Sean M. Doyle is principal at FitzMartin Inc, a leading consultancy focused on sales marketing and management, sales and marketing technology services, and revenue operations. Sean and his team at FitzMartin are focused on long term value creation through a sales-first, scientific approach to driving revenue. Over a 25+ year career and more than 5,000 client engagements, Sean has amassed unmatched expertise in helping B2B companies sell more to their most profitable customers.
Sean’s latest book, Shift, explores 19 practical ideas, grounded in the science of behavioral change, that can transform a business’s marketing efforts and, by natural extension, its profitability. A native Pennsylvanian who’s put down deep Southern roots, Sean is a man of family and faith who strives to be a selfless leader. On weekends, you’ll find him out fishing local streams and teaching the art of fly fishing to anyone who wants to tag along.
Listen to this informative Publish. Promote. Profit. episode with Sean Doyle about transforming a business through behavioral change.
Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:
– Why someone else sending your book as a referral is a great way to get new clients.
– How we’ve learned to tune advertising out making it less effective than having a book.
– Why positioning yourself in a specific market will make your book stand out more.
– How the value of having a book hasn’t changed over the years.
– Why authors must find ways to get their book into their ideal clients’ hands.
Connect with Sean:
Links Mentioned:
fitzmartin.com
fitzmartin.com/freehelp
seanmdoyle.com
Rob Kosberg:
Hey, welcome everybody. Rob here with another episode of the Publish, Promote, Profit Podcast. As usual, I have a great guest I think you’re really going to like, Sean Doyle. Sean is a principal at FitzMartin, a leading consultancy focused on sales, marketing, and management. If you know anything about me, you know I love those subjects, so we’ll be diving into that. Sean’s latest book, Shift, explores 19 practical ideas grounded in the science of behavioral change that can transform a business marketing efforts. And we know we need, many of us need our marketing efforts transformed. So Sean, thanks so much for being on the podcast today. Look forward to diving into your magic.
Sean Doyle:
Oh, I don’t know about magic. But I do have a good story.
Rob Kosberg:
Oh, okay. You want to start with a good story? Let’s go.
Sean Doyle:
Let’s go. Yeah. I walked into this prospect’s office once, privately held company, $300 million company, significant group. And I was meeting with this CMO, and he looked up at me and said, “Hey, before we start, and I know you want to talk about what FitzMartin does.” Well, what FitzMartin does, we’re a sales and marketing consultancy. We work with B to B, middle market companies. We improve their sales and marketing processes. So he says, “Sean, before you talk about all this stuff that you want to sell me, I need to tell you something that a friend told me about you.” “Okay, what’s that?” He had gotten an email the day that I was going to meet with him from a peer of his, another CMO. And he said, “I’m reading this book, and you’ve got to read it. It’s a game changer.” And he sent him by book. So, I don’t know in a 30-year career of selling stuff that I’ve ever had a better lead in than a third party sending a book as a referral to a prospect.
Rob Kosberg:
Well, that is a great way to begin this podcast, my friend.
Sean Doyle:
I thought you might like that story. Yeah, it was great.
Rob Kosberg:
You know the right thing to say, yeah. And I agree. What better way to be introduced as the expert and have built in trust than something like that? So very, very cool. You must’ve felt so good after you learned that wasn’t something negative.
Sean Doyle:
Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I thought I was the king of the world, and we got the deal. And then private equity came in, bought the company and fired everybody, so it didn’t end very well. But the story up to that point was good, so it did work.
Rob Kosberg:
Those private equity guys clearly didn’t have a copy of your book.
Sean Doyle:
They needed a copy. I don’t think they would’ve read it because those guys know everything. Right? That’s another subject, I think, though. So yeah, we had years ago, my publisher, it’s a group called RockBench out of Nashville, they do business thought leadership publishing. And years ago, he had introduced this idea to me about the ladder of effectiveness of marketing. And at the bottom rungs was advertising, just because everybody knows every buyer’s really savvy. Our antennas are tuned, and we hear an ad, and we know that it’s paid, and that’s one point of view. And typically, the point of view is the selling party’s point of view. It’s not necessarily because of a history of salesmanship that serves itself, doesn’t serve the need of Rob, it serves its own needs.
So, we’ve all learned to tune advertising out. Right? So it’s not ineffective, or people would quit advertising. But it’s less effective. We understand. We come into it with some skepticism. The higher you get on the rung of ladder, you get into speaking and publishing a book. And so he’d introduced this idea of elevating my marketing to doing more speaking, to doing publishing, and the path to getting there, blogging. And that all was really great. And he finally convinced me to try this book thing. And it was a great journey. Writing has a lot of benefits. And even having a helper, first of all, I think it’s a fool’s errand if you think you’re going to do this yourself, if you’re going to dive into a book. I had to have help. I had to go to some subject matter experts and say, “This is what I want to communicate. But help me with this understanding.”
Then really, an editor is an incredibly powerful, important part of a good book. Right? My editor literally called me one day and said, “You’ve built your book all wrong.” I’m like, “Well, wait a second. You just told me my baby was ugly. Come on.” And she said, “Let me share this with you.” She said, “I see these three chunks. And I think this order of priority should go this way.” And any executive, and this book was written for executives of middle market companies who are frustrated with their sales and marketing efforts, but particularly with their marketing efforts because I don’t think I’ve ever met an executive who didn’t waste money on an ad agency, or didn’t waste money on marketing in some way, internally, externally.
So that’s why I wrote the book. I was frustrated about that. And there’s such … Marketing is an incredibly powerful business tool that rarely gets leveraged well. Right? So I’ve never met a CEO who said, “Hey, accounting, that’s a pretty important thing. My nephew’s going to graduate from college with a degree in accounting. Let’s just bring him in.”
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah. Let’s make him CFO.
Sean Doyle:
Right. But we do that with marketing. We bring in a nephew, a niece, or somebody, an administrator who’s … I mean, come on. What would you expect if you put the new college … And there’s nothing wrong with college grads. I am one. Right? But don’t put me in charge of things day one. I’ve got way too much to learn. So marketers, this book deals with 19 practical ways to use executives.
But the point of this is to say my editor said, “Organize it in this structure. Let them look at it in this way, in this path. And then give a practical bit of advice at the end.” Everybody wants to know not about the subject, but what to do, so there’s a practicum after every chapter of this book. And I think that journey, having it published by somebody who knows what they’re doing, who knows how to promote, who knows how to structure and position helped a lot, and an editor helped a lot. And the thing that it really helped me with is, it helped me codify what I believe.
You can say you believe something, and at the next party, you can say something else, and nobody knows, or the next business meeting, and nobody knows what you said in the last meeting. But you write a book, people start quoting it back to you. That was a surprise of this journey. In fact, I can remember a specific meeting, somebody said, “On page 86, you said ba, ba, ba, ba, ba.” And I’m thinking, “I’ve got not idea on page 86 what I said,” but it was exemplary. What am I trying to say? It was a good demonstration of what happens.
Rob Kosberg:
Demonstrative.
Sean Doyle:
Demonstrative, thank you. Yeah. It’s really incredible how it helps you when you write, you clarify, you get better. And probably not many people think I’m going to write a book so I learn more. Right? But that’s a practical thing.
Rob Kosberg:
I hear it all the time.
Sean Doyle:
Do you?
Rob Kosberg:
I do. I hear it. Just yesterday, I was having an interview with a podcast guest that said the exact same thing. And the funny thing is, I want to get back to something that you said in the beginning of this part of the conversation. But I at least want to mention this, is talking about your page 86 story. It surprises me sometimes with my books, not just when people quote the page or the story, but oftentimes, I will go back and I’ll read it. I’ll go, “Wow, this is pretty good.” I forgot what I codified. Right? I forgot. Did you ever experience that yourself?
Sean Doyle:
No. In fact, I just pulled this book out of the boxes in the back here. I’m going to have to scan it again and see what I said.
Rob Kosberg:
It would not be a bad idea. You might be surprised. I want to go back to something you said that I think is very, very interesting. And I’ve never heard it described in that way. But I teach something very similar, I call it the hierarchy of desire. And I talk about how, talking about college degrees, or expertise that even for a doctor, a doctor that is a generalist is at the very bottom of the hierarchy of this pyramid. Sure, they’ll make good money because they went to school for 12 years. But if they’re a generalist, they’re going to make the least. A specialist might have a few initials after their name. But it’s only when someone becomes an author, is on television, radio, podcasts, blogs, becomes a celebrity because of their own social media, their own authority, that they become desired, and so their income rises.
I’d like to hear more. It sounds like that was expressed to you, but not so much with education, but with marketing. You had the advertisers on the bottom of the pyramid, and then it kind of went up from there. Is that accurate?
Sean Doyle:
Yeah. I think the key … I mean, so if you’re a client of mine, I’m going to tell you that when you’re looking at how to make your marketing and sales more effective, the key is always going to be positioning, and that positioning is the singular proposition upon which anything in sales and marketing stands. With weak positioning, good luck. Right? You might make some money, to your point.
And so, I think the key is, positioning allows relevance. Right? So if I am an expert in marketing to electrical manufacturers, then I should write a book about electrical manufacturing marketing, not marketing. Oh, my gosh. How many marketing books are out there? Who cares about marketing books? Unless you’re one of the original guys that have been sitting on that shelf for 30 years, then I’m not going to read you. If you’re David Ogilvy, I’ll still read your books, but nobody listening even knows who David Ogilvy is anymore. Right?
Rob Kosberg:
We love David Ogilvy. Absolutely. He’s a legend.
Sean Doyle:
He’s a stud. Yeah. Well, actually, he was way … He was the king of long format copywriting. He would’ve been the proponent of blogs. Right? He was a content guy.
Rob Kosberg:
Sure, his famous Rolls Royce ad.
Sean Doyle:
He was also famous for buying every product he ever marketed, so he owned a Rolls Royce. He measured the hedges of his English estate in miles, not feet. So, this idea around positioning is critical. And narrowing, narrowing, narrowing. And I find that the idea of giving it away scares a lot of folks. Right? So if I’m producing content whether it’s a book or another format, if I tell the customer everything, then they don’t have to call me. Well, the reality is, the customer in today’s world, information is proliferated in a million different ways, and the best information, Google’s always going to figure that out. And the best information’s going to rise to the top.
So, if you write obtuse thoughts and incomplete thoughts, thinking that somebody’s going to call you to get the rest of the answer, well, then you’re fooled because somebody else is going to do it. You’ve just always got to remember it’s the application of these concepts that’s so critical and so hard, and that’s why they hire you. That’s why they buy your product. That’s why they bring your service into their business. So just give it away. Right? You can go to fitzmartin.com/freehelp, and I will give you the framework that we use, and it’s incredibly helpful. It’s wherever the behavioral science applied to sales and marketing gives a third party perspective that’s not some marketing hubris or sales hype. It’s just real. It’s data based. There’s not a business in the world, retail I specialize again in B to B, emerging middle market, typically a lot of manufacturing.
But if you wanted to help your retail store, you still must understand how people change behavior because if they’re not contemplating using your product or service, and you want them to buy your product or service, you’ve got to take somebody through change. So if you just understand that, it’s free. You come get it. You can listen to videos on my website. You can read the book. There’s two chapters about what we do and how we do it. I am glad to give it to you. I’m not scared of that because I know you’re going to struggle and need a guide. I need that surgeon, that expert surgeon, not the generalist MD, to do the work.
You might figure it out, but probably not. And it’s not a secret. It’s not even my science. Who am I pretending? It’s these three brilliant behavioral scientists that figured this out. I just applied it to this one position, this one idea of sales and marketing.
Rob Kosberg:
We went on a tangent, but it was a very good tangent because that is a very common question that we get asked, which is: How much do I give? How much of my content do I hold back?
Sean Doyle:
None of it.
Rob Kosberg:
And we say the exact same thing, give your best stuff. First of all, we want people to write big checks, not little checks. And people that write big checks, they don’t have time to try to figure out how to do everything. The people that are writing little checks, the price of the book, the reason that they’re only able to write little checks, so don’t be offended if you’re listening to this right now, but the reason most people are only able to write little checks is because they spend all their time thinking about the next shiny object, or implementing this, instead of get the best people involved to do the thing that they’re good at. You do the thing that you’re good at. And then everybody will succeed together. And so yeah, I couldn’t agree more with that mentality.
Sean Doyle:
I’ve never heard that quote before, Rob, and I am absolutely stealing it. That’s brilliant. Yeah, and our worst customers are the ones that come in and say something like, “We need you to teach our staff how to do this.” And they may not say it directly, but I’m not in the business of educating marketers. I’m in the business of giving strategic direction and guidance. And occasionally, I can teach. But if you tell me the beginning, the goal is for me to teach you, then you should send your staff to college or something, not try to run a project.
We were talking about it today, the worst video project we’ve ever done, the client insisted that the art director and copywriter and director of strategy be involved the whole way through. And it tripled our costs. Now we didn’t get paid for that, but it tripled our costs. So look, we’re just not doing that anymore.
That was shame on me. Right? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. So to your point, I mean, yeah, people who write big checks just get it. Go hire somebody who’s great at it and move on. You know it’s going to be done well. And you’re the beneficiary of that. And both parties win. So yeah, share it, man. Share it. Rob, I have a question for you. I’m really interested in this. So in the ladder of marketing effectiveness, if speaking in books are at the top, how has the market today changed? Because I see, I had the fortune to be published by a publishing company versus self-published.
Tell me about the perspective. What do you see in the marketplace, the value of a book? Has it changed in 10 years? Is it better? Is it higher? Is it lower? Does it matter?
Rob Kosberg:
I don’t think it’s changed. I think people respect authors. If you want speaking engagements, if you want to speak on the best stages, you have to be an author. They require it. Even if people aren’t as much avid readers, the people that write the checks understand that the guy that wrote the book on it, the gal that wrote the book on it, is the person that we want to get involved.
Sean Doyle:
Okay. So at this one point, my publisher looked at me and said … I was stressing about something. I forget what it was. And he looked at me and he said, “Sean, you do realize no one’s going to read your dumb book.” I’m thinking, “You’re my publisher. What are you talking about?”
Rob Kosberg:
That’s horrible.
Sean Doyle:
I think your point is what he was trying to make. It’s a credibility. It’s a bar. If you don’t have this, you’re not in the club, and you just can’t. You can’t avoid that. I think the big check writers probably don’t read the book. They just want to know you’ve got the chops.
Rob Kosberg:
Yep. I mean, we suggest to our clients to find ways to give their books away. And not you go to a speaking engagement, so you put a book on every seat, 500 books. No. But find ways to get your book into your ideal clients’ hands. I’ll give you an example. My book is a Wall Street Journal, USA Today bestseller, Publish, Promote, Profit. It’s probably sold 75,000 copies, something like that.
Sean Doyle:
Okay. So, for listeners who don’t know, that’s huge.
Rob Kosberg:
It’s big for a book about writing books.
Sean Doyle:
Oh, that’s huge. What percentage of the world sells more than 5000 books, Rob?
Rob Kosberg:
Tiny. It’s a fraction of a percent is what it is. The interesting thing is, I have a direct mail campaign that we’re starting in two weeks. And I am sending 1000 physical copies of my book out to CEOs of companies between 20 and 100 million. Free book, I got to print it. I have to spend the money to ship it. And I’m sending it to people that have never heard of me for one reason. Of course, there’ll be a nice sales letter introductory. But one reason, I know these people have the money and desire, and can use a book. And so let me be the guy that wrote the book on writing books to them, and so all I need is a couple percent of those people to become clients, and I’ll five, six, seven, maybe 10 X my investment.
So, find ways, maybe you don’t want to spend 20 grand on a direct mail piece. But you know what, you could spend a couple thousand to find ways to get your book into the right people’s hands. And it’s a game changer. So like you said, give it away. You meant the best content, but I would even take it a step further and say, “Find ways to give your book away to the best people.”
Sean Doyle:
Absolutely. So I mean, I feel like an infant here. I don’t even want to tell you how many books.
Rob Kosberg:
I want to know. I want to know. Please, tell me.
Sean Doyle:
Let me see. You said 75,000, so that’d be 10% would be 70. Ooh, so I’m probably 5% of what you’ve done.
Rob Kosberg:
Well, your book is newer, so you know.
Sean Doyle:
Well, that’s it. It might be that you’re better at marketing books and promoting books.
Rob Kosberg:
That is what I do.
Sean Doyle:
And that was a lesson I learned. Yeah. That was a lesson I learned. Writing a book is not the same as publishing and promoting a book. And I didn’t invest enough in that part of the job. I’m just so embarrassed. It took me a year, year and a half to even get it on my own website. Right? I may be the worst marketer listening or on this podcast. So you’ve just really got to … I mean, a book is great, but a book on a shelf in a dark library has very little value to anybody, listener, reader, writer, just nobody, so you’ve got … I just don’t think you can under emphasize the promotion of a book. That’s got to be part of it.
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah, well said. Can we shift gears and talk a little bit about how you’re using your book? The first story you told is beautiful. And what I tell my clients is, there’s the reactive methodology of your book making a difference, which is you don’t even know it’s happening. So people contact you, and you’re reacting to … Like you found out, he has your book and he’s reading it. You’re reacting. What about proactive stuff, ways that you’re proactively using your book for speaking engagements or media, like we’re on right now, that sort of thing?
Sean Doyle:
Well, there certainly has been, I will say the reactive side of things, there’s certainly been a lot of nice little personal moments that you know you’ve impacted somebody’s life, when somebody mentions it. It doesn’t happen to me a lot, probably not like you, certainly not like JK Rowling, maybe. Just reading a book and telling an author that it made a difference, that just feels great. It’s good to contribute to humanity, and that’s neat because I do want to have an impact. And I think good people want to have an impact in life. I guess bad people want to have an impact in life too.
Rob Kosberg:
Evidently, everyone wants to make an impact.
Sean Doyle:
Everybody wants to make a difference, so that’s a good part of it. So how do we use the tool? So yes, we use it with speaking. I’m a Vestige speaker. I’m a Convene speaker. I do some other things like that and speaking moments, and those are fine. But more often, so maybe sold a little shy of 1000 books, and that was never my expectation. I didn’t ever think I was going to make money that way. And the better use of it and the more helpful use of it is two ways. One, you meet a prospect, somebody who is maybe not ready for the services that we provide. Let’s not keep focusing on this B to B, emerging middle market company. Or maybe it’s even somebody that’s not in our wheelhouse.
But I know I can help them through a video series that I’ve created that’s really the book articulated that way. You can come to seanmdoyle.com and spend a couple bucks, and go through me teaching about all these things, or you can buy the book. Or if it’s a prospect, I’ll just give it to you. Right? A lot of meetings, I’ll end by saying, “I think this is great. Your business is fabulous. I think the best thing for you to do is to start by building a foundation of the way Mr. And Mrs. Executive, that you think about marketing and sales. And that’s what the website’s for. It’s, I don’t want to say kind of grow you up into the success when we can help, but it’s just a helpful thing. Right? And it’s not a ton of money, and sell a few a year, and it’s fine.
But the more financially as a seller, put my sales hat on, we use it often when we have a prospect meeting that is a fit for us. We really do know how to move the needle in that business. Well, any kind of complex B to B sale has multiple decision makers and certainly multiple influencers. The book is an incredibly powerful tool to share with somebody. So you’ve got this point of contact, and it’s just such a great thing. And I always have a third party do it. I feel like it would be just a bunch of hubris for me to say, “Well, read my book. It’s really going to help you.” But I’m not too ashamed to have my staff do it, so my team will say, “Hey, what if we send you two or three books?” You could share it with your executive team, or you can share it with that person in your organization that’s suspicious of, because we’ve hired three agencies, and they all ripped me off, and it wasn’t worth the money.
And people do that. They’re willing usually as a late stage reassurance building tool within their company, so that’s been by far the most effective use of the book for us, is to use it late stage for those influencers, who you may or probably never will even meet. And then the other use is exactly what you just said. It’s an incredibly good direct mail tool. Hey, we want to write this book. We know something about your space, love to meet you someday.
Rob Kosberg:
Great usage, love having the staff get in there and send copies of the book. Just to mention another great kind of … What’s the term? It’s more discreet, I guess, is I’m sure your book is full of … I want to read it, by the way. I love the cover too.
Sean Doyle:
I’ll get you a copy.
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah. I love it.
Sean Doyle:
It’s going to cost you $25 though.
Rob Kosberg:
No problem. I’m going to implement all the things in it anyway, I don’t need you.
Sean Doyle:
That’s fine.
Rob Kosberg:
I’m kidding.
Sean Doyle:
You’re not a on target prospect for me.
Rob Kosberg:
Clearly, right? Clearly, I wouldn’t be if I said that. But a great way to I guess get them, allow them to dip their toe in the water is throughout the book, you have stories, you have case studies, you have examples. And when one fits the best, telling somebody, “Here’s a copy of my book, read it,” oftentimes is like, “Where do I begin? I don’t have time. It’s 200 pages.” It feels like a commitment. I don’t know if that’s how you feel. It’s often how I feel.
But if someone sends me something and says, “Hey, read this chapter,” and I can do that. I got 15, 20 minutes to read this chapter. It’s a helpful way for me to dip my toe in. And then usually, I’m hooked.
Sean Doyle:
Yeah. I was just thinking. I think it’s chapter four on reframing the marketing job. And in chapter four, I give executives four questions to ask in the interview. And I give you the answers you need to hear back to know whether you should hire this person or not. It would be sort of like me hiring, I don’t know, an accountant. Right? I know something about accounting. I can pretend I know a little. I can read a PNL, all that stuff. But if I was interviewing for a CFO, I don’t really understand deeply how to ask the questions, much less know what answers I need to hear to those questions that I don’t know.
Rob Kosberg:
That’s a great example.
Sean Doyle:
So, if I have this third-party example, then it’s just like a little litmus test. Ask these four questions, if you don’t hear these answers, and so that’s been my favorite chapter to give away and just say, “Go look at that chapter.”
Rob Kosberg:
I’m writing a new book. I am going to include that chapter in my new book. That is a great … That is a brilliant idea. And it’s an important idea. The way you described it, the way you framed it, if you were going to hire somebody, that’s an important, integral part of your business, it would be good to know the questions that you need to ask. Very, very good.
Sean Doyle:
Yeah, that’s perfect. And I’ll get back with you on the licensing rights to the use of that idea.
Rob Kosberg:
I love it. Sean, I’ve had a good time talking to you. I mean, really, really learned a lot and love the stuff that you do. I mean, you gave a couple links, but let’s give some links to the listeners of best place to interact with you, learn your stuff, get your book, that sort of thing.
Sean Doyle:
Sure. Yeah, there’s two ways. One is seanmdoyle.com. Make sure you get the M in there. And there’s some free videos there that explain the concept around the idea of the science. And how do you use this science? How do you apply it? It’s not a freshman, it’s not a sophomore, it’s probably a junior level course on how to do that. And then of course, you can find Shift: 19 Practical Business Driven Ideas, on Amazon. Or just shoot me an email, Sean@fitzmartin. In fact, Rob offered for the first five of you, he’s going to pay for them, and I’m going to ship them, so it’s all good.
Rob Kosberg:
I don’t recall that, but maybe you heard it and I didn’t. I love it.
Sean Doyle:
I’ll tell you what, I’ll still send the first five of you books. But Rob will not get a bill. How about that?
Rob Kosberg:
Very good, man. Great, great chatting with you. I love your expertise, love what you do, and excited about reading the book, and at least four others will as well.
Sean Doyle:
I’ve got another book in process. I think I must set a follow-up meeting with you to learn more about what you do. It looks like you’ve got a great organization, and so 75,000 books sold, Wall Street Journal list, is your promise if I publish through you. Right?
Rob Kosberg:
We do have a marketing plan and we do have a guarantee of Wall Street Journal and USA Today. That’s significant. That’s 7000 to 10,000 sales in a week. That’s what it takes to hit the Wall Street Journal list. Mine was, I don’t know, number two or three on the list. We’re launching one on Monday for a client. We’re launching another one two weeks after that. We do two or three Wall Street Journal launches a week. We do two or three other Amazon launches every single week. So yeah, anyway, I guess that’s a plug for me.
Sean Doyle:
Thank you for having me on, Rob.
Rob Kosberg:
Thank you. Thanks for being on and being fun to talk to and wise in your expertise.
