Live from Sales HQ with Eric Boggs
Okay. Alright. Good. We're live Okay. Here at SalesHQ.
Vince Beese:I'm your host, Vince Speezy, also the founder here at SalesHQ. And my guest today
Eric Boggs:Eric Boggs. Nice to meet you.
Vince Beese:Nice to meet you. Is my friend Eric Boggs here who back in the day, we did this thing called the T Rex summit. And some of you out there might remember this orange branding we used to do here in the little time.
Eric Boggs:If you ever wanna know who's the better salesperson or who's the better marketer between Vince and me, Vince was like, we should call it the revenue exchange. And I said, why don't we just call it T Rex? And he's like, that's way better.
Vince Beese:That is the true story. That absolutely is. But I was the one that got all the sponsors.
Eric Boggs:Yeah. You there's no denying. You are Right. Top 1% of the 1% Yeah. Sellers.
Vince Beese:So, before we get to you, because this is all about EricBot today.
Eric Boggs:Of course.
Vince Beese:Hear more about you. I talk about this all the time in the beginning, the most important thing, which is what is SalesHQ? So we are a co selling community for high performing sellers and sales teams. Basically, what we've established is a place for remote sellers and teams to now work from to feel the energy of a sales floor, to collaborate with their peers, and to grow and develop their careers. We also do a lot of events.
Vince Beese:So, if you go to the website, saleshq.co, you can not only become a member, but you can also join our events that we do for guests and members. So, Eric, it's been a little bit. I think I know a lot about you, but our our folks out there watching don't. And I always ask, they don't know about you. I always ask this first question, which is interesting to me is how people actually got started in sales?
Eric Boggs:Do you recall how you got your career started in sales? I have a few answers to that question. So who I am today, I'm the CEO of a company called repboss.com that does, marketing workflow and lead generation for small businesses, like marketing agencies, software company, that sort of thing. We can get into that later. So a while back, my mom sent me a picture of a flyer that she found that I made when I was probably 15, and it was like, Eric Boggs will come mow your lawn, but you have to provide the lawn mower and the gas.
Eric Boggs:And it had my phone number on it, 9229126. This was, like, pre area code. Like, it didn't didn't have 704-922-9126. And it said, I aim to please. So I remember I mowed a few neighbor's lawns.
Eric Boggs:I know that's kinda like a cliched story, but, that came up pretty recently as a thing. But what really kinda kicked off my career in selling was my first job out of undergrad. I well, my senior year, I was an intern at the UNC Business School and, like, the technology office and fixed laptops and Blackberries and and printers for very brilliant business professors, but absolute Luddites when it came to technology. And, you know, those people liked me. Yeah.
Eric Boggs:And, they would say, hey. Can you help me set up a home Wi Fi network? And I'm like, yeah. Yeah. Sure.
Eric Boggs:I'm sorry.
Vince Beese:For the effort.
Eric Boggs:Yeah. And so I built a little side business. You know, a night or 2 week, I'd go and set up a Wi Fi network at somebody's house or, get their printer online, like, that kind of stuff. And, yeah, it was just kinda fun and easy, and I liked helping people. Didn't make too many messes.
Eric Boggs:I definitely made some messes. But, yeah, that kinda got me on a path. And, you know, not too long after that, I went to work for a company called Bronto Mail. That became Bronto, that became a big success. And I was the one man sales team there for almost 3 years.
Eric Boggs:Yeah. Like every dollar that they made well, not every dollar, but a lot of the dollars.
Vince Beese:Just pre Matt? I forgot. Were you there before Matt Williamson?
Eric Boggs:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Matt. I remember when Matt joined the team.
Eric Boggs:There were 3 salespeople when Matt joined the team. And, I mean, he's talk about 1% of the 1% top seller. Like, that guy might might be the best seller I've ever known. Well well And, yeah. And I mean, that was kinda cool.
Eric Boggs:He came in and joined the team, and I got to work in the product team Yeah. Customer success team, kinda got to see a lot of a lot of pieces of it. But, yeah, I love selling. I did a sales call today.
Vince Beese:You have to.
Eric Boggs:Yeah. It's fun.
Vince Beese:So, when you were at Bronto and you came in there early, the one of the one, I know the 2 founders are, they're not from sales backgrounds. What did you have to do to get stuff started? I mean, you you not had never formally, it sounds like, been in the sales role.
Eric Boggs:But No.
Vince Beese:No. You weren't trained. You didn't Yeah.
Eric Boggs:And it wasn't like I knew what I was You didn't come
Vince Beese:from Xerox there. Right?
Eric Boggs:Like Yeah. It wasn't like I knew what I was doing either. I remember, meeting Chaz and him just being like, well, if you could do anything, what would you like to do? I was like, well, this seems fun. I'd like to do something like this.
Eric Boggs:Like, you guys seem smart. I don't know. Let's build something. And, I didn't sell anything for, like, the 1st 2 months.
Vince Beese:Yeah. And I know I know they had
Eric Boggs:to think about hiring me a 100 times because I didn't sell anything. I didn't know what I was doing. And, I don't know. I guess they were just patient and I figured out, oh, it doesn't work when you do that. It doesn't work when you do that.
Eric Boggs:And, eventually, I just figured out, like, just be nice and be helpful and be accommodating and be yourself.
Vince Beese:That means you got a lot of inbound leads, didn't you?
Eric Boggs:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I definitely did. Believe me, I did my more than my fair share of cold calls. Yeah.
Eric Boggs:But I think that, you know, there's, like, a lot of things that have to work and happen for a business to kinda get its Mhmm. Early flight. And, Bronto was early AdWords. Like, Google AdWord. Like, I remember Google IPO.
Eric Boggs:Like, that was all happening around that time.
Vince Beese:Involved in that when they set that up? No.
Eric Boggs:No. I I wasn't. But I do remember, the day that Chaz was like, we get to talk to someone at Google today. We are finally spending enough money with AdWords where we get to speak to a human at Google.
Vince Beese:Yeah. Yeah.
Eric Boggs:And we were like, wow. So yeah. They were buying keywords on something and, you know, I get a you know, I was just following up on what came in and moved a lot of product,
Vince Beese:for sure. So was it there that you got the entrepreneurial bug? I went to that.
Eric Boggs:Yeah. Well, I mean, before that, like, what I was doing with the
Vince Beese:The lawn mower business? Yeah. With lawn mower. Bring their own equipment, their own gas. Yeah.
Eric Boggs:Well, I mean, hey. I mean, you like, lazy or brilliant, you tell me. No. Be a little bumpy. No.
Eric Boggs:I mean, it was when I kinda figured out that, these people would trust me to come in their home and do a thing for them and, you know, give me $50 or a $100. Yeah. I don't even remember. And I did enough of that to, like, team up with some, some buddies that worked in the IT department. And I was like, hey.
Eric Boggs:Why don't we try to, like, do more of this? And, you know, we tried to do more of it and, you know, it didn't really go anywhere, but it was like, oh, wow. Like, smart guys can just form a entity and throw up a website and suddenly you have
Vince Beese:a business.
Eric Boggs:And then, that I guess that's what sparked it. And then, you know, the experience working at Bronto and just kinda seeing like, wow, these guys are smart, but they're not smarter than me. And they're just, like, trying.
Vince Beese:Yeah. And that's they're just trying.
Eric Boggs:I mean, that really is, like, the hardest part. Right? And sticking with it. Yeah. And, yeah.
Eric Boggs:And that's kinda led me down, you know, a lot of
Vince Beese:So biggest takeaway from your Bronto experience. My biggest I mean, that was Biggest learning, I guess. Right?
Eric Boggs:You might say that that was prehistoric a long, long, long time ago. Honestly, as much as I learned working directly with Joe and Chastity, who neither whom I haven't seen those guys in forever, seeing Matt Williamson in action Yeah. To see, like, a professional sales process and a professional, like, manager Yeah. Not that there weren't others, but, like, he's one that I worked closely with and that I admired and kind of, you know, become friends with. Like, him coming in just like a tornado in, like, the most positive Yeah.
Eric Boggs:Way imaginable is something that, made an impression on, probably, like, 25. Yeah. I was a child. But just Your brain wasn't fully developed yet? No.
Eric Boggs:No. I definitely did not have, white facial hair then. But, yeah, I just I guess seeing the, like, brute force it takes sometimes, just, like, make something happen and, yeah, that's something that I think about.
Vince Beese:So they went on to start Aragao Social as a founder or cofounder. Yeah. Which is, again, like, you're starting a company, you're in charge of sales. Right? Like, when you started that as a cofounder, were you when you divvied up the responsibilities to was the sales Yeah.
Vince Beese:Part of your responsibility? Yeah.
Eric Boggs:I mean, so my cofounder was a product guy. Yeah. And funny enough, he was the guy that took my whole job at Alta. And it was funny because I was a marketing kind of customer product manager, and he was a technical product manager. And that's actually a pretty good founding team.
Eric Boggs:What do you mean you
Vince Beese:took your job at Bronto? When I left Bronto to go to business school Oh, I see.
Eric Boggs:As as and, you know That's interesting. It's like different sides of the product manager coin, but, it's a good founding team when people are, like, product centric and customer centric, but come at it from different ways. Yeah. I mean, that too, like, that was forever ago. But I definitely remember just, like, beating my network to death to demo the thing to anybody that would listen.
Eric Boggs:And, you know, our pitch deck probably had 10 or 12 logos on it, none of whom had paid us a dime, but all of whom would be like, oh, no. Yeah. Like, we believe in this. And, like, we believe in Eric and, like, what they're doing is cool. Again, I mean, to the earlier point, just like an incredible amount of just energy and focus and
Vince Beese:just ruthless effort. Yeah. I mean, I think the thing about being a the the the commonality I find in being an entrepreneur, a a founder of a company in sales is that you're gonna get a hell of a lot more no's and ghosting and all the bad stuff than you get the good stuff. But the good the great news is when you get that one yes or whatever, it's like things just sucks you right back.
Eric Boggs:Yeah. It's it's hard, man. It's it's like the goods can feel very, very, very good and the bads feel like it's over in the world. Yep. And those things can happen within 5 minutes.
Eric Boggs:Okay. It's absolutely right. And that's certainly the case in sales. Yep. It's just it's amplified when you're an early stage founder because, like, well, this whole thing might fall apart.
Eric Boggs:And it never goes away when you've got, you know, a bunch of people on payroll that are paying their mortgage and
Vince Beese:Relying on you. Yeah.
Eric Boggs:Financing their 401 k and daycare or whatever else, and it's based on, you know, decisions you make right or wrong. And so the goods feel good because you can help people live a good life and see the success that they have. But the bads feel can feel really, really bad. I mean,
Vince Beese:I think that's what people have to realize as they start their sales career. It's like, you know, it's it's every every moment is different. Mhmm.
Eric Boggs:Just embrace it. And it's not a straight line either.
Vince Beese:Not even close to a straight line. So, I don't even know this question answer to this question. I know the question, actually. Why did you start RevBoss,
Eric Boggs:by the way? Was there
Vince Beese:a certain vision you had or the problem you saw on the market? I'll get into that a little bit.
Eric Boggs:So that's more recent history. I was consulting, like I, I, you know, Argyle went down in flames And, I mean, we had a good business, and it didn't have to end the way that it did. It it could have ended very differently, but it ended the way that it did. That's fine. It's a whole other podcast I've said.
Eric Boggs:But, you know, I didn't wanna jump right into anything. And so I figured I would just go work for someone else. And I thought, well, I might just plug in as a fractional guy and get in there and solve some problems with a number of different companies, and I'll I'll pick the one that I wanted to work for. And what happened was they just kept paying me to do the do the thing, and I just kept doing more things and found more clients and eventually hired a guy named Danny Chiu to come help me do it for more people. And
Vince Beese:And the thing was lead generation?
Eric Boggs:Initially, it was just like marketing plumbing and infrastructure, like install Pardot, make it work with Salesforce, and make it do all of this stuff, and make it I mean, do people even use Pardot anymore? Like, I'm
Vince Beese:sure somebody out there. Yeah.
Eric Boggs:Do you even know what that is?
Vince Beese:The same people use Marketo.
Eric Boggs:Yeah. Yeah. Which the Marketo UX looks the same as it did.
Vince Beese:Same. Same. Whatever.
Eric Boggs:And yeah. So, like, make make like, build this like plumbing and then make it create activity and do things. And, that kinda led us down a path of, you know, lead gen and outbound email and lots of other things. And and now our focus is much broader, like sort of full funnel, you know, you at you know, top of funnel email is very different from bottom funnel, high intent email, and we are sort of spanning all of that now. And it all sits inside of the rep boss platform, but it's founded on the same idea of the right person needs to get the right message at the right time.
Eric Boggs:And the further up the funnel you go, you lose control of the timing element. But as you get a little lower down, certainly with, like, like, site visitor retargeting, those kinds of flows, you can be like, hey, Vince. Saw that you were on the website yesterday. Let me know if you wanna connect. Yeah.
Eric Boggs:And that
Vince Beese:stuff can work. Yeah.
Eric Boggs:And, you know, you've got very large low converting audiences, but then you also have very small high converting audiences. And the thing that I've learned about marketing is it's rarely sometimes it can be one thing that works really well, but for most people, it's lots of things that work together, lots of things that work just okay Yeah. But in the aggregate work. Yep. And that's kind of how we serve our clients today.
Vince Beese:So, when you started RevBoss, how has it changed and morphed over time? Because everyone has pivots or changes.
Eric Boggs:Yeah.
Vince Beese:I mean, we're we're How many years has it been now?
Eric Boggs:10th. Wow. And, I mean, we're in the midst of it now. Like, with the team, I've been very clear. Like, this is the 3rd time I've started RevPAR.
Eric Boggs:I started it once with Danny Choo in my office upstairs the way I told you. I started it a second time around 2018 when it was very clear that, like, the SaaS thing is just not taking off. You're running out of money. And we pivoted to kind of a productized service that was 100% prospecting email. Yep.
Eric Boggs:And, we're starting it a 3rd time, like, now.
Vince Beese:And what does this look like?
Eric Boggs:What I just described.
Vince Beese:Combination. Yeah.
Eric Boggs:We have, like, been all in on the tippy tip top of the funnel where it it it can work. It still works. Yep. It doesn't work like it worked 18 months ago, 3 years ago, certainly, like, not when we started doing all of stuff. But it still works.
Eric Boggs:But investing all of our energy and all of our effort into the thing that's getting harder and harder and, the prospects that are the hardest to convert Yep. It just kinda stopped making sense. And the more we kinda thought and worked the problem like, well, the same sort of strategy and execution applies at different stages of the buying process. We just need to get access to these different audiences. So we're we're connecting with our client CRMs to get existing prospects.
Eric Boggs:We're We're embedding in their websites to get on-site, sessions, and we're looking at connecting in their LinkedIn Mhmm. To get their LinkedIn audience and all that just kinda, you know, churns and stuff all that.
Vince Beese:I, just here at SalesHQ, the only thing that's worked, I don't have a marketing budget. It's I am the marketing budget. So go back to the T Rex thing. Right? Yeah.
Vince Beese:That's yeah. Anyway, the thing that has worked is my audience lives and breathes on LinkedIn. Mhmm. So I continue to try to figure out different ways I can communicate on LinkedIn. And it's just a series of experiments and it always surprises me.
Vince Beese:It's always the dumbest or most simple thing that always pays off the most. And I do the same mistake every single time. I overcomplicate it. I overwrite whatever it is, and it doesn't do anything. And then I do something short and simple and guess what?
Vince Beese:Yeah.
Eric Boggs:Well, you know, earlier this year, I went through I had a goal of doing a 100 short videos on LinkedIn, and I think I've done maybe 30 or 35. It's it's hard. It's hard. It's hard to do a lot of things with the z of the company. But the one that by far outperformed the most was, talking about the, like, smoking crater at Orkyle Social.
Vince Beese:Oh, yeah? Yeah. Yeah. And then you did that to generate interest for RevBoss.
Eric Boggs:Yeah. It was more just like, I'm just gonna talk about things that are interesting. Yeah.
Vince Beese:And Related or not related?
Eric Boggs:It I mean, it was related in that I am need. Yes. Yes. And that's it. Yes.
Eric Boggs:And, the second highest performing one was, when we almost went bankrupt in 2018 when we pivoted the business and, like, we're crashing into the ground. I love that person. Pulled up just, like, at the last minute and, like, the the bottom of the plane scraped the tip of the tree, and we kinda made it, Yeah. And, you know, did someone see that and fill out a lead form on revboss.com? No.
Eric Boggs:Yeah. But my LinkedIn audience grows by 1% every week. Like, clockwork.
Vince Beese:And you're using video exclusively? Or are you No.
Eric Boggs:I haven't. I so I've got some people on my team that write for me doing a lot more just, like, content that our marketing team generates. But, Danny, the same Danny that was the first person that I hired at RevBoss, came back to work with us. He's he runs
Vince Beese:Basically here or just He
Eric Boggs:lives in in, Dallas, Texas Okay. In in the Dallas metro. But he came back to work for us, and it was really funny because you worked for this
Vince Beese:This is the 3rd iteration now?
Eric Boggs:Or Yeah. And so, he is a master at this process. And so I accepted a calendar invite with him today to kinda get back on the horse of doing more of the short form video content. And the strategy now is talking more about starting RepOps for the 3rd time and trying to find, like, more of other personal stories because that's what gets people.
Vince Beese:People love it. I used to think back in the not that long ago, all of a sudden people started posting really personal stuff on LinkedIn.
Eric Boggs:You're like, what the heck is this?
Vince Beese:And then boom, blow up. 100, thousands of of views and likes and
Eric Boggs:It's
Vince Beese:audience growing. Right?
Eric Boggs:It's really I don't know. Sometimes it feels like it comes very natural Yeah.
Vince Beese:Yeah. Yeah.
Eric Boggs:For me. And other times, I feel like a phony Yeah. Because it does feel fake. And, you know, there's this product called RB 2B. It's it's one of the tools we we're plugging in a few of these tools that does, like, site visitor retargeting.
Eric Boggs:And the guy the founder of the business I did a webcast with him. RB 2B? Yeah. His name's Adam Robinson. He's a sharp guy.
Eric Boggs:He's successful. And, I mean, this guy is relentless. And he I don't want to say shameless, but he was like, look, I see my goal is to become the Kim Kardashian and B2B. And
Vince Beese:he's good at it.
Eric Boggs:I kinda bought for a minute and I was like, I don't like her. And, you know, no disrespect. I don't
Vince Beese:I don't think she's watching.
Eric Boggs:The peep the people that watch that yeah. I don't understand why any person would watch that. And so why would you want to be that? Like, I get it. Like, that's very natural From
Vince Beese:a popularity standpoint. Yeah. That's you know,
Eric Boggs:he can do that. I don't have that. Mhmm. I I
Vince Beese:don't You couldn't do that.
Eric Boggs:Yeah. Like, I just don't have that. Yeah. I hear what you're saying. And, so yeah.
Eric Boggs:To to your point about content and personal Yeah. Personal stories and whatever, I don't know what the
Vince Beese:balance is. So you use LinkedIn platform. Eric Boggs uses the LinkedIn platform. Eric and RevBoss is one thing. It's just the same thing.
Vince Beese:You are RevBoss. RevBoss is Yeah.
Eric Boggs:I mean, it's it's like the founder brand.
Vince Beese:Right? Right. And if if
Eric Boggs:the founder can build a big enough audience and have enough credibility, well, then it just creates a halo effect that does everything else. And so and I mean, that's that kind of makes sense if you think about it. Like, nobody wants to know Yeah. Sales HQ. Yeah.
Eric Boggs:It's it's just a legal entity. People want an event.
Vince Beese:It's actually a living, breathing entity. Well, you
Eric Boggs:know what? I think you're You know what I mean? But it is the people. It is the people.
Vince Beese:And you see it repeated on LinkedIn. You know, you mentioned Adam. Right? He's one founder or is he a founder or or whatever he is. Like, he's using it the right way for his purpose, which is to build this ginormous audience.
Vince Beese:There's another guy, but Justin Welch. I don't know if you that is the guy, the content creator. He's got, like, 600 and some 1000 followers, which on a b to b platform is Yeah. That's massive. That's huge.
Vince Beese:Most people, if you had 20, you're doing pretty well for yourself. At 600 and something, he's just absolutely crushing it.
Eric Boggs:It's just wild how so much of it is becoming, like, TikTokify Yeah. And just, like, really weird and, you know, I don't know. It's all, like, info it's all infotainment. Right? And, the thing for me is, like, it it always feels like it has an angle and sometimes it just feels so contrived.
Eric Boggs:It's like I'm embarrassed for you that you made that. You're not
Vince Beese:saying that about my post, are you?
Eric Boggs:Or No. No. No. No. No.
Eric Boggs:No. And the thing is, like, the You
Vince Beese:could tell me.
Eric Boggs:The the person for whom I'm embarrassed probably doesn't care.
Vince Beese:No. They don't care.
Eric Boggs:They're shameless, and it's like,
Vince Beese:I'll just do anything for the yeah. Because you looked at it, and you might have
Eric Boggs:I know. I know. So
Vince Beese:them more views. That is the conundrum. So in addition to that's one of the platforms, obviously, you use for your own brand for the RevBoss brand, but also for your clients. What are you finding from a marketing standpoint from a what are the channels that are really working and how are you taking advantage of them today? Because it seems like every 3 months or 6 months, things are the the evolution of things is happening so much more rapidly.
Eric Boggs:Yeah. So I think I think there are a few trends happening. One, the, like, easy money era is gone, which means the easy marketing era is gone. And, that means higher scrutiny, skepticism, standard, whatever you wanna call it for buyers at any stage of the buying process. Yeah.
Eric Boggs:Top, bottom, left, right, whatever your paradigm is. And so that means you can't just flood AdWords with ad spend or crank out a bunch of cold emails and just hope you have the best. That said, what always works is the right message to the right person at the right time and, regardless of platform. Yeah. Yeah.
Eric Boggs:And right person, in my view, is a tightly defined, segmented, not in, like, 50 different ways, but in 2 or 3 ways, ICP. Like, you don't you don't need an audience of 50,000. You need the right 5,000 and the best qualified, best defined 5,000. Maybe you put in a couple buckets that lets you layer messaging that makes a lot of sense. Like, a a really good example is, you know, we love to work with companies that don't have marketing teams.
Eric Boggs:And so, you know, hey, Vince. Congrats on your 25 person PR team. I bet it's really hard running the business, being the number one salesperson, and being the marketer. Well, you know, we, you know, why don't you let us do that? Right?
Eric Boggs:And so we know something about you that lets us say something about us that shows that we understand you. And so we look at segmentation through that lens. And so then it kind of becomes like, alright, if you're the right person and and that's the message I wanna get in front of you, well, I can say it up here at the top of the funnel as a cold email or a display ad. I can say it here if you're in my LinkedIn audience or in, like, an a legacy lead or something like that. And I can say it down here if you're happy to be on my website or showing some other intent.
Eric Boggs:And so I think that what will work is a tighter audience Mhmm. And a tighter message and patience. And that's the thing that, you know, we're gonna find out. Yeah.
Vince Beese:How do you I assume you've done some experimentation with I always struggle with the amount of words or content you need to feed. I always, like I said before, over explain like, oh, I need to say this and I need to say that and I need to say this. I I I get the call to action. Right? It has to happen, but, like, I think I always over express the value.
Vince Beese:So how do you what's what's your magic sauce for making sure to just to the point to that audience
Eric Boggs:you described? Hard, man. Yeah. It's hard.
Vince Beese:My Hey, chat chat g p t.
Eric Boggs:Yeah. Well, it's not that. Yeah. I'll tell you that. We've we've spent a lot of effort there.
Eric Boggs:And, man, it it it chi g p t for us has been very good at decision making.
Vince Beese:Okay.
Eric Boggs:It's not good.
Vince Beese:How so? Give me an example.
Eric Boggs:Here's a prospect, Vince. He works for he has this title of this company. Here's a list of 30 reference clients. Pick the
Vince Beese:best one for Vince. Right? Okay.
Eric Boggs:Based on That makes a
Vince Beese:lot of sense.
Eric Boggs:A lot of things. Right? Here's Vince. Should you get this email, that email, or that email? Versus here's Vince.
Eric Boggs:Write a cold email for Vince. Like, terrible. Yep. No matter how you feed it and how you train it. And believe me, we have spent a lot of time.
Vince Beese:It doesn't feel authentic. Right?
Eric Boggs:Yeah. You can just see it. Yeah. You can just see it. Yep.
Eric Boggs:And so where we've actually found a value is our team of copywriters, who are very good, keep it very tight and very short, and we will use AI for some clients, not even all clients, to decide the best phrase or decide the best reference client or, you know, 7 word case study based on you. Yep. The other way that we use AI is to my earlier point about, like, that audience of 5000 or 10000, whoever you are, like, making sure that, you know, that list that you dump from Apollo or ZoomInfo or, you know, wherever, that those are real things because they're not. And, you know, 30% of anything that you download from Apollo and all these tools is, like, absolute garbage. Yeah.
Eric Boggs:And feels it's get like, it's getting worse. It's it is getting worse.
Vince Beese:Okay.
Eric Boggs:And I think it's because all of these providers, they'll even tell you this. They all, like, share they all buy and sell from each other. And it's all this, like, weird incestuous relationship. And I think there's, like, some data crew down in, like, South America or something that's, like, real time scraping LinkedIn, and everybody buys it from them. Yeah.
Eric Boggs:It just gets passed around because data quality has diminished in, it's a lot of evidence Yep. For it. But it's been bad all along. Yeah. We've just been too lazy and haven't had the tools to to validate that.
Vince Beese:So it's been interesting here is that from, like, January ish time frame when I really solidified, like, I'm gonna start this thing and open the doors soon, I started building my list, not, like, purposely, just started doing things and activity that sort of I've grown it now in 6 months to 3,000 subscribers, not just names, 3,000 subscribers. I was like, wow. This is where I'm really starting to build some real value because these are subscribers to this asset that I'm sending them valuable content that continue to want it. I'm like, jeez. I'm actually creating a platform here.
Eric Boggs:And it took you a long time. Yeah.
Vince Beese:6 months to get to 3,000, which for
Eric Boggs:b to b and That's actually really fast.
Vince Beese:In one market in one market. Right? So if I had 50 markets I was in, different story.
Eric Boggs:But I was like, I
Vince Beese:was really encouraged by that because, okay, I'm doing the hard work right now, which is attracting an audience that is interested in this thing called sales HQ, whether it's physically being here or just absorbing some of the content. Right? Yeah. And I was like, wow. This is where I need to focus my effort.
Eric Boggs:Yeah.
Vince Beese:It's not mass. It's like, to your point, narrow what is my ICP? What do they care about? And then slowly keep building. Yeah.
Eric Boggs:And then then you've got that 3,000 and, you know, locally, your your your your cap is, I don't know, 15 or 10 or something like that. What it is, but it's like, you know what you have and you know what you need to go get and everything outside of that is just noise. It doesn't matter. And even inside out outside of that 10,000, let's say, that you don't have, there's, like, a most valuable 2,000. Yes.
Eric Boggs:And you probably would be best served to, like, 0 in on that.
Vince Beese:And it's it's amazing when you curate your audience, and then you're communicating with what they're interested in. And that they're gonna tell you what you need to write about. Yeah. You know what I mean? So my honestly, as time came out, I was like, I how can I do a a weekly newsletter?
Vince Beese:This is daunting. Like, how do I come up with my next that's easy now because I know what they care about. Yeah.
Eric Boggs:We just, like, go talk to those guys back there doing a sales call. Like, hey. How's it going? What'd you do this week? Absolutely.
Vince Beese:It's that and it's just what people are actually clicking on. Yeah. Like, okay. They're not clicking on that. They're clicking that.
Vince Beese:You know what the number one clicker of things are? On my YouTube channel. Someone ringing the sales bell over there. An 8 second ring of a bell crushes my YouTube channel. That's great.
Vince Beese:Isn't it great? Yeah. Because people some people are like, well, why is that guy standing up and going to or gal going to that thing and ringing it? That's called a sales win. Like, it's just some people that don't even know what that is.
Vince Beese:Right? I mean, a generation. So Yeah. And people like seeing other people succeed too is what I've I've identified as well.
Eric Boggs:So It's I I guess this to my earlier comment. It's like sales HQ as the brand versus Nets Yes.
Vince Beese:As the brand. Yes.
Eric Boggs:That's that's the difference is that, you know, that's why I do content as me. My content is Redboss. Yeah. It's why you do content as you.
Vince Beese:And it's I know because if you try to do it as your brand on LinkedIn, it's Yes.
Eric Boggs:Well, like, we post something as rep boss, crickets. We post the literally the exact same thing as me. Well, plenty of, you
Vince Beese:know, engagement. And they even say if you even, like, push your brand in your post, it actually drives down engagement. I'm like, anyway, it's all a game
Eric Boggs:you have to play. Yeah. I know. It's it's weird. And it's weird to find that balance between who you are and Kim Kardashian.
Eric Boggs:Yeah.
Vince Beese:Not hard for me. What is the top thing your customers your current customers want, need, or challenged by? Like, what is what's going on with your customers? Your your
Eric Boggs:Our so our clients want leads in activity. And it's hard for us because there's it's never enough.
Vince Beese:And is activity mostly a meeting schedule?
Eric Boggs:Yeah. Generally. Yeah. Generally. And, yeah, that's what they want.
Eric Boggs:And our clients range from you know, they're small. So our average client's probably 25, 30 employees. Some of them are 2 employees. Yeah. Some of them are are quite a bit bigger.
Eric Boggs:Right? And you can imagine the quite a like, we have a handful of, like, higher education clients, like these, like, executive education at UNC, UNC Chapel Hill, UNC Charlotte, Arizona State. Those are big organizations and they can budget and take a long view and partner with us in the work that we do. But then we have other clients that are, you know, Eric and Vince's Yep. You know, sales consulting shop, and we might be desperate and dying.
Eric Boggs:And, that's fine. We can still serve those types of clients, but it's a really different. Yeah. It's a different problem and a different dynamic when it's like, okay. We budgeted for 12 months of RevPARs.
Eric Boggs:Let's make this work versus, like, if I don't get something in 30 days, my business is gonna go under. Yeah. And we have a lot of that. Yeah. And, you know, we can make it work.
Eric Boggs:Yeah.
Vince Beese:And
Eric Boggs:we do make it work a lot. Yeah. Sometimes we don't. And
Vince Beese:Yeah. So your world is the same as the SaaS sales world. It's top of the funnel is diminished, mid funnel is diminished. You know? Yeah.
Vince Beese:Everything's diminishing. Yeah.
Eric Boggs:It's definitely harder than it was, certainly in 2021.
Vince Beese:I find it back to if we're gonna get channel specific, I just find that emails got so much harder, like, ridiculously much harder. Used to be like, okay. I'll take a series, and I'll be very specific and very per very, very personalized and all that. It's like, nope. Not so much.
Vince Beese:Yeah. So I've got one last question for you. Yes. It's gonna be a hard one. So you better be ready.
Vince Beese:You ready? Yes. Okay. And you better think about this because it better not be a simple answer. It better be more complex.
Vince Beese:What's the one thing about Eric Boggs that most people don't know that's interesting.
Eric Boggs:Most people. That most people don't know. Alright. Here's a very timely one. Alright.
Eric Boggs:I bought a ticket to a concert today, to Really timely. See a band called Sumac in Asheville, and I'm going with some of my college roommates. And it is music that would make your toenails curl. I'll listen to it all the way over here.
Vince Beese:What is it? I don't know.
Eric Boggs:It's not death metal. I would call it, like, post punk hardcore noise. It's hard to describe.
Vince Beese:But, yeah, I listen to music that So it's loud. It's aggressive.
Eric Boggs:Yeah. I I listen to music that would scare children, and I do it to concentrate. That makes you concentrate. Yeah. It's like a weird you, like, find a zone and I can, like, work.
Eric Boggs:Yeah. So I guess that's a that's an interesting thing about me that most people don't know that I thought of on the spot because I was listening to it out there and I literally bought I thought
Vince Beese:you were gonna tell me it was, like, some soothing kind of jazz laid back lounge type music.
Eric Boggs:I mean, I like that too. But
Vince Beese:Yeah. No. This is are these the same guys you go hiking in? They'll
Eric Boggs:It is. It's the same roommates.
Vince Beese:Sense. Yeah. Do you guys go in the woods and play this stuff and just scare the bears away?
Eric Boggs:No. No. My friend my friend Ben so most of us live in, North Carolina and Tennessee. Yeah. And Ben lives in Texas, and he kinda turned us on to this band, and he loves this band.
Eric Boggs:He's flying here in December to see them in Raleigh and then again in Asheville. So we're all gonna go converge and see this band in Asheville. And, yeah, you put me on the spot, man. I'm doing the best I can. I probably know.
Eric Boggs:I like that. I could've come up with something more interesting. Can I come up with something interesting? I replied that most people don't
Vince Beese:know. Well, they tore that building down that you used to work in. Yeah. Probably you probably were in that building by that time. They just you you might have been there while they're actually
Eric Boggs:taking Guys, hang on. I'm still I'm still, like, stripping things off the wall. That that was interesting. So we were in a building in downtown Durham. It was cheap and ratty.
Eric Boggs:Yeah. Like, don't ride the elevator kind of building. And we at least sitting there this was probably 2017, 2018. I don't know. They're like, we're gonna tear it down.
Eric Boggs:I was like, okay. What is it? You know? Let us know. Make sure we're out of the building before the wrecking ball comes.
Eric Boggs:And they're like, well, you know, we're we're doing 6 month rolling lease. I was like, okay. Yeah. And I'd be like, yeah. I don't know if we're gonna extend.
Eric Boggs:You know, we got the financing. This building's gonna come down. We were there for, like I know
Vince Beese:you were. Years.
Eric Boggs:I know you were.
Vince Beese:And then, No plumbing. No. Just kidding.
Eric Boggs:No. It was fine. It was fine. Actually, a great view, like, right by Oklahoma Caves.
Vince Beese:Perfect location.
Eric Boggs:Then, you know, pandemic hit. Like, we moved out when the pandemic hit. That's right. And, but, yeah, they they made a big deal out of it, but, you know, we just stayed there for a
Vince Beese:long time. Squatters.
Eric Boggs:So it was a bank building. Yep. Do you know who, showed up as the, like, guest celebrity appearance for the ribbon cutting. For the ribbon cutting in downtown Durham. You'll never guess it.
Vince Beese:I'm actually gonna guess it.
Eric Boggs:He he was a member of the Beach Boys. Brian Wilson? Touring member of the Beach Boys, not Brian Wilson.
Vince Beese:Touring member of the Beach Boys, Barry Gibb. Glenn Campbell. Glenn Campbell? For real?
Eric Boggs:Campbell. Is he from North Carolina? I don't know. I think he was, like, on I I talked to the building.
Vince Beese:Why would he come to Durham, North Carolina?
Eric Boggs:Like, on tour in North Carolina, and they were opening the building. And they're like, hey, Glen Campbell. Do you wanna come cut the ribbon?
Vince Beese:He's like a DPAC, and they're like, hey. He's like walking dead.
Eric Boggs:He wasn't a DPAC. I don't know where he was, but DPAC didn't exist.
Vince Beese:Oh, it wasn't? Not not the
Eric Boggs:new building. The original building in, like, the sixties. Oh. The building was cut down.
Vince Beese:I thought you meant the new new building. No.
Eric Boggs:No. No. The new new building. Glenn Campbell died a few years ago.
Vince Beese:Okay. I'm I'm sorry.
Eric Boggs:I unironically love Glenn Campbell. Yeah. But, no, like, when it opened like a rhinestone cowboy? Yes.
Vince Beese:Am I right?
Eric Boggs:The Wichita line
Vince Beese:I'm back.
Eric Boggs:I'm back. Southern knights. Okay. Alright. Okay.
Eric Boggs:Alright. I'm back. But, yeah, Glenn Campbell.
Vince Beese:That's interesting.
Eric Boggs:It, like, blew me away. I was like, this is so great. I've been a place to come.
Vince Beese:I think we're gonna end there because I don't know what we're talking about. It's got nothing to do with sales or but When
Eric Boggs:you hit which is hotline, man, that's usually the wrap it up.
Vince Beese:Eric, thank you for coming on. Yeah, man.
Eric Boggs:It's good catching up. My pleasure, my friend.
Vince Beese:Till next time, sales HQ.