just as critical as that is external.

Bert: Yes, absolutely.

Ryan: So I'd love to dig into like, see if we can channel some of your marketing Jedi mind tricks here. But I would love to hear from you a little bit of what are you seeing a lot of businesses do right now to really stand out with their marketing? You know, there's this belief that the internet has made it so everybody can be a marketer, and it makes things so easier.

But I don't know that that's always true. So what are some of the things that you're seeing out there that companies are doing? Smaller businesses, I mean, below 300 employees, that's who Jeremy and I talk to a lot. So what are some of the things they can do to really drive in their message and really make sure that they're standing out?

Marketing Jedi Mind Tricks

Bert: Sure. So what I do very routinely is we'll actually have a focus group. And the first focus group that we do with some of our clients is actually with the employees to find out who they think their customer is. And then the second focus group that we do is we actually start doing focus groups with their actual customers to see if they match up. And I want to say that 90% of the time, they don't match.

In other words, the company thinks that their customers have these needs and characteristics. And then when we actually bring in some of their customers and bring them into the focus groups, they're surprised to the answers and they start realizing that they're, you know, that there's a big mismatch. And so the number one thing that I see companies do is that they are not customer-centric enough to know who their customers are.

And maybe they were in the very beginning when they were small, but now that they're, you know, maybe 50 employees or 100 employees or 200 employees, they haven't checked in with their customers. They're still assuming that their customers are the same people when they were three or four employees. And so the number one thing is you got to really know who your customers are. That's just vital and don't assume. And even if you just had the best year of your life, your business just doubled its sales, maybe it would have quadrupled in sales if you really knew who your customers were.

That's number one. So definitely the first thing I always do with my individual, with my clients is to absolutely find out who their customers are, what are their needs, what are their pain points, things of that nature, What's keeping them up at night is, you know, is really the question I want to know. And then of course, then once we understand who our customer is, then where do those customers spend their time? Are they watching YouTube? Are they reading certain magazines? And that's going to help us align the message and the marketing. so we can be more effective.

And so, Ryan, to answer your question, the internet has made things a lot easier as far as getting instant results as opposed to when I was going up, you know, you would run an ad, and let's say in the newspaper, or the radio, or even TV, and you had to wait a while to see what the results were. TV and radio was a little bit quicker, better, faster. Print was ridiculously slow. But now with the internet, you can put an ad together and within 24 hours, you know if people are clicking on your ads, and if they are clicking on your ads, that is part of the success equation.

Then the next thing I want to see is how many people who clicked on the ad are now going to the website or to the landing page or sales page, wherever they're being directed. And so if people are clicking on the ad, but they're not clicking to the next step, then we know that there's something wrong with the ad, right? And so that's a fairly easy thing to fix. If they're clicking on to the next one, the next step, but again, we're not getting a lot of opt-ins or we're not getting a lot of purchases, then there's again, then there may be a misalignment with the ad versus the message on the actual website.

So it has gotten easier. It's gotten better, but the fundamentals are still the same, which is you got to know who your audience is. you got to know what keeps them up at night, you got to know how to best market to them. Is it direct mail? Direct mail still works, it actually direct mail works, in some cases better than anything else because a lot of people are doing less of it. And then the other thing that people need to be aware of that I see, that I come across a lot is their customers might have bought one thing from them. And I'll give you an example. We work with a chain of print stores.

And when we started doing the focus groups, the customer had no idea. I mean, like when I, like 90% of the customers in the focus groups had no idea that the print shop did all these other services. And the print shop basically had left just a huge amount of money on the table because they were not marketing to their existing clients and saying, Hey, you know, we did this brochure for you, but we can also do this and that and the other thing. So those are the, you know, in a, you know, and kind of along the way, those are the three things that most people can do very inexpensively.

They can, they have a lot of control. And that, just as a recap is, again, understand who your client is, understand where the best places to market them. And then thirdly, sell more to your clients. Do your clients, are your clients aware that you do all the different things that you do? Now, if you're just a one-time sale, then that's, you don't have to worry about it. But if you do multiple services, you know, your clients need to be aware that you do multiple services.

Ryan: You know, there's so much of what you were just talking about there and marketing that I see translate over into the recruiting world So well. So much of what we do is around finding the right people, putting the right people in the business making sure they're in the right seat. And so much of that is if you don't know who it is that you're looking for, if you don't know who your customer is, or in this case, your prospective employee, you're never gonna find them. Or if you do find them and the message is incorrect, you're not there. It's not going to resonate with them, and you're not going to attract them into an application or into your pipeline.

And if you're not communicating with them about all the opportunities that exist, it's not going to be sticky. Because I think too often, we hired this person to be a server in our restaurant, but we forgot to tell them that if they wanted to go cook, they could go cook. We just assume because they applied for server, they never want to work in the kitchen. But while that might be true with some, we can't make the assumption that they'll figure it out. I mean, that's what you were just talking about with the customers, the print shop's like, well, they should know. Our customers should know we do all these things.

Bert: We're a full-service print shop, well, that doesn't mean anything to the customer. They don't truly know what that means. So you explain it to them and, you know, of course, you know, the old saying about assuming, right?

Ryan: Yep. Yeah, absolutely. So I think like to sum up that idea, that concept that you had there and tying it back to culture, is culture drives your message. And if your culture is wrong, your message is going to be wrong. And if your message is going to be wrong, it really doesn't matter who you're sending that message to, you know? Good customer bad customer, yeah, it doesn't matter if the message is incorrect. Is that fair?

The Necessity of Identifying and Targeting Your Audience

Bert: Yes, absolutely correct. You know, and so, I come across small companies that are just struggling to make sales. And the number one mistake that these smaller companies make, and when you ask them who your customer is, they'll say, Well, everybody. Well, no, it's not true. That's why it's not working for you. You know, and, you know, it just so happens that all three of us live here in the Phoenix Valley. And so, you know, here we have several choices of pizza. There's Pizza Hut, there's Papa John's, there's Domino's, and there's another chain out here called,

Ryan: Giordano's?

Bert: That's it. And there are going to make pizza and they don't do, I don't think they do delivery. You know, you go in there and you sit down and they make these really nice pizzas for you and it's basically, you know, two people will go to Giordano's and we'll spend 5060 bucks on pizza because it's a full restaurant experience, as opposed to getting a $10 Pizza from Papa John's for Domino's. And so, here are four companies that essentially surface level are selling the same thing, which is pizza. However, the way they sell it and who they sell it to is different.

And, you know, so you have Domino's that not only do they sell pizza, but man we do pasta bowls, and we do this and we do that and we have all these different possibilities. So if you don't want pizza, you can order pasta or whatever. And so they really try to separate themselves from the other people who are selling pizza. And so to me, you can look around and you can see that some of these, you can learn from other marketers, and see how they're distinguishing themselves and seeing how their message is different. So maybe you can learn and adapt that to your company.

Ryan: Absolutely. I mean, Bentley has no identity crisis when it comes to who their customers are. But then you look at someone like Chevy, who's been in trouble a lot these last couple of decades and they like, they want to service everybody. And it's a really challenge because you lose your identity in that as well. I think that's an important piece to that.

Bert: It really is. And using the auto industry, you look at what Toyota did. So Chevy, a Chevrolet could be a really expensive car or could be a low-end car. It could be a truck or it could be a small truck or a big truck. I mean, Chevy, like you said, has all these different brands, and so therefore, they're struggling.

And then you look at Toyota, so we know what a Toyota is. And Toyota has a luxury brand called Lexus. And we know what that is. And so they market Toyota different than they market Lexus. And it's the same manufacturer and they use some of the same, what do you call it, undercarriage or body or whatever it's called. And yet they sell to different customers.

Ryan: Sure, absolutely. So how would you see that translate? I mean, you talk about sales team and I think you actually ran or built sales teams, when you're looking for good salespeople, what are some tips, some thoughts, some strategies that can help these companies out there find some really good reliable salespeople?

Bert: Well, you know what, you're gonna love this because one of the things that I look at is one of the questions that I ask is what kind of sales culture do you want? Because there are, you know, you have some sales cultures that are nothing but closers, right? They're not necessarily very good at building the relationships. They, you know, they're there to hammer their customers and try to close them. And once they close that customer, they pass them off to a customer service rep who's going to love them and nurture them and fulfill their, the company's promise to them, right?

So what kind of culture is important in sales? Do you want an advisory type or consultative type of culture with a salesperson takes their time to get to know that customer and help them identify what product is going to be best for them, right? So I do start with culture because that's so important. And then the other thing that I do when putting together a sales team is we become brilliant at the basics.

And so, in selling just like in anything else, there are going to be some basic fundamentals that no matter how good you are, you could always get better at. And that might be how to go from this consultative selling to now closing in that same style without sounding salesy, or seeming like you're putting a lot of pressure on the client. And that is a true art form. The other thing is, every sales department, every customer is going to have a certain set, if you will, of objections, you know, most people are going to hit the price objection.

And so again, we set up training on the five or six or 10 most common objections that this customer or this company is experiencing and we'd become brilliant at those objections. Because if they're, if you're hitting them all the time, then it's best to be prepared for them. So it's not a big shock when somebody says, Man, I can't wait 30 days for you to deliver the XYZ machine. I need it today. Or I got to go someplace else, or, you know, whatever the objection is. So culture is the first thing and then the second thing is training.

Jeremy: So from the training standpoint, what do you find are the most critical things, you know, we're bringing on sales team, we've talked to them about the culture, now when you get them into our company. What are some of the most important things for us to train on at the very get-go?

Refine Your Onboarding Process

Bert: You know what, I think in the very get-go, the onboarding process is so important. Again, it goes back to your culture. I'm a big believer in having scripts. And I'm a big believer in checklists and just, Hey, you know, you go through the steps and you make sure that all these steps are done so that person is onboarded correctly. They set up their voicemail in the standard operating procedure way, right? In the standard way. They know how to log in to their system, they've done all this stuff.

I think that Ryan said that, you know, that we know that people aren't there just for the paycheck, they want to stay there, that whether they stay or leave because of the culture or the boss. And so I believe that you should have part of your culture should be something that represents the value of the company. So is this a fun place to work where people are valued and they're encouraged to let's say, make mistakes and there is this, you know, this culture of fun? You know, I mean, it's a fun place to work even though Yeah, we got to get down to business and we got to perform.

Is it a fun place to work or is it a place that come Sunday night, I'm starting to get butterflies in my stomach because I got to go to work and it's just a terrible culture. So whatever your culture is, you got to find people to fit it. And so the onboarding process may include taking that individual out to lunch so they can get to know everybody, right? So, you know, and so maybe the boss takes out the individual to lunch one day, so he can get to know the boss, and then maybe they do maybe a company lunch and learn kind of a thing so everybody gets to know them.

You know, the new hire. But one of the things that a lot of people fear is change. And starting a new job is fearful because it is change. And you want to make that person feel welcome. And I think that is really key to onboarding them correctly. So whether you have a very aggressive sales culture, they still need to feel the warm and fuzzy. Or if you have a more consultative type of scenario, again, they still need to feel that warm and fuzzy because ultimately, people want to be accepted and they want to be loved.

You know, whether, you know, and I know that sounds kind of weird, but that's really one of the big human drivers, right? Is we want to be accepted. And people do all sorts of crazy things to be accepted and to be part of the group, right? Some people pick up smoking, some people will get tattoos. They, you know, we do things to be accepted. And so when you're onboarding your individuals, make them feel warm and fuzzy as though they're accepted and valued from the very beginning.

Ryan: Now, I think that's some great tips there. A lot of times we do talk to marketing teams and sales teams that, you know, they're either not aligned or, you know, marketing wants to really ramp up some sales but the sales team isn't growing fast enough. They can't find enough good salespeople.

So I think there's some great insight on how to find some good salespeople. Well, hey, Bert, I can't believe that the time is up already. This went so fast. Thank you so much for your insight on this and culture and marketing. And for anybody out there that has any marketing questions or really wants to find some growth strategies, how do they get ahold of you?

Bert: The easiest place to get ahold of us is at Bertmartinez.com. That's BERT MARTINEZ dot come. Come check us out. We definitely love to talk to people for free and point them in the right directions. You know, and if we can give somebody some strategies to help them get over the hurdle, that's certainly something that we'd love to do. And that's basically the best place to get a hold of us.

Ryan: Awesome well Hey, thanks again for the time today. Really enjoyed it. Again, I'm Ryan Englin, co-host to the Blue Collar Culture Podcast here with Jerry Macliver and our guest today, Bert Martinez. Thanks again.

Jeremy: Thanks Bert.

Bert: You bet. Thank you guys.

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