Dave Gerhardt (Founder of Exit Five, former CMO) and guests help you grow your career in B2B marketing. Episodes include conversations with CMOs, marketing leaders, and subject matter experts across all aspects of modern B2B marketing: planning, strategy, operations, ABM, demand gen., product marketing, brand, content, social media, and more. Join 4,400+ members in our private community at exitfive.com.
Dave Gerhardt [00:00:14]:
Hey, it's me, Dave. So this is a special episode. This was a session that we recorded live at Drive, our first ever in person event, which was early September in Burlington, Vermont. It was incredible. We had 200 people there. The NPS after the event was 88. We're going to do it again this year. Don't worry.
Dave Gerhardt [00:00:32]:
I know there's a lot of FOMO out there. For those of you that didn't make it, we're going to do it again September 2025. But we have all of the recordings right here for you on the Exit Five podcast. Now, this is just the audio if you want the full video and see the slides and everything that is available exclusively in our community. Not on YouTube, not on the Internet, nowhere else except inside of Exit Five in the community. Join 4400members exit5.com and you can see all the content. Okay, let's get into this session from Drive. Devin Reed is here.
Dave Gerhardt [00:01:08]:
Devin is a legend in the content game. Every, every speaker referenced Gong's content and social media strategy and he's behind all that. But number one of the number one things that comes up in Exit Five is people wanting to know how to use LinkedIn. I'm a big believer that I don't see it as a social media channel. It's not a fun little toy that people play with. If I was running marketing at a B2B company today, I wouldn't be spending 20 grand a month on a on a retainer for PR. I would be investing it all in organic LinkedIn. And that's exactly what Devin's going to talk about here today.
Dave Gerhardt [00:01:39]:
So give it up for my guy, Devin Reed.
Devin Reed [00:01:48]:
Thanks. So when I. Fuck, I was going to drink out of that. So when I looked at the agenda, once Dave confirmed I'm going to speak, I was like, all right, cool. What slot did I get? And I was super grateful I didn't have to follow Ross. And then after yesterday, I was really fucking grateful I didn't have to follow Dan. And then I was like, shit, everyone's going to be pretty tired this morning, but it's still better than following those two. So I'm going to make a deal with you.
Devin Reed [00:02:19]:
I'm not going to do that super annoying thing where I asked everyone to stand up and stretch and shake it out. Instead, if you could just take out your phone and stare at that for the next 30 minutes, that'll make my job a lot Easier. So I, as it was referenced, started at Gong in 2019 as the head of content, and we built what I call a content powerhouse. We found content market fit, we scaled it across multiple channels, and it had a massive impact on Gong's brand and pipeline. And then I quit and I joined our competitor. And that could cause some problems and also caused a temptation, which I was reminded of time and time again, because during my listening tour at Clary, you know, I'm going around talking to marketers and salespeople and executives, and after the niceties and the weather and all that, they go, so you're going to run the Gong playbook here? And I said, it's tempting, isn't it? And I said, no, I'm not here to build Gong 2.0. I'm here to build clarity 2.0. And the reason why is because you can't just take a strategy in a playbook, copy and paste it, and take it from company to company.
Devin Reed [00:03:28]:
Seeing some nods over there. Reason being that is created in a certain time, in a certain market, for a certain audience. And so when you try to copy and paste it, it doesn't work. Plus, it's pretty freaking lazy. So what I did instead was think about, hey, how am I going to look at our strengths and see what we have today? And what I realize is there are principles that I can take with me from Gong, and I've taken them to clarity and I've taken them to the reader today, where I help B2B SaaS companies design top of funnel content strategies. And they're pretty timeless. And so if I take everything that I've learned, everything that I believe, and I put it into one principle, it would be this, oh, hell yeah, I got early. I look over, he's just eating the breakfast sandwich.
Dave Gerhardt [00:04:15]:
I was like to say, that was like a. That was real.
Devin Reed [00:04:18]:
That was like a Campbell soup. So I want people who influence and make purchasing decisions to know, like, and trust us. That's kind of it. Hell yeah. Phones are coming out early. Let's go. That's when you know you're doing well when that first phone comes out. And if it's vertical, you know they're lying.
Devin Reed [00:04:36]:
I would appreciate that too. And so I'm a content guy, so of course I believe content is the best way to do it. And every mission statement I go to starts with these three words, or excuse me, whoop, jumped ahead. I want them to know who we are, like what we're about, and trust we can help them. I'm making too Many jokes. I'm not looking at the conference monitor. So this is what it comes down to. That last one is really important because the four words that I always talk about are build trust at scale.
Devin Reed [00:05:05]:
That's really what it is. And so I was thinking, how am I going to build trust at scale at Clary? And the fun part is my cmo, Clary, is in the room right now. And I actually never told him this. Sorry, Kyle. I knew that when it came to the corporate LinkedIn page, Clary was never going to be gone. I told you. I had never told him this before. And when I joined, it was 12,000 followers.
Devin Reed [00:05:34]:
When I left, it was over 200,000 followers. Thank you. It was a great team. I had a great team of eight who helped obviously, scale this. It's not all me, but I was like, there's no way if the king of Revtech Sales tech is going to be crowned in the next two years, there's no way we're going to catch them up in this way. But I knew that we could play to our strengths. And so I thought, hey, what do I have that gong doesn't have or at least isn't using it? And that's a charismatic CEO. And it's okay if yours isn't charismatic.
Devin Reed [00:06:00]:
We sell sales tech, so you kind of have to be in that space. But I realized, hey, we've got a guy who believes in marketing because he hired a tattooed guy like me. And.
Dave Gerhardt [00:06:09]:
Wait, sorry, what does that have to do with marketing? You told me to interrupt. Sorry.
Devin Reed [00:06:14]:
Strike one, Dave. I'll see you after class. You believe if you hire a head of content. Sorry, Then you believe in marketing. Totally fucking threw me off, by the way, right before this at breakfast, I'm like, dude, we all love that you're on the mic, interrupting people. I hate it.
Dave Gerhardt [00:06:30]:
He's like, yeah, he's like. He's like, make sure you do it a lot during my session. You're already.
Devin Reed [00:06:34]:
Yeah, it's pretty Good. I have 48 minutes, right, to give this presentation now. It's all good. So what we decided to do, I'm really glad it's an informal conference, was to build Andy, andy Burns, our CEO. We decided to build his LinkedIn strategy. So we built a LinkedIn strategy. We committed to it for 12 months and then I wrote about it on LinkedIn. CEO just started posting.
Devin Reed [00:06:55]:
He got 6.1 million views in the first 12 months. If you click See More, you'd see that I shared a five step framework of how we got there. Now, what's really annoying. Is anyone, like, everyone I'm guessing is on LinkedIn, right? Like, do a quick show of hands. Give me one hand. Raise. Okay, now keep it raised. If you post on LinkedIn even, like, once a month, like, you just do sometimes post days, lying.
Devin Reed [00:07:15]:
Okay, cool. Now keep your hand up. Or just raise it up if you're like, I'm on it, but I'm not, like, really on it. You know what I'm saying? Oh, fuck. Yeah, we're all in it. Okay, cool. This is great. You'll be on it by the end of the day.
Devin Reed [00:07:23]:
Okay, fantastic. So what I realized was what I wanted to do is lean into this more. And so I shared the five processes where I was going was, it's super annoying for the folks who write on LinkedIn. Like, the posts you write in, like, four minutes or five minutes always outperform the ones that you write. Edit, write, edit. So I'm on a plane with my wife. Shoot. Say hi a little louder next time.
Devin Reed [00:07:47]:
But all good. She's my partner at the Reader. And so we're on a plane, and I'm, like, buckled up. We're literally on the tarmac about to take off. I'm like, punching this thing in. I click publish as we're in the air, turn on airplane mode, and then I, like, put on a podcast, fall asleep. When I land, I turn off airplane mode, open LinkedIn, and this thing had half a million views in, like, five hours. And I'm not bragging that I'm like, some God at LinkedIn.
Devin Reed [00:08:08]:
If I could write this type of post every day, I would, and I'd teach you, and I'd probably be a billionaire. But what it showed me was that I was onto something. People weren't just interested in those 6 million views. There's something interesting where a CEO has kind of entered this creator mode. They're taking it seriously, and it's working. And I got a lot of dms, a surprising amount from marketers, executives, and founders who are like, hey, can I learn a little bit more? But I wasn't the first one. Some other dude kind of made it up first. Go ahead.
Devin Reed [00:08:36]:
You can talk in the mic now.
Dave Gerhardt [00:08:37]:
Sorry. My favorite review of that book was, it's somebody wrote one star on Amazon, and all it said was, this should have been a blog post.
Devin Reed [00:08:45]:
Yeah. So basically, what I'm going to talk about is founder brand meets LinkedIn. Raise your hand if you've read Founder Brand. Okay. If you raise your hand slowly, you're lying because Dave's in the Room. That's okay. And so that's what we're going to cover today. So a little bit the obligatory about me slide.
Devin Reed [00:09:02]:
I spent 10 years in SaaS, sales and marketing. Some folks don't know. I got my start in sales. I was the head of content at Gong. I was actually a rep at Gong. From 2 to 20 million head of content from 20 to 200 million. ARR. When I went over to clary, we crossed 100 and I think we got to about 150 million now.
Devin Reed [00:09:18]:
I found the reader three months ago. I quit my job on a Friday. Quick Clary. Two days later, packed up my family and my house, moved from the Bay Area to San Diego, and then two days after that, opened my laptop as an entrepreneur. So I'm three whole months into it. And this is my first presentation from the reader. So I'm pretty excited about that. I'm pretty excited about that now.
Devin Reed [00:09:39]:
If you know me past my career, you know I own way too many sneakers, I cheer way too loudly at warriors games, and I'm a proud dad of two girls. Girl dad. Hell yeah, girl dad. Okay, so here's my thing. You can pull your phone out if you want. I said if you want. I didn't ask you. And what I like to do is, like, I hate homework.
Devin Reed [00:09:56]:
So if you have notepad, if you want to follow along, you can literally follow this step by step framework with me today. And by the time we're done, you'll have V1 in your pocket for when you go home. The other disclaimer is, I wrote this presentation as a marketer for marketers who might want to build this on behalf of your B2B leader. That could be your CEO, your CXO could just be a thought leader or someone fairly smart at your company. And so keep that in mind as we go through it, even if you're not on LinkedIn or maybe, I don't know, you're obsessed with Reddit for some reason. Had to rose right on. I had. It's a layup.
Devin Reed [00:10:29]:
This will still be helpful. You'll find a lot of valuable insights that you can use no matter where you publish content. Okay. I absolutely love Natalie's presentation yesterday because when you bring this idea to your executive, they're going to ask, why? Why should we do this? Why should we do it now? There's so many other priorities, I'm spiraling. So step number one is really step zero, which is you gotta sell this thing. And so I wanna give you a quick tip list that you can use to make your case. So here are 10 undeniable reasons for B2B leaders to get active on LinkedIn right now. I know, Hell yeah.
Devin Reed [00:11:02]:
More phones. Honestly, when I wrote this slide, I was like, if I don't get a phone by now, I'm. So the biggest one is number two. Number two is how I always get funding, resources, whatever I need is because every CEO has what I call the CEO slide. It's three to five company wide initiatives at the beginning of the year and if you can tie your initiative to that initiative, you're almost guaranteed to get funding. All this other stuff is nice to have. And for the personal stuff, that really works really well for like, I don't know if you have like a CRO, cmo, vp and they're like, I like the company, but like, do I really want to give my LinkedIn to it? I don't know, do you like bigger.
Dave Gerhardt [00:11:39]:
Paychecks, dog, real quick, this is not a bit a serious thing. Maybe you answer this later, but yeah, go for it. I think one of the biggest objections that I've heard from founders or even people here personally is they believe all this. And I know you're going to answer this, which is why I'm giving it to you, but they believe all this. But the founder, they don't want to be that person. They don't want to be. That part makes them uncomfortable. And yet there's all of these undeniable benefits to doing it.
Dave Gerhardt [00:12:04]:
How do you help people get over that objection?
Devin Reed [00:12:06]:
What was your line yesterday? The pain of change has to be. What was it? The pain of staying the same has to be greater than the pain of change. So all those woes of pipeline and we're not different in our competitors and yada, yada, yada, this is it. And I get to a little bit more on that later. But I also have a backup answer which is like, if all else fails, Adam Robinson is doing it. It seems to be working. I honestly thought he was going to be here today and I really wanted to do this in person. And it's funny because as I was making this in my Google Doc, this was the first comment I wrote to myself.
Devin Reed [00:12:41]:
And I can assure you there were a few more. I had to cut them out. I went early. All right, cool. So step one, we'll get real tactical today. Step one is you got to pick your one word. Pick your one word. So really what it means is this is probably the most overlooked but critical part of my LinkedIn strategy.
Devin Reed [00:12:59]:
And I say overlooked because when I made the post, pick one word to own. There was a theme in the comments which is like, what's that? What is this one word? How do you pick it? How do I choose? And so I went, great. I should probably focus on that a little bit. So the one word is what you want to be known for. And here's why it matters. The right content strategy is going to spark word of mouth marketing, which is the most powerful form of marketing. But whenever I heard word of mouth, I'm like, that kind of just means, like, people talk about you, they say nice things about you. And that's great.
Devin Reed [00:13:30]:
I've experienced that. But like, what triggers someone to talk about you? What is that trigger word or phrase or thing? And so I wanted to explore that a lot more. And if you have your one word and you execute the right content strategy, then you start to earn mind share. And if you earn mind share, then you can win market share. It goes in that order. And if you try to go without it, two pretty bad things are going to happen. And you can tell they're bad because there's a red X you. It's pretty cool.
Devin Reed [00:13:59]:
So not being known for anything. You'll publish a ton of content, but you won't earn mind share. People will not talk about you when you're not around in a good way, or you'll pump out a bunch of content, but you'll be known for the wrong thing, something that you don't actually sell. Mm. I got a second. Was that the same guy? Different. Let's go. I love it.
Devin Reed [00:14:18]:
This is a new thing. There's phones and. Mm. All right, so I talked about these conversations when you're not around. There's two styles of word of mouth conversations. There's casual conversations, and there's what I call closed door conversations. Let's go through the first one. Casual conversations.
Devin Reed [00:14:33]:
Not this event, but kind of looks like it. Right? Right after this, we're all going to go hang out. We're going to talk, we're going to. We're going to see each other. And certain people remind us of certain things. Anyone know Erica? Yeah. Hell yeah. Erica's awesome.
Devin Reed [00:14:44]:
When I think of Erica, I think of editing. Yeah. Yeah. When I think of. Anyone know this guy? Eddie Schleiner. Fantastic. We think copywriting. And when I think this guy, I think great hair.
Devin Reed [00:15:01]:
Wait, no. I think growth. You want to go back? Okay. You know how hard it was to see you all day yesterday and not let this out like I was? Really? And you told me you cut your hair I was like, God damn it. This was the second slide I made of this whole presentation. Don't make fun of Adam Robinson and make fun of Brendan's hair, because I love your hair. It's awesome hair. It's awesome hair, right? So these people have mind share.
Devin Reed [00:15:23]:
They have worked hard, they have a certain content strategy. They talk about the same things over and over. And so when you see them, you think of a certain thing. And when you see that word growth, editing, copywriting, you think of this person. Growth. Is that the right word? Growth. Growth. Sprints.
Devin Reed [00:15:35]:
All right, cool, Done. All right, so the next one's closed door conversations. And this one was actually introduced to me while I was at Gong, because as I was in sales, I would often ask people, so, like, how did you hear about it? Like, why are you on a call with me, VP of sales? And it was really interesting what they would say. They say, hey, I'm in a forecasting meeting, sales strategy meeting. You know me, my VP is directors. And we realized we had a demo problem. Our reps can't demo for shit. Their words in our mind.
Devin Reed [00:16:01]:
And we're going around the table thinking about, like, how do we solve this problem? We need some sales coaching. Someone thinks gong. Hey, have you heard of gong? Yeah, yeah, I like their content. We read a lot. Hey, cool. Don't they like do something with sales coaching? Yeah, I think so. Hey, let's go see a demo. It's really that simple.
Devin Reed [00:16:18]:
Your prospects right now, whoever you sell to, are talking to each other in these closed door meetings. And you need to have your trigger word be mentioned in those meetings because what happens is they go, all right, sounds good. They go to your website, they ask for a demo. And that's how you can use this concept to get more inbound. So your one word is your North Star. And it serves two main purposes. Internally, it helps you keep focus. It's much easier to create content when you have some sort of guardrails.
Devin Reed [00:16:44]:
Externally, it helps you carve out that mind share. Right, so I'm going to use Andy because I talked about Andy at the beginning of the LinkedIn post. So we're going to use him as a bit of a proof point as we walk through here. For Andy, it was revenue. We had started a strategic initiative to go from a forecasting tool to a revenue platform. We launched a new category called revenue collaboration and governance. Terrible freaking name. Fun fact.
Devin Reed [00:17:08]:
When I was signing my Clary letter, like right before I signed, I made like a good and bad list. And the only thing on the bad list was that fucking terrible category name, but I signed up anyway. So anyway, he wanted to be known for revenue when CROs and certain people are talking. He wants that name to be synonymous. So I ask you to take out your notebook. You can think for a second. What's your word? What's your leader's word? If you're already thinking about your CEO now, chances are it's the word that popped into the front of your mind by the time I finished that question. But if not, you need to think about it.
Devin Reed [00:17:36]:
That's all good. Take the weekend to think about it. But don't take too long, because the sooner you pick your word, the sooner people will start talking about you in those conversations. And that's going to help grow your brand and your business. Dave, if you're going to interrupt, now's the time. Thanks. Oh, you thought about it too? You didn't have anything me a minute.
Dave Gerhardt [00:17:52]:
My nose was itchy to turn the mic on, so you're good to hold date.
Devin Reed [00:17:55]:
All right, cool. So step two, now we know we're going to win Mindshare. Step two is, who are we going to win Mindshare with? I'm going to go a little bit faster now because that main concept was like, the big one. We're going to kind of rip through the rest of this. So that was not a joke. Shit, should it have been? Okay, narrow your audience. All right, so real quick, we got to figure out, who the hell are we going to get that mindshare with. We've got a niche.
Devin Reed [00:18:18]:
If you say niche, that's all good. You're wrong. I don't care if you're. Hold on, Riches. I don't care.
Dave Gerhardt [00:18:23]:
Nobody says the riches are in the niches.
Devin Reed [00:18:26]:
Yeah, I do, and you just did.
Dave Gerhardt [00:18:28]:
Well, because I'm trying to make a point.
Devin Reed [00:18:30]:
Got him at his own conference. Not as funny as damn, but I'll try. All right, so here's the focus segment of the broader market. You want to be the go to expert audience is the group of people who resonate with your message. Now, here's the deal. This is how I think about it when I want to win. In the attention economy, you are either playing winning or dominating. And I know it's like 9:15, and to ask you to dominate this early in the morning is pretty aggressive, but this is my mindset.
Devin Reed [00:18:57]:
I don't want to play. I don't play to win. I play to dominate because there's first place and then there's everybody else. Ricky Bobby. Okay, so that's what I want to do. But I know sometimes it can be really challenging to figure out, like, who is that exact narrow audience, that niche, that who is it Exactly? Because we've got, like, this business leader, and they're the one that we really want to buy from us. But then there's, like, the end user, and then there's ancillary departments, and then, oh, shit. The cfo.
Devin Reed [00:19:20]:
They're the one who's actually going to, like, sign off on this thing. So I'm gonna take you through. Oh, shit. You okay? It's all right. We won't point attention to the fact that Mark just spilled coffee everywhere. So I want you to think of this. If you're struggling. Here's an exercise I do with my clients.
Devin Reed [00:19:37]:
I want you to imagine this. There's two parts. One, think of it through the lens of your brand. Okay? Imagine you're an event like this, maybe bigger. Whatever. You've got a booth outside, and a swarm of people come up to your booth and like, oh, my God, I love you. Love your brand. It's so great.
Devin Reed [00:19:52]:
Who is that one person? If you had to pick, like, one title, think of, like, who would that be? To love your brand from a marketing standpoint, Write it down. Now, next to heat check yourself is you gotta think from the sales lens too. So think of if a wave of people hit your website, punch the demo button. Like an overhand right from Mike Tyson. Who would your sales team want that to be? Who would your sales rep be? Like, oh, hell yeah. Today was a good day. Ice cube reference. A couple millennials in the fan.
Devin Reed [00:20:18]:
Okay, Right. So I did this at Gong while we were scaling and while we're going up market, I would constantly go up to my VP of sales and say, hey, if you had one person that could hit the demo button, who would it be? Because we sold to VPs of sales. But also there's, like, sales enablement. They influence it. And again, the CFO signs it off, but he said, no, no, no. I want VPs of sales to hit the demo button. We'll do in pipeline marketing to the cfo. We'll do in pipeline marketing to the sales enablement.
Devin Reed [00:20:43]:
But I don't want to start conversations with them because we have data. They don't close.
Dave Gerhardt [00:20:46]:
I think this step is so important, and I've been in the internal conversations. Like, we can't overstate how important this is. I think it's inside of every company. I've heard many conversations like this this week. It's like well, sales, but also this Persona. But also then you have like the four VPs inside of the company with competing opinions, or the company tells you they sell to one core Persona, but actually they kind of also care about this one and this one and this one. It's like, I understand that, but if you want to be good at content marketing and do this, you have to focus and you have to pick one. And so, like, that is the exercise.
Dave Gerhardt [00:21:16]:
You have to disagree and commit and say, yeah, maybe we do serve all multiple Personas, but for our content strategy, we're going to pick one. We're going to own that one word and that one Persona. And because like anything else, if you try to write for everything, everyone, you miss and you're for no one. You have to figure this part out. And this is the hard part, because you have to push back. You have to tell people, nope, sorry, we're not writing that way. This is the part you have to figure out.
Devin Reed [00:21:38]:
Thought I had a little longer. I totally agree. And here's the thing too. And you talked about riches and initiatives. I get it. Is like, other people still read the content and other people still hit the demo button and they still know. And like, you, like, think of the VP of sales as like the bullseye, but there's still like the green ring around the bullseye. I don't know what that's called, but those are like, great buyers too.
Devin Reed [00:21:56]:
And then there's like all the rings around. It's all good. It's still going to work. Okay, now, quick nuance alert. If you're working with the CEO, founder of the company, they're basically going to be like, here are the keys to the car. Like, bring it back by midnight. Right? The marketing strategy is like my strategy. My LinkedIn profile is now like a marketing channel.
Devin Reed [00:22:12]:
Treat it and go. Not 100% of the time, but pretty, pretty frequently. But if you're working with like a VP or it's like a director and they don't own the company, they're not going to give you the keys because it's their reputation on the line as well. So just know there might be some variance between these audiences that you choose. And there's a little bit of variance. When we were working with Andy, so one, CROs and svps was actually our second buyer Persona. We wanted Rev Ops VPs, but. And he wanted CROs in his network.
Devin Reed [00:22:37]:
Two, he wanted CEOs or his peers. Again, people around the Rev Ops person, people that can still say, hey, go like group one and two can still, go tell the Rev Ops leader to go look at Clary. Hell yeah, Kyle's nodding. I was kind of like making sure he's not like, what the fuck? I also told Kyle that he has this really cool ability that right after my presentation, because he goes next he could be like. So none of that is true. Yeah, I took it from you. Yeah. I was not going to let you do that to me.
Devin Reed [00:23:02]:
And then you wanted VCs, because, you know, you wanted to be cool VCs. Who doesn't? They're rich. So I guess. All right, step three. Pick content, pillars and topics. I'm going to give you a cheat code. Fun fact. I hate when people say cheat code, but I wrote one, so I'm getting a lot of laughs.
Devin Reed [00:23:19]:
Way more than I thought. So what everything comes down to when I'm creating content. I think about what your audience wants to know, what their peers are seeing, thinking and doing. And here's how I came up with this. I had a VP of RevOps, I was hosting and in charge of running a webinar program for other VPs of RevOps. And I basically don't know a goddamn thing about RevOps. And so I've asked leaders like, so hey, when you're like with your executive, when you're with your CEO and your CEO tasks you with something and you don't know how to do it, but you're not going to say that in the meeting. And then after the meeting, what do you go do? Anyone want to guess? No.
Devin Reed [00:23:53]:
Who said that? $100 for the Reddit comment. Run it back. No, that's not what they do. But that would be funny. They pick up the phone and they call their peers because they want to know what other peers are saying, thinking and doing. So this is like the cheat code is like, I don't know a damn thing, but I can go find the answer with this framework. And so when you're picking your pillars, you need to know what your audience cares about. You need to know your niche, knowledge and experience.
Devin Reed [00:24:16]:
And when you put those two things together, you have relevant and valuable content, or what I often call content that converts. That's the sweet spot. Okay, if you need a quick exercise for how do I come up with the topics below that here it is really quickly. I like skill statements. I know how to write a co prospecting email, run an event. Next one is outcome statements. What has the outcome of those things? I know how to generate sales pipeline. You're going to go through and list all these things out that this Person knows they're not going to fit into the middle of the diagram right away.
Devin Reed [00:24:45]:
Right? You have your Venn diagram. You're kind of putting stuff everywhere. You'll go through this list and then you're going to look at what's the most expensive problem. This is what I asked the VP of Rev Ops. You had all these ideas because he's, like, intelligent. He was actually really smart. It was. It was intimidating.
Devin Reed [00:25:01]:
So what's the most expensive problem and what's the most urgent problem? And that's what we picked for that webinar and other programs, because that's what's going to matter most. That's what's going to stop people on the scroll, stop them in their email and go, that's something I need to show up to. Here's what we came up for. Andy, I thoroughly do not expect you to read all this, but I wanted to show you the content pillars we came up with. So one was, how does Andy run revenue? Clary run revenue was like, our phrase is something we're going to market with. People want to see CEOs build in public. As proven by the LinkedIn post earlier today. Number two category evangelist.
Devin Reed [00:25:29]:
We were doing the category play, so we said, hey, people kind of need to, like, know what that category is. We shortened it to Revc. Again, the name is terrible. We change its revenue platform so I can shit on it. Now realize value from customers. This is saying, hey, we're going to make a lot of claims. We're going to show you the new way. But are people actually doing it? So let's tell some compelling stories.
Devin Reed [00:25:48]:
This is really important for the deck because these example topics, you don't have to use them, actually, but when you're making your strategy, it's helpful. Just have this, like, general direction. Like, cool. We're gonna take exit four and go that way. Fuck. So dumb. All right, now.
Dave Gerhardt [00:26:04]:
So dumb.
Devin Reed [00:26:05]:
So dumb. I know I'm a dad. Okay? I led earlier with dad, so I can make, like, two dad jokes, one for each kid. Okay, so now you're thinking, all right, cool, that we made, like, all these exercises, all these decisions, but I read this book called Create Once, Distribute Forever, and we haven't created a goddamn thing. I see. I made fun of you, but then I brought you back up. Yeah, yeah, I try to do that. So here's the main problem you're going to hear.
Devin Reed [00:26:28]:
Excuse me, first objection. You're going to hear. Anyone want to guess? Time? Time is money. $100 fucking 1000. I'm not paying. I don't have enough time. How am I going to do all this stuff? Devin, this sounds great. We're going to differentiate, build a bunch of pipeline.
Devin Reed [00:26:42]:
I'm going to be famous in the VC community. But like, I'm busy though, so another thing to consider. Did you know the average exec replies to about 4,200 Slack messages every day? I made that up when I made this slide. But it's kind of true, right? How many times are you in a meeting, like even a one on one, and you're like, you're there doing this, the blank stare, and you're like, no one listens. Like this. You're doing other shit. So they contact switch a lot and they're busy. So you need to make it as easy as possible.
Devin Reed [00:27:10]:
I learned this earlier in my career. A confused exec as an angry exec. And that'll make life easy for any marketer. Great results come from great promise processes, not promises. We've all had some empty promises in our lives. Hashtag personal stuff. But execs are scarred too, right? They kind of don't believe in marketing. A lot of times that's just the truth.
Devin Reed [00:27:29]:
Internally, we have to fight for ourselves, so we have to have great processes. And so I'm going to walk you through the production process that I came up with. Andy and other execs. Now, I wish I'd made the word commitment larger and maybe a little brighter, but I lead with this word. If I'm going to make the strategy and I'm going to be running the program, I need a commitment that I will do what I say. And you exactly are going to do what you say. It's like, well, what am I going to do? Here's the day by day process that we follow and I color coded it because it makes it easier to follow Tuesday, never Monday. By the way, if you even think they'll be like, no, Monday, 8am or 4pm Just don't do it.
Devin Reed [00:28:05]:
It's going to push and it screws the whole week up. Don't do Mondays. Stupid thing to say. Okay, Tuesday, idea, brain dump. Excuse me, let's go back. Idea and brain dump. 20 minutes. Me, you zoom.
Devin Reed [00:28:15]:
Gonna ask you some questions, you're gonna give me some answers. You don't have to prep, you don't have to think, you don't have to write. Just give me some content. All right. Alternatively, if you want to send a voicemail and video, I'm cool with that too. I'll take 20 minutes back in my calendar. I Don't care. All right, Wednesday, I'm gonna write the first draft.
Devin Reed [00:28:30]:
I'm gonna take all your ideas and put it into all, like, the formatting that I know. Cause I know LinkedIn better than you, exec. All good. Your ideas, my writing, put in this Google Doc. I'm gonna tell you what day and time to post it, and then I'm gonna share it to you via Slack. You're gonna revise the draft? You gotta look at it, dude. I don't know Revops. I told you that earlier.
Devin Reed [00:28:47]:
I don't know. I don't know what's good. You're gonna review it by Thursday, end of day. It's pretty, like, demanding, right? Timelines. And then Friday, I'm gonna take a final pat. There it is. Get it. Get it, girl.
Devin Reed [00:28:59]:
And then I'm either gonna stage it for you or, like, again, give me the keys. Or some people are like, nah, nah, I got it. I don't care. Like, that's fine. You get the idea. But the point is. Idea dump. First draft revised.
Devin Reed [00:29:08]:
Finalize anything more than this level of revision. Again, going back to earlier, you're, like, overworking the content. Let it fly. Okay, Any questions on this? Thoughts on this? Wasn't just thinking of Dave. Other people can talk to. All right, cool. All right, last part. Is this five? Yeah.
Devin Reed [00:29:23]:
All right. Last one is measure and iterate. Number one question you're going to hear. Anyone want to guess? Holy shit. Yeah, except no, not at all. Because really, what are they going to ask? When the fuck are the leads going to get here, dude? Yeah, so I've posted twice and like, what the hell? I've gotten this after week one. Literally, I submitted, you know, the Friday where I'm like, the posts are ready. Literally, the question was like, so when do we see the leads? And I was like, tomorrow for sure.
Devin Reed [00:29:53]:
Obviously, I can definitely promise how the algorithm will treat you. So here's a shit ton of metrics that I made before I met Pranav. Kind of insecure about it at this point in time, but here's the truth. These are. You could look at these and be like, those are pretty standard. Yeah, dude, for sure. Because the last thing I want to do is like, yeah, and also, like, enterprise account penetration, because. No, dude, take the simple route.
Devin Reed [00:30:19]:
These are metrics that your CEO knows for the most part. Right? So you want to meet them where they're at now. Really quick post, publish. I said three a week. I think if I did math, that's 36. This is my benchmark. This is like me putting my line, going the gauntlet or whatever. Like, if I can't get you 20% lift from like, basically nothing, then, like, probably let me go.
Devin Reed [00:30:37]:
Right? Honestly, this is a little bit of a reach. 10, 15. We all know the algorithm kind of sucks these days. Whatever Content downloads, I turn on creator mode. This is a little hack. Turn on creator mode. You can take a gated piece of content. It is every single time you put on like their featured thing or they're like, LinkedIn, dude.
Devin Reed [00:30:52]:
We've gotten some seriously good leads from that. Really cool enterprise stuff. It's all good. Set the benchmark. I don't know how many downloads you're going to get. I don't know how many people like you yet. Website from traffic. Website traffic from organic MQLs.
Devin Reed [00:31:05]:
The MQL has an asterisk. This is specifically from that gated piece of content on their LinkedIn profile. So it's specifically like publishing content. Hit the profile, download the content, you know, become an mql and they're like, vibe in a week.
Dave Gerhardt [00:31:16]:
Hey, on the, on the creator mode thing, are you talking about the, like, you turn on creator mode and that gives you the ability to like, the pin posts in the featured section?
Devin Reed [00:31:24]:
Yeah, so I put stuff in the featured section because it's a big visual. And then also there's like, you can. There's a couple ways you can do it. There's like, view my website. Like, I think me and you have.
Dave Gerhardt [00:31:32]:
Like, you have to pay for premium to get that.
Devin Reed [00:31:34]:
Just a CEO of a company.
Dave Gerhardt [00:31:35]:
No, no, no. I mean, I'm just saying.
Devin Reed [00:31:36]:
No, I know. Yeah, yeah.
Dave Gerhardt [00:31:38]:
Like, we did. Everybody asked about, oh, how do I do it? I'm not saying because it costs money. It should cost money, just.
Devin Reed [00:31:43]:
No, yeah, I know they don't know.
Dave Gerhardt [00:31:43]:
How to do it, but you're talking about. So you upgrade to premium and then you can use the website link in your profile and Drive that to a resource. Yeah.
Devin Reed [00:31:52]:
And the reason why, real quick, the reason why is when you're on the profile, you'll see the featured stuff. Right. But when you post on the feed, you get the link under your name that says, like, go to website, whatever. You can put your, like Clary.com. i think we actually did Clary.com sometimes, sometimes we put in, like, other stuff. It's all.
Dave Gerhardt [00:32:06]:
Yeah, like, we do it for our newsletter and it's a number one. Yeah, it's the number one growth lever for our newsletter.
Devin Reed [00:32:11]:
Super. I don't know, correlation, causation. I'm Not a scientist, but like the more impressions you get, the more people see your face and that link and the more people click the link and then like you get to host an event in Burlington. Okay. And then the last one and I again, this is probably the most insecure one at this point in time is the self attribution. But at the time, this is the best that we have. So I just like to see like when we launched it for Andy and we started to see people saying, Andy, Andy's LinkedIn more and more in the self reported attribution. I'm like, look, it ain't the whole pie, but it's a piece and it's working a little bit.
Devin Reed [00:32:40]:
Pranav isn't here or at least not throwing tomatoes at me. So we're going to keep moving. All right, cool last bit. I said confused exec is an angry exec. So let's just put a quick operating cadence together, like setting expectations, all that good stuff. So every week we're going to sync on topics, produce and publish content, engage with our audience. Dan talked about this. This is a big one.
Devin Reed [00:32:59]:
You got to do this. Super annoying to be like, hey, you have all these fans and like VPs and presidents and like commenting and you're just leaving them out to dry. Super chill. Every two weeks, share wins and learnings, they want to know really quickly what's happening and what's working. Review content performance, refocus on those content pillars, keep revisiting them, keep looking at them. And then every month, metrics, deep dive. There's the phones. Killing it with the phones right now.
Devin Reed [00:33:23]:
I'm stoked, dude. I'm super stoked. All right, review top and low performing posts. Tell them why they're top and low performing. Like, hey, it's all good. No one really cares about you mountain biking. Just saying. But people really like when you talked about that board meeting last week though.
Devin Reed [00:33:36]:
So like, let's do more of that, right? And the last one, tweak the strategy as needed. You shouldn't be taking like hard rights, but again, you can take exit. Stupid joke. Okay, all right, the best part. Ready, set, ship it. You're ready to go. You've made all the posts, you've done the strategy. You go in a hit post and then you get to do the money dance or the happy dance.
Devin Reed [00:33:55]:
If I dance right now, it would be the nervous dance. So quick recap. I'm a little bit over. Pick your one word, narrow your audience, pick your content pillars and topics, build your assembly line, measure, communicate, and Iterate. And I think now it's Q and A, if we got any. Okay, I have a question.
Dave Gerhardt [00:34:22]:
Can you do this with a company.
Devin Reed [00:34:24]:
Page, or does it have to be a person? If your CEO is really not interested in, you know, being active on social, it's a fair question. You definitely can. And I've done it. Like I said previously, and I have. Even at clary, we did have a company page strategy too. The algorithm gives Personal profiles 5 times more views than company pages. That's the last, like, stat that I heard. So you can definitely do it on a company page.
Devin Reed [00:34:49]:
But I have five clients right now. I'm not advising any of them to do it for their company page. Three out of five have come to me and said, we want to do it for the executives. And that's just going to get you the most bang for your buck. No doubt. Hey, awesome presentation. Thank you. Thank you.
Dave Gerhardt [00:35:03]:
Can you talk a little bit about your Tuesday brain dump? I could see that going really well or, like, really bad, potentially.
Devin Reed [00:35:10]:
Oh, you too? Yeah. So you'll know real quickly what kind of mood your CEOs in in the first two minutes of that. So here's how it usually goes. One of two things. So one is like, something had just happened and he's like. And he was, like, super excited. Like, one time he was like. So I went to an AI conference yesterday, and it was just like, firehose central.
Devin Reed [00:35:29]:
Like, all this cool AI stuff, right? So I'm like, cool, recording the conversation. I've got a whole bunch of stuff on AI. I guess we're going to focus on AI. Fits into the pillars. All good. Or halfway through, I'm like, hey, that's all cool. But, like, AI isn't like, the main pillar. So, like, what else happened this week? And I have, like, just a little list of, like, what happened this week.
Devin Reed [00:35:45]:
What was surprising? What was interesting? What was something someone said you didn't like? I try to get emotional responses. What did you hate this week? What did you love this week? What annoyed you? He's like, you. And I'm like, fine. And so I try to get those type of responses. And then I just kind of like, do interview discovery and just try to pull out as much as I can. Was that helpful? All right. Also, sorry, option two is I just lead. He's like, I don't want to be here.
Devin Reed [00:36:06]:
And I'm like, me either. Now and then I just ask a bunch of questions. It was awesome, man. Thanks, man.
Dave Gerhardt [00:36:12]:
Great job.
Devin Reed [00:36:12]:
Thanks for not hating me. After the Reddit, it's all good.
Dave Gerhardt [00:36:15]:
Let's say you're working with like multiple executives within an org where they want to like have the entire leadership team, active and social. Would you run the same playbook, just like control C, control V, with different story tracks type of thing, different words.
Devin Reed [00:36:28]:
Or would it be the same word, same process? Yeah, you probably are going to have different words, though. You should have different. It would be. I mean, there's always an exception. Maybe the whole team's like all in on like selling on behalf of the company. And so like revenue, for example, might work. I've never seen that. I've done this at a work ramp where we ran through their executive team through this.
Devin Reed [00:36:46]:
No one had the same word and only the CEO had the word of like, whatever their thing was, like learning or something. But the process is the exact same for sure. Yeah.
Dave Gerhardt [00:36:56]:
Hey, Devin, so when you're picking your one word, let's say there's people in your space that already own that word. How do you think about it? Is it just like niching down in your audience? Do you niche down with the. That's it.
Devin Reed [00:37:07]:
No, that's. Well, one. I was hoping that question would come up because it is a popular one and you know the answer. Yeah, you niche down. So you might be known in editing in one pocket of the Internet, but you could be known for editing in another pocket in another niche. Right. And the other thing is like kind of aggressive again, like just dominate. Like just you have to like be consistent, have differentiated content, have a point of view, and you can beat other people.
Devin Reed [00:37:27]:
Gong was not the first to a lot of races that we won. We were not the first conversation intelligence program. We're not the first to talk about sales coaching by any means. But if you have a different approach and a consistent approach, you can beat out people who might already be in your niche or again, realize actually that person's over there. They don't even sell to quite the same people. And it's okay if you're like adjacent to each other.
Dave Gerhardt [00:37:44]:
Also, just to build on that, I believe in the. I say niche, so I'm going to say niche.
Devin Reed [00:37:48]:
But that's fine. You can be right.
Dave Gerhardt [00:37:49]:
I believe believe that the niche can also be you. And so just because someone else talks about that topic the way you say it is different, your way of doing it is different. Maybe you're more informational or educational or funnier or wittier or whatever. I think you can have your own flavor on it. Doesn't mean you have necessarily the way you'd Be different is by being yourself. And I think a lot of us, the power of doing this from the founder, not the company page, is that the founder is typically someone. They didn't start this company just for fun because they want to get super rich. It was like, oh, they had a deep background in this engineering thing and they have 20 years of history.
Dave Gerhardt [00:38:20]:
Like, those things are the perfect ingredients to tell this story. You did great job.
Devin Reed [00:38:25]:
That was awesome.
Dave Gerhardt [00:38:25]:
So my question is around the engagement stuff, and it's something I still struggle with even when I'm, like, managing programs to get CEOs. Like, how do you reply to the comments as the CEO? Like, how do you tell who's important, what to dig deeper on? Are you doing that yourself?
Devin Reed [00:38:40]:
How does that even work? It's a good question. And there's no one answer, to be honest, because the busy objection comes back a lot. And. But I really try to put. And I pushed Andy into, like, looking. I never replied to any comments for Andy because Kenley, I don't feel comfortable doing that. Helping him write his content is one thing. Like, he's putting his fingerprints on it.
Devin Reed [00:38:58]:
Me logging in as Andy and then commenting to like, I just. I'm already, like, uncomfortable. So what I was like, can you just go look at the engagement? You know those people, like, three weeks ago we said we wanted to get in front of. They're on your page commenting right now. I want them to see that. And hopefully that lights him up a little bit and he can punch out a quick comment. I can't force him to do it. Of all the things in the world of marketing and that I'm running, I'm not gonna, like, fucking beat him up for that.
Devin Reed [00:39:22]:
But I do. I'll do like this a lot. Like, hey, did you. I'll send him comments like, hey, did you see, like, the CEO at Cisco, Commentator, whatever, you know, whatever. And he'll be like, oh, that's awesome. So it's kind of a way, I guess, like, to tether him back into the program and to get on LinkedIn is like, hey, it's working. Yeah, no problem.
Dave Gerhardt [00:39:36]:
Hey, question about if this can apply to other platforms beyond LinkedIn, because for my company, our audience is not as heavily on LinkedIn. It's so B2B.
Devin Reed [00:39:44]:
Yeah.
Dave Gerhardt [00:39:44]:
But much heavier on, like, Instagram, Facebook, social media.
Devin Reed [00:39:49]:
So, like, does it apply? Is the question.
Dave Gerhardt [00:39:50]:
Yeah, do the same framework.
Devin Reed [00:39:52]:
Yeah, I don't see what wouldn't. But I'm happy to chat after because, like, do you still need Mindshare with one Word, Yes. You still should have content pillars, still should have a production process, and you should still be measuring things. So, like, obviously the metrics are going to be probably a little different for Instagram, but overall, the framework, I would stay the same. Hey, Devin. Yeah, Great talk. I wanted to ask, when you sort of write for the CEO, right? Like, obviously there's information coming from them, but you don't. You sort of lose their voice because, you know, you're the one that's writing.
Devin Reed [00:40:20]:
You're not going to be there at the company forever and there's going to be somebody else. It's just like that voice question always sort of comes to me like, the best sort of. I don't know, what are your thoughts on that? It was the second objection or not objection, but question from the group. I was hoping and expecting. Give me one sec. Because you're right, it comes up all the time with everyone. They're like, this doesn't really sound like me. And I'm like, yeah, no shit, it's me.
Devin Reed [00:40:43]:
A little. The good part of a transcript is I actually start with copy and paste because, you know, sometimes they go on a little story or rant. They're like, I do this, then I do this and I do this. I'm like, cool. Copy, paste, hit enter a lot of times. Get that, get that formatting looking good. Hit the Grammarly a little bit, right? Clean it up. And then I just go through and I'm like, I'm really, like, revising.
Devin Reed [00:41:02]:
Writing is almost like actually like a little too strong of a word. It's like revising probably. But when we get to. Give me one sec, I promise I can click. Oh, man, it's a little deeper than I thought. I want to get to Thursday. If I can get there in a second, that I'll show it to you. Yeah, cool.
Devin Reed [00:41:14]:
So this day is the tone day. Maybe I should have mentioned that. Faster. Great call out. This is that heat check of like. Yeah, no dough. I don't sound like you. I'm not you.
Devin Reed [00:41:22]:
So when you revise your post before I revise it, finally put your tone on and make sure it sounds a lot like you. And honestly, you might hear it for like, the whole year. And we kind of do. It's like, this doesn't quite sound like me. I'm like, you also don't know what you sound like. Yo, you don't have your writing voice yet. So, like, we're finding this together. And unfortunately, you're getting a little bit of the Devin Reed action in there to maybe muddy it up.
Devin Reed [00:41:41]:
Devin, yo, real quick, talking about the one word of that part you mentioned.
Dave Gerhardt [00:41:47]:
Like, don't wait too long type of deal on that.
Devin Reed [00:41:50]:
So my question is more around, like, is there a way to pick a.
Dave Gerhardt [00:41:53]:
Bad word and do you have any.
Devin Reed [00:41:55]:
Guardrails for us to not pick bad words? I wouldn't pick fuck. Can you pick the wrong word? Yeah. I mean, here's the thing I line it with. Does your audience care about this thing? Do you have expertise in this thing and are you selling that thing? There has to be a through line. That should be the word. The place I see people mess up is actually pretty. Usually it's more on the audience side. Usually people are like, I know what I'm good at, I know what I sell, and that's what I'm going to talk about.
Devin Reed [00:42:20]:
And I'm like, no one cares that much about your origin story. They care a little bit, but not every day. So make sure it hits on all three of those points and workshop. You can talk to people and be like, hey, you know me, you know me enough. What do you think my one word would be? There's probably a bunch of people here that now know about it. We could all talk to each other and help figure it out. Yeah. So I've read found their brand and also, what do you do if your CEO doesn't have a compelling story?
Dave Gerhardt [00:42:40]:
Like, if they did just get into it.
Devin Reed [00:42:42]:
Oh, I can't click fast enough. You have to just get the book, like straight up. You have to get the book. No, I've read it as well. But like our CEOs that I've worked for frankly haven't had like compelling, interesting stories about why they founded the company. They just sort of wanted to get rich. Can I be honest? I don't know.
Dave Gerhardt [00:42:55]:
Yeah, that's.
Devin Reed [00:42:55]:
I'll be honest. Struggling, actually.
Dave Gerhardt [00:42:57]:
I think there's like a different path. I don't think. I think you, if you have a great story that you can be an original creator.
Devin Reed [00:43:03]:
If not, you can be a curator industry.
Dave Gerhardt [00:43:06]:
And so like, maybe they don't have all the basic stories, but you make them like the go to account to follow for news and insights as it relates to that industry. And maybe over time that is the thing that helps them find a voice. So if it's, you know, finance or whatever or hr, maybe they don't have an amazing founding story. But like, there's got to be. They got to have some strong point of view about the industry and where HR is going. If they don't have that. Then you can be like, you start doing it for them. You're reading articles, you're serving up stats.
Dave Gerhardt [00:43:33]:
You notice that this trend with Starbucks hiring has happened and you can, like, be the curator and they become like, a source of meetings for the industry. Sorry. I know you can go hunt, Devin. After.
Devin Reed [00:43:45]:
I'm leaving right after this. I'm sprinting to the car. Yeah, I am. I am around. I would love to. I was actually. That is my. My only call to action.
Devin Reed [00:43:52]:
I didn't. I didn't do a QR code, but it's like, come holler me after. I'm happy to talk about it. So you had, I think last week's newsletter or the week before you talked about reach versus teach. Oh, yeah. You read my newsletter. Thanks. But you just made some cheeky joke about, like, no one wants to see you mountain biking.
Devin Reed [00:44:05]:
So can you talk a little bit about the balance of. Yes, those, like, engagement, pushing posts versus, like, teaching and being relevant to your one word. So the reach is about reaching them and what they care about. So if you post the mountain bike and you see the mountain bike doesn't work, then they don't care about that. That's a mess. So I love that you brought up that framework because I still believe in it. And I would try. Like, we posted the mountain biking thing.
Devin Reed [00:44:28]:
Like, we did it. We did the reach. You still should always look at the numbers and be like, what do people care about? Like, oftentimes we had one with another go to market leader. It was just him like in like, bam for something. He's like off site. Like literally 10 words. It was like, we're at an off site and it got like the most views of all this stuff. So, like, cool people love off sites.
Devin Reed [00:44:44]:
And apparently you and shorts. Great. So you just got to. You have to test it out, but still follow the reach first teach. I still believe that for sure. Is there like a best practice of ratio or just like, it's up to like, style? Right? Like, if you're. Some people were like, my CEO really doesn't want to do it, then, like, probably little to none, candidly.
Dave Gerhardt [00:44:59]:
Are you guys. You could take this offline later. Your time is up.
Devin Reed [00:45:03]:
Give me the right hand dap, dude.
Dave Gerhardt [00:45:04]:
No, but seriously, we have a break and breakout lesson. Wait, I need that clicker. Give it up for Devin. That was awesome.
Devin Reed [00:45:09]:
Thank you.
Dave Gerhardt [00:45:11]:
But, but seriously, I think something that we're learning as we're doing this event, I think one of the cool things is, like, accessibility. Like, I love that all the people who spoke are sitting in the front row and hanging out here today. So there's something to that. And obviously, everybody's very approachable. So if. If I couldn't get to your question, it's not personal. Go find Devin in the break or go find him in the hallway after this, and he'll help.