Automated Networking Follow-up and Referral Networks

Welcome to Building Better Developers, the developer podcast where we work on getting better step by step professionally and personally. Let's get started. Well, hello and welcome back. We're continuing our season where we're doing interviews. We're continuing our discussion slash interview with Ian Campbell of Mission Suite. This will be the last one. We will wrap it up really getting into the we'll call it the nitty gritty of marketing and well, it's really more networking and getting the most out of your network and understanding how to keep that alive, essentially keep that fresh. It has a lot of great suggestions. So get your pencil out, get your paper out, get ready to take a few notes because we're going to dive right back in. And here we go back to our discussion with Ian Campbell. You mentioned earlier the idea of which is really it's the automation side of this is it's where it's where you're saying, hey, I don't have time to go to all these events, but I do want to make and part of what software provides is a way to sort of help people do that without having to go in all those meetings, but to say, hey, let's keep those connections fresh, I guess, and do some of that follow up work. So how do you approach that? And maybe some of this is how your software does it and how and maybe some of this a little more about how you got to that point from your own experiences. Yeah, definitely. Well, what I realized was that the you know, the it's kind of like the more I practice, the luckier that I get. Right. I mean, I what I realized is that the more frequently that I sat down in front of the same person, you know, and not just did my one time follow up and say, oh, now I've got another in my referral network. Right. The more frequently that I got together with that person, the more likely they were to refer me business. Right. And so what I realized is that having that those common touch, those regular touch points of once every three months or so becomes it becomes really, really valuable. And so that's where that's where our kind of platform really starts to shine, because what I ended up doing was when I moved to Denver, so I was living in San Diego, moved to Denver, and I was like, all right, I got to figure out a better way to do this because forgetting people, all that sort of stuff. So what I ended up doing was I created these systems inside of Mission Suite because again, you will use Mission Suite automates emails based on trigger points, right? Standard sales automation system. And so I created three follow up emails. One that said, hey, great to meet you. We talked about getting together again. Would love to schedule that. What's your calendar look like? Another said, hey, you know, we didn't talk about getting together again, but I'm interested in your business. Would love to learn more. You available? And then the last one that I called the gentle blow off, which is, you know, hey, great to for like the 976 real estate agent that you meet at the event. Right. It was, hey, great to meet you. Looking forward to seeing you again at the next event. In the meantime, if you, if I can make any introductions off my LinkedIn network, definitely let me know. Here's my profile. Looking forward to chat. You're looking forward to seeing you next time around. Cheers. So really straightforward, really quick, short to the point. But then it took my follow up from those networking events from about an hour to about five minutes, right? Which was beautiful because it was, it allowed me to be more regular and be more consistent with following up with people. And getting more of those one-on-ones from the, from the events I was going to. And, you know, of course, if you do, if you run the personalization engine, right. Then you can, uh, then you can, you know, make it sound really personal and not say, not make it feel like it says dear name, it was great to meet you at the event, you know, that kind of thing, um, which I've gotten before, and I always find ironic when I do, but, uh, you know, you don't, you don't email the automation and personalization guide, uh, with an email where all the placeholders are. But, uh, I'm going to say as a software developer, it's like, it's, it's, it's always funny to see that kind of stuff where you're like, ah, you didn't configure this, right? Cause you're exactly right. Like the brackets or something. And it's such an obvious, like, oh, you were supposed like where it says inter name here, it's like, you forgot to enter the name here. Exactly. Exactly. And, uh, so, you know, those types of things, uh, really can't really make things a lot easier, uh, and smooth out a lot of that in the beginning. Um, but then on the, the kind of ongoing touch points, again, I've got three basic levels, right? I've got the people that I want to get together with once a, once a month or so. Right. And those are people that I'm really close with, right. That I've spent, that I spent time figuring out and if, and have, then we have like, we have an explicit relationship that says, Hey, listen, let's get together once a month. Let's talk about wins. Let's talk about what we're doing, different types of people that we, that we've met and let's, let's look at how we can help each other grow our business intentionally. Um, so that's a big thing. And then, uh, the, but the, the more frequent, the more common one is the once every three month person. And so, uh, what we're able to do is, is set up as in, inside of mission suite, what I did is set up a schedule for those people so that if I tagged them as a, you know, once every, as a, what I call home plate, then they get an email from me once every month that says, Hey, let's, let's get some, let's get some time on the calendar. What, what, what, what looks good next week. Uh, and then, but if I tagged them as my infield, then it's once every three months, Hey, it's been, it's been a few months since we've gotten together again. What's your calendar look like over the next couple of months? Right. And then I've got the, that outfield level, which is every six months or so. I want to get, I want to be getting together with these people. Um, just because, you know, those are the ones that oftentimes can refer me to other are really good for referring to other referral partners, but I don't want to spend a ton of time, you know, like not that I don't want to be getting together with these guys, these folks because they're good people, but I don't want to be spending my work time doing it because they're not going to have, it's not, they're not going to have as big an impact on my work time as infield and home plate people can't, right? Once every six months, they get an automated email from me. Hey, so and so it's been a while since we've gotten together. Tell me what your calendar looks like for the next few weeks and we can get, we can grab some coffee again, making it really easy, really straightforward, but taking the human brain out of it. And that's the important part because what I realized was that the second that this one square foot of real estate, and because we're on an audio medium, I'm getting a lot of value out of pointing at my head right now, but, uh, but B but, you know, so for all you listeners, I'm pointing at my head right now, uh, but, but, you know, one square foot of real estate has a massive impact on the way, on what you do. Right. And so it's really easy to get in your head and remind and say to yourself, I just saw Dave last week, right? I don't need to get together again, but what you're forgetting is because again, it's human nature to self-protect self-promote, right? I feel awkward doing this. I feel awkward reaching out to somebody and saying, Hey, let's get together. You know, so I'm not going to, I'm going to protect myself from that awkward feeling and I'm not going to do it. Right. And you look for any excuse to do so your brain looks for any excuse to do so. So, you know, but what your brain is not telling you is that, you know, yeah, you saw Dave last week, but it was in the line for the bar at the happy hour that you went to and you had no meaningful interaction and you didn't get a chance to actually talk about anything, but Hey, you got this big win last week that you want to brag about to let people, to remind people what you do, you know? So, Hey, yeah, get in front of, you know, get in front of it. Yeah. Right. And so that kind of a thing. So getting the human head, getting the human brain out of it makes it that much more likely that it's going to happen and makes it that much more likely that you're, excuse me, that you're actually going to, going to continue to do, to, to kind of build this because now all of a sudden you're just getting emails back saying, yeah, I'd love to get together. What's your calendar look like? Or how's Tuesday the 23rd or what, you know, whatever the case may be. So things like that become, become super, super, super effective. Yeah. And particularly cause that's, you know, that's the kind of thing that I'll say, Oh yeah, I just saw, talked to Dave last week and then I, you know, look deeper into it and it's like, Oh, last week was actually six months ago or something. So then you get busy and you're just, I had a, as a guy that we were good friends for a while and we, we went like five or six years and we're like, yeah, it was like a couple of months ago and we looked back and it's like, no, it was actually multiple years and just so much goes on and you get so busy. And like you said, you just, you get in your head, you're focused on your business and there's people like that, that you it's helpful to, you know, it's good to touch base with them regularly and you just sort of lose track cause you're just so busy on other stuff. Yeah. If you don't run into them at that, you know, if you don't run in the same circles, you can go a long time without even, you know, and they're like, Oh, wow. I didn't realize that you, you know, lost weight or all these different things. You're like, you don't even recognize people cause it's been so long, but you just time flies kind of thing. That's it. That's it. Exactly. I mean, one of my best friends from, I'm a musician as well. And one of my best friends from days when I was performing this entertainment company and I finally got together again after, when I was back in my hometown, in July and I'm like, what's it been? It's, it's been like, it's been a few years since we've gotten together and we actually went back and counted. It had been 12 years since he and I got together, right? Because, you know, I had the family and, uh, and other work stuff going on and, you know, this and he changed jobs and all this, you know, so it just, but I mean, fortunately we're close enough that 12 years went by and we're still able to pick up like it was yesterday, but most people aren't like that. Right. And so you gotta stay in front of people because otherwise they just, they, they frankly kind of just forget about you. Yeah. Yeah. It's having kids are funny because we're like, oh yeah, it's your kids are like one or two now, right? Like, no, my kids are 40. You know, it's like, it's, it's been a while. Yeah, exactly. You freeze people in that last time you saw them. That's it. Yeah, exactly. And it does. I mean, I think it is, it does, you know, you referred to the idea of, you know, so that you're getting emails back. It's just this, you know, you've got the system and it's sending stuff out and it's, it's doing what, you know, what the executive assistant used to always do for somebody it's like, go make sure that those things get done, but now you've got this automated software, it can go out and we joked about the, you know, do hello, inter name here, but a lot of that stuff is very, it's very intelligent to this point that you can, you know, you can put a decent amount of information in and it will, it will track that, Hey, you know, we met at this event last year and this, and it was great talking about ABNC and it all that, especially with some of these CRMs that the information is here. Those emails are really hard, even as an expert, I think sometimes it's hard to tell, did they type this out and they're just very formal and specific, or is this just some automated piece? And either way, it's still, it's like, you know, I haven't talked to him in a while, I'm going to go ahead and reply anyways and say, yeah, why don't we get together? Yeah, exactly. You know, I mean, for, so we have the, these two systems that, that this automated networking follow-up and the referral bench system, we've got those built into mission suite, to every new mission suite account. So everybody that signs up for missions, we got, has that running for them from the day that they get up and running. Right. But, and so for those clients, for those systems, it's very basic. Hey, so, Hey, first name, it was great to meet you. We'd love to get together again, learn more about your business or whatever. Right. I mean, and, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but it's very basic. So it, it doesn't feel, again, it doesn't, it feels pretty informal. It feels pretty, it feels really personal, but there's not a lot of detailed information with mine on the other end. I mean, this is where my kind of marketing marketing, uh, technology geek comes out. I, I dive in and I make it as complicated as I can. Right. And it's dynamic fields. And if it says this, then put in this paragraph. It, if it does that, I mean, you can, you can really make it super, super, super personal if you want to. And, uh, and I mean, I've done it with some things and I've, I've left it alone with others. And honestly, you don't see a whole lot of performance shift in, uh, in one versus the other. I think that, uh, that, you know, again, everybody's, everybody's kind of comfortable with the, with the follow-up email, Hey, it was great to meet you. Let's get together again. And you know, that kind of a deal. So, and again, the thing to keep in mind too, and this is what took me a while to, to, to, to really, to really kind of take home is that people are there. To do this. Right. People go to these events to meet other people. People go to these events to follow up with other people. People go to these events to have one-on-ones and to build relationships. So if you're not, if you're not there doing that, if you're not doing those, those follow-ups, then you know, you've kind of wait, you've wasted, you ended up wasting a lot of time and, uh, and you're, you're not getting out of it, what you can. So, yeah, that's a good point is that it's not, and especially if you're not a, if you're somebody that's not normally a networking kind of person and you go in there, you're like, Oh no, I'm sort of, you know, I'm bugging them because I'm trying to, you know, saying, Hey, I talked to you yesterday, but that's what they want. Right. That's what you would love for the people that you talk to that said, Hey, I appreciate that I talked to you yesterday. I'm glad, you know, I've got your business card. I'm glad that you do this kind of work. I'll keep you in mind. So, you know, you're giving them the same thing that you would want to get out of it. Exactly. Exactly. You know, and the last point that I'll make on that, that specific thing is that it's always good and impressive to be the first one to follow up. Right. Like you said, you want to be the first one to give, cause then it's like, you're not keeping score, but it's like, Hey, I was there first. Exactly. Right. Right. And that sits with people, you know, it's, uh, you know, it does. It's, uh, so you're like, man, you, and when you become the guy who's really good at following up, you know, it's, it's kind of like that, there's an old saying, there's no that is in sales that, but it's kind of saying someone says that, listen, if the reason that we follow up so vigorously is because imagine if I work this hard to get the business, imagine how hard I'm going to work once you're paying me to do so. Right. I mean, and so it's the same kind of a thing, right? I mean, if you work that hard at following up that you're first, that you beat me at following up, then, you know, imagine how hard you're going to work for the next person that I, that I introduced you to. Yeah. That's a very good point. It's, you know, you, you get there and you say, Hey, I'm, I'm, I'm, you know, I'm going to follow up. I've got those details. I'm not the guy that's going to like flake out on you because I'm showing you from the start. Right. Exactly. Exactly. So if somebody wants to use, do you have a, um, somebody's interested now? I've been talking about all this. You're like, Oh, I love this idea of mission suite. Do you guys have like a, uh, uh, you have like a trial period or do you have or sort of like a, you know, get to know us or something like that, that you recommend for somebody that wants to, wants to dig into it a little bit more? Yeah. So we've got a, uh, we've got a page, uh, you know, up on our site that's, you know, see the mission suite.com is our, is our website and a slash CRM for entrepreneurs and, uh, and so we've got there, we've got videos, we've got, uh, you can register for a demo. You know, we don't typically do trials because our, our price structure is so low. I mean, we, you can jump into a mission suite at 30 bucks a month, uh, especially with, uh, with, with the deal that, uh, that, that is offered on that CRM for entrepreneurs page. Um, but, uh, but yeah, I mean, so, but that said at the same time, if you really want to kind of say, if you really want to kick the tires and, uh, and, and dive into it, you know, there's, uh, we're never set in stone with anything, right? I mean, where a mission suite is pretty customizable. We like to be pretty customizable too. If you're ready to jump in, if you're ready to roll, then, then you can absolutely do that, you know, uh, on that page, but then you can also connect with us and just, uh, you know, with, I mean, between you and me and, uh, you know, the internet gods here, a little bit of cajoling we'll get, uh, we'll, we'll usually get a couple of days to kick some tires. So, well, and it's one of those things, you know, CRMs are sort of interesting like that is that you almost, usually once you've spent the time to, to play, like if you get a seven day trial or whatever, and I think that's a lot of the CRMs recognized, if I've spent that much time to use it for a week, then I'm probably going to keep using it. It's like, you sort of want to know beforehand where this is going to do what you want it to do or not. Exactly. Exactly. You know, and that's what, and we do, and we, we dive in on personalized demos too. Right. So the one thing that we do ask if we're going to do a, uh, if we're going to do any sort of trials is that you spend some time with us on the, uh, on a demo, just so you can see how to do the things that you're trying to get it to do. Um, you know, so, because that way, at least when you get into it, because again, it's in a customizable system and obviously your audience is more technical as probably more technical than most, but inside of a customizable system, it's really easy to get lost because with most custom, you know, as with most customizable systems systems, excuse me, it's easy to say, oh, well, I can do this this way or this way or wait, can I, I can do it this way too. So what's the best way to do it? Right. And so those types of things. So, and that's, and that's, again, to your point, using it a little bit and kicking the tires and getting, getting to figure out how to, how to make it work for you is one thing, but you know, actually seeing the talking to somebody who uses it every day, that's that, that kind of turns into a whole different place. So, and that's why we, we, you know, like I said, if we're, if we're going to do a free trial for any period, we ask you to spend some time just, just, you know, half an hour, 45 minutes with us, just kind of making sure that you understand how it does the things that you want it to do. So if nothing else, you have some, some memory for it. Yeah, that makes sense. And so with all of this discussion of networking and referral networks and all that, if somebody is like, Hey, I need to, I want to reach out to Ian, what are, what's the best way to get ahold of you and, and, you know, sort of get into sort of ping you for whatever their questions are. Yeah. So if you want to, so if you want to touch base with me, you're welcome to do so. I mean, I'm on LinkedIn and so, you know, you can find me linkedin.com slash E and S Campbell, you know, my, my, our, my direct line, I mean, is, and I don't know if it's, if, if just blurting it out or putting into the show notes or whatever, but I mean, you can, you can call me directly. You can email me directly. Probably emails the best way, but Campbell at the mission suite.com is my email address. You're welcome to touch base with me there. And then my, our, my, my direct line is 303-900-3770. So if you want to touch base with me there, you can do that too. I will be honest that most phone calls go to voicemail first, but, but you know, you know, because I do have, but I do have a desk phone that blinks when I have voicemails, so I am more likely than most, I think, to get back to voicemails. But, but yeah, and I, and I, and I do have a team with me too. So, you know, I've got, we've got a biz dev person as well. So, you know, there's, there's some folks that'll probably, that might hear, that might hear from her and whatnot too. So, cause if you want to see a demo, you want to get that set up, but usually all that stuff goes through her. But, but I'm happy to be the first point of contact for anybody that, that is looking for insight, advice, thoughts on, on any of this stuff. You know, I am, I am here to be helpful. So. Awesome. That is great to be so available like that. And yeah, we'll definitely, I'll make sure I've got all of that in the show notes to, so anybody that wants to track you down, if they're sitting there driving along, they don't have to like, you know, worry about crashing to take that note down real quick. Exactly. Pull over to the side of the road, write down my phone number. Yeah. Right. Right. There you go. Pause. Yeah. Find a safe place first. Stop. Exactly. All of those notes down. You don't want to be on the side of the road and suddenly get sideswiped or something, just cause I was just trying to take that number down. Exactly. Right. Right. Talk to him as soon as I could. Right. Right. Or worse have like the, I've seen that video of the truck, the like 16 wheeler that takes out a car while, while, you know, while a state patrol there is, but as it hasn't pulled over like, wow, I didn't know that happened, but you don't want to be on the receiving end of that for sure. Exactly. Right. Well, I do want to thank you for your, for your time for excellent discussion, a lot of information. I think there's one of those that I often mentioned, you know, I just mentioned like, you know, if you're driving, it's tough, but it's one of these, hopefully if you weren't, you had no paper and pencil or pen or, or good electric electronic way to take notes. Cause I think there are a lot of good things, a lot of good points that you brought out and a lot of this too, I think is that it's kind of things that if somebody wants a little more, learn a little more, it sounds like, you know, go check out the mission suite.com. And there's, like I said, there's those, a lot of how to use this, but there's behind it, there's these ideas of, Hey, you know, you want to, you want to touch base, you want to do it regularly. You, you know, it's the more you do that, the more likely you are to, you know, to find a hit a target that's going to work for you and to, and to have some of that, you know, pay back and get some referrals at work for you, whoever, whatever your, your focus is. That's it. Exactly. That's exactly right. Exactly. Right. So, and there's, you know, there's all sorts of content up on the website, things like that too, for, for educational purposes. So, I mean, we, we, we do our best to educate people on this. So, you know, anything that you can find, and if you can't, you know, somebody on my team will be able to help you figure that out. Well, thanks a lot. Have a good rest of your day, a good weekend, and we will catch you next time around. Yeah. Cheers. All right. Thank you. And as you may have guessed that wraps that one up. We are not done with our season though. We've got plenty of interviews lined back up. Hope you were entertained by and enjoyed the conversation with Ian as much as I did. This is an area that I think if you're like me, I'm just not a natural networking kind of person. You put me in a room with a lot of people. I am not going to go jump in front of them and start introducing myself and things like that. It's just not my style. Like you said, it's one of those that we just generally do not market and advertise ourself enough. And some of us even less so than average. And I would be in that bucket. So it's really not comfortable for me. It's really not normal for me. And it does help to have these like automated things and processes and procedures where you just do it and you don't think about it as much, but you, you are intentional about how you connect with them as far as setting that up and making sure that it's a, a good connection or a good reminder. You know, as we mentioned, you know, you don't want to have something that's like deer fill in your name. This was a great time at fill in the event name, blah, blah, blah. Utilize this stuff and test it. You put yourself into the, the loop or the process or whatever it happens to be, the funnel, whatever it is. And make sure that you've crossed the T's that you've dotted the eyes, that it does feel like something that was thought about at least, even if it is obviously automated, try to take some of the, you know, impersonal side out of that, that automation process, add a little touch that will make them think that, okay, at least you, you know, you heard me, you understand me. And maybe they'll even think that's like, Hey, this guy's or gal is sitting here you know, is really just great at following up and touching base. That being said, I'll let you get out there and touch base, follow up with whoever you need to, and we will come back next time around. We'll have a new conversation, but until then go out there and have yourself a great day, a great week, and we will talk to you next time. Thank you for listening to building better developers, the developer nor podcast. You can subscribe on apple podcast, stitcher, Amazon, anywhere that you can find podcasts. We are there. And remember just a little bit of effort every day ends up adding into great momentum and great success. One more thing before you go, develop a nor podcast and site are a labor of love. We enjoy whatever we do, trying to help developers become better. But if you've gotten some value out of this and you'd like to help us be great. 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