What Makes a Purchasing Agent Tick?

A key member of technical buying teams is the purchasing agent. Their content needs are quite different than engineer specifiers, but many marketers don't understand how to craft targeted messages to this unique persona.

Nate Peo has served as a purchasing agent for 15 years, and knows what it takes to craft a win-win deal for his company. During this episode I got in his head about the purpose, goals and motivators of this profession.

According to Nate, purchasing agents are very goals-driven, but the goals and often vary by organization. One company may care most about speed to delivery and inventory size, another on cost and volume discounts, and yet another on quality and reliability. Knowing these goals greatly informs how to message to this persona.

Often companies make the mistake of "starting from scratch" when communicating to purchasing agents. This is a big time-waster when the vast majority of the time the specifier has already qualified the solution and the company as a vendor. Sometimes companies go into too much detail about technical specifications, or a business overview, when where they should focus is on the business drivers where the purchasing agent is focused.

It can be difficult to displace a competitor, but staying top-of-mind with targeted messaging will help a company be considered if there are issues down the line. Conversely, forging and maintaining a harmonious relationship where you deliver on your promises will keep competitors from nudging you out. 

When not negotiating supplier contracts, Nate is the host of the All-In Podcast, which is filled with inspirational business and personal stories of pushing through barriers. 

Transcript

Speaker 1: [00:00:00] Welcome to Content Marketing engineered. Your source for building trust and generating demand with technical content. [00:00:07][6.9]

Speaker 2: [00:00:08] Here is your host, Wendy Covey. [00:00:10][1.6]

Speaker 3: [00:00:11] Hi and welcome to Content Marketing Engineered. I'm your host, Wendy Cody. And each episode I'll break down an industry trend best practice or challenge in marketing to technical audiences. Along the way, you'll meet friends and colleagues of mine who will share their stories. And my hope is that with each episode, you'll be inspired and ready to take action. Before we get started, I'd like to give a brief shout out to our sponsor True Marketing. True is a full service content marketing agency located in beautiful Austin, Texas. For more information, visit true marketing dot com. If you're a listener of content marketing engineered, then most likely your primary persona, the specify or that's going to first bring you into the company, will be an engineer or some sort of other technical professional. But there's another important persona that comes along in as part of a buyer's team, and that's the purchasing agents. And I don't know about you, but I didn't know a lot about purchasing agents, having worked with very few of them in my career. And so I was excited today to invite Nate, people who spent 15 years of his career as a purchasing agent. And I wanted to get him to his head about how this professional operates, what motivates them and how they're measured. I think you'll learn a lot about how to create content targeted to this persona through this podcast. Let's do this. Well, today I'm joined by Nate Powe, who's the vice president of purchasing and the host of the All in Podcast Weapons in the show. Nate. [00:01:45][94.2]

Speaker 2: [00:01:47] Welcome. Thank you. Glad to be here. [00:01:48][1.3]

Speaker 3: [00:01:49] Good. We were going to have some fun today. So those of you listening, Nate has spent 15 years or so of his career in purchasing, and I, for one, can't wait to get in his head about what makes this unique profession tick. So, listen, Nate, I'm asking you today to speak for your entire profession. Are you ready for this? You know, no pressure. [00:02:12][23.2]

Speaker 2: [00:02:13] I completely am. Let's talk about it. [00:02:15][2.1]

Speaker 3: [00:02:16] Okay. Well, I invited you here because. So the situation is my listeners have several target audience personas that they have to write content for. And we often talk on this podcast about the engineers and how they are the the specifiers, you know, the first person to find their solution. And but no doubt and another important influencer and maybe even final decision maker is the purchasing agent. And I don't feel like marketers really understand what makes them tick and what they're all about, what motivates them, how they're measured. So that's what we're going to do today. [00:02:52][35.7]

Speaker 2: [00:02:53] Awesome. Can't wait. [00:02:53][0.7]

Speaker 3: [00:02:54] Okay, well, let's start with the buying team. So describe the buying team and what the role might be of the purchasing agents. [00:03:01][6.9]

Speaker 2: [00:03:02] So a purchasing agent is usually involved in an organization that has enough purchasing needs that they're going to need full time staff, maybe as one purchasing agent, or it's a team of multiple. And what they're usually doing is going out and creating relationships with all the vendors that they're that are supplying materials or products or services to to the company. And they're looking for what's out there, what are the pros and cons, knowing who's got the best deals. But they're also there to, I guess, do economies of scale. So if you have multiple projects going on and people that are spec and products for the different spots say I need 15 widgets here and 20 widgets here and 30 widgets here. Instead of it's three separate orders. You figure out a way to combine resources and say, Hey, we're going to be buying 100 of these things. Is there a better option to do it? And you start talk with the vendors too, about, hey, you know, this is our needs today. What are our needs next year and in the future that you're keeping aware of, you know, product trends and stuff like that, improvements in the market and constantly looking for alternate sources that solve the same problem or solve it more effectively makes sense. [00:04:15][72.2]

Speaker 3: [00:04:15] So when I think about the economies of scale and, you know, some of the people listening might have a product that they're trying to get into a company, but their competitors are already entrenched. And so maybe when design engineer likes Product A, but the other divisions of the company are using Product B, and I can imagine that's a pretty uphill battle to displace the person that's already there and has this volume discounts or whatever it is. [00:04:40][25.3]

Speaker 2: [00:04:41] It really is. And I want to talk a little bit about personalities and purchasing, because you think it's just, hey, it's just a role you order. You know, you send out your RFP as you get your prices back and you select the lowest price provider or the lowest price provider of a qualified bidder. By qualified, I mean, hey, there's a there's a certain threshold of expectations, specs, qualities, performance deliverables. And if they qualify for all those things and you're a little bit indifferent to them, to the manufacturer, we have to remember, like the purchasing agent has their own set of bosses or their own set of customers, if you would. So they might be reporting in a structure that's very operations driven and it's all about time, schedule, get the product, they're doing all this stuff, or they might be marketing central, which is very, hey, we want it to be the top of the line. We want it to be the flashiest. We want it to be the best, for it might be very cost driven. And it's like, Hey, we're very value centered. We would never pay more than this, that or this. So, so think about all those scenarios are different. If somebody comes in and wants to sell me a product and say, Hey, I can give you this product for $0.10 cheaper. But my boss says, Schedule is all we care about. Do I want to risk my career by hiring, saving a little bit of money on an unknown that might not be able to deliver on the schedule until they're proven or vice versa market wise? Hey, we can get this here all day long, but if you go, Hey, you're not up to this level of, I guess, brand identity, you know, think about like trying to think of something like I'm thinking of of color faucets or like high end faucets. Like you can't just switch in just generic faucets because they're cheaper and you can get more of it because the customers get to have a higher level of expectation. So if your product is along those lines of brand recognition, the person is going to switch it to. So there's a lot of dynamics that go into it. So you have to really understand what is the organization's priorities? What's the what's the purchasing agent's priorities? Because they're going to be a little bit different. And then you also there's another thing you want to understand is a purchasing agent has a variety of backgrounds. Maybe they came from an engineering side, maybe they came from the operations side. But a lot of times they come in, their first job is receptionist or contract admin, and they're just used to getting paper, put it into a computer and they really understand the contract process and then they do really good at the job. So they get promoted to purchasing agent because they're really efficient at writing contracts, negotiating contracts, running the accounting system. Make it your bills are paid, but they really don't understand the products that they're buying and the level of detail that the people that are installing them use. So if they're not really that savvy on that stuff and you come in and wow them with how much better your products are, they're going to it's going to go over their heads. So you got to kind of relate that information so that it's it's understandable to them and they can comprehend it and then they can evaluate how the other people make differences. I don't know if I answered your question about how you get to like knocked over your tried competitor. But that's a tough one because that's a whole. A whole nother like set of strategies because, you know, would somebody who's been in there for a long time, this works the other way, too. Like if you were trying to get ahead to some company and how would you feel if they just turned their back on you and went with the next guy just because you got a phone call and a ten cent discount like, yeah, relationships are everything. And so I always say like if you want to get in on a company, you got to build that relationship within the sequence of that framework, who the person agent is, who their customer is, you know, the boss, the marketing, the end user, evaluate that and just kind of be patient that it takes time to develop this. But if you're there and somebody always messes up and somebody always gets another shot to come in, and if you're there been knocking on the door for a while, they're going to call you and give you a shot. But if you just, you know, hey, here's my literature. Yeah, call me when you need something. You're not going to get a call back. [00:08:55][253.4]

Speaker 3: [00:08:55] No. So staying top of mind and also understanding what it is they value most. And and so I'm imagining there's there's two things that go into that. So one, it's really the salesperson, I imagine, from that company that's interacting with purchasing, interacting with the specify or whoever it is, the buying team and understanding is it time to delivery, is it quality, is it is there a co-marketing branding thing? You know, what is it that this company values? And then I see following that where marketing can have a set of content that maybe sales is delivering or is delivered on the website. It's it's pretty universal that the thing that the people we target care most about is X and so let's develop messaging around that. So yeah, it was a really good point. [00:09:44][48.2]

Speaker 2: [00:09:44] Well, that's true because, you know, a lot of people, when they're think in marketing, they understand it in B2C or consumer driven relationships where you're kind of like, oh, here's some nice artwork or here's some nice advertisements. I'm excited about the product. Let's go buy it. But that works in like impulse decisions and then B2B, those type of purchasing decisions aren't made impulsively. There's usually a reason for it. So the marketing literature is almost secondary. Like it's not going to be like, Hey, I saw a cool Facebook ad like, I want to bring this this new vendor. And the marketing should be it should support the relationship. So, you know, your sales force comes in and they do educational. They talk about why this product works. So the marketing message has to be on point where it's it's identifying the pain point and that needs to be in alignment with the company's solution and they need to be able to deliver on it. So if all those things are in line with the way that the salespeople are presenting the information, then the back up marketing that goes with it, the websites, the, the, the literature. I always call it your, your propaganda that those things are going to. [00:10:58][73.6]

Speaker 3: [00:11:00] We have savvy marketers listening to this. [00:11:02][1.7]

Speaker 2: [00:11:04] Yeah. So, so like that's where you go to the website and that's where you want it to be, easy to use, easy to find the technical data, the brochures and all this stuff so that you can easily be referred to it. Because a lot of times, you know, if you go on to the website and you're just you're like, I don't I'm already in the position where I use the product. I need the technical data. Like, where is it? Is it easy to find? Is it located? There is the pros and cons is. And the other thing I think that's important to have on there. Is is useful data to help the purchasing agent advocate for that company. Because if you go in there and you're going to talk to your boss about why you want to switch somebody if you have, you know, studies or results or like, you know, and the best one is, is like if you say like technical jargon, you know, scientific studies, all this stuff that flies over a lot of people's head, body control, like a video, you know, like of I'm just thinking of like something's like under compression, like a press and one bus and one doesn't like. That's very visual. And you go, hey, that's that's a lot better. So something that that's visual that a person agent can use as support for their argument to like, Hey, why do we want to use somebody else? Why do we like this product better? Yeah, you go and you show it, hey, here's it's outperforming the competitors because of this reason. And oh, by the way, you know the price points better or they can service this better. They got more inventory or there's less inventory or these two parts cost more, but they cost less than the two parts individually. You know, little things like that. All are useful for making the purchasing agents job easier if they're going to, you know, recommend you. [00:12:50][105.8]

Speaker 3: [00:12:50] Yeah. You know, often we'll focus on technical case studies about what if solution does the application that it serves. But I can see there being a business case study showing how a company saved money or worked more efficiently because of this product. And it had that purchasing manager in mind when they wrote that case study. So giving the business support to that purchase, not just the technical support. [00:13:16][25.4]

Speaker 2: [00:13:17] Right. Exactly. [00:13:17][0.4]

Speaker 3: [00:13:19] Well, as far as job performance goes, how is the purchasing agent measured? [00:13:23][4.2]

Speaker 2: [00:13:25] Wow. That's that's a tough one. The Persian agent job is it's one that. You don't get a lot of kudos for doing your job. You just get a lot of grief. If you didn't do it right, you know, you got you got to if you meet your budget and meet your schedule, you did your job and it's like, hey, good job. But you know what you get screamed at or people looking for is like, Hey, why did you miss in your budget? Why did you miss this, you know, specification? Why did you like not get the materials and parts and pieces on time? Like that's the calls you get, you know, Friday night at 5:00, like, my stuff better be here on Monday morning and you're stressed out all weekend trying to make things happening, but nobody goes, Hey, thanks for getting out here a day early, like, you know, cheers. So the person agent role is very tough. So the people that really perform well in it, I think are detailed, organized. They're not always rushing around, putting out fires or planning ahead, that they're being proactive and figuring out what they're going to do. And they're very thorough in making sure that they don't have missed scope. There's nothing worse than going, Hey, I got all the parts here, and then you find out like, Well, there's one little screw that's missing and that screw is 12 weeks out and you can't do anything without that screw. So it's like, why have anything in there? Yeah. So, so you really have to be that type of person. But you know, if, if the if you're basically. Out of sight, out of mind. I think people like that are in the business know how important that habit of purchasing agent is that they go, Hey, we don't have a lot of problems with this person because they're so organized. Everything gets there on time. Everything's thorough. They get they get rewarded pretty well and they move up. You know, they tend to move up pretty quickly in the company. They go from whatever the organization's role is, basically contract admin to assistant person to person, Asia to maybe like a director purchasing, or maybe they become very skilled in the operations side too, and they become like an operations purchasing person that runs both sides of the shop. That tends to be at some point, everything funnels up into operations and whoever's running that still has to have an adequate knowledge of the operations and of the purchasing. So it's a lot of times that that person comes out of the purchasing background. [00:15:50][144.3]

Speaker 3: [00:15:51] Okay. So it sounds like to help that purchasing manager do the perform well within the organization, vendors can deliver on time and fulfill the promises that they make and make sure those screws or whatever it is that component is arrives. When you say it'll arrive so that everyone is happy, things move along. I assume that some are probably also measured on what kind of discounts they can get. So yeah, coming into that relationship knowing that there's some give and take in the contract negotiation to have a win win would be another one. [00:16:28][37.6]

Speaker 2: [00:16:29] I all for sure. And that's one of those things where you have to understand what's important to the company. Like some purchasing agents get a lot of kudos for the rebates they get. So if the rebates important to them, they'll be like, Hey, I need a rebate. I need a rebate because I want to go show like the rebate check to the boss. Like, look, I got 500 bucks back, 5000 bucks back, like, woo hoo. But we all know that the rebate is a portion of the original sale price. So wouldn't it be better to just get the lower price upfront? But sometimes that doesn't get the wow, look at the money you got back. It's just like, Oh, you did a good job in negotiation. There's hard to do a defined like, well, you know, the whole thing kind of added up to a 2% savings, but how much of it was that the price? That was just the price and how much of it was good negotiation and all this other stuff. So you do have to understand what is motivating that employee that that person an agent. So I suggest like if your first time doing business or even if you haven't been doing business for a long time is go spend some time like an hour, like you do a lunch and learn or you take them to lunch or you just come in to present your materials, spend a bit of time getting to know them, like find out what is the company's pain points. What is your pain point as a purchasing agent? What are the things you're looking for? Understand that complexity because I'll face, let's face it, most people that are going to get in the door and meet with the purchasing agent there are going to be again pre-qualified that there are products capable enough to do the thing. So like everybody comes in and says, hey, our product so much better than this other product, blah blah blah. It's like, Well, I get it, you got a couple bells and whistles this other person doesn't have. They probably got the same little few things different too. But as a whole, you guys are all pretty equal. Like, you know, we think you're capable of fulfilling the project specifications. So really we need to solve the pain point, you know, what's going to make the the difference and that's going to be how you solve that person's pain point. So don't go in there thinking like I'm going to allow them with the technical literature and how much better, how big, how many years we've been in business and how long this how many stores we got, how much inventory we got. Like the person is going to care about a lot of different things. Are you going deliver on time? Am I going to get a bunch of headache with that invoice? Am I going to deal with like shortages? Am I going to deal with like after the fact? Price increases like those are the things that make a person agents head spin. And you go, well, we get in business with you like, well, you're counting sucks and your air app is a nightmare to deal with. I just don't want to deal with it. So I don't care if, like, how great your product is or how cheap it is. Like it's a pain in the ass to deal with your company. So I'm not going to. So you really have to dig into what their pain points are and solve those, and that will make your life so much easier to promote your product. [00:19:23][174.3]

Speaker 3: [00:19:24] Okay, what about this sounds like so eighties, but what about bribes and gifts? And you mentioned lunch. Do companies ever, ever try that? Is that still a thing? [00:19:35][11.3]

Speaker 2: [00:19:36] I think that's that's definitely scaled back significantly when there's 2008, when when the recession happens and maybe even prior to that, there's like Sarbanes-Oxley was with version 14 and stuff like that came in. So it used to be like, hey, if you took somebody to lunch or. I'd hate to think somebody is making a decision based on a lunch thing, but, you know, like, hey, I'll, I'll take you on a trip somewhere and all this stuff. Those things definitely did happen, and they probably still continue to happen to some point. But I think personally it's not like it's really not worth it for for you to get to get into that trouble. You know, the. I think, too, that was back when there wasn't as much social media. There was it wasn't easy to connect with people like very digitally, like email, phone call. Like I've talked to some some. I hate to say this where like old timers, but people have been in the industry for like 30 years and they were telling me stories like we didn't have email back then. We, we didn't have phone call, you know, we had all had was a phone. So what I would do is I would drive to your office and I would sit in this conference room and the once a week and the person agents would kind of rotate through and talk about all their stuff and all their needs and do this stuff, you know? And that sounds so archaic. So the only way you could build these relationships with people was, you know, you'd have to get them out of the office and have a conversation with. I think now it's a little bit easier to to converse and it's definitely frowned upon. A lot of corporations have gifting policies of, like, anything over, you know, a token amount like, like a t shirt or, you know, something like that. A hat or a coffee mug is, is acceptable. But I still am a believer that that lunch at the office is an important way to connect with people. But just to take. It off the table. I always pay for the lunch because I feel feel like one. I'm probably going to get more out of this lunch than they are going to because if there's if there's a potential to do business together, you know, if I invest 30 bucks in a lunch, I'm probably going to get more than $30 savings on the deal. So I just kind of treat it that way. And I think my employer probably feels the same, too, that that's better than just saying, hey, look, this guy got a free lunch and now we're paying more for the product because we got to pay for their marketing budget. [00:22:04][147.8]

Speaker 3: [00:22:05] So, yeah. Yeah. Good. Are there any special associations or training programs or certifications that purchasing agents go through? Like, is there the Association of Purchasing Agents or something? [00:22:17][12.7]

Speaker 2: [00:22:19] Well, in my industry, there's there's some groups, councils and stuff like that that are related specifically to construction purchasing. But every every organization has some sort of purchasing association, trade shows, whatever. Some are more formal. You know, if you are doing manufacturing, purchasing, I'm sure there's certifications and little designations you can have behind your name. And it really depends on your industry and how it's set up, but there's definitely some. So I would if you're looking to get started, start Googling what your industry is, slash purchasing agent and some stuff will pull up. You can always ask your vendors like, Hey, what do you what do you go to? Because they're always looking to network with other purchasing agents. So they're going to go with the purchasing agents are, which tend to be these industry groups and they'll they'll tell you a this one's a good one. This one's not so good. Hang out here. And then you meet a few other person agents, ask what they're up to, what what's helped them be successful in their career and just kind of fall out of ice. [00:23:26][67.3]

Speaker 3: [00:23:27] Okay, very good. Well, do you have any other examples of just fantastic content or communication that a company is done that's helped you make a decision in their favor? Something to give all of our marketing people. [00:23:42][15.5]

Speaker 2: [00:23:46] I'm going to say project specific type marketing, put together presentations. So when when you come out with like, here's my catalog and here's my brochures and stuff like that, like it used to be if you went to a trade show, you'd have the these bags they give you and you walk in the show and you'd like walk through and you'd get done. You'd have like £60 of stuff. You're like, What am I going to do with all this stuff? And then. [00:24:13][27.5]

Speaker 3: [00:24:13] You're going to throw it all. [00:24:14][0.7]

Speaker 2: [00:24:14] Away? We knew I would. I was like, I like as I walk out the door, I'm like, I'm going to look at this again. And I would throw it away. [00:24:19][5.3]

Speaker 3: [00:24:20] So definitely just wasted little is over. [00:24:22][2.4]

Speaker 2: [00:24:23] So that's not really that important. But what what I find is when you're talking about a product or service and you say, hey, we're thinking about using you over here on this project, can you put together a little bit of of specifics for this so I could show my boss so maybe show us what what are trends in the industry like? What are people what are your other customers doing? How are they solving these same problems? And you come out and you say, hey, this is what's kind of going on. This is stuff that that you like is how you how it's been doing. This is where it's going. So you understand really the trends of what's going on and how that product fits into it. Like that's really, really helpful. I think too is, is knowing that. And then one of the things that I always find is frustrating is you have the marketing and sales staff come out and they talk about the product and then you go, why have all these like technical questions? And they're like, well, we're going to have to refer you to our technical person. And it's like, I just want to talk to like the, the wrong person. So bring the team that needs to be there for the answer. So when you when you gather up all your literature, all your stuff, which really rolls back down to what I said before, is like, you know, what is the problem you're solving? How do you eliminate that pain point and, and what, what, what the company is about and all that message is all in alignment. Then you come in and you curtail that message to what that individual person you're meeting with is is interested in. That's the best, best way to do it. [00:26:03][99.6]

Speaker 3: [00:26:03] Excellent. So I'm envisioning, as you were talking, how you have one, let's say PowerPoint deck, that is for the engineer specify. Right, that that goes into deeply technical information specs, all of that. And then you have this other document and there's some overlap, of course that talks to the he said trends in the industry, business, stability, whatever those benefits are that you think will be the selling point and it's not as. Deeply technical, but it's just technical enough to show that, yes, you meet those specifications. And I think that that's that's kind of a nice way to look at it is this companion, whether it's PowerPoint at the end of the day or Web pages or whatever, you know, maybe that's the difference there, too. So, yes, for sure. Yeah. [00:26:52][48.2]

Speaker 2: [00:26:52] And the other thing I would I would recommend is, is be okay with getting off the script. You know, like I think a lot of times the sales marketing team comes in and they got this script and they're like going through it and you're like, like, stop. Like, we don't, you don't have to pitch this portion of it. Yeah, let's just talk. We've already said we're going. We're. I don't need to know about the company history. We've already passed that. We've already passed the like why we should use you. We're in the point where it's like, Hey, let's get to the nuts and bolts and you're in the running for it. Let's talk about that. So be be willing to skip, go off script. Don't stick to like the guns. And one thing that I'll tell people the E think it would be easy common knowledge but when you get to yes shut up like sometimes people get yes and they keep talking. They keep talking and they could talk their yes into a no. If they just if you get to the yes, even if it's 5 minutes in and you had an hour meeting, just, hey, cool meetings over, like, what do you do? It's like you got featured this week. What's up? [00:27:52][60.3]

Speaker 3: [00:27:53] Perfect. Perfect. Oh, well, this is all been very interesting. Exactly what I hope to accomplish today to get in your head as a purchasing agent. And I think it's it's motivating me and and how we can think about this persona a little bit more critically. [00:28:12][18.8]

Speaker 2: [00:28:13] Yes. So awesome chatting with you. Yeah. [00:28:14][1.8]

Speaker 3: [00:28:15] Well, before we hop off, I would love to talk a little bit about your podcast, which is called Catch All in Podcast gets me a little bit more about that. [00:28:24][8.9]

Speaker 2: [00:28:25] So the All in podcast is an extension of an experiment. I thought about doing this this year, which had had the little bit of legs in the past, and it started off with I was in my career in purchasing. I hated networking and they didn't like doing it. And so I would avoid these networking events. But people were like, Hey, you got to go. You got to you know, you can't what they say, you know, no person is an island. You have to go out and meet people or you're not going to be able to grow your career. That's why I started doing it and I did. A lot of what everybody does is just hang out with a select few people that you know that they see at the same things. And I didn't really venture out, but then my job required me to meet a bunch more people that were outside this immediate circle of influence. And so I started doing that, and as uncomfortable as it was, it became easier and easier. And I also found out that my ability to do my job got better, because basically what it is, is your network is, is like a tool chest of. Resources to solve problems. And the more problems we can solve, the more valuable you are. And you start realizing, hey, I'm doing better with, you know, being a report for more people to solve more problems. Like let me go into the national space, like let me be in the local industry, let me go national again. It is accelerated. I think my career path, not just because I know a bunch of people, but like I said, I was able to solve more problems. So I just over the last year said, hey, what would really happen if you just put in all your efforts and to grow your personal relationship as big as you can, knowing that you have no idea what's going to happen, but you're going to meet amazing people along the way and just kind of document on the process. And, and the podcast is an extension of that, this idea of like, hey, and so me always going out trying to find people. It's a place for people to kind of come find me. So you could either come on as a guest and I can talk with people I might not have had chance to meet with before, or I could get my message to other people that might not have heard it. It's hard to say, okay, I'm going to do this. So the podcast is kind of like a conversation of like what it would be like if we went and said, Hey, let's chat, let's get to know each other, go grab a coffee, talk about what's kind of going on, where the things are important to you and just just what are you about? And document that because I always thought whenever I'd go meet with somebody for a coffee or a cocktail after work, I was like, Those are really cool conversations and I wish they had been recorded because I think there's a few nuggets of value that I think people would find just kind of came out of this, get to know you meeting. So that's really the and the Nutshell podcast. [00:30:53][148.2]

Speaker 3: [00:30:54] Very cool. Very cool. Well, I've listened to some of your episodes and I found it very both entertaining and got some inspiration from it. So I appreciate something, right? Yeah. [00:31:06][12.4]

Speaker 2: [00:31:06] Thank you so much. [00:31:07][0.5]

Speaker 3: [00:31:08] Well, we're again, our listeners go to learn more about you in your podcast. [00:31:12][3.4]

Speaker 2: [00:31:13] Okay. So my website, Nate Paycom, is like the central hub for everything you can find all my social media links, but LinkedIn, I'm pretty active on there. I like connecting with people on LinkedIn, and so I'll just put this out there. If anybody that's on the sales and marketing side just wants to pick my brain about, Hey, how could we do basically, how could I get a buyer's perspective, perspective on the sales process? I'd be happy to connect with them for a few minutes and just, you know, tell them what I think. And, you know, we could be just generic advice questions or you could say, I have a specific problem with this person. Like, what can we do to, to, to figure it out? Like, I love those conversations and that's a ton of fun. It's like a hobby. That's like, what's your hobby? It's like this, like, why would that be a hobby? That's so weird, but I love it. [00:32:04][51.5]

Speaker 3: [00:32:04] So your people person. [00:32:06][1.2]

Speaker 2: [00:32:07] They go. [00:32:07][0.2]

Speaker 3: [00:32:09] Well, any parting words of advice for the marketers listening again? [00:32:14][5.7]

Speaker 2: [00:32:15] You know, I think there's the marketing of presenting your company in alignment of the vision, but I think the relationships are so important to create. You want to make sure that each one is individualized and really people like talking about themselves first. So make it about them. Don't just lead with, Hey, here's who we are, here's what we do. This is why we're so great. Like, it's going to go you're going to develop better, stronger relationships. Faster. Would you go in? Hey, who are you? What are you doing? What is your problem? And sometimes our problem might just be like, I just had a bad day and I needed a coffee, you know, like, that's it. Like it. And those conversations turn into, like, that person was really just very empathetic. They didn't try to jam me down my throat with a bunch of stuff and I liked meeting them. And so then the next time you call, they're going to be like, Hey, I like talk to that person. I'm going to take their call. And then they'll it'll it'll turn into a a bigger friendship. The other thing I don't know if you tell your cousin, your clients this or your marketers this, but podcasting is something I would recommend people do because if you want to get in with like. Like Let's say you're trying to get in at some company and the procedure won't return your calls. If you're having a podcast and you call this person CEO and you said, Hey, I do a podcast on this industry here, and would you come and share your wisdom and knowledge, blah, blah, blah, they're going to come and chat with you the more I chat with you, because the CEO came out and said, okay, around this his conversations podcast on the business and then at the end of the show there's always a little chit chat and I go, What are you doing? Like, Hey, we're interested in buying your stuff. So then the CEO might say, Oh, I'll introduce you to the PR or I'll tell the PR to take your call. And then the PR gets a call from the CEO like, Hey, meet with this person. Then they're like, Oh yeah, I'm going to take the cork as a CEO, ask me to like it. There's a lot of benefit from just having your own podcast. It's a chance to set yourself apart from the expectations shirts. It's work. Sure, you might not get a lot of immediate, like tangible numbers that just pinpoint to it, but you're able to have conversations again with people you might not have had otherwise because you have a podcast and it's a chance for you to just you have a reason to call somebody that's about them, not for you. So it's a it's an amazing tool. [00:34:36][140.8]

Speaker 3: [00:34:37] Great advice. Thank you so much for being on the show today, Nate. [00:34:40][3.1]

Speaker 2: [00:34:41] Thank you. Appreciate it. Had a lot of fun. [00:34:42][1.8]

Speaker 3: [00:34:43] Visit Content Marketing Engineer dot com for notes and resources from today's episode. While there you can subscribe to my blog, which will keep you up to date on new episodes and other resources for building trust and growing your business with technical content. Thanks and have a great day. [00:34:43][0.0]

[2036.1]

Resources

• Nate on LinkedIn