David Mayo Loomis is gone to Florida this week, so Steve and his smokin’ hot wife, Kay, share one of the most important cornerstones of successful sales and marketing — hunting moose.
In their conversation, they explain why knowing your who your best target market is…where they are…what bait will attract their attention…and why you should focus 100% of your planning and execution on just them! Steve and Kay call target marketing, “hunting moose.”
(Hint: it has to do with you making MORE money.)
Watch now!
And if you haven’t read any of their books, here are the links:
UNCOPYABLE — https://amzn.to/3dN3iWR
UNCOPYABLE SALES SECRETS — https://amzn.to/3wow1b2
Stealing Genius — https://amzn.to/3AI3xM6
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Transcript
(This transcript is generated by AI, so there are, undoubtedly, mistakes.)
Kay – Moose
Steve: Hey everybody. This is Steve Miller. Better know as Kelly’s Dad, Marketing Gunslinger, not the rockstar. And I am not joined by The David Loomis, the David Mayo Loomis today. And in fact, this is like the second time in a row that one of us is gone. Last week. I was gone because I had a doctor’s appointment and or the last time, yeah, last week and my smoking hot wife Kay Krueger. Kay Lynn Krueger Miller is back again this week. Last week. She knocked it out of the park with, with Mr. Voice. And and, and I don’t even know what you guys talked about last week.
I have to go. I have to guess.
Kay: I think I have to go watch well, yeah, you gotta watch that episode because we talked about getting an uncopyable advantage, which is extremely
Steve: important, you know, and that’s kind of, you know, you and I. Now I started it. I started, I started the uncopyable movement, you know several years ago when I actually was started teaching the uncopyable method or, or mindset many years ago.
Mm-hmm and then finally got smart enough to, to, to, you know, write the darn book. Right. And this one, I, I grabbed real quick. It doesn’t ha you know, we, we have like a sticker that we put in here that is, that shows that it, it, it was an Amazon number one best seller and still sells really well. Yes.
Kay: Just gotta take.
And it’s a fabulous book objectively speaking.
Steve: Yeah, absolutely. You know,
Kay: Bias or anything. Yeah. I have no ties to the, yeah, that’s
Steve: in that book. And in the, in the book, one of the, one of the chapters, I, one of the strategies that I talk about is, is stealing genius, which is a, a technique of generating innovative ideas.
And you can use it in any, basically in anything, but I primarily focus on helping companies with marketing and branding. And we talk about that in there and then. To, to do another follow up in the uncopyable mindset. My smoking hot wife. Kay. Do you happen to have a copy of of your new book?
I happen
Kay: to have one right here. Tell us what
Steve: is it
Kay: called and tell us what it’s called. It’s called uncopyable sales secrets. So this is the uncopyable philosophy, which is brilliant. Like you said it, that your book became a number one, one best seller.
Steve: Yeah. That was a surprise. You know, what’s that it was a surprise.
Remember, see, we, it was, oh my gosh, the system, you know, there are so many authors out. I hate to say it. We know who you are. And you could, you could tell, you know, by how the books are being released and stuff like that, they’re gaming the system to try to push the sale, push the sales up for a short period of time.
Ours, mine didn’t even make, didn’t even go to bestseller. Status for several months. Right. And, and it was just in fact, we were lucky that we happened to look one day. Yes. I don’t remember if it was you or me,
Kay: but I do remember who it was. It was me. Was it you? Yes, of course. I’m gonna take the credit for that.
Right? I have no
Steve: issue with that.
Kay: I have no, it happened organically as they say organic. So we do believe in organic. We’re very organic. Yeah. So, yeah, and I happened to look on a Sunday. I’m like, oh my gosh,
Steve: that’s right. I do remember it was Sunday. We’re like, what the heck? How do you go to number one on a Sunday, but but there, it was, you know, big, best seller number, you know, number one best seller, you know, right across the top of the book.
And, and we got very excited and got drunk and disorderly and and there’s, there are two. Two sports bars that we are no longer allowed to go in anymore. So which is fine. Yeah. Yeah. One of ’em actually closed, I think, because we don’t go there anymore. Right. So so, and you, you came out with yours and it is just kicking ass right now.
And you know, and, and, you know, One of the things we wanna talk about. One of the things in there that is a very, very big part of the uncapable philosophy and the, and, and developing the uncapable mindset that I, I talked about. Again, for years wrote about it in, in the first book, we, again, both of us wrote about it in our other, our, our, our other books, right.
Because our new books, it’s so important, our, our new books, right? Because it’s so important. It has been, it has made a, a major impact on our clients on the way they think the way they approach their marketing, the way they develop their marketing and even their branding. And that is what we call.
Hunting moose. And you
Kay: can tell how important it is because right behind me is a new, you know, print that I bought yeah. Of a moose to help everyone I talk to on zoom. Remember, it’s all about the moose. It’s
Steve: all about the moose. So so, okay. So do you wanna explain. What, what we mean by hunting moose, Don analogy.
Why don’t you go for it
Kay: first? Since I, I would go for it and you can see if you can possibly improve on what I say. I doubt
Steve: it. Doubt it, but go ahead again. What is it? What is, what does hunting moose mean? What are we trying to say to people? The
Kay: analogy is. Imagine that you are a moose hunter. Of course, that would not be me because as I, I like to joke.
My favorite thing to hunt is shoes, shoes, deals on shoes. But if there are people that hunt animals, there are people that hunt moose. Now, if you were intent on hunting moose, and you went out to the forest and you just started, you. You know, seeing bears and rabbits and deers and raccoons deers. Did I say dears
Steve: did deers in deer.
Okay.
Kay: I like that dears. You would best be like in sales, they call it spray and pray. You know, you would not be focused on what you really want to accomplish. So there’s a story it’s in both of our latest books. So you need to get the book to hear the, the background of the story. But Steve was asked the question.
If you were going to hunt moose, where would you go? Would you go to Arizona? No, you would go up north, you’d go to Canada or, you know, the Northern United States. What would you do to attract the moose? How would you bait the moose? How would you, you know, what language would you do? You used to get their attention?
So it’s all about being really focused on your very best target. And in the case of sales, The person who is going to buy the most, be the best to work with and just be a, a big win-win for everybody.
Steve: Yeah. So how do they do when you say yeah, that was great. When you say spray and pray. What, what, what does that mean?
That’s a, that’s a sales talk. That’s
Kay: sales talk. Yes. I’ve been hearing that phrase a lot lately of, of what not to do. This is what you don’t do. And you know, a lot of people, a lot of companies, business salespeople fall into the trap. Everyone needs my product. Everybody can use this. So you just blast your message out to everyone.
You just, you know, cold call on everybody. And then you just pray that the right, you know, that you’re gonna make a sale instead of putting more thought into it, being strategic, the moose is all about being strategic mm-hmm and you, you know, I have. People listening might not know, but I have a mastermind group of, with some of our clients and a lot of us float ideas to the group and they might be saying, you know, I wanna do this campaign or do this, or, or that.
And the first question that will come up is, well, who is your moose? Right. So when you’re in sales, always start with, okay, who is your ideal prospect? And don’t waste your time on everybody else. And,
Steve: and one of the things about it is, is you become a moose. Expert you become a moose specialist you know, like, like Kay says when you go into a forest.
So, so yeah, first of all, we’re gonna go to where go find a forest where we think the moose are and that we think are insufficient quantity. All right. And, and even, and even better is there big fat move? Right that and hungry moose, they’re hungry, moose, they’re hungry, moose and hungry, hungry moose.
And no, that’s a joke that probably nobody’s gonna get. And you know, you know, and so when you go into the, when you go into the forest you’re, you know, and you’re seeing all these other animals, right. You’re just ignor. You you’re just ignoring you. You are just going after the moose. Now, why is this important and why, why should we do this?
And I, I’m gonna start this part with, by, by, by saying that, see it’s, if we were, if, if I were to. Say, oh, just go into the forest and just start shooting everything you can find. And I mean, assuming you’re using a gun or, or something, but your, your, your objective is to hopefully find some moose, hopefully get some moose, but you start, you know, you just go in, you just start finding you know, like you say, rabbit and deers and you know, all those other things and, and you start shooting, but those are not what you’re looking for.
Right. And so here’s the thing is that when you are doing your marketing, when you are thinking about the messaging and messaging is the. That’s the bait that attracts people to you. All right. And when you are doing that, if you are using the language of your moose and you are offering them something that is based on something that they want, see a hungry moose is a moose who has a problem.
He’s hungry, you know, and our moose, as we look at them as prospects and potential customers, we are going to be offering that we’re not selling products. And let’s just get, let’s just understand this, you know, and I’m, let me take a little pivot here. God, I hate the word pivot
Kay: to save pivot. You hate that word, pivot.
Hate that word.
Steve: We’re pirouetting. I’m gonna take a peril wet. Okay. That’s the word we use? Pirouette. I’m gonna take a, a slight per away and I’m going to, and, and I don’t even remember what I was go, gonna talk about now, but anyway or what I was gonna say, but marketing
Kay: message,
Steve: marketing message.
Kay: And, oh boy, we
Steve: got off track there it’ll come to me. It’ll come to me. So so anyway, so when we are trying to understand, yeah, we we’re. We are not selling a product. I remember not selling a product when I ask people what business they’re. And sometimes I, I, the, the common answer I get is, well, we manufacture widgets.
That’s what we do. Okay. Or we sell this service. That’s what we do. And I have to, I have to educate them on. No, you’re not. That is not the business that you are in. That is the deliverable. But the business that you are in is the business of selling and of marketing and selling a widget. That’s the business that you are in, because if you don’t, if you don’t market and sell it, you can produce all you wanna produce.
Mm-hmm right. But you’re gonna have a big warehouse full of stuff. Right? You are in the business of, of marketing and selling a product or service. So. The better, you can understand your mops. The more you understand the solution that you are delivering to them, because what they are looking for is some kind of a solution.
Is it a solution to a problem, a painful situation? Is it a, is it a solution to some kind of goal that they have? You know out there, you, you know, what you are going to do is sell that solution. And so the better you can understand them even to the point of the language that you speak.
Cause, you know, and if you think about it, like in, in, in the legal world, you know, we we’ve all heard the term legalese. Well, that is the language of attorneys, right? Mm-hmm . And so if I’m going to be selling to attorneys, I better be able to. The language of attorneys and not, not the language of chefs, right.
Or the language of electricians or the language of hotel people. See, they all have their own language. And the more you can speak to people in their language, it’s just like going over. It’s just like going to a foreign country. Right. And if you go to Italy and you don’t, and, and you start speaking Italian, they go, wow.
Kay: But what about if you accidentally speak Spanish? Like I did when we were in Italy. I got
Steve: a little confused. Yeah. That’s. We had we had, and you know, that’s interesting. He started speaking Spanish to her, so, yep.
Kay: And you know, Dave and I talked about, you know, not only understanding the, the language of the moose, but you know, understanding their problem to the point where last week, Dave and I talked about Leslie, and you remember the story of Leslie?
Yes. Who is selling it service. But what the reason that the people bought was that she offered white glove service. So she’s de delivering the solution in a way that they won’t have to worry about it. You know, she didn’t get into all the little details about, you know, whatever the specifics might be in that case.
She just said, relax, I understand you. I will give you white glove service. You won’t have to worry about a thing. And the customer admitted. We bought Leslie, we bought the salesperson because of what, what she did for the customer. Well, Leslie understood. She
Steve: understood her moose. She understood her moose.
She talked to them, she talked, she, she was able to calm their fears. You know, let’s let’s understand this when somebody is get, when you are trying to get somebody to buy from you. Well, the first thing that we have to recognize is are they changing vendors, right? Are they already buying from somebody?
And you’re trying to get them to buy from you. Well, you know what, they kind of have to be a little bit dissatisfied with their current vendor. Yeah. Or if they’re, or if you’re trying to talk ’em into, into a, a new type of solution to something that maybe they’re not using anything like it right now, they have to be a little bit dissatisfied.
Right. And so what Leslie was doing was Leslie, was she made it clear to them. Look, I get it. I understand you all right. And she was able to convince them that she understood them. And then she said, I am going to take care of your problem. I’m the one who’s going to provide that solution for you that so that you will be able to sleep at night.
Mm-hmm , you know, you’re not gonna wake up in the morning and the first thing on your head is, oh my gosh, how do I, how do I take care of this situation? Right. Right. So that’s, that is this whole thing. And, and so, and, and the other thing about going out and being very, very focused on your moose you know, I often ask new clients, what is your closing percentage?
Most, most people can’t answer that question, which is dumb. You really should know mm-hmm, what your closing percentage is. And the closing percentage is, is like, if I hand you 10 prospects, how many, how many prospects are you gonna turn into customers? Now the national average, for the most part, primarily in the B2B community, which is the, the main community that we work with, the national average is something along the lines of five to 10.
Close closing rate. So, you know, if I hand ’em 10 prospects, they would turn, turn ’em into a customer. Now here’s the thing though, is if, if we think about it from the forest analogy then most companies try to do the spray and pray most sales people, most marketers spray and pray. And. When I hand they’re what they’re getting is 10 animals.
That’s what they’re getting. They’re gonna get 10 animals from their marketing and sales efforts. All right. Now, out of those 10 animals, you know, it’s a combination again of rabbit ducks, deers, you know, snakes. And some moose, right? Well, your closing rate is not gonna be, you know, your closing rate is gonna be impacted by the fact that a certain number of those animals are disqualified because they, they’re not your moose.
They don’t fit.
Kay: That’s a great point. That’s a great point. So your closing rate, isn’t really an AC you know, an accurate closing rate.
Steve: So our marketing. And, and in marketing, like we say, we gotta go to the forest where the, where the moose are more prevalent. Right. Because what I want is not just the ideal situation is I don’t want 10 animals.
I want 10 moose. Right? I know I’m not, I’m not gonna close all the moose, but I have a I’m, but my, my closing rate is gonna go way up because I have already set it up and we teach that also in our marketing diamond. Where the, the number one thing is you. I have to identify who your moose is. Be very, very clear.
The second thing is message. What is that bait? That’s going to attract them to come to you and say, and, and say, yep, I, they, they raise their hand. They say, yeah, I wanna talk to you because you’re talking my language. You’re you’re you’re sounds like, you know what you’re talking about. I want to talk to you.
Okay. And, and so in order to do those things, in order to find that makes, we have to find the forest, we have to ask ourselves, where do people hang out? You know, where do our moose hang out and, and do they hang out online? Do they hang out at a trade show? Do they hang out at, you know, where, where do they hang out?
That’s where we’re gonna. We’re gonna go hang out, you know, like the question that like, for, for I’ll use the trade show, I made a trade show as, as an example, is that right? You know, there are a lot of companies out there are saying, oh, you don’t wanna go to trade shows. Like they’re so expensive. They’re so they’re just really so expensive, but you know, what, if I know my moer at the trade show, I’m going to the trade show.
Right?
Kay: Cause it’ll be, you’re a very good investment.
Steve: It’ll it’ll end up being a very, very good investment. And I hope like, heck that my competitors listen to these idiot, digital marketing agencies who say, oh no, don’t you know, don’t go to the trade shows, take all that money and put it into digital stuff.
You know, it’s like, come on, you know, and I hope you do. All right. I really do, because when you do that, it just makes my job that much easier. So, so, all right. But so you see, that’s why we want you to hunt moose. That’s why it’s so important and is to, to know who your moose is, know the message that you need to have with them, the media, the media, that, the tools that you use that’s those are the, for that’s the forest.
You know that, you know, whether you use online, whether you use offline. In fact, in the B2B world, we have found that the combination of online and offline is the best way to go. Mm-hmm all right. Even with direct mail, you know, even involving sales calls, you know, things like that it is, it worked and.
Our clients for over the years now of us pushing on this, they speak the language of moose.
Kay: They really do. It’s be, yeah, it’s become so second nature to them.
Steve: Yep. That becomes totally second nature. So that’s the moose folks that is the moose focus on the moose, you know, but it, what, what have we not talked?
Hmm, when it
Kay: comes to the moose. Well, one thing that we’ve not talked about, I’ll just say briefly a couple things. All right. When some people struggle with, well, who, who are my moose, who is my moose? One way to figure that out is to look at your very best clients. You know, who do you have the most fun working with?
I mean, Steve, you know, you’ve always had rules for our business, right? Who do you make the most money from and who do you serve the best and then study your current. You know, customers very best customers to determine how can I find more of them. And then the other thing that when you talk about how to reach them, when you do really have a per a really good, I shouldn’t say perfect.
A clear idea of who your moose is. You can spend more time. Money and resources to reach them. Like, you know, in Steve’s book and my book, we talk about a shock ina package. Something that if you can’t get through to a prospect, you do this and you will get their attention. So, you know, you can afford to spend that kind of time, money and energy on a whole bunch of the wrong animals.
But when you take the time to dial in on the moose, the person who could, or company that can become a. Good and profitable customer. Then you can really knock it out the out of the park with getting their attention and developing those, the first steps in that relationship.
Steve: Yep. That’s exactly right. And, and you know, I don’t wanna stretch this out too long today, but I think in the future conversation, you know, one of the other things that we talk about is how much money are you willing to spend to get a customer?
You’ve
Kay: always, you know, you’ve always. Had that concept, you know, or, you know, I don’t know the right way to say it, but yeah, that is such a meaningful con concept because if you, you know, if you’re willing to spend the money to get a customer, right. And when you think of them, I think you’re gonna talk about in the future episode of looking at their value, not just now, but into the future long term, long term
Steve: mind boggling, long term value, right?
Yeah. And you know, I have a great story behind that, of how I actually really learned. The smart way. And but I, but I’m gonna tease you with this. I’m gonna tease you with this. See a lot of people when they think about their marketing budgets and things like that, they’re thinking in terms of, oh, it’s how do we keep our marketing budget down as low as possible?
But the way I look at it is. If like if I, and I I’m gonna say that most of the people that are look watching this are selling fairly expensive products or services, fairly expensive. And if I were to charge you $5,000 for every moose that I brought to you, and if you were able to close 50%. So think about this.
Like if I brought you 10 moose and I charge you $5,000, each for them say, let’s say that’s $50,000. All right. And you think about the long term value mm-hmm of the moose. How many moose would you like me to bring you? Like $5,000? Just think about. Think about that. See, as compared to trying to keep your class as low as possible for, for finding leads, but I’m gonna cut it off, right.
I’m gonna cut it off here. And you know, to say that well, we’ll, we’ll come back for our future conversation.
Kay: Well, thanks for having me back because we didn’t, we were out of Mayo, so
We were out of Dave Mayo. Lumis so he’s somewhere Florida. He’s in Florida somewhere. He’s having fun, but you and I it’s a Saturday actually. So we’re gonna go have some fun ourselves.
Steve: We’re gonna go have some fun now ourselves. So, so alright. Smoking hot wife. All right.
Kay: Hunky hub
Steve: Miller. Better known as muffler mama.
Kay: Yeah, there you go. Kelly’s dad,
Steve: make sure you buy her book. For that matter by our, by, by,
Kay: by, by both stealing genius show stealing genius right there. Stealing whoop. I’ll tell you if you want innovative, cool ideas. Yep. It’ll knock your socks off if, whether or not you’re wearing them
Steve: really you’re wearing socks or nevermind.
so,
Kay: okay. Thank you. Okay. Thank you for listening and watching. Go out there and get ’em and be uncopyable. See it.
Steve: Thank you for listening to another episode of the one and only B2 B marketing and sales podcast. These source for B2B marketing and sales insight. If you enjoyed the podcast, please be sure to subscribe and leave these old guys a five star rating.
Check the show notes for any links in contact information, you can always contact us by going to b2bmarketingandsalespodcast.com. Thank you and keep on marketing. Keep. Selling.
