How To Phone In Your Sincerity By Misusing Your CRM – Episode 149

Customer relationship management system. CRMs are hugely powerful. I love CRM. It does, however, let you phone in your sincerity, doesn't it? You know, if you're not careful.

The wider point is a really interesting one. I mean, we've been talking a lot recently about sort of behavioral science and how people feel and how they make decisions. And in light of that conversation about how readily available spam content is, how easy it is nowadays to pretend to be something you're not online, and how easy it is to sort of set up a website, set up a business, set up a front that really can't deliver. I think what people have become very conditioned to is sort of using people's behavior as a measuring stick of who they really are. You can't trust someone's web presence because anyone can fake it. But what you can judge people on safely is the way they actually act and treat you. And I think if you do something insincere, like maybe you're sort of playing at being sincere in a previous conversation, The trust is completely gone.

Yeah. So welcome back to Digital Marketing From The Coalface. And it's all very strange today because for whatever reason, uh, Alex and I have found ourselves alone in the office today. Everyone's either working from home or. Leslie. Um. How operative. She'll she'll love me for that. Is is actually on holiday today. So we decided to do, do the podcast anyway because, um, we.

Just don't care about it.

We didn't used to, you know, video at all as we were doing it. So like, there's no video cameras on today and there's nobody else in the office. So, um, you and I have basically spent a huge chunk of the day working on our own website, which has been, uh, you know, in Scotland they have a saying, you know, cobbler's bairns, they've never got nice shoes. Um.

A Ben is a child for people who are not familiar.

Yeah. And uh, you know, we are guilty, I think, of neglecting our own web presence. So our web presence works well for us. It brings in business, get enquiries, we get opportunities to work with some great businesses. And, you know, pretty much all of the businesses we're working with just now, almost all of them probably are there because they found us online, looking to solve a problem, contacted us and, and became clients. And that's, that's great. That's how it should be. And that's what we help our clients achieve as well. Um, but sometimes, you know, you can't, even when you're really busy, it's very easy just to kind of lose track and not spend any time. So, you know, we spent some time looking at what's going on on the site pages that are getting traction, pages that are not getting traction, etc.. And it's fair to say we've made some quite big changes to the site today. We've actually changed, you know, changed what we've been saying on the home page and just generally kind of doing a bit of hard thinking. That's not a thing, is it? But it is now. It's some hard thinking when you're doing it, you know what we've you know, what what we're actually putting out there and digitally ourselves. And I'm kind of thinking we've made some fairly positive improvements. Well, positive improvements. That surely is a ridiculous thing to say. We've made some improvements to the website, um, which is uh, remains to be seen. Obviously, we'll monitor and see what's going on, but there were certainly there's certainly improvements in with respect to making things more logical and sensible. We were kind of, I don't know, I kind of we there's a danger that we were maybe being a bit confusing with the messaging that we're putting out there and the way that the site was constructed, certain pages kind of like, why isn't that the homepage? Why is it that page and you know, various things making.

People work a little too hard, I think.

But it just goes to show, you know, when there's no adults in the office to, to make sure that, that we actually get on with the work that we should be doing. Then we left to our own devices. And not only have we spent a long time working on our own website, but we're also now going renegade and doing a podcast without being looked after by Leslie and recorded. So this, this, you know, anything could happen, I suppose. Well, that's not true either, is it? I mean, you know, not anything we.

Could we could have a rap battle if you wanted. We could sing.

That's not gonna work. That's not gonna. That's not going to impress anybody, is it? Let's face it. You know, just like. I mean, I don't impress anybody ever. I'm certainly not.

I'm sure you impress your mum.

I'm certainly. Yeah, I'm certainly not gonna impress anyone with my rapping skills. Um, so I've got a few things you, as ever, have come onto this thing completely unprepared. Um, because you're so busy. Oh, I'm so busy. I've seen your writing for that client. Um, I, um, I've got a few things written down, and if it turns into, you know, a meaningful, um, conversation then albeit, you know, that's great and albeit shorter than usual, probably. That's great.

But meaningful conversation.

Have we ever had a meaningful conversation?

Three plus years. We've known each other. No.

Probably not. No. Um, so the first one I pointed one out to you earlier this morning, I just want to say a huge, um, open up before we do, before we do, uh, this is going to be episode what we're recording now, I think this is one four nine one four nine. It might be one fifty.

I don't blow a big anniversary episode on this pitch.

Um, I think this is, I think this is one four nine.

I hope so.

I hope so anyway. If it isn't, doesn't matter. But anyway, um, we don't get a lot of, uh, feedback. We get some feedback and, you know, we know that the, you know, in all seriousness, you know, we don't have a huge listenership. We get that we enjoy doing this. And the few people that do listen to it on a regular basis, we, we enjoy. um, doing it and they enjoy listening to it and it's great, but we would appreciate some feedback, um, positive or negative. Um, we won't pester, we won't put you into our database or anything. But if you email podcast at revolution dot com and just tell us what you think of the podcast, tell us what you want more of less of, um, or, you know, just, just introduce us if you.

Want, go for it.

I don't really mind. Um, that would be good. So podcast at revolution dot com, just give us a bit of feedback either which way? Um, so I'd just like to say that a huge, huge thank you to the spamming community because, you know, like when you get an email, you got the subject of the email and then it gives you like a little bit of a, it gives you.

A little snippet, a little taste of what's in there.

And bless them in the snippet. It quite often says, now, um, this will be the last time that I come, you know, you know, the whole kind of idea of like, if you're not getting anywhere, then send the break up email that will trigger people to get in touch with you, and it'll make them want to buy the shit that you're trying to sell. So a lot of people use that, you know, bullshit technique, if you like, of like the breakup email. So they go, right, you know, this is it. This is the last time I'm going to email, you know, you've deleted all ten of the previous emails, um, without responding. And then they send you that. But I just want to say a huge thank you because by doing it that way, it means that you don't even have to open the email to delete it. You can just delete it. Have to say, I mean, we use gmail and gmail does a great job of filtering out the spam. I don't know if you ever go and look in your spam folder. Yeah, I tend to have a cursory glance of it and then just select all delete. I don't spend a huge amount of time in there, because I trust that the majority of the stuff in there is garbage and. But some stuff gets through, obviously, and. But when it does and it flags itself as spam with the, uh, with the breakup thing, then it makes my life a lot simpler. And, um, like I said, I just want to be, I just want to send out a huge thank you to those spammers who take the time to make sure that it's very easy to identify their spam.

Yeah. I love that whole, um, you know, as you as you haven't responded to any of my previous six emails, I'm going to assume that this offer is no interest to you thing as well. It's like, yeah, really, no need to say that out loud. You know, you just sort of take it as read. Um, I do wonder, I mean, I, you know, if you imagine a world without spam, both in your email inbox and on your phone and also on social media, like it would be a much nicer place. I do wonder how much productivity is wasted, sort of flicking through spam emails and reading rubbish on every morning.

Um, I, you know, when I, when I get to my email, first thing I do is, is just delete a load of spam. It comes in through the night like it does for everybody else all through the day. You kind of like, it's.

Like sweeping up the litter on your front porch and like the leaves in autumn. It's like just chuck them in a bin. Just be nice if the trees didn't drop the leaves in the first place.

The problem is, it's so easy and so cheap. As in virtually free to send messages to strangers and try and flog them whatever you're trying to flog them. Do you think it is, though, that you know, everybody does it? And you know, we've talked about it before. Send out a million emails, you know what I mean? And if like one point one percent of them, you know, get in touch with you, then it's been hugely successful in terms of raw numbers.

I suppose that's all it is. I mean, easy and cheap to send an email, but the volume that they must have to send to get any sort of response, I don't know. It just seems.

Yeah. I mean, email is truly wonderful. It's an it's an incredible tool, as is the web, as is so many other tools online. I think it's very easy to forget in an environment where, you know, we're being told about how nasty and horrible social media is and all the rest of it, you know, like when I was a kid, I used to watch Star Trek and they used to pull this thing out of his pocket and flip it open, and he could talk to the people on the mothership, on the enterprise and, you know, and it was just like, wow. And like, we've got that now, you know, like Steve's in Australia. If I were to chat with Steve now, I mean, he might be annoyed at me because it would be like nine o'clock at night or whatever it is. Um, but, you know, literally just have a and it is incredible. All of this technology, I still find it absolutely incredible. And I've been working in this industry now since what, nineteen ninety five, six, something like that. I still find it incredible. Um, but yeah, email wonderful though it is, has been, um, has been, it's so it's been so badly abused, so much so that, you know, like you get the situation where, where legitimate messages get put in spam, get in the spam folder because spam software, yeah, you know, isn't very good sometimes anyway, it's all a bit dull and dry that speaking about emailing or not so much emailing, but messaging in general. Um, tell me why you felt a bit unloved earlier this week.

Are you talking about our good friend at at Meade N6? Yeah. That'll do. Um, yeah, it's quite funny, isn't it? So we're in the midst of, as I think you mentioned in the last podcast, we're in the midst of talks with them and have been for quite some time. Um, they're trying to aggressively sell us their software as they do. Um, and then I logged into LinkedIn, um, just as you do, uh, just to check my messages and that sort of thing and found a lovely email, uh, in my LinkedIn inbox from the chap that we were chatting to the, the sales guy. Only it wasn't really sort of directly addressed to me. It was just the standard phishing email of, oh, I've come across you and I think you'd be a great match for our software. Yeah. Despite the fact that I'd spoken to him like two days before and had a meeting booked with him that afternoon.

Well, that's the funny thing, isn't it? I think you'd had, I think possibly three actual conversations in a video meeting with him and his colleague and me and.

Said hi to me and asked me how I was. He acted like he cared when I told him how I was.

And then you got a message. And I've had those as well. And I think, you know, customer relationship management system CRMs are hugely powerful. I love the HubSpot CRM that we use. Um, although I'll say some, you know, bad things about HubSpot as this podcast progresses. No doubt not. Yeah, no, definitely will. Um, I like our CRM. I like the concept of a CRM, customer relationship management. And that's despite having several false starts using a customer relationship management system. Um, you know, this is amazing. And then you found yourself a week later just not using it. And then you try it again. Anyway, you know, we've been using it now for, for years and it is a fantastic tool. It does, however, let you fall in your sincerity.

Yeah.

Doesn't it?

It does.

It does if you're not careful, if you're not careful.

Yeah. And like I, you know, I sent him back a quick message just to say that he knew exactly how to make a guy feel special. And he apologised profusely. And that was sort of it. And you draw a line under it and you move on. But I think the wider point is a really interesting one. I mean, we've been talking a lot recently about sort of behavioral science and how people feel and how they make decisions. And one of the things that I think is really interesting, you know, in light of that conversation about how readily available, you know, sort of spam content is how easy it is nowadays to pretend to be something you're not online, and how easy it is to sort of set up a website, set up a business, set up a front that really can't deliver. I think what people have become very conditioned to is, you know, sort of using people's behavior as a, as a measuring stick of who they really are. You know, like you can't trust what people say about themselves online. You can't trust someone's web presence because anyone can fake it. But what you can judge people on safely is the way they actually act and treat you. And I think, you know, with stuff like this, you get sort of, you know, the zero tolerance for those missteps. If you do something insincere, if you do something that seems a little bit sort of shady, or like maybe you're sort of playing at being sincere in a previous conversation, like straight away, as soon as that email message landed in my inbox, I was like, well, you know, I don't believe a word that comes out of his mouth ever again. Do you know what I mean? Like, it's just the trust is completely gone. Yeah. And I think that's true of a lot of these interactions online. Like you have to be so careful not to misstep, not to sort of badger people. And we hear it all the time, you know, HubSpot have a whole thing about it as well where it's like, you know, if your sales team are nurturing people, you shouldn't be sending them marketing emails in case it makes them feel sort of, you know, uh, used or cheap or whatever, you know, you just sort of like bombarding them with messages while you're trying to get them through a sensitive sales process. And I just think it's a really valid point. It's a really important point is that you have to be very, very considered when you interact with people, because anything you do that rubs people up the wrong way will pretty much trash your relationship with them nowadays. Yeah, and I think that is largely because there is no other real way of judging somebody's intentions, is there? You know, you have to sort of take their actions as sort of representative of what they are and what they're about.

So where does in a business context, where does being polite, being nice turn into something maybe creepy, but certainly wrong? Yeah. You know, where's the line in where's the line in business?

I don't know. I know where it is for me, but I think it's quite different because, like you and I have slightly different takes on, on this sort of thing. Like sometimes you'll get, you'll get messages that would rub me up the wrong way or, you know, you'll get a message that I think is totally fine and you'll be like, right. That's like, that's really pissed me off for whatever reason. I think it's really interesting how sort of personal this is, isn't it? There's a big sort of grey area. Yeah.

Because in business, we, we have to form relationships with people, uh, who we don't know very well. Yeah. And we, Broadly speaking, we only ever have a business relationship with them. We don't become pals with everybody we do business with. We don't go fishing with everybody we do business with. You know what I mean? We I mean, sometimes we do. But I mean, generally speaking, we, you know, we're forming relationships that are superficial. They're there, they're there to serve a purpose. And, you know, they need something that you've got or you need something that they've got, whatever it is, it's like if you know, if you're going to go and buy a car, then you know, the sales person is I, I like salesperson that are just friendly. Yeah, that's all I need from a salesperson, just a general chat, not pushy, not overly, you know, like, you know, oh, Mr. Robinson and oh yeah. Oh, this sir and that, sir. You know, I understand like they don't know salesperson. Well, you know, I understand that they don't know who I am. They don't know, you know, I might be the sort of person I've got, you know, want of money in my pocket and I want to be treated special. I want you to call me sir. I mean, I'm not that person. And I always, you know, if I'm in a situation like that, I always put people at ease and just say, oh, it's dev, you know, and just, I'm just here to learn about this car and just use the car analogy because we like a car analogy. At red evolution. Um, I just, I guess I don't, I don't really know how to sort of get across. What I'm trying to say is I think in business, you know, we can have good solid relationships with people. We can build trust, we can be friendly, you know, but we don't become friends. Yeah.

And when people pretend to be.

Yeah. And where, where do most. Where do people be interested? If anyone wants to give us any feedback to podcast at red evolution dot com. Um, you know, interesting to know where people feel that the line is crossed with that. I mean, you know, quite often you'll get a sales call and very quickly, you know, oh, well, this, you know what, mate and this mate and that mate and do you know what I mean? I always find like, even friends who call me mate. I, I.

I think when do you ever call your friends mate Anyway. You know, the thing.

I.

Find weird?

I find it a bit of an odd term when people use it like. You've forgotten my name, aren't you? Yeah.

So I think.

That's just me being paranoid.

Um, but yeah.

You know, in business I've done, I've done a fair bit of networking over the years and, you know, you form relationships, going to networking events and all the rest of it. And I don't know.

Do you know what actually, what this brings to mind as well is I think this is really interesting in the context of email marketing as well. Okay. Because like, do you ever get that thing where you subscribe to a newsletter and it lands in your inbox and it's like, hey, Sophie, we've got these. I often pretend my name's Sophie when I'm online. That's, that's just a thing that I do.

We might, we might delve into that. Later on in the podcast.

We found these ten great things that we know will be a really good match for you. And I'm like, off like you don't have a clue who I am. You don't know what motivates me. Like, don't you pretend. But then like when, when I get email inboxes, the emails in my inbox that are literally just like, these are our deals for this week. Or like, this is, you know, this is a thing that we thought was interesting. Yeah. Like, I will open that and I will not feel, uh, you know, these people are pretending these people are marketing to me. And I think that's the thing, isn't it? It's like all of these behaviors are just things that are slightly overexaggerated and that immediately put the hairs on the back of your neck up. But I don't know where. Yeah, where that line is, I don't know, I just think we're developing very good instincts for that sort of insincerity.

Um, yeah.

The exclamation mark thing, you know, where people are like, oh yeah, what you must do is personalise your emails and you hi whoever. And then make sure there's an exclamation mark because that makes it seem energetic. And it's like all of that stuff just makes you, I don't know, it makes my toes curl. It really does.

I agree, I agree and we, we are always, I mean, I guess leading this agency the way my, my approach, if you like, somewhat, um, you know, is adopted by other, other members of the team. If you come to meetings with me, you know, you'll pick up certain things that I do at the meetings and you may or may not adopt that approach as well, but my approach in life has always been to be just kind of straightforward. Yeah. So I will always be my default behavior with a stranger is to be is to be nice.

Yeah.

You know, and I don't mean I don't mean overly nice. I don't mean I don't mean like, you know, calling people my mate and all that. I just mean polite and nice. And I think that that I think in business, I think that's probably a reasonably good kind of position to take as well.

Yeah, I think so. I think so, um, much better than being overly familiar.

Yeah. Okay. Don't know how we got on to that. It's something moderately interesting anyway, but, um, okay. SaaS companies are just starting to grind my gears a little bit. And I say this as an owner of a very modest SaaS company and predominantly operating over in Australia. But so we've had a recent thing, um, with our good friends at HubSpot and we have HubSpot partners. We make a little bit of commission when, when, when we recommend HubSpot and all the rest of it. And we only ever recommend it if we think it's the right tool. I hiss, no. Um, but so, you know, and we, we pay HubSpot a lot of money every month for, uh, um, you know, content management system and marketing platform, customer relationship management system, whatever. Um, so it's a piece of software that we like, but recently, um, trying to help a client get on to the content management system. You know, we came across a situation where first of all, they were like, oh, well, you know, they need, they need to commit to two months and they need two years rather, and they need.

two months would have been.

Nice. Two months would have been nice. They need to commit to two years and they need to pay two years in advance.

Yeah.

It's like, are we on what? On what planet you know. In what universe is that reasonable? I know you and I had a chat about it earlier, and I recognise that there's different ways of looking at this. But, you know, so one example is HubSpot. And I always sound like I'm picking on HubSpot. I always say how much I love the software. And, you know, we are fans of the software. We pay the money and everything else. But, you know, this whole idea that like, and, and then eventually the best they could come up with, well, okay, you know, it's a two year commitment, but we'll allow you to pay one year in advance. So you're paying them like thousands of pounds for their software.

And did you say thank you, sir, and hold your hat out.

And, you know, you were like, um, you know, you know, you were putting their case forward, you know, when we were chatting about it and I, and I totally understood where you were coming from, but I think a lot of the time with SaaS software as a service SaaS, it could be your accounting system, could be your website builder, your customer relationship management system. It could be any number of things. You know, an enterprise resource planning ERP system. A lot of the time, I think I'm reluctant to take commitments like that. And going back to our friends at Mead Mackenzie, um.

Well, they were the same, weren't they?

They were the same. They want a two year commitment and they want the, for the first twelve months paying in advance. And then at the end of that, you pay them the second twelve months. Um, so you're always paying twelve months in advance. It's not insubstantial. The amounts of money, it's thousands of pounds that they're looking for, for a piece of software that we may figure out in four or five months time does not help us as a business.

Yeah.

And you know, I and then but then you've just answered your own question, David, because that's the reason that they want a two year commitment and twelve months in advance because they think there is a there's, they know that there's a danger that a significant percentage of people who buy the software finish up realising they don't need it anymore. And, and so their solution to that is to lock you into contracts and get massive advance payments, right?

And the and the case I was putting to you is that, oh, you know, like sort of, oh, poor, poor SaaS companies. Imagine putting all this hard work into building a software product, knowing full well that fifty percent of the people that buy it will dump it after three months, and then you'll be out of pocket. And how can you possibly spend money on marketing if you don't know for a fact that you're going to land the the gigs and get the full value out of it? And, you know, how can you improve your lifetime customer value if people can quit at any time and blah, blah, blah. However, I went away and had to think about it afterwards. And the sort of the thing that came to mind really was this whole idea that like fifty or sixty years ago, you would have only ever sort of signed yourself up to something, maybe even twenty years ago, you'd only ever signed up to something or got in bed with somebody for the long term if it was mutually beneficial. And we find ourselves in this weird sort of Wild West place now, where there are a bunch of software companies producing effectively identical bits of software and then trying to compete with each other on marketing and lock people into contracts to make up for the fact that fundamentally, there isn't an awful lot of space for them in the market. And, you know, this is the thing, isn't it? You know, there is Salesforce, there is HubSpot, there is Marketo, there are countless numbers of these, these products that do virtually the same thing. And they shouldn't really all be able to exist at the same time, because in real life, a clear market leader should emerge and everybody should say, well, they're the one I'm going to give my money to. They're the ones I'm going to get in bed with, skill up with, learn to use properly, like learn inside out. Very much the way that Microsoft cornered the market in the beginning. You know, it's like, this is the product and everybody will use it. But we're in a weird place now where because the markets are sort of so broad and there are so many different competitors, they really have no choice but to be increasingly sort of predatory. And I think that's what is really happening. If you look at HubSpot now, compared to when I came on board three years ago, the way they operate is completely different. You know, they're way stronger on like getting people to sign up for long term contracts. They're way less sort of interested in what that person's business needs are and whether hubspot's a good fit. They just flog on the software, lock them into a contract. Here's some points for you. Off you go. And that's changed, I think, because they're under so much pressure to grow, and it's so difficult for them to carve out a genuine niche for themselves.

I mean, I think SaaS companies, generally speaking, are, you know, they're on a sort of monthly recurring revenue journey and they're trying to get more and more people tied into contracts. And, you know, that, I guess helps them justify their valuations or increases their valuations, I should say.

I run the risk of getting both off piste and walking into territory that I'm not really qualified to talk about here, but I was reading a really stopped you before. I was reading a really interesting thing about the damage that the invention of the MBA had done to America. Sorry, am I talking too loud?

No, no, I didn't actually set the machine accurately. But that's alright. Leslie will take care of that.

I was reading a really interesting article about the basically the damage that the NBA had done to economics in general and the way that companies think, because the whole idea that you can sort of have these professional managers that come in in the middle having no experience and sort of teach good management practice, and that that will percolate down. And, you know, this whole idea that bringing in sort of professional middle managers has really damaged the way that companies think and operate. And I think you can see it really clearly in sort of the SaaS software market, where there's all these, like you say, platforms that are on this like monthly recurring revenue journey, and they want their growth to be exponential, and they want the graphs to go up and to the right and the value of their stock to grow and grow and grow. And that is way more important to them than producing a genuinely good product that's useful and that people want to use. You know, we've sort of switched to a place where it's way more important that you sort of massage statistics and force people into doing things that profit you than it is to actually deliver something that in twenty years time people will be saying, oh yeah, hubspot's great. I don't think that will be the case. I don't think HubSpot will be around in twenty years time, because they are becoming increasingly predatory and increasingly less interested in building something good.

Maybe, I don't know. The products are good. Like we keep saying ad nauseum, we like them and we use them and it just it's off putting. I suppose it's almost like and I get a sense sometimes that the kind of a bit. Well, you said aggressive with it and I don't disagree with that. But they're almost like you like almost incredulous if you question it. It's like, well, you know, I don't really want to commit to two years. I just want oh, well, you know, we can't possibly. And you just think.

That's.

The best you've got.

You know, that's the other thing that's sort of that culty sales behavior, isn't it, where people just if they assume that what they're pushing culture. You said I think Culty. Yeah, I think it's a little bit of drinking the Kool-Aid going on. Yeah. It's like if you if you just act like it's completely normal for people to sign up for a twenty four month contract, they'll start doing it. It's the same with mobile phone companies, isn't it? You know, at a certain point, you know, when I was a kid, it was like unlimited data and you're on a monthly rolling contract and now it's like, oh yeah, you only have to sign up for seventeen years and you can have one hundred megabytes of data. It's like, when did that become normal? But yeah, but yeah.

And so you can say it's culty. I would say it's a misspelling of culty. Um, okay. To chase or not to chase. So we've got a number of proposals out with um, clients for consideration just now. And we were talking this week. We've, you know, this is all a bit kind of, you know, heart on sleeve stuff in it. We've never, I've never anyway, and broadly speaking, we've never been very good at chasing, you know, we, we are very responsive, very proactive. We will, you know, get an opportunity comes in, we will service that opportunity, go and see the people, even if it means driving, you know, for ten hours down to the south of England.

I'm not bitter about that at all. No.

It's not dead in the water. That potential gig. I mean, it's still very much being considered. Um, but it's, you know, I'm all for providing all the information people need. I'm not very good at I'm not very good at you. Just write an email or pick up the phone. It's dead easy. But I tend not to chase and pester people. Now, does that come across as not caring and not really wanting the business doing that? Or is it the right thing to do? Um, and, you know, dyed in the wool shoe leather salespeople need not apply, need not apply or reply even, uh, to that question. I mean, I'm, I just wonder what you think about it because this morning I finally relented and contacted the company down in Yorkshire to say, do you need any more information? Which was a thinly veiled way of saying like, you know, have we got the gig or have you gone somewhere else? You know, and they just came back and said, oh, you know, so and so is away this week, back next week. You know, then we've got more conversations to have. We'll be in touch, hopefully speak soon sort of thing. So it's not dead in the water. There was an element, I suppose, or an aspect of it from my perspective, which was like, well, if I don't ask them, then if we've lost the work, if we didn't get the work, I don't know. And so, you know, it's a bit, um, uh, Schrödinger's gig.

You know what I mean?

We both have and have not got the gig until we definitely haven't got it. Um, but I just, I don't know, I mean, should we be chasing down, um, a bit harder? Well.

We'll make an educated guess here, and I'll say that if you were friends with somebody, like if I was like, oh, David, gonna go on a fishing trip and you were like, oh, that sounds really good. And then I didn't say anything for three weeks. You might say, whatever happened to that fishing trip?

I wouldn't, I'd say, thank God for that. He must have forgotten about it.

But but by the same token, if somebody you didn't really know at a networking event invited you to a camping trip and then never said anything. You'd probably assume that they weren't being very genuine and wouldn't follow them up on it. And I think that's ultimately what we're talking about here again, isn't it? It's that whole friendship behavior. Yeah. You know, if if you work on the assumption that actually like you've sort of starting to develop a relationship with somebody at that company, they're probably quite interested in you, they probably haven't ghosted you. And the assumption is that, you know, something's holding them up. It's sort of almost, I think, polite to follow up on it and show them that you're still interested. And again, you know, you back that whole sort of reciprocal relationship building thing. But if you operate from the assumption that the relationship is superficial and that, you know, you don't sort of assume friendship where none exists, then it does become weird. And I think that's the problem. It just depends where you sit on that sort of spectrum, doesn't it? Like whether you want to play the game of sort of pretending to be best pals with somebody, or whether you're just being honest and saying, well, you know, if, if I invite somebody on a date and they don't reply, I'm just going to assume that they're not interested. But other people wouldn't. Other people would be like, what happened to this?

Yeah.

Where are we with that?

Well, that's a really good point that you make. Um, if I was, you know, thinking back, um, to when I was a lot younger, if I was like, I was always good at chatting to people. No issue at all. But I was always very shy when it, when it came to, you know, if it was an inner disk or inner disk, I was like, oh, I'm going to go and ask her to dance. You know what I mean? I would be like, you know, it would be, I would be one of those people like, would you like to dance? No. And that's it. You know, like you want the ground to swallow you up and you certainly wouldn't go back or question it. Yeah, well why not? But some people will. But some people will. They're quite pushy. Or they'll just literally go to the person stood next to them and go, what about you? Do you want to work your way down the line? Yeah, exactly. Um, so I've been like, I guess my whole life, I've tried not to be pushy in any situation. And that comes, that is how it's, I am in business as well. And I, it was just we, we, we started talking about whether or not um, you know, it was um the right thing to do. Not be pushy and just let people make their own mind up in their own good time. Or did it give off a vibe that you weren't really interested in the work? And I don't think we've answered it. I think I think I.

Don't think there is an answer. That's the thing.

It could be taken either which way.

You speak to people and they'll say, oh, it's so annoying when I say no and people question it. And then you'll, you know, you'll hear other people say things like, well, if people aren't persistent and they don't keep asking me, I'll assume they're not interested. And it's just you just, you know, it's like that whole thing where, you know, it's, it's traditional in some cultures to turn down offers of food three times. And it's like, if you don't do it, you're not polite. And then, you know, if you come to this country and I say like, oh, you know, do you want me to stick some tea on for you? And people are like, no, then I will not offer again. Do you know what I mean? Like, there's just no sort of and that's just assumptions in a.

Digital marketing context is being pushy. What's going on with remarketing?

Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Well, yeah. But you see there again, you see, you can make the opposite argument, can't you? And be like, well, if you don't remarket, you don't care about staying top of mind. You're not that interested in sort of pushing people over the line. Yeah, I think I think the problem with all of this stuff as well is like, people are just very forgetful. Yeah. You know, in an online space. And, and one of the things that I find quite difficult with remarketing, for example, is I find it very annoying when people remarket to me, unless it's a product I want. And if it's a product I want, I find it really useful. And I'm really glad they're pushing this on me, because otherwise I'd have completely forgotten about it and I'd never got across the line. So I think it's one of those tricky things where, yeah, you fall into that camp of like, if you're remarketing, something that people don't really want, they will get annoyed with you. But actually, you know, if you're remarketing something that's a considered purchase that people do want, and it sort of comes at the right time, then it's fantastically powerful.

I, um, I'm reminded of the, um, episode of the nudge podcast punch, punch, punch cast podcast, the episode of the nudge podcast with Tom Goodwin, um, that I related to you, the it's entitled Ninety nine point nine percent of adverts are crap. Um, and he made, you know, he was talking about data and how data's being used. And he was talking about remarketing and he said, you know, for example, if you, if you, you know, buy a toilet seat and then suddenly for the next two months, you're getting remarketed to by people also sell toilet seats who were trying to get you to buy more toilet seats because they've decided that, you know, you must be interested in toilet seats because you bought one. Therefore, you know, here's another load of toilet seats to help your toilet seat fetish.

And another one's got on the wall.

Another one to go on the wall. That's for the gurning competition.

It's an interesting, really interesting point that because obviously, as you know, I'm in the process of renovating a house and this exact same thing happened to me. I bought a shower screen and suddenly my Facebook feed was full of shower screens. It's like, all right, I've got my only shower screen. I don't have that many showers there.

Look, this is just going to the butchers and the butchers is closed. It's Thursday afternoon. Watch. Should we walk back in a minute? Um, yeah, I.

Yeah, we've all been there, but I think that just falls into the bucket of lazy marketing, doesn't it? Like if you, if you're remarketing, really, it should be when you know that people haven't purchased and when you know that they're considering still in that consideration stage and once they're past it, like once too much time has elapsed or, you know, they've come back to your website a couple of times and still haven't bought give it up, you know, forget about it. Yeah. But I think if people remarket responsibly, I think they're almost the remarketing adverts. You don't notice when that happens, you know.

It's okay. Um, you mentioned something about I can't remember the context of the discussion we had yesterday or the day before about nepo babies. What were you talking about?

Babies. Oh, that's a very good question, I can't remember. I like to bitch about nepo babies.

The reason I'm saying I saw a news article online and it was, um, some performer who, um, I think Jack Whitehall labeled her. It was a derogatory term.

Right?

And and she laid into him on the socials. Um, because, you know, you know, Jack Whitehall is the he's worth X million quid. He's, he's his dad was a entertainments agent or something like that. He now does a TV show with his dad and he's had a kind of. Yeah. You might say there's a, there's a, there's a nepo baby, um element element to him. And um, it was funny because you've just been talking about that earlier, earlier in the week and that little news story kind of tickled me. But I also wondered, um, you know, I wonder to what extent that goes on in business as well. You know, the obvious, the simple case in point would be Donald Trump. You know, he's in the news all the time at the moment. And, you know, he came from nothing. Well, nothing plus a, you know, an ex.

A.

Few million, an X million quid loan off his dad sort of thing. And that's, you know, that's the general kind of joke that's made where he's concerned. Um, but I just I don't know where I'm going with this, actually, but, you know, you've got this, this whole nipple thing in, in business as well, haven't you?

You do. It's everywhere actually. Yeah. Public health service as well is rife with it. You know, people getting their mates jobs and their cousins jobs and their aunties jobs and that sort of thing.

I think in the health service. Yeah.

Okay. I don't think you can escape from it. I don't I think it's everywhere.

I yeah, I don't think it's necessarily even a class thing.

No, I don't think so at all. And I think to be honest, I think it's just a fundamental human thing. It goes back to the whole trust thing doesn't it? You know, we we like to put people that we trust on a personal level in positions of authority around us. And that's the thing. Like, if we can surround ourselves with people that we know are all right and that we know that, you know, if shit hits the fan, you can sit down and have a, a detailed conversation and that they won't sort of blow up in your face and that sort of thing. Predictability is, is something that we all sort of crave. And I think that's ultimately what that behaviour is, isn't it? It's saying like, I know how this person is going to react in these situations, so I will happily put them there and I. Yeah, I don't even really know if it's a bad thing. I think, you know, back to the whole nepo babies and entertainment conversation, I think the thing that's funny about it is that they care so much about their sort of status and are so insecure about it that they feel the need to constantly talk about how being a nepo baby isn't a big deal or doesn't matter, and that they definitely earn their position. And it's like, no, just accept it and sort of live with it and go forward and stop being insecure and strange about it.

Um, I think my only somewhat tenuous link and reason for bringing it up is I think in business and we predominantly talk about business and digital business, digital marketing, business, etc. I think in business, it's very easy to be seduced by um, gurus, by people who want to impart knowledge and expertise and tell you about their journey and, and how they finished up, you know, like ten times the monthly revenue in six months by doing X, Y, or Z, you know? Yeah, all the time. I mean, it comes across all the time. And I think I think it's worth kind of sort of sense checking a lot of that stuff and finding out, you know, just how connected. Well, some of those people were in their difficult rags to riches journey.

There's an interesting bias here, and I see it all the time in the moment, at the moment, like not even in relation necessarily to like nepotism particularly, but also just in the way that people tell stories about things like, um, you know, in, in films, whenever there's like a particularly witty or pithy line of dialogue, almost inevitably people will start to say, oh, that was ad libbed, you know, that wasn't in the script. Somebody just came up with it off the fly. And I think there's this whole sort of like thing in our in our brains where we really, really, really like to assume that anything sort of clever or intelligent has got some great myth or story behind it. You know, like Bill gates is the example we were talking about the other day around the nepo baby thing, you know, where people love this idea.

That's right. That's what we were talking about.

The uni dropout who like is sat in his garage and he's like, what am I doing with my life? What should I do? I know I'll make some fantastic technology. And you know, he puts his head down and he codes for six days straight and he forgets to drink or eat anything. And then suddenly Microsoft is born and he's a billionaire. And like we the human brain loves that shit, right? We're like, oh yeah, it couldn't possibly be like the work of several people over several years, you know, input from his mum, who was a programmer at IBM, a load of other people got involved. It's like, no, it couldn't possibly be that. It's one man's genius. It's the same thing with TV shows, you know? Um, Aragorn in Lord of the rings went off script and did this crazy stunt. Not like thirty people worked all day to make something happen. Um, and it's a really strange subconscious bias, but it does make people very prone to, I think, being sort of taken advantage of by those sort of guru people who are like, oh yeah, I'm a brilliant mind and I can tell you exactly how to get to where I am. And you can't because it's not really their journey at all. It's no, it never is.

I know.

Neil Patel's the other one who I know you quite like, but in marketing circles, it drives me nuts because you.

Might like or not like. He's been he's been very successful.

He has been very successful, but he does the same thing. He's like, you know, I'm Neil Patel and I taught myself everything that I know about marketing and now I can teach it to you. And it's like, oh.

And by the way, during that tirade, you did say off the fly, did I? Yeah.

What did it.

Mean to say, I think you meant to say on the fly.

On the fly?

Yeah. I just, I just needed to pick that up because the, um, the pedants who listen will think I missed it and I'd hate them to think I missed it.

There are a lot of pedants in life. That's the thing. I think you might be one of them sometimes.

Oh, dear. Well, I don't know if this has been worthwhile or not. I mean, we've kind of like, talked about all kinds of stuff. Um, you know, we started off looking at the fact that we were left to our own devices in the office today, and we've managed to, um, spend a lot of time looking at our own website and made some quite significant changes to it. And then we decided, like, even though Leslie isn't here, we'd record a podcast. Um, and I think, um, here we are at the end of it, thankfully, uh, because it's, it's kind of more petering out than anything else, isn't it? But anyway, um, hopefully, um, as we approach episode one hundred and fifty, which is, I think, I do think this is one four, nine we're doing at the moment, I'm fairly sure, um, hopefully we'll get, maybe get a little bit of feedback from somebody and you know, something, it's just, it'd be nice to kind of talk about it in that, you know, landmark one hundred and fiftieth episode, unless this is the one hundred and fiftieth, which case we've just made a complete arse of it. Yeah. That's right. Anyway, you've been listening to Dave and Alex rambling on about absolute nonsense on the Digital Marketing From The Coalface podcast, and we'll speak to you soon. Soon.