Marketing with Meaning: An Interview with Pete Steege, B2B Clarity, and Author of On Purpose

John Ray: [00:00:00] Hello again, everyone. I’m John Ray on the Price and Value Journey. And folks, I’m here today with Pete Steege. Pete is with B2B Clarity and he is also the author of a newly released book called “On Purpose: The CEO’s Guide to Marketing with Meaning”.

Pete is a 30-year marketing veteran. He’s got a wide range of B2B technology and manufacturing business experience, working from Silicon Valley startups all the way to Fortune 500 firms. And he’s got global experience as well in North America, Europe and Asia. And all that experience gives him a wide breadth of perspective and experience he’s going to bring to this interview. But certainly, in his book, which I have read, folks, I have read so, and I’m delighted to say that because it was worth every minute of it. Pete Steege, welcome to The Price and Value Journey.

Pete Steege: [00:01:04] Thanks so much, John. Really happy to be here.

John Ray: [00:01:06] Hey, I’m delighted to have you. Talk about — let’s first of all, just give everyone a quick introduction to what I missed in your business. Tell everyone how you’re serving folks at B2B Clarity, then we’ll get to the book.

Pete Steege: [00:01:21] You know, John, I think you summed it up pretty good. As you said, I’ve been a marketer for a long career. And these last two years have been a big change for me and just a great change where I’m on my own helping B2B business owners and CEOs. And it’s been — it’s just been really, really exciting and satisfying change for me. But yeah, that’s what I do now is I just — I’m able to use some of that, you know, gray hair, I guess, and help people solve problems. I really enjoy it.

John Ray: [00:01:55] One of the aspects to this book that you state right up front is that you believe that most CEOs, B2B CEOs, look at their marketing function and their marketing efforts and they see that as broken. Why?

Pete Steege: [00:02:16] It’s absolutely true. More often than not, they are not satisfied with their marketing. And it’s usually not, oh yeah, it could be better. It’s usually a pain point for them. And I think there’s a couple of things at work there. One is, I think if you’re at all in the business world, you know what a overwhelming space marketing is. I like to call it the marketing industrial complex. There’s so many businesses and agencies and consultants and software applications all fighting for your mindshare and saying that they have the greatest thing since sliced bread to solve your marketing problems.

As a matter of fact, there’s this really interesting number factoid. There’s a guy that tracks it’s called Chief MarTec is the organization, and he’s been tracking since 2011 the number of marketing technology solutions available in the market. And he creates a landscape, right? 2011, the first one, 150. 2022, 9,938 of them.

John Ray: [00:03:32] Oh, wow.

Pete Steege: [00:03:32] So, there’s this overwhelming wealth of solutions, I’ll say, right. So, that’s a problem because no one can get anywhere near to choosing. All of them are even a collection of them. You’re going to have to choose what you’re going to do. And that coupled with the fact that there’s this idea that, oh, I’m just going to choose this thing to do. Some people call it random acts of marketing. You know, hey, we need a video,

John Ray: [00:04:07] Right.

Pete Steege: [00:04:07] Hey, let’s go to the big show this year. You know, this kind of arbitrary thoughts that are emotional sometimes or that feels good, it sounds good. Maybe it sounds fun even sometimes, or your competitor is doing it, right. There’s all these reasons to do them. But you take this wealth of options and couple it with this idea that you can choose one and that it would be just as good by itself versus part of a bigger plan or strategy. And that doesn’t work. It’s like throwing stuff at the wall and your customers are getting these blips of information from you and they’re not consistent when they do get them and you cancel yourself out.

So, basically, a lot of that effort, a lot of the money you are spending is almost — is often just a waste of time because it’s not helping you get closer to your customers.

John Ray: [00:05:09] I’m curious about — I mean, CEOs of larger B2B firms in general, they certainly are — they’re the chief strategy officer, right. And so, this is really a matter of getting their attention diverted toward a tactic, a video, or whatever that tactic, whatever form that tactic takes. Instead of focusing on the strategy and executing the strategy, kind of understand it from a smaller firm point of view, you know, an entrepreneur that’s kind of overwhelmed and can easily maybe get their attention distracted. But the CEO is a bigger firm. I mean, why does this happen? What’s your view on that? You’ve talked to a lot of them, by the way, that was –.

Pete Steege: [00:05:57] I know.

John Ray: [00:05:57] Yeah. So, cite more about that, maybe first.

Pete Steege: [00:06:01] So, I like the fact that I started — when I started my business, I kept track of my meeting. I went out and wanted to talk to CEOs, right. Obviously to find customers, but also to kind of validate as a corporate marketer versus being a solution provider for a CEO, it doesn’t translate, right. So, I had, I think I say in the book, 397 meetings, right. Not all CEOs, but all CEO related people, related to this challenge. And yeah, so a lot of data points and a lot of commonality in that.

And to answer your question, why do the larger companies, strategic CEOs let’s say, ones with a big budget and maybe even a marketing team, they wouldn’t have this problem, right? Guess what? A lot of the places I worked over 30 years were those organizations and I was in those marketing teams. And there is a core problem here that I talked about before that CEOs or their marketing leader or their sales leader tend to bite off more than they can chew with marketing. For the reasons we said, there’s a lot of things you could choose to do, and they tend to try to do more than they can get done, that they can be successful with.

So, even at the larger organizations, I remember one not too long ago where I worked over a hundred marketers on this company’s team and they had big plans and they were sophisticated plans, but they often didn’t finish these sophisticated projects because they were so busy with so many plates spinning. It just scales up, whoever you are. It’s a mindset issue. It’s a problem with thinking of marketing as the more the better. And activity is good versus there’s a less is more theme here and a strategy before tactics.

It’s less important how many things you do and it’s more important why you do them and that you finish, that you finish what you — you do it well, right. That’s really an important part that translates up to — I can’t speak for multibillion dollar companies. Probably a different issue. But certainly, you know, for a wide range of company sizes, this is a challenge for those organizations and the leaders of those organizations to get focus and to follow through and thoughtfully deliver on a purposeful marketing plan.

John Ray: [00:09:00] Pete, one of the things that you talk about in the book is not just, I guess, maybe marketing overload, taking on too many tactics, too many initiatives, but you talk about mindset a lot and that the problem is a mindset of meaning. Explain what you’re talking about there.

Pete Steege: [00:09:28] Yeah. That’s the core of the book, really. What my observation is, there’s a really important hierarchy in marketing. And most businesses, most CEOs know two of the three levels, and they don’t even know the third level exists. The first level, which we all know is tactics. It’s all the stuff you do in marketing. We all know what they are. There’s website, SEO, email, PR, all these things you do. So, these are the things that have a budget line item.

As I said, often, there’s some chaos around the activities, the tactics. And the more incoherent they are, the less valuable they are because they are all out there and your customers are picking them up and they’re busy. And if they don’t hear this common story, it’s a problem, right. So, tactics can be a real and it’s hard to deliver on them. The more you get, you get overloaded, right.

So, the next level is really important, and it really helps solve that problem and that strategy, marketing strategy. Bunch of books out there. You know, we all have our favorites probably if you’re a CEO or a executive. And that helps bring order and priority to these tactics and consistency can really help rein in the chaos. Absolutely. And for a lot of people, that’s where it starts. That’s marketing. You got your tactics, and you got your strategy.

John Ray: [00:11:02] Sure.

Pete Steege: [00:11:03] I strongly believe that there’s a really important element above that, which is mindset. Strategy without mindset, without purpose, without direction — there are almost as many strategies now as there are tactics, right? And there are often multiple strategies that you need to apply to your business marketing, your marketing approach. There are strategies that have to align with your sales strategies and your customer support strategies and your product development so you can — companies that think of strategy as a means to an end that are that — if I just come up with a really smart way to look at this, it’s going to solve all my problems.

They end up with a well, maybe more ordered group of tactics, but I would say in a way they’re almost lifeless, right. They’re mercenary. Their goal is to get, get. Their goal is to get, right, to win the order, maximize profit, change mind perception. All those things are a good outcome. But if those are the destination and there’s not a tie to why you created your business or why you are getting up every day to manage this thing, what’s the vision? What’s the value of your organization.

If your marketing is cut off from that, it doesn’t work. It’s a lot more visible in activity, but it doesn’t change the hearts and minds of your crazy busy clients that are hesitant to come on board with somebody new. And it’s that mindset of meaning that says my — first, I need to start with, okay, why are we in business?

This isn’t a marketing thing. This is why we come here every day. And who is it that we’re here to help? Because a business that gets — you may say, oh, my goal is to make a lot of money. Well, you can’t make a lot of money if you’re not solving a problem for somebody. And knowing that mission is the first step to marketing that works. Because if you know that mission and then you say marketing isn’t a by itself set aside tactic, it’s actually part of us creating the bond with our relationship with our customers that make it work. And so, a little bit of a side topic here.

John Ray: [00:13:57] Yeah.

Pete Steege: [00:13:57] My definition of marketing is optimizing the relationship between your business and your customers. So, it’s relationship. One word, marketing is relationship.

John Ray: [00:14:10] Oh, wow. I love that. And you talk a lot about that in the book too, to be clear. Because those sound like two separate things, mindset and relationship. But they’re not in your world, in your mind.

Pete Steege: [00:14:32] No. And the reason why is picture yourself and your customer, right? There’s these two — it’s a company, yourself as your company, right? But it’s people in your company and then you have your customers. And if your goal is a relationship, I believe that the only way — the way you make that relationship happen, the way you spark it, the way you turn it on and activate it, is meaning. Meaning for them and meaning for you. If you’re doing things at them without a purpose, for the bigger purpose, they can tell.

John Ray: [00:15:10] Right.

Pete Steege: [00:15:11] If they are listening to you or they are interrupted by you and there’s no good reason in their mind why they should talk to you, if there’s not a purpose to that. Meaning, they’re not going to take the time to do it. So meaning back to the word, right, mindset of meaning. Meaning is what makes marketing create that relationship.

John Ray: [00:15:36] So, Pete, let’s talk about — I want to dive into relationship just a little more. You know, for smaller firms, I think they think of that as one-to-one and very personal. They’ve got the capacity to handle one-to-one relationships. As firms get bigger, it gets a little trickier because suddenly you’ve got sales forces and you’ve got layers of folks in your organization. And how are you talking? How do you talk about in the book, you talk about how to create relationships and how those relationships start and how they deepen, cover that force, if you would.

Pete Steege: [00:16:27] Sure. First thing I’ll say is that I like to call them the three superpowers of marketing. So, there are three traits that you as a CEO need to have in your culture and in your organization, that if you do, if those are there, then those relationships happen, but it’s like the essential ingredients of relationship. And what they are is the first one is authenticity. Being transparent and truthful and real with your team and your clients, right, with your world. That’s one authenticity.

The second is intention. Being intentional. We already talked about that, right. That’s having a strategy before you choose your tactics. That’s doing less but doing it better. Choosing, being purposeful, being — doing things with the end in mind. That’s intention, right. That’s the second.

And then the third is generosity. The first two I’ve heard of in a marketing sense or really authenticity, you know, that makes sense.

Pete Steege: [00:17:45] Oh, yeah.

Pete Steege: [00:17:45] Intention, Absolutely, right. Being operationally good and all that. You don’t hear generosity mentioned very often when it comes to marketing, but I am convinced that it is a total — it is absolutely a superpower. And it’s one of the three ingredients. You need all three, but it’s often the missing one.

John Ray: [00:18:07] Well, I want to get to that in a minute, because when I read your book, I had a comment for you on that, that I want to get to. But I think it’s counterintuitive for folks when you talk about the intention piece and you’re talking about let’s do less. I mean, people don’t want to do less, right.

Pete Steege: [00:18:26] Right.

John Ray: [00:18:26] I mean they want to do more because they think pressing on the accelerator is going to what — is what’s going to get them to whatever their goal is for their company. And that’s just counterintuitive and hard for anybody to get their head around.

Pete Steege: [00:18:41] It is. Let me help a little bit with that. There’s a key dynamic in marketing. And I can’t speak to other functions, but it’s absolutely true in marketing that there is a critical mass that you need to reach with a marketing program often, that until you get there, you get kind of zero results from it.

So, let’s say you decide to start posting on LinkedIn and you dabble in it, or you do a poor job of it, or it’s confusing, whatever. You spend a lot of effort on posting on LinkedIn, but it never clicks. Nobody really — it does — it’s not like the more you do, it’s incrementally more result for you and more exposure to your clients. There’s a certain level you have to get to where you reach, escape velocity, and your campaign starts to make a difference and move the needle.

Marketing is that way. A lot of things, okay. So, what often people do is they’re so — they feel so much pressure to do all these things that everybody’s doing around marketing that they — none of them have the mindshare or enough effort available to them to get to that critical mass. So, there’s lots of activity going on, but very little of it is moving the needle. If you force yourself to first say what are — what is important, right. If I had to choose three things, that three programs, tactics, campaigns, that would move the needle for my marketing, I should start with the biggest pain points, right?

So, the first step is understanding that. But when you do and if you can resist the temptation to do the other dozen things now and say, we’re going to solve these three, we’re going to launch these three things, and move the needle in these three ways and check to see if we did, right. That’s part of that intention is be thoughtful and check your work and see if it worked. Your odds of success go way up because you’re able to spend the right amount of time, your team or you or your agency, whatever it might be. You have the time and money needed to do it well, right.

So, those two things. It moves the needle, but also now you’re a brand that does things well. You start to look like you’re good at what you do. And communicating and making relationships is part of what you do, right. So, that’s — I hope that helps with the less is more.

But it’s true in so many factors, it’s true with how much content you put on your website. B2B companies, especially tech B2B, they tend to try to explain everything on their website and put a lot of acronyms on there. So, that’s another example of less is more, right.

John Ray: [00:21:40] Right.

Pete Steege: [00:21:41] Don’t try to explain it all because they don’t have time to grasp it. Another example is your priorities with your team, right? Does your team on board with what’s important right now? Are they all rowing the same direction? Often, people have multiple priorities that confuse their team.

And here’s maybe the most important one, companies need one story. I like to call it the true story, their true story. But they need one story about who they are, whom they serve, how that target benefits from them. And you tell them a lot of different ways, but you got to have that one story. So, that’s another less is more example.

John Ray: [00:22:33] Okay. Now, I’m going to get myself in trouble here. I might get you in trouble here. Let’s see where this goes, but —

Pete Steege: [00:22:40] Let’s do it.

John Ray: [00:22:40] Yeah, okay. Let’s dive into this, because this, the less is more is not where the, I’ll say a lot of the outside marketing firms and really even the inside marketing folks end up, right. I mean because —

Pete Steege: [00:23:01] Right.

John Ray: [00:23:01] And so, there’s a lot of pressure on the CEO or the owner of a business from their own marketing people on this, right. And that’s what I think is so hard for them. I mean, let’s — am I — is it just the marketing people I run into? Or do you see that out there as well?

Pete Steege: [00:23:26] Well, I do see it out there and it’s totally understandable, John.

John Ray: [00:23:31] Yeah.

Pete Steege: [00:23:33] There — you know, it’s their job, right. And more is the shorter path to looking like your progress, right. Because you can quickly point to the activity.

John Ray: [00:23:48] Right.

John Ray: [00:23:50] It’s also more budget that comes with more sometimes.

John Ray: [00:23:53] Well, yeah, that’s where I was going, right. I mean —

Pete Steege: [00:23:56] Oh, it is?

John Ray: [00:23:56] Yeah.

Pete Steege: [00:23:58] And it’s not that people are, you know, their intent isn’t good but there’s a lot of just natural impulse situation here that it’s understandable why it happens so much, right. Because it is counterintuitive and it doesn’t always — sometimes the rewards are delayed, right. This delayed gratification.

Because there’s another connection here, which I’m sure you’ve heard, which I’ve heard from a lot of CEOs, is I just need leads. I need leads and I need them now and I need more. And what can you do to get me those leads next month? Sometimes, there’s a fun, surprising little tweak that does something like that. But most of the time I think you’ve picked up, from my view at least, marketing is an ecosystem.

Marketing is a relationship building engine and it doesn’t happen overnight. And there is — to set up that right environment with your team and your customers and your prospects, it takes time for it to play out. And those leads come more organically usually. Throwing money at a Google Ads, the more you put in, doesn’t mean the more good leads you get out and the more revenue you get out.

There are — like I said, sometimes you get lucky and there’s an opportunity in the market and you want to be ready for those opportunities. But that comes after you’ve understood this — the needs here, right, and the journey your customer is on. And that’s when you see the opportunity. It doesn’t happen, which I see so often where CEOs hire a vendor to do that one tactic, one off in a vacuum, and they say you’re going to mint money with this thing. Wow. This is going to be awesome. It doesn’t happen very often for all the reasons I just said.

John Ray: [00:25:56] Okay. So, Pete, we talked about authenticity. I think we’ve covered intention. So, let’s get to my favorite part in your book, Generous Marketing. And I have to tell folks when I read Pete’s book, I wrote him a note and said you need to name this book, Generous Marketing. And to his credit, he ignored my advice. So, because he knows what he’s doing.

Pete Steege: [00:26:22] Tell me in my next book.

John Ray: [00:26:24] Okay. There you go. And I’ll read that one as well. I loved that concept. And let’s define that in your words. What is generous marketing?

Pete Steege: [00:26:39] So, for me, I like to describe it as customer centricity on steroids, right. This is — we’ve all heard about customer first, and that’s a standard platitude and obvious reasons. Of course, we want to put our customers first. Generous marketing is taking that to another level where putting your customer first isn’t a means to an end. It’s not something you do so you can make more money. It’s the paradox of really believing and wanting what’s best for your customer and changing the behavior of your organization to maximize maximize that. And in a Zen way, magically, that’s where the most success comes, because customers can tell.

And it’s organic, right? It’s deep in their bones that they can tell that you are trying to help them. And that draws them to you more than any persuasive thing you can come up with saying, right. So that’s part — that’s the essence of it. And it shows itself often in a couple of things. One is it’s not about you, right. So, when people aren’t generous, they care about their customers. Of course, they do. But they’re just so excited about what they do to help their customer that that’s what they talk about. Look at how good we are. Look, we are so — we are the best provider for you. And they sincerely — they are, they’re sincere.

But your customer doesn’t want to hear about you. They want to hear about how you can help them. So, the story needs to start with their problem and relieving it. And it just so happens that it’s that thing you do so well that does that. And it’s a subtle difference, but they notice. They notice and they will be drawn to you with your solution for their problem more than they will with your skill and your expertise.

John Ray: [00:28:58] I think it’s so important what you just said about how there’s a subtle difference to this. And it’s so subtle that I’m not sure a lot of companies and marketing gurus, marketing executives, and CEOs get the difference. I think everybody thinks their marketing is helpful, right. We’re trying to help. I think most people think that. But there is a difference that the client can see. So, dive into that a little more.

Pete Steege: [00:29:36] Yeah. So, I think I totally agree with you. It’s subtle, right, and but powerful. And just maybe a couple of other insights along the way that may help people make sense of this. Let me paint a picture.

John Ray: [00:29:51] Yeah.

Pete Steege: [00:29:54] Some things that generous marketing is not. So, persuasion is one thing. Persuasion is an interesting topic for me. When I was early in my — actually, my favorite example is I used to say I’m a marketer. I used to say, oh my gosh, I hate sales. I would never be a salesperson. And my memory is going door to door as a junior high, a 12-year-old or whatever, selling raffle tickets and having to knock on somebody’s door and interrupt their life and say, would you buy these things for me knowing that they had no, I didn’t believe in this was going to help make their life better.

And I — since then I’m realizing what I didn’t like about that wasn’t selling. What I didn’t like about that was putting myself first, right. And trying to talk them — and that’s where persuasion comes in. The best marketing doesn’t have to convince a client of something that they don’t already know or already want. The best marketing finds the people that they truly can help the people that need them and shares the good news about the solution that they have for them.

John Ray: [00:31:08] Right.

Pete Steege: [00:31:09] It’s more of an awareness and an education opportunity. Three things, awareness, education and a gift, right. It’s — do the — start giving. This is another subtle difference here. You may say, we believe it, we want our customers to succeed. I will ask you a tough — a hard question. Ask yourself this. Is your motive — in your mind, is your motive how do I maximize my revenue from this client? Or is your motive how much can I give away before I have to charge them?

Now, those are extremes. But I believe that if you truly could find a way to have that second perspective, and an example of that in the B2B tech world is thought leadership and content, where you’re an expert at what you do. Again, you’re looking for people that need how you can help them because you want to help them, right?

John Ray: [00:32:08] Right.

Pete Steege: [00:32:09] And you say, you know what, I have this service for them that someday hopefully they’ll let me do for them and they’ll pay me. But in the meantime, I have these tips, or I have this framework, or I have this how to guide that will help — as they read this, their life’s going to be better today. They’re going to solve a problem that I know they have because I’m an expert on what they — what that problem is. I can give that to them for free. And they’re going to be — that helps me eventually because they, again, they got it for free.

And if I don’t do that, if I start with rather than giving them something for free, I start with, hey, I’m going to ask you to give me something for free, maybe your email address or have a meeting with me, and my only message is, yeah, I just want you to — do me a favor almost is what it almost ends up being like, right?

John Ray: [00:33:09] Right.

Pete Steege: [00:33:10] Step back from that for a minute. Is that right? Do you really want to ask your customer to pay you first? Generous marketing gives first. And then as long as you can, and again that’s where you look at, free demo. What is it? What is it we can give? Is it free trial? And of course, the math needs to work. You can do it in such a way that it pays for itself.

And I will use an example. I’ll use an extreme example. Apple. Obviously, everyone knows the Apple story. I’m a happy Apple user and no, they’re not perfect, but and I pay a lot for their hardware, and their services, and their subscriptions. I pay more than I could for other people because I feel like I’m getting more than I’m paying. It’s — yeah, I don’t feel like I’m getting skinflint at along the way, you know.

John Ray: [00:34:12] You’re getting value.

Pete Steege: [00:34:14] Getting value consistently.

John Ray: [00:34:17] Right.

Pete Steege: [00:34:17] And it’s not like I got — I looked for a deal and I got one over on them, right. Again, it’s a trusted relationship where I know what I — that’s back to brand, right? I have an expectation of value from my provider. You have the opportunity as a generous marketer to focus first on the relationship by giving in ways that will connect them with you because you know you can help them and that’s a profitable relationship long-term. Just trust it. Make — invest in the relationship and that’s how you build that expectation, that expected value brand over time.

John Ray: [00:34:58] So, Pete, you know, I think a lot of the response a lot of folks have to what you’re talking about is if I give everything away, because I think what they hear is it’s all or nothing when you —

Pete Steege: [00:35:16] Right.

John Ray: [00:35:17] Right. When I give everything away, then why are they going to hire me? Right. I mean, so respond to that thought that I think is going around in some heads out there.

Pete Steege: [00:35:30] If everything you have to offer them, everything they need, everything they value that you can offer them, they can get it from that content or email, you probably need to rethink your product offering. I believe that if you are not this — and this doesn’t work for commodities, I’ll say it right upfront. But if you’re in the business, where you — back to that beginning, you’ve identified that your company has a unique reason to exist, something you do, nobody else can offer them, and you know who it is that has that need that only you can offer, I have found that companies that give without limit within economic reality, right. Of course, at some point you charge. But if you don’t, don’t try to hold back because maybe they won’t need you. If you’ve truly found that product market fit, they absolutely will, the ones that are going to be profitable long-term customers, they want help, right?

You’re the expert. You’ve just made the case from your help that one, you’re trusted. Two, you know your stuff because I’m using your ideas.

John Ray: [00:36:56] Right.

Pete Steege: [00:36:57] And you’re really good at this. And this is important to my business. So, I’m going to get some more of that goodness from you. I need to sign up. Tell me about what you can — how else you can help me. And back to what I said. If your answer is well, it’s pretty much what I shared with you in that spreadsheet, you haven’t thought through your value proposition and your service offering or your product offering because you have more to give them than what you can give them in a quick piece of content.

John Ray: [00:37:29] Well, let me put it a way that I’m going to let you either agree or disagree and tell me where you disagree. You know, if — let’s take your book, for example. I mean, somebody thinks, well, I can get all Pete’s secrets by reading his book, right, because you’re a generous marketer, so you’re going to put it all in the book. The problem with that line of thinking and then being, let’s call it stingy or whatever you want to term you want to give it.

The problem with that line of thinking is what it discounts is the fact that if I read your book and I’m a CEO and I agree with what you’re saying, hiring you is going to help me get there much faster. I mean, I’m going to have to you know, I buy into everything you say. Okay, you’ve laid it all out for me, but I’m going to get there much faster by hiring you and my results are much more assured, right?

Pete Steege: [00:38:36] Right. Another way to say that. Agreed. Another way to say that is I’m a CEO of a business. If you’re — if my client is a CEO of a business, they have a lot more to think about than the marketing.

John Ray: [00:38:50] Right.

Pete Steege: [00:38:50] And they’re looking — as you said, they’re looking for help that starts with some ideas in the book. Give them that. I also do videos on LinkedIn, which again, it’s a way for me to give them three or four minutes of ideas and they can quickly just, oh, okay, that’s something to think about. Both the book and the videos share what’s possible. But to your point, I’m in the business of helping CEOs transform their marketing and create an ecosystem that runs, right, that it keeps going.

John Ray: [00:39:26] Right.

Pete Steege: [00:39:26] And there may be some out there. Just to be clear, there may be some small business owners, some founders, where DIY is their solution. And you know what? I’m good with that. I believe that there’s — my market is rich enough that I can give some stuff away and nobody is going to ever need and some of those people will never need any more for me. But there’s enough CEOs and businesses out there that, as you said, they see — the idea is just plant a seed for them, right, and they need help to implement it. And that’s my opportunity to really move the needle with them.

John Ray: [00:40:07] Yeah. And B2B services provider out there, I’m using Pete as an example here. You know, look at yourself the same way. I mean it — and what you’ve got to offer the same way. That DIY as you brought up, I think it’s a great point, Pete. They’re never going to hire you, anyway, right? So, it really doesn’t matter what the message is to that particular group of clients, they’re never going to hire you. So. So don’t worry about them.

Pete Steege: [00:40:39] Can I add to that?

John Ray: [00:40:40] Please.

Pete Steege: [00:40:41] Those DIYers that may not hire you, could be a lot of them. They’re not going to hire you. But what they might do is be at a dinner party, say, I just read the most interesting book colleague of mine that’s also a business owner. It was really interesting. I got something out of it, right. So that’s — to me, that’s better marketing than anything I could, right, to that person they know at the dinner party is that their friend that they trust, suggesting that there’s value for me. And that person might be the right one that I could help.

John Ray: [00:41:20] So, I have to come back to one point that you’ve made so many great points here that it’s hard for me to keep up with them all, Pete. Sorry about that. But one — you talked about always trying to persuade and that being a problem. So, I take it that all these lead pages I see and all these posts I see that are always trying to get me to sign up for the latest webinar or the, you know, the latest sales coaching, whatever. I mean, you know, you’re not really in favor of that kind of thing.

Pete Steege: [00:41:57] I’m going to disagree with that.

John Ray: [00:41:59] Okay. I’m glad I brought it up then.

Pete Steege: [00:42:02] Yeah. If I have done — if I’ve done the work to understand the strategy as I talked about and I know what my ideal customer journey is, there’s a point on that journey where that webinar — a webinar is another way to help, right?

John Ray: [00:42:23] Mm hmm.

Pete Steege: [00:42:23] So, if there’s a point on that journey where giving them some tools or some some perspective or a case study or something about their problem is helps, then that’s a great thing to do. Maybe what you’re saying and you mentioned the persuasion thing.

John Ray: [00:42:42] Yeah.

Pete Steege: [00:42:43] It’s not tricking them into going. Again, being authentic and generous and saying, hey, people out there, wherever you can find them, maybe it is email, maybe it’s a web ad, could be. But it’s got to be value. It’s a valuable offer. It’s not clickbait, right.

John Ray: [00:43:05] Right.

Pete Steege: [00:43:05] You’re not trying to deceive them into coming and deceive them into the value of your webinar. To me, best marketing is authentically sharing the good news of I have this thing that will be valuable for you, you can come for free. Come to my webinar. Here’s a way to do it. Make it as easy as — again, it’s about them, what’s easy, what’s valuable. And then yes, so there’s a role for that.

John Ray: [00:43:31] Terrific. Now, Pete, we could go on for a while, but I probably ought to let you get back to working with the clients. But when — lets some this up, you know. I definitely encourage folks read the book. But sum it up for us, Pete. I mean, in terms of just you talked about the takeaways. The takeaways that a B2B services or product company ought to think about.

Pete Steege: [00:44:05] So, if I had to summarize it, what I would encourage CEOs and other business owners out there to do is take the time. When it comes to marketing, take the time to set aside what you’re doing and do some do some soul searching. And think about these three things. Is my marketing authentic? My marketing and my team and my culture, is it authentic? Is it intentional? o we have a reason for everything we’re doing? Is it generous? All the things we talked about there?

And if it’s not, you know, I’d encourage you to consider it. Considering it is a different approach. And, you know, in marketing, any time you can do something different than everybody else is doing, something to think about because standing out is a good thing in this world, right. So, I hope CEOs out there, you know, go to a quiet place for a couple of hours and just maybe think through those ideas and see how they apply to you. And there might be some real gems of opportunity for your business with this kind of a mindset of meaning as a reason for what you’re doing in your marketing.

John Ray: [00:45:29] Yeah. And it sounds like folks ought to think about getting some different perspective on this, right? Because their own perspective may be a little jaded. They may think they’re more generous than they really are. They think they’re more intentional or authentic than they really are. So, maybe some third-party perspective, maybe asking their employees, right.

Pete Steege: [00:45:50] Yes.

John Ray: [00:45:51] I mean, so get more ideas on this than just what you come up with over a weekend.

Pete Steege: [00:46:00] I’m going to follow up with what you said.

John Ray: [00:46:02] Please.

[00:46:03] I love what you said. Here’s an even easier than taking that introspection time. Take a little time and do a poll of your employees, as you said, ask them some open-ended questions. Why do you think we’re in business? What’s the most important? What’s our most important message? What do we tell people? Something simple like that, you might be very surprised at the variety of answers you get. Two problems there. One is they’re not the answers you want.

John Ray: [00:46:37] Right.

Pete Steege: [00:46:38] And two is everybody’s got a different answer.

John Ray: [00:46:40] Mm hmm.

Pete Steege: [00:46:40] It’s a good starting place to say I think I need to put a little effort into this purpose thing.

John Ray: [00:46:47] Wow. Lots to think about, folks from Pete Steege. He is the author of On Purpose: The CEO’s Guide to Marketing with Meaning. And he’s also the founder and CEO of his own firm, B2B Clarity.

Pete, this has been great. And I would love it if you could share some coordinates with folks because I can’t imagine there aren’t some folks that would like to be in touch.

Pete Steege: [00:47:15] Sure. And John, thanks so much for the opportunity. It was a great chat today.

John Ray: [00:47:19] Thank you.

Pete Steege: [00:47:19] People can reach me. I find the easiest way is on LinkedIn. Pete Steege, S-T-E-E-G-E, or my website B2Bclaritymarketing.com.

John Ray: [00:47:30] Terrific. And you can find the book on all the usual outlets, folks. So, again, do check it out. I’ve read it and it’s terrific. And it’s a quick read, but dense with a lot of things to take away. So, check it out, On Purpose: The CEO’s Guide to Marketing with Meaning. Pete Steege. Pete, thanks again for coming on.

Pete Steege: [00:47:55] Thank you, John.

John Ray: [00:47:56] Hey, folks, I just want to remind you that you can find previous episodes of this show, The Price and Value Journey. Just go to pricevaluejourney.com. And if you’d like to connect with me directly, just you can email me, john@johnray.co. Thank you for joining us.

John Ray: [00:00:00] Hello again, everyone. I’m John Ray on the Price and Value Journey. And folks, I’m here today with Pete Steege. Pete is with B2B Clarity and he is also the author of a newly released book called “On Purpose: The CEO’s Guide to Marketing with Meaning”.

Pete is a 30-year marketing veteran. He’s got a wide range of B2B technology and manufacturing business experience, working from Silicon Valley startups all the way to Fortune 500 firms. And he’s got global experience as well in North America, Europe and Asia. And all that experience gives him a wide breadth of perspective and experience he’s going to bring to this interview. But certainly, in his book, which I have read, folks, I have read so, and I’m delighted to say that because it was worth every minute of it. Pete Steege, welcome to The Price and Value Journey.

Pete Steege: [00:01:04] Thanks so much, John. Really happy to be here.

John Ray: [00:01:06] Hey, I’m delighted to have you. Talk about — let’s first of all, just give everyone a quick introduction to what I missed in your business. Tell everyone how you’re serving folks at B2B Clarity, then we’ll get to the book.

Pete Steege: [00:01:21] You know, John, I think you summed it up pretty good. As you said, I’ve been a marketer for a long career. And these last two years have been a big change for me and just a great change where I’m on my own helping B2B business owners and CEOs. And it’s been — it’s just been really, really exciting and satisfying change for me. But yeah, that’s what I do now is I just — I’m able to use some of that, you know, gray hair, I guess, and help people solve problems. I really enjoy it.

John Ray: [00:01:55] One of the aspects to this book that you state right up front is that you believe that most CEOs, B2B CEOs, look at their marketing function and their marketing efforts and they see that as broken. Why?

Pete Steege: [00:02:16] It’s absolutely true. More often than not, they are not satisfied with their marketing. And it’s usually not, oh yeah, it could be better. It’s usually a pain point for them. And I think there’s a couple of things at work there. One is, I think if you’re at all in the business world, you know what a overwhelming space marketing is. I like to call it the marketing industrial complex. There’s so many businesses and agencies and consultants and software applications all fighting for your mindshare and saying that they have the greatest thing since sliced bread to solve your marketing problems.

As a matter of fact, there’s this really interesting number factoid. There’s a guy that tracks it’s called Chief MarTec is the organization, and he’s been tracking since 2011 the number of marketing technology solutions available in the market. And he creates a landscape, right? 2011, the first one, 150. 2022, 9,938 of them.

John Ray: [00:03:32] Oh, wow.

Pete Steege: [00:03:32] So, there’s this overwhelming wealth of solutions, I’ll say, right. So, that’s a problem because no one can get anywhere near to choosing. All of them are even a collection of them. You’re going to have to choose what you’re going to do. And that coupled with the fact that there’s this idea that, oh, I’m just going to choose this thing to do. Some people call it random acts of marketing. You know, hey, we need a video,

John Ray: [00:04:07] Right.

Pete Steege: [00:04:07] Hey, let’s go to the big show this year. You know, this kind of arbitrary thoughts that are emotional sometimes or that feels good, it sounds good. Maybe it sounds fun even sometimes, or your competitor is doing it, right. There’s all these reasons to do them. But you take this wealth of options and couple it with this idea that you can choose one and that it would be just as good by itself versus part of a bigger plan or strategy. And that doesn’t work. It’s like throwing stuff at the wall and your customers are getting these blips of information from you and they’re not consistent when they do get them and you cancel yourself out.

So, basically, a lot of that effort, a lot of the money you are spending is almost — is often just a waste of time because it’s not helping you get closer to your customers.

John Ray: [00:05:09] I’m curious about — I mean, CEOs of larger B2B firms in general, they certainly are — they’re the chief strategy officer, right. And so, this is really a matter of getting their attention diverted toward a tactic, a video, or whatever that tactic, whatever form that tactic takes. Instead of focusing on the strategy and executing the strategy, kind of understand it from a smaller firm point of view, you know, an entrepreneur that’s kind of overwhelmed and can easily maybe get their attention distracted. But the CEO is a bigger firm. I mean, why does this happen? What’s your view on that? You’ve talked to a lot of them, by the way, that was –.

Pete Steege: [00:05:57] I know.

John Ray: [00:05:57] Yeah. So, cite more about that, maybe first.

Pete Steege: [00:06:01] So, I like the fact that I started — when I started my business, I kept track of my meeting. I went out and wanted to talk to CEOs, right. Obviously to find customers, but also to kind of validate as a corporate marketer versus being a solution provider for a CEO, it doesn’t translate, right. So, I had, I think I say in the book, 397 meetings, right. Not all CEOs, but all CEO related people, related to this challenge. And yeah, so a lot of data points and a lot of commonality in that.

And to answer your question, why do the larger companies, strategic CEOs let’s say, ones with a big budget and maybe even a marketing team, they wouldn’t have this problem, right? Guess what? A lot of the places I worked over 30 years were those organizations and I was in those marketing teams. And there is a core problem here that I talked about before that CEOs or their marketing leader or their sales leader tend to bite off more than they can chew with marketing. For the reasons we said, there’s a lot of things you could choose to do, and they tend to try to do more than they can get done, that they can be successful with.

So, even at the larger organizations, I remember one not too long ago where I worked over a hundred marketers on this company’s team and they had big plans and they were sophisticated plans, but they often didn’t finish these sophisticated projects because they were so busy with so many plates spinning. It just scales up, whoever you are. It’s a mindset issue. It’s a problem with thinking of marketing as the more the better. And activity is good versus there’s a less is more theme here and a strategy before tactics.

It’s less important how many things you do and it’s more important why you do them and that you finish, that you finish what you — you do it well, right. That’s really an important part that translates up to — I can’t speak for multibillion dollar companies. Probably a different issue. But certainly, you know, for a wide range of company sizes, this is a challenge for those organizations and the leaders of those organizations to get focus and to follow through and thoughtfully deliver on a purposeful marketing plan.

John Ray: [00:09:00] Pete, one of the things that you talk about in the book is not just, I guess, maybe marketing overload, taking on too many tactics, too many initiatives, but you talk about mindset a lot and that the problem is a mindset of meaning. Explain what you’re talking about there.

Pete Steege: [00:09:28] Yeah. That’s the core of the book, really. What my observation is, there’s a really important hierarchy in marketing. And most businesses, most CEOs know two of the three levels, and they don’t even know the third level exists. The first level, which we all know is tactics. It’s all the stuff you do in marketing. We all know what they are. There’s website, SEO, email, PR, all these things you do. So, these are the things that have a budget line item.

As I said, often, there’s some chaos around the activities, the tactics. And the more incoherent they are, the less valuable they are because they are all out there and your customers are picking them up and they’re busy. And if they don’t hear this common story, it’s a problem, right. So, tactics can be a real and it’s hard to deliver on them. The more you get, you get overloaded, right.

So, the next level is really important, and it really helps solve that problem and that strategy, marketing strategy. Bunch of books out there. You know, we all have our favorites probably if you’re a CEO or a executive. And that helps bring order and priority to these tactics and consistency can really help rein in the chaos. Absolutely. And for a lot of people, that’s where it starts. That’s marketing. You got your tactics, and you got your strategy.

John Ray: [00:11:02] Sure.

Pete Steege: [00:11:03] I strongly believe that there’s a really important element above that, which is mindset. Strategy without mindset, without purpose, without direction — there are almost as many strategies now as there are tactics, right? And there are often multiple strategies that you need to apply to your business marketing, your marketing approach. There are strategies that have to align with your sales strategies and your customer support strategies and your product development so you can — companies that think of strategy as a means to an end that are that — if I just come up with a really smart way to look at this, it’s going to solve all my problems.

They end up with a well, maybe more ordered group of tactics, but I would say in a way they’re almost lifeless, right. They’re mercenary. Their goal is to get, get. Their goal is to get, right, to win the order, maximize profit, change mind perception. All those things are a good outcome. But if those are the destination and there’s not a tie to why you created your business or why you are getting up every day to manage this thing, what’s the vision? What’s the value of your organization.

If your marketing is cut off from that, it doesn’t work. It’s a lot more visible in activity, but it doesn’t change the hearts and minds of your crazy busy clients that are hesitant to come on board with somebody new. And it’s that mindset of meaning that says my — first, I need to start with, okay, why are we in business?

This isn’t a marketing thing. This is why we come here every day. And who is it that we’re here to help? Because a business that gets — you may say, oh, my goal is to make a lot of money. Well, you can’t make a lot of money if you’re not solving a problem for somebody. And knowing that mission is the first step to marketing that works. Because if you know that mission and then you say marketing isn’t a by itself set aside tactic, it’s actually part of us creating the bond with our relationship with our customers that make it work. And so, a little bit of a side topic here.

John Ray: [00:13:57] Yeah.

Pete Steege: [00:13:57] My definition of marketing is optimizing the relationship between your business and your customers. So, it’s relationship. One word, marketing is relationship.

John Ray: [00:14:10] Oh, wow. I love that. And you talk a lot about that in the book too, to be clear. Because those sound like two separate things, mindset and relationship. But they’re not in your world, in your mind.

Pete Steege: [00:14:32] No. And the reason why is picture yourself and your customer, right? There’s these two — it’s a company, yourself as your company, right? But it’s people in your company and then you have your customers. And if your goal is a relationship, I believe that the only way — the way you make that relationship happen, the way you spark it, the way you turn it on and activate it, is meaning. Meaning for them and meaning for you. If you’re doing things at them without a purpose, for the bigger purpose, they can tell.

John Ray: [00:15:10] Right.

Pete Steege: [00:15:11] If they are listening to you or they are interrupted by you and there’s no good reason in their mind why they should talk to you, if there’s not a purpose to that. Meaning, they’re not going to take the time to do it. So meaning back to the word, right, mindset of meaning. Meaning is what makes marketing create that relationship.

John Ray: [00:15:36] So, Pete, let’s talk about — I want to dive into relationship just a little more. You know, for smaller firms, I think they think of that as one-to-one and very personal. They’ve got the capacity to handle one-to-one relationships. As firms get bigger, it gets a little trickier because suddenly you’ve got sales forces and you’ve got layers of folks in your organization. And how are you talking? How do you talk about in the book, you talk about how to create relationships and how those relationships start and how they deepen, cover that force, if you would.

Pete Steege: [00:16:27] Sure. First thing I’ll say is that I like to call them the three superpowers of marketing. So, there are three traits that you as a CEO need to have in your culture and in your organization, that if you do, if those are there, then those relationships happen, but it’s like the essential ingredients of relationship. And what they are is the first one is authenticity. Being transparent and truthful and real with your team and your clients, right, with your world. That’s one authenticity.

The second is intention. Being intentional. We already talked about that, right. That’s having a strategy before you choose your tactics. That’s doing less but doing it better. Choosing, being purposeful, being — doing things with the end in mind. That’s intention, right. That’s the second.

And then the third is generosity. The first two I’ve heard of in a marketing sense or really authenticity, you know, that makes sense.

Pete Steege: [00:17:45] Oh, yeah.

Pete Steege: [00:17:45] Intention, Absolutely, right. Being operationally good and all that. You don’t hear generosity mentioned very often when it comes to marketing, but I am convinced that it is a total — it is absolutely a superpower. And it’s one of the three ingredients. You need all three, but it’s often the missing one.

John Ray: [00:18:07] Well, I want to get to that in a minute, because when I read your book, I had a comment for you on that, that I want to get to. But I think it’s counterintuitive for folks when you talk about the intention piece and you’re talking about let’s do less. I mean, people don’t want to do less, right.

Pete Steege: [00:18:26] Right.

John Ray: [00:18:26] I mean they want to do more because they think pressing on the accelerator is going to what — is what’s going to get them to whatever their goal is for their company. And that’s just counterintuitive and hard for anybody to get their head around.

Pete Steege: [00:18:41] It is. Let me help a little bit with that. There’s a key dynamic in marketing. And I can’t speak to other functions, but it’s absolutely true in marketing that there is a critical mass that you need to reach with a marketing program often, that until you get there, you get kind of zero results from it.

So, let’s say you decide to start posting on LinkedIn and you dabble in it, or you do a poor job of it, or it’s confusing, whatever. You spend a lot of effort on posting on LinkedIn, but it never clicks. Nobody really — it does — it’s not like the more you do, it’s incrementally more result for you and more exposure to your clients. There’s a certain level you have to get to where you reach, escape velocity, and your campaign starts to make a difference and move the needle.

Marketing is that way. A lot of things, okay. So, what often people do is they’re so — they feel so much pressure to do all these things that everybody’s doing around marketing that they — none of them have the mindshare or enough effort available to them to get to that critical mass. So, there’s lots of activity going on, but very little of it is moving the needle. If you force yourself to first say what are — what is important, right. If I had to choose three things, that three programs, tactics, campaigns, that would move the needle for my marketing, I should start with the biggest pain points, right?

So, the first step is understanding that. But when you do and if you can resist the temptation to do the other dozen things now and say, we’re going to solve these three, we’re going to launch these three things, and move the needle in these three ways and check to see if we did, right. That’s part of that intention is be thoughtful and check your work and see if it worked. Your odds of success go way up because you’re able to spend the right amount of time, your team or you or your agency, whatever it might be. You have the time and money needed to do it well, right.

So, those two things. It moves the needle, but also now you’re a brand that does things well. You start to look like you’re good at what you do. And communicating and making relationships is part of what you do, right. So, that’s — I hope that helps with the less is more.

But it’s true in so many factors, it’s true with how much content you put on your website. B2B companies, especially tech B2B, they tend to try to explain everything on their website and put a lot of acronyms on there. So, that’s another example of less is more, right.

John Ray: [00:21:40] Right.

Pete Steege: [00:21:41] Don’t try to explain it all because they don’t have time to grasp it. Another example is your priorities with your team, right? Does your team on board with what’s important right now? Are they all rowing the same direction? Often, people have multiple priorities that confuse their team.

And here’s maybe the most important one, companies need one story. I like to call it the true story, their true story. But they need one story about who they are, whom they serve, how that target benefits from them. And you tell them a lot of different ways, but you got to have that one story. So, that’s another less is more example.

John Ray: [00:22:33] Okay. Now, I’m going to get myself in trouble here. I might get you in trouble here. Let’s see where this goes, but —

Pete Steege: [00:22:40] Let’s do it.

John Ray: [00:22:40] Yeah, okay. Let’s dive into this, because this, the less is more is not where the, I’ll say a lot of the outside marketing firms and really even the inside marketing folks end up, right. I mean because —

Pete Steege: [00:23:01] Right.

John Ray: [00:23:01] And so, there’s a lot of pressure on the CEO or the owner of a business from their own marketing people on this, right. And that’s what I think is so hard for them. I mean, let’s — am I — is it just the marketing people I run into? Or do you see that out there as well?

Pete Steege: [00:23:26] Well, I do see it out there and it’s totally understandable, John.

John Ray: [00:23:31] Yeah.

Pete Steege: [00:23:33] There — you know, it’s their job, right. And more is the shorter path to looking like your progress, right. Because you can quickly point to the activity.

John Ray: [00:23:48] Right.

John Ray: [00:23:50] It’s also more budget that comes with more sometimes.

John Ray: [00:23:53] Well, yeah, that’s where I was going, right. I mean —

Pete Steege: [00:23:56] Oh, it is?

John Ray: [00:23:56] Yeah.

Pete Steege: [00:23:58] And it’s not that people are, you know, their intent isn’t good but there’s a lot of just natural impulse situation here that it’s understandable why it happens so much, right. Because it is counterintuitive and it doesn’t always — sometimes the rewards are delayed, right. This delayed gratification.

Because there’s another connection here, which I’m sure you’ve heard, which I’ve heard from a lot of CEOs, is I just need leads. I need leads and I need them now and I need more. And what can you do to get me those leads next month? Sometimes, there’s a fun, surprising little tweak that does something like that. But most of the time I think you’ve picked up, from my view at least, marketing is an ecosystem.

Marketing is a relationship building engine and it doesn’t happen overnight. And there is — to set up that right environment with your team and your customers and your prospects, it takes time for it to play out. And those leads come more organically usually. Throwing money at a Google Ads, the more you put in, doesn’t mean the more good leads you get out and the more revenue you get out.

There are — like I said, sometimes you get lucky and there’s an opportunity in the market and you want to be ready for those opportunities. But that comes after you’ve understood this — the needs here, right, and the journey your customer is on. And that’s when you see the opportunity. It doesn’t happen, which I see so often where CEOs hire a vendor to do that one tactic, one off in a vacuum, and they say you’re going to mint money with this thing. Wow. This is going to be awesome. It doesn’t happen very often for all the reasons I just said.

John Ray: [00:25:56] Okay. So, Pete, we talked about authenticity. I think we’ve covered intention. So, let’s get to my favorite part in your book, Generous Marketing. And I have to tell folks when I read Pete’s book, I wrote him a note and said you need to name this book, Generous Marketing. And to his credit, he ignored my advice. So, because he knows what he’s doing.

Pete Steege: [00:26:22] Tell me in my next book.

John Ray: [00:26:24] Okay. There you go. And I’ll read that one as well. I loved that concept. And let’s define that in your words. What is generous marketing?

Pete Steege: [00:26:39] So, for me, I like to describe it as customer centricity on steroids, right. This is — we’ve all heard about customer first, and that’s a standard platitude and obvious reasons. Of course, we want to put our customers first. Generous marketing is taking that to another level where putting your customer first isn’t a means to an end. It’s not something you do so you can make more money. It’s the paradox of really believing and wanting what’s best for your customer and changing the behavior of your organization to maximize maximize that. And in a Zen way, magically, that’s where the most success comes, because customers can tell.

And it’s organic, right? It’s deep in their bones that they can tell that you are trying to help them. And that draws them to you more than any persuasive thing you can come up with saying, right. So that’s part — that’s the essence of it. And it shows itself often in a couple of things. One is it’s not about you, right. So, when people aren’t generous, they care about their customers. Of course, they do. But they’re just so excited about what they do to help their customer that that’s what they talk about. Look at how good we are. Look, we are so — we are the best provider for you. And they sincerely — they are, they’re sincere.

But your customer doesn’t want to hear about you. They want to hear about how you can help them. So, the story needs to start with their problem and relieving it. And it just so happens that it’s that thing you do so well that does that. And it’s a subtle difference, but they notice. They notice and they will be drawn to you with your solution for their problem more than they will with your skill and your expertise.

John Ray: [00:28:58] I think it’s so important what you just said about how there’s a subtle difference to this. And it’s so subtle that I’m not sure a lot of companies and marketing gurus, marketing executives, and CEOs get the difference. I think everybody thinks their marketing is helpful, right. We’re trying to help. I think most people think that. But there is a difference that the client can see. So, dive into that a little more.

Pete Steege: [00:29:36] Yeah. So, I think I totally agree with you. It’s subtle, right, and but powerful. And just maybe a couple of other insights along the way that may help people make sense of this. Let me paint a picture.

John Ray: [00:29:51] Yeah.

Pete Steege: [00:29:54] Some things that generous marketing is not. So, persuasion is one thing. Persuasion is an interesting topic for me. When I was early in my — actually, my favorite example is I used to say I’m a marketer. I used to say, oh my gosh, I hate sales. I would never be a salesperson. And my memory is going door to door as a junior high, a 12-year-old or whatever, selling raffle tickets and having to knock on somebody’s door and interrupt their life and say, would you buy these things for me knowing that they had no, I didn’t believe in this was going to help make their life better.

And I — since then I’m realizing what I didn’t like about that wasn’t selling. What I didn’t like about that was putting myself first, right. And trying to talk them — and that’s where persuasion comes in. The best marketing doesn’t have to convince a client of something that they don’t already know or already want. The best marketing finds the people that they truly can help the people that need them and shares the good news about the solution that they have for them.

John Ray: [00:31:08] Right.

Pete Steege: [00:31:09] It’s more of an awareness and an education opportunity. Three things, awareness, education and a gift, right. It’s — do the — start giving. This is another subtle difference here. You may say, we believe it, we want our customers to succeed. I will ask you a tough — a hard question. Ask yourself this. Is your motive — in your mind, is your motive how do I maximize my revenue from this client? Or is your motive how much can I give away before I have to charge them?

Now, those are extremes. But I believe that if you truly could find a way to have that second perspective, and an example of that in the B2B tech world is thought leadership and content, where you’re an expert at what you do. Again, you’re looking for people that need how you can help them because you want to help them, right?

John Ray: [00:32:08] Right.

Pete Steege: [00:32:09] And you say, you know what, I have this service for them that someday hopefully they’ll let me do for them and they’ll pay me. But in the meantime, I have these tips, or I have this framework, or I have this how to guide that will help — as they read this, their life’s going to be better today. They’re going to solve a problem that I know they have because I’m an expert on what they — what that problem is. I can give that to them for free. And they’re going to be — that helps me eventually because they, again, they got it for free.

And if I don’t do that, if I start with rather than giving them something for free, I start with, hey, I’m going to ask you to give me something for free, maybe your email address or have a meeting with me, and my only message is, yeah, I just want you to — do me a favor almost is what it almost ends up being like, right?

John Ray: [00:33:09] Right.

Pete Steege: [00:33:10] Step back from that for a minute. Is that right? Do you really want to ask your customer to pay you first? Generous marketing gives first. And then as long as you can, and again that’s where you look at, free demo. What is it? What is it we can give? Is it free trial? And of course, the math needs to work. You can do it in such a way that it pays for itself.

And I will use an example. I’ll use an extreme example. Apple. Obviously, everyone knows the Apple story. I’m a happy Apple user and no, they’re not perfect, but and I pay a lot for their hardware, and their services, and their subscriptions. I pay more than I could for other people because I feel like I’m getting more than I’m paying. It’s — yeah, I don’t feel like I’m getting skinflint at along the way, you know.

John Ray: [00:34:12] You’re getting value.

Pete Steege: [00:34:14] Getting value consistently.

John Ray: [00:34:17] Right.

Pete Steege: [00:34:17] And it’s not like I got — I looked for a deal and I got one over on them, right. Again, it’s a trusted relationship where I know what I — that’s back to brand, right? I have an expectation of value from my provider. You have the opportunity as a generous marketer to focus first on the relationship by giving in ways that will connect them with you because you know you can help them and that’s a profitable relationship long-term. Just trust it. Make — invest in the relationship and that’s how you build that expectation, that expected value brand over time.

John Ray: [00:34:58] So, Pete, you know, I think a lot of the response a lot of folks have to what you’re talking about is if I give everything away, because I think what they hear is it’s all or nothing when you —

Pete Steege: [00:35:16] Right.

John Ray: [00:35:17] Right. When I give everything away, then why are they going to hire me? Right. I mean, so respond to that thought that I think is going around in some heads out there.

Pete Steege: [00:35:30] If everything you have to offer them, everything they need, everything they value that you can offer them, they can get it from that content or email, you probably need to rethink your product offering. I believe that if you are not this — and this doesn’t work for commodities, I’ll say it right upfront. But if you’re in the business, where you — back to that beginning, you’ve identified that your company has a unique reason to exist, something you do, nobody else can offer them, and you know who it is that has that need that only you can offer, I have found that companies that give without limit within economic reality, right. Of course, at some point you charge. But if you don’t, don’t try to hold back because maybe they won’t need you. If you’ve truly found that product market fit, they absolutely will, the ones that are going to be profitable long-term customers, they want help, right?

You’re the expert. You’ve just made the case from your help that one, you’re trusted. Two, you know your stuff because I’m using your ideas.

John Ray: [00:36:56] Right.

Pete Steege: [00:36:57] And you’re really good at this. And this is important to my business. So, I’m going to get some more of that goodness from you. I need to sign up. Tell me about what you can — how else you can help me. And back to what I said. If your answer is well, it’s pretty much what I shared with you in that spreadsheet, you haven’t thought through your value proposition and your service offering or your product offering because you have more to give them than what you can give them in a quick piece of content.

John Ray: [00:37:29] Well, let me put it a way that I’m going to let you either agree or disagree and tell me where you disagree. You know, if — let’s take your book, for example. I mean, somebody thinks, well, I can get all Pete’s secrets by reading his book, right, because you’re a generous marketer, so you’re going to put it all in the book. The problem with that line of thinking and then being, let’s call it stingy or whatever you want to term you want to give it.

The problem with that line of thinking is what it discounts is the fact that if I read your book and I’m a CEO and I agree with what you’re saying, hiring you is going to help me get there much faster. I mean, I’m going to have to you know, I buy into everything you say. Okay, you’ve laid it all out for me, but I’m going to get there much faster by hiring you and my results are much more assured, right?

Pete Steege: [00:38:36] Right. Another way to say that. Agreed. Another way to say that is I’m a CEO of a business. If you’re — if my client is a CEO of a business, they have a lot more to think about than the marketing.

John Ray: [00:38:50] Right.

Pete Steege: [00:38:50] And they’re looking — as you said, they’re looking for help that starts with some ideas in the book. Give them that. I also do videos on LinkedIn, which again, it’s a way for me to give them three or four minutes of ideas and they can quickly just, oh, okay, that’s something to think about. Both the book and the videos share what’s possible. But to your point, I’m in the business of helping CEOs transform their marketing and create an ecosystem that runs, right, that it keeps going.

John Ray: [00:39:26] Right.

Pete Steege: [00:39:26] And there may be some out there. Just to be clear, there may be some small business owners, some founders, where DIY is their solution. And you know what? I’m good with that. I believe that there’s — my market is rich enough that I can give some stuff away and nobody is going to ever need and some of those people will never need any more for me. But there’s enough CEOs and businesses out there that, as you said, they see — the idea is just plant a seed for them, right, and they need help to implement it. And that’s my opportunity to really move the needle with them.

John Ray: [00:40:07] Yeah. And B2B services provider out there, I’m using Pete as an example here. You know, look at yourself the same way. I mean it — and what you’ve got to offer the same way. That DIY as you brought up, I think it’s a great point, Pete. They’re never going to hire you, anyway, right? So, it really doesn’t matter what the message is to that particular group of clients, they’re never going to hire you. So. So don’t worry about them.

Pete Steege: [00:40:39] Can I add to that?

John Ray: [00:40:40] Please.

Pete Steege: [00:40:41] Those DIYers that may not hire you, could be a lot of them. They’re not going to hire you. But what they might do is be at a dinner party, say, I just read the most interesting book colleague of mine that’s also a business owner. It was really interesting. I got something out of it, right. So that’s — to me, that’s better marketing than anything I could, right, to that person they know at the dinner party is that their friend that they trust, suggesting that there’s value for me. And that person might be the right one that I could help.

John Ray: [00:41:20] So, I have to come back to one point that you’ve made so many great points here that it’s hard for me to keep up with them all, Pete. Sorry about that. But one — you talked about always trying to persuade and that being a problem. So, I take it that all these lead pages I see and all these posts I see that are always trying to get me to sign up for the latest webinar or the, you know, the latest sales coaching, whatever. I mean, you know, you’re not really in favor of that kind of thing.

Pete Steege: [00:41:57] I’m going to disagree with that.

John Ray: [00:41:59] Okay. I’m glad I brought it up then.

Pete Steege: [00:42:02] Yeah. If I have done — if I’ve done the work to understand the strategy as I talked about and I know what my ideal customer journey is, there’s a point on that journey where that webinar — a webinar is another way to help, right?

John Ray: [00:42:23] Mm hmm.

Pete Steege: [00:42:23] So, if there’s a point on that journey where giving them some tools or some some perspective or a case study or something about their problem is helps, then that’s a great thing to do. Maybe what you’re saying and you mentioned the persuasion thing.

John Ray: [00:42:42] Yeah.

Pete Steege: [00:42:43] It’s not tricking them into going. Again, being authentic and generous and saying, hey, people out there, wherever you can find them, maybe it is email, maybe it’s a web ad, could be. But it’s got to be value. It’s a valuable offer. It’s not clickbait, right.

John Ray: [00:43:05] Right.

Pete Steege: [00:43:05] You’re not trying to deceive them into coming and deceive them into the value of your webinar. To me, best marketing is authentically sharing the good news of I have this thing that will be valuable for you, you can come for free. Come to my webinar. Here’s a way to do it. Make it as easy as — again, it’s about them, what’s easy, what’s valuable. And then yes, so there’s a role for that.

John Ray: [00:43:31] Terrific. Now, Pete, we could go on for a while, but I probably ought to let you get back to working with the clients. But when — lets some this up, you know. I definitely encourage folks read the book. But sum it up for us, Pete. I mean, in terms of just you talked about the takeaways. The takeaways that a B2B services or product company ought to think about.

Pete Steege: [00:44:05] So, if I had to summarize it, what I would encourage CEOs and other business owners out there to do is take the time. When it comes to marketing, take the time to set aside what you’re doing and do some do some soul searching. And think about these three things. Is my marketing authentic? My marketing and my team and my culture, is it authentic? Is it intentional? o we have a reason for everything we’re doing? Is it generous? All the things we talked about there?

And if it’s not, you know, I’d encourage you to consider it. Considering it is a different approach. And, you know, in marketing, any time you can do something different than everybody else is doing, something to think about because standing out is a good thing in this world, right. So, I hope CEOs out there, you know, go to a quiet place for a couple of hours and just maybe think through those ideas and see how they apply to you. And there might be some real gems of opportunity for your business with this kind of a mindset of meaning as a reason for what you’re doing in your marketing.

John Ray: [00:45:29] Yeah. And it sounds like folks ought to think about getting some different perspective on this, right? Because their own perspective may be a little jaded. They may think they’re more generous than they really are. They think they’re more intentional or authentic than they really are. So, maybe some third-party perspective, maybe asking their employees, right.

Pete Steege: [00:45:50] Yes.

John Ray: [00:45:51] I mean, so get more ideas on this than just what you come up with over a weekend.

Pete Steege: [00:46:00] I’m going to follow up with what you said.

John Ray: [00:46:02] Please.

[00:46:03] I love what you said. Here’s an even easier than taking that introspection time. Take a little time and do a poll of your employees, as you said, ask them some open-ended questions. Why do you think we’re in business? What’s the most important? What’s our most important message? What do we tell people? Something simple like that, you might be very surprised at the variety of answers you get. Two problems there. One is they’re not the answers you want.

John Ray: [00:46:37] Right.

Pete Steege: [00:46:38] And two is everybody’s got a different answer.

John Ray: [00:46:40] Mm hmm.

Pete Steege: [00:46:40] It’s a good starting place to say I think I need to put a little effort into this purpose thing.

John Ray: [00:46:47] Wow. Lots to think about, folks from Pete Steege. He is the author of On Purpose: The CEO’s Guide to Marketing with Meaning. And he’s also the founder and CEO of his own firm, B2B Clarity.

Pete, this has been great. And I would love it if you could share some coordinates with folks because I can’t imagine there aren’t some folks that would like to be in touch.

Pete Steege: [00:47:15] Sure. And John, thanks so much for the opportunity. It was a great chat today.

John Ray: [00:47:19] Thank you.

Pete Steege: [00:47:19] People can reach me. I find the easiest way is on LinkedIn. Pete Steege, S-T-E-E-G-E, or my website B2Bclaritymarketing.com.

John Ray: [00:47:30] Terrific. And you can find the book on all the usual outlets, folks. So, again, do check it out. I’ve read it and it’s terrific. And it’s a quick read, but dense with a lot of things to take away. So, check it out, On Purpose: The CEO’s Guide to Marketing with Meaning. Pete Steege. Pete, thanks again for coming on.

Pete Steege: [00:47:55] Thank you, John.

John Ray: [00:47:56] Hey, folks, I just want to remind you that you can find previous episodes of this show, The Price and Value Journey. Just go to pricevaluejourney.com. And if you’d like to connect with me directly, just you can email me, john@johnray.co. Thank you for joining us.