****Please forgive any and all transcription errors as this was transcribed by Otter.ai.****

John Asbell 0:00

Hi, I'm John Asbell and you're listening to A Shark's Perspective.

(Music - shark theme)

Kenneth Kinney 0:21

Welcome back, and thank you for joining A Shark's Perspective. I am Kenneth Kinney, but friends call me Shark. I'm a keynote speaker, a strategist, a shark diver, host of this show, and your Chief Shark Officer.

Kenneth Kinney 0:33

What is one of the most powerful tools, a superpower even, that can help you achieve better results, get more spin for your initiatives, and even get better alignment out of a team? It may surprise you because it's not your super cool creative idea. It's not that call to action button that Google Analytics recognize perform well, it's not even your ad copy. Those hopefully will all perform well. But the one that's often a miss and may even boost your career more quickly, is being able to communicate up and up refers to the powers that be off in the C-suite that run a company. And if it's you that run the company, well then it also plays to your banker, your board of directors and so on. But understanding how to communicate to them to be a C-suite whisper if you will, very often helps you in your career, and that superpower can be defined as better communicating up.

Kenneth Kinney 1:20

John Asbell is the Vice President of digital marketing at American Residential Services, operating under the trade name ARS/Rescue Rooter, which is one of the nation's largest networks and suppliers of HVAC and plumbing services companies.

Kenneth Kinney 1:34

And on this episode, we will discuss marketing and Home Services superpower of communicating up translating marketing speak, testing new initiatives, looking at problems from different angles, questions and curveballs, building trust, clarity, call centers, superhero fights, HVAC, plumbing, pumpkin pie lead gen, and a lot, lot more.

Kenneth Kinney 1:52

So let's tune into a home services marketer with a shark who calls the ocean his home on this episode of A Shark's Perspective.

[music]

Kenneth Kinney 2:04

John, welcome to A Shark's Perspective. If you will tell us a little bit about your background and your career to date.

John Asbell 2:10

Yeah, so, um, background, I was 20 I started my career as a developer. So, you know, I this was not to date myself too much. But what language latest 90s? Well, it was just HTML,

Kenneth Kinney 2:26

CSS, that kind of stuff. At least it wouldn't COBOL because then, you know, is

John Asbell 2:30

that not that not that, Oh, lots, lots of JavaScript. You know, I didn't do a lot of PHP. But, but you know, when the internet was becoming a thing, it was close to the thing that it is today. And, you know, I thought that's pretty cool. I want to learn how to build websites that seem to be the most immediate way to kind of get in the game. And so, really focused on learning how to do that, you know, my undergrad is in information technology. And, you know, when I have a school I started working for a startup is a small ecommerce company, and that my job was really just kind of building websites for the East doors, that kind of thing. And, you know, this was back when SEO was the thing you could do to a website, you know, you literally just yeah, just change the title tag dropping keywords, and you're, you're good to go. And the guy that ran the company, he was kind of an old school sales guy. And but he was getting into he really liked marketing. And he was getting into like, SEO aspect of things. And sem wasn't even really a thing at this point, right? There was no Google ads. But, you know, his dad never will forget, he said to me, he was like, you know, building stuff is cool. But like, Wouldn't you like to figure out how to get traffic to it and figure how to make money with it? And I was like, Yeah, I would like to figure out what how do we do that? It's like, let me show you, you know, and you go through, drop some keywords in the title tag, and boom, you're number one on the search engines, as you're, you know, AltaVista, or whatever it was back then. You know, and so, that was pretty, pretty interesting way to transition into, you know, the marketing field, I'd never, you know, had any designs and being a marketer, but just kind of happened like, by by happenstance, and, you know, working for the startup, it was always the, you know, the thing, same thing, you hear about wearing many hats, and if you want to be able to do something, it's like, well, I'll just learn how to do it. You know, it's like, we don't do email marketing. Okay, well, I forgot to do email marketing. We don't do a fit. We don't affiliate program. Okay, well, let's figure out what that's all about. So, great learning experience, did that for a while and then transitioned over to a digital agency. So worked for an agency that's owned by one of the big holding companies. And also great experience, you always think of agency work as a Marketing Bootcamp, right. Because it's like you have to, you're just learning so much, and your clients are always they're asking you to solve different flavors of the same problem. So I like to think about it and so I thought that was just it was great experience. There. Were aspects of it that were not enjoyable at all right? It's like there's crazy, there's crazy hours, there's crazy demands. Not all the time, but enough at the time to make you kind of go, Yeah, this is not, this is not my jam. So I was, I was grateful for that experience where for some great people that ultimately kind of decided, Hey, I'd like to be brand side. So I had an opportunity to get into leadership role in the, with a large home services company. And I've been in that space, you know, ever since Coming up on eight years now, you know, in a few different companies and leadership roles in a digital customer acquisition.

Kenneth Kinney 5:38

And so tell us a little bit real quick about what ARS primarily does,

John Asbell 5:42

ARS, so we are one of the largest, each back and plugging providers in the in the company. So every company in the country, we, we have about 80 locations across the US were in most of the most major cities, not all, but we've got it's very interesting the way that the company has been built, because we have a, you know, a brand ARS rescue Rooter, and about half of our locations go to go to market under that brand. But then we've got, you know, as we've acquired businesses and other markets, we tend to let those brands continue to operate, you know, under the same brand name, just because they typically have a lot of equity and value in that market. And, and so we've got about half of our locations operate under some some of the brands. So, you know, it's very different from, you know, previous roles where, like, you know, you're you go to market as one fairly well known national brand. Here, we go to market, as, you know, a family of brands, and there's, you know, a number of challenges associated with that, you know, it's like you've Market to Market, it's different. How do you how do you standardize? How do you? How do you create good process? How do you like, how do you even invest in the brand? You know, that's the thing because you can't, like, we don't have a national advertising campaign, right, we're building the brand that just, that doesn't, it doesn't work for us. So so it creates a lot of interesting challenges. And the team has to be super flexible and super, you know, they've got to be able to go Market to Market to Market and figure out, what do I What do I do to win in this given market? Because it's usually it's usually a different answer, because the competitive set is different. The you know, the landscape is different. The weather is different. I mean, we're an age back business. So like that, you know, whether it's hugely impactful to what we do. But yeah, I've been in the role now here for about three years. And I lead our corporate Digital Strategy Group.

Kenneth Kinney 7:40

Yeah, well, brands is product lines in local markets. It is, it's a challenge to look tomorrow for sure way. So but I know when we first met, I believe you would reach out somebody that I work with to pick my brain about a SAS technology that I think we shared some knowledge of at the time, but then we met in person several years ago, and you're also on a panel for me at a conference. And then when I reached out about this show, we started talking about something randomly that I thought was just an amazing topic, because it's not taught nearly enough of, and a lot of that is really sort of the superpower, if you will, of communicating up. Oh, yeah, I have to make the right kind of people happy to make initiatives move forward and thinking about what I brought to the table years ago, and I think I learned well, after that I had been endowed with that superpower, I was communicating to the CEO or in president of a company. And another role, I recognize this and someone else, and I thought they're doing exactly what I was doing. And I realized how valuable it was for moving initiatives forward. And they were speaking the same language to that leadership team. So from your own interpretation, what do you think that superpower means for where it's helped you get things moving forward in your own career? And what is it?

John Asbell 9:00

Yeah, so it's interesting that you call it a superpower because it I think of a superpower is something that you just have, right? And this is definitely a a learned skill that this could

Kenneth Kinney 9:13

be either DC Comics you're born with it? Yeah, Avengers. You got bit by a spider. And

John Asbell 9:19

that's it. I love the analogy. Love the analogy, kind of Yeah, I think I think it's definitely the getting bitten by a spider, as opposed to just endowed with it. And I feel like you it's definitely one of those things where you just have to fail at it some before you get good at it. And you realize that hey, what I'm saying is not landing with these folks. But it is just you live you live your job every day, right? You live doing the marketing work every day. And then so every so often, you ever called to go talk in depth about this to somebody who doesn't think about it every day, nor should they, right they pay you to do that. And, and there's so much nuance to it, that it's sometimes can be very, very difficult to get the details that you want to cut across, and to make the points that you want to make land with the senior leaders, and they're the ones that are, you know, charged with growing the company and making the big decisions and, and leading the strategy for the business. And, you know, it can be very difficult sometimes to to translate sort of the marketing speak and the detail to, you know, bubble up the really, really important points. And, and just make it very clear for them, you know, what you're trying to say, and the initiatives, you're trying to get to move forward. And it's but depending on who you're talking to, you can get very, very different perspectives, right. So if you're in a meeting with, let's say, a CEO, the CFO and the Chief Human Resources person, right, they're all thinking about the business from very different angles, right? And they're all thinking about what you're saying from very different angles. And it's always been amazing to me, one of the exercises I'll go through when I know I'm going to go present to senior leaders is I'll think about what questions could they ask me, right? Like, and I'll think about, okay, this person, their perspective is this. So they're likely to ask about these things. This other person, their perspective is this and they're likely to ask about these different things. And it never ceases to amaze me that I sometimes I'm able to guess a few of them. But there's almost always something out of left field that I didn't think about, you know what I mean? And it's just because their perspective is so much different from from mine, and what I do in the day to day, and Okay, so where does the where does the superpower come in? Right? It's, it's being able to think on your feet. And then like, when you get those questions that come out of left field, like, how do you? How do you answer them succinctly enough, to where you don't go down a rabbit hole, where you don't invite a lot of other questions that maybe you don't have great answers to that maybe you don't have great data to support all that kind of stuff. And, and it really is just the skill that you kind of learn over time. And I find that the people who have that skill and who have developed it and kind of, you know, gone through it enough times, those are the ones who really end up moving up the organization and the leadership roles. Because, because that skill allows you to earn trust, right? I never will forget a former CMO of mine. We were we were talking about this kind of a topic related to this, but it was definitely being able to answer questions. And he said he used this term, and I never will forget, he said, If you can't answer the question, that's like putting blood in the water. You like this? It's a shark shark analogy, right? He's like, it's like, it's like blood in the water for those guys. And you can't answer a question or you answer it, if you answered poorly, or you tried to provide too much detail or whatever. And he's like, You have to figure out how to avoid it. If you can't answer it think about? That's a great question, I'll come back and you know, get back with you on that, that that kind of response is going to be much, much better than going off, you know, in on some tangent where maybe you're not really prepared to speak on it. So that's one of my sort of guiding principles is don't don't put any blood in the water. You know, if I get one of those questions, where I think that that's, that's what's happening, then I try to I try to avoid it and double back. And, and I have I have always found that that. You know, that's a great question. Let me let me go get some more detail come back to you on that is usually a pretty good way to defuse. But, but yeah, anyway, so So it's one of those things that you just develop over time. And as you as you get a feel for working with the same leaders, and start to really understand what their, what their perspectives are what they care about, then you're better able to like kind of tailor tailor those answers and tailor those details that you're providing to them. But to your point,

Kenneth Kinney 13:37

what I absolutely love about it is because they even CEO likely reports to a board of directors, right? Or, or an investment group behind that. So it's helping them and I also love the point that you may think you're coming in to fix the Rubik's Cube, but they're not looking at the same side of the cube that you are when trying to explain it because the HR person's thinking about how to get the right fit, or the finance guy is thinking how much money do we give John and his team do? And the CEOs worried about culture? It's not necessarily is John the most creative marketer, right? But it's also really important because a lot of times the the group that gets the most focus is marketing and sales. Oh, it is a critical skill in every role you're in, it is exceptionally critical as more and more dollars have moved into the digital space especially. It's not just the old brand positioning and we thought it was a good ad. We play somewhere. Now it's do we give John another million to spend on Google ads or Instagram ads, whatever. So I think it's fascinating. So you said though, that you learned it over time. If you looked back in your own career, yeah. What do you think would have progressed you to be able to get to that place to where you feel more comfortable more quickly? Because I you know, my niece is in school right now. She's about to graduate with a degree in Marketing, and I was thinking about all of the skills that she's not being taught Oh, yeah. Well, Oh, yeah. And sadly, she's going to work immediately out of school for an agency, which is I worked at the agency world as well. So you know, that's a place that's wonderful and can also pose in your mind. Yes, yes, yes, yes. But that skill that she taught, it's nothing around, you know, this skill that we're talking about is not around Google Analytics. Yeah. It's not about Creative Advertising, right. It's just nothing that you necessarily think about how to communicate up and what they could do for you. But how do you what do you think you could have either learn more done more? Or what was your epiphany to think I'm able to communicate to what they need to hear and understand to move initiatives forward?

John Asbell 15:39

Yeah, you know, I wish there was a really a magical Oh, you just go do this thing. You know, the

Kenneth Kinney 15:44

old term is a bleak dream, a genie? Yeah, exactly.

John Asbell 15:47

The real answer is, I think it's just repetition. Right? And it's just get it was getting thrown enough curveball type questions. And and it really made me just sort of stop and go, Why do I but I feel like every time I'm having these conversations, I'm getting asked questions that I had never occurred to me before. And I think and I think this when that's when I realized that like, what, you're not really thinking about it from all these different perspectives. And once you try to take those perspectives, you're a little more I'm not saying it's a perfect science, right, but you're a little more able to prepare yourself with the kinds of things that you think they they will actually ask you. And so you know, the unfortunate answer is, it's really just the Trial by Fire scenario where you got to go do it, and you've got to kind of fall on your face and get tripped up a few times. And then understand how do I dodge those landmines. In the future, or at a minimum, figure out how to eloquently back out of this situation with something like a great question, not prepared to discuss, we'll follow up and come get back to you that kind of thing. Yeah, it's

Kenneth Kinney 16:51

reminded me something is going on politically to is when you are going to get asked some curveballs. But you can't just ask well, I'll have to defer you to the Department of Justice on that. Every other answer, because that's not gonna last very long in your job, either. It's just No, it's not.

John Asbell 17:07

No, it's not. And it's really, you know, what you're trying to do, if you think about what you're really trying to do is you're trying to either build trust, or you're trying to improve the trust that already exists, right? Every time you have those conversations, it's like that that's really, it. I mean, these are people that you're talking to, really, and I mean, at the end of the day, it's okay, do I trust this person? Do I trust what he's saying? Do I trust the data he's presenting? Do I trust the direction that he is suggest, right? And it's like, the more prepared you are, and the better you can kind of anticipate the conversation, the more you're able to build that that trust with your leadership team.

Kenneth Kinney 17:47

We're gonna talk a little bit about testing. And so when you think about communicating your needs, as marketing, digital marketing evolves, how do you communicate and go about looking then at testing, new channels, new vendors, new ideas, things like that, so that you get the kind of buy in to, that helps you develop that trust, to be able to really allow a lot of good marketing takes some time to validate. It's not Yeah, you know, two seconds what happened? You know,

John Asbell 18:14

yes. such it's such a great topic. And I will say that I have been reasonably lucky in my career, I've talked to a number of marketers who haven't been lucky. But I've, I've worked for leaders, and been in organizations that were for the most part pretty supportive of testing and kind of understood that, you know, marketing it's, it's part art part science. Right. And, and the art part is that I think this thing will work. But I'd really like to, I don't have any proof. So I'd like to go try. But what I found to your to specifically answer your question, when you're trying to get the buy in, again, it goes back to thinking about the prospective and like, What can I say to this person to make them think that this test is a good idea, right? And so if you think about maybe the person that needs finance, and you're talking to them about it? Well, it's a numbers game, right? And so okay, what what data can I present, even if it's an estimate, right? And it's the Hey, I think we can go run this test. If it goes, well, this is how well I think it could possibly go best case, this is the how poorly I think it could possibly go worst case. And then here's kind of the financial impact of that. And again, I know we don't know, right, and you want it, you want to kind of caveat it a little bit. But But I think if you can, if you can present it in those terms, it's much easier to get by and for what you want to do. And you're kind of putting yourself out there a little bit, right? I don't know, the future. This thing could I mean, the worst case scenario on a number of tests is it could fail miserably, or we could waste a lot of money. That's that's the worst case scenario, right? You can't see that. So you definitely have to kind of put it in perspective of here's the most likely thing to happen. Like, if it goes really bad, it could look like this. If it goes really great. It could look like this. More than likely it's going to be somewhere in the middle. And here's kind of where I think that It's good to know, I used to tell my team because this is a previous role. You know, it was I was trying to instill a testing culture in my team. And and we would there's always so many things you could test. Right? So you have to go through some kind of a prioritization exercise. And what does that exercise look like? Well, it looks like taking all of those things that you could be running tests on and determining, I think this thing would be the most impactful. So let's do that first. And the team would always say, Well, I don't know, I don't know what's going to happen when I test this. And I said, I understand. But you are the most qualified person in this organization as the marker to make some kind of an educated guess there's nobody employer that can make, they can make some kind of an educated guess about what this is going to yield for the business, you are the best person to do that. And they won't be like me, you know what I mean, it's a lot of responsibility. Because in oftentimes, you're talking about testing things that are millions of dollars, right. And it could be very impactful to the business. But you know, I just found that that's something you have to be comfortable with, as a marketer, you have to be comfortable with taking risks, you have to be comfortable with making bets. And I mean, you know, I've been fortunate that most of them have worked out, certainly, a number of them have not worked out as well as I've wanted. But you know, I can, I can think of a few things that have been worked out better than I anticipated. But like I say, in most cases, it's kind of the middle of the road scenario. I mean, you and I both know, Canada, most tests don't work, right. They just they don't, it's the unfortunate reality, you're going to test 100 things 10 of them are probably going to work pretty well. The other 90 You're gonna be

Kenneth Kinney 21:33

Yeah, well, I think it's, it's remarkable to when you think about the the fact that a lot of times with tests, I know a lot of marketers who are not exactly Bravehearts, yeah, they rely on the C suite to ask you or someone similar role to help fix the problem. Because to your own point, you can ask your own team as another marketing person, that they're the most qualified person to go find out. But that's really what they're relying on you to do. And then interpret back to them in a way that helps they can at least understand and I love the point at least setting the guardrail of understanding where this might fail, because they may know that they have a problem. They may be don't know how much it's going to cost to fix that problem, or the depth of what the problem really is. But you've also done some work, like we talked about with a wonder kids over on the agency side, you work with a lot of agencies, I'm sure now how can an agency, especially in the marketing and advertising space, help a marketer better communicate? Because, as we know, their tentacles can often run deep inside an organization and extend in a common communication role outside of just that direct line that you have with them?

John Asbell 22:42

That's a great, that's a great, that's a great question, I will tell you that the way that I manage my agency partners is that I am very candid and transparent with them. And you'll and you'll find that I will give I will over explain things to them. And I will give them way too much context for what's going on in the business. And there's a reason that I do that. Because when I worked on the agency side, the thing that would drive me crazy was when we were getting these requests from our clients, and they just didn't seem to make sense. And it was always like, I'm missing some piece of context, I'm missing some kind of challenge that's happening in their organization, I'm missing something in order to really provide the most value that I can to them. And that's not, that's not helpful for anybody, it's not helpful for the client, it's not helpful for the agency. And so what I tend to do is just over explain everything to the day, because I'm well aware, they're not in my business every day, right? They're not they even the best agency partners are not in your business every day. Right? And, and so it just requires a lot of investment. You know, it requires investing in educating them, investing in giving them all the context of what's going on in the business. And then once you have done that, and you can challenge them to how would you help us solve this problem, you'll find that you get much better answers. And you'll find that you're much more comfortable letting them come in and present to other team members, other stakeholders, members of your leadership, because they're much able, they're much better able to speak to the real challenges that are going on with the business and they're much better able to solution real problems or give you real solutions to the problems. And and they're things that you can actually take in and go implement pretty quickly because they've skipped that whole issue. I don't really get the context of the business problem that I'm trying to help you solve. You know, it's like you're telling me that you need more cheaper leads? Okay, great. Like what why, you know, what I mean? What what, what is what is the driver behind that is, is it possible I could give you fewer better leads? Would that help you? You know, what I mean? Like, just as a very, very simple, simple example. But But yeah, so I always I've always over communicated with my agency partners, and Like, I'll find, you know, you've got a 30 minute check in, I'll find myself talking to them for 20 minutes about, you know, everything that's going on in the business, just so they have all the context and can go better help us, you know, tackle the challenges that we've got in front of us.

Kenneth Kinney 25:14

A lot of times, and I think I've found this out, especially on the consulting that I've done, even now, I probably learned it more than than I did, even when I was on the brand side of the agency side is when I'm on the agency side, I try to be more empathetic if you will, in feel like because I've been in a brand, I get what you're going through, but I don't, because I don't know what you're going through at that moment. And I think sometimes, especially agencies, overthink it without listening more to what it is. And they may think they understand the solution, the problem. But I mean, even with my background, and I've worked with a lot of the Fortune 200 And a lot of fortune 200 agencies, there's still a massive disconnect in between the two. And it's not for lack of trying, but sometimes it's for a lack of listening. So I love I love what you said. But the language of performance, I think also across teams internally is important, especially when it's a conversation with procurement or customer service, or even the call center, what advice would you give to a marketer who's trying to communicate what the expectations should be across those different teams?

John Asbell 26:22

Oh, wow, I like that. You mentioned call center.

Kenneth Kinney 26:25

I've worn this blood with you. So I get it. Yeah, please counsel me on what I went through.

John Asbell 26:31

So it's so it's so interesting. If I look back over my own career, and I think I mentioned I started an E commerce, right. So call center was not was not a part of what we were doing at that point, right. But but as I moved into the role with the agency, and I moved into, especially the home services space, call center is such a huge, important part of this mass, it has such an impact on what you do as a marketer, right? Because if you if you think about it, the business, the business cares about, not just the marketing spend, and not just the demand that you drove, they care about what happened all the way down at the bottom of the funnel, where did I collect money we're not. And and the reality is that it takes concerted partnership between marketing and between the call center sales team, whatever you whatever you call it in your given situation. And so I've had to just learn a ton, I know way more about call center than I ever wanted to know, I can tell you that. And it's just it's about working in partnership with them. And really seeing yourself as like, it can't be can never be US personnel, that can never be I gave you the leads, you didn't do what you're supposed to do with them, it can never be your leads or garbage. That's why we can't convert them, it can never be that it's always it that does not breed success in any way, shape, or form. In any situation. It just doesn't. So it's always got to be a How can I work together with them? In order to improve the situation? That's always the mentality that you have got to take, always? And like, you know, it can be things like, Can I help you with the scripting, like maybe, you know, I can give you some context on this lead source and the mentality of this person. And maybe we can use that input to improve the scripting that we've got that we use on this particular type of lead. But you know, it's, you mentioned empathy earlier in the conversation. And I think, and I think it's really taking that approach to those other stakeholders, being empathetic, trying to put yourself in their shoes, what is the challenges that they are solving, in their day to day role that maybe I could help them solve, I can't, I'm not saying I'm going to do their job for them, or I'm not saying I'm going to go, Hey, I have, you know, expertise that you don't have move out of the way it's a How can I how can I bring what I do to a better partner with you to solve the things that we need to solve together to produce the right result for the business? And, you know, there's so many examples of that and you know, the call center funnel there's so many breakpoints you know, what I mean? There's there's your your especially on that I deal with a lot of like inbound leads, which produce an outbound call. So there's so many breakpoints there, there's your your speed to lead, your contact rate, your conversion rate, your close rate, your all those things. There's so many breakpoints that happened in that funnel. And you know, you've got to be like part detective, in partnership with your sales team, to figure out where's the breakpoint that's impacting things the worst? And what can we go do in kind of a scrappy way to prove out that we could potentially fix it? And then maybe that leads to some bigger project down the road, but, but again, it's just you know, I think I think being empathetic to the issues that that the other teams are dealing with, is really, really the key.

Kenneth Kinney 29:46

You know, I talk a lot about connecting the dots and alignment and I love talking about the value of call centers and also where the break points are, that you just mentioned me the ads a million times where you're running an ad for 50% off of $100 project, and then they get to the call center and the call center is on the phone with them. Tell them it's only 4995. Well, the ad says 50% off. Yeah, yeah. And then you know, then there's some confusion there for the customer they don't understand. And then call centers blaming, marketing, marketing's blaming sales, sales is blaming everybody, and it's not them. But at the end of the day, it's not solving the problem for the customer. And unless you start aligning that and pulling it together, and being able to communicate with each other is such a role that isn't taught nearly enough in school specifically for where the customer journey goes across. Because it's all these breakpoints as a detective, they get exposed quickly.

John Asbell 30:44

Yeah. KENNETH, I've got a great story. You mentioned ads. So so the previous organization I worked for, we were running, this was specific to Facebook, we were doing a lot of Facebook advertising at the time. And we were running a campaign around Thanksgiving. And we had you know, a lot of different creatives in market at the time, but one of them had a piece of pumpkin pie in the in the image. And this was a lead ad, right? So it was, you know, the picture of the pumpkin pie, then a blurb about the product and a lead up

Kenneth Kinney 31:11

a guarantee. Click through on that. Yeah, if you're lucky,

John Asbell 31:14

but but here's here's the thing, my call center started telling me, we're getting leads for people who want pumpkin pie. What, what do we do? And I'm like, well, just Google pumpkin pie recipes and give it to them. That was the first thought but but no, I was like, oh, okay, I see the issue, right. It's like, it's like, you've got to, you've got to, I mean, that was a very specific example. And kind of a funny one. But but the broader issue is, these are people that are on Facebook, okay. They, they they're focused on, you know, pictures of their kids and what they have for dinner, they're not focused on like, your product. So you've got to, you've got to kind of take that mentality to recipe

Kenneth Kinney 31:50

for pumpkin pie, pumpkin pie using that for an HVAC system.

John Asbell 31:55

So you've got a sales team, like what here's, here's some thoughts about what you know, where this where this consumer is, in their journey, very upper funnel this point, right? They're not, they don't even really understand what the product is why they might want it. So you've got to take a step back, and instead of just going like, let me close the sale, you need to be like, Okay, how can I better educated person because clearly, you thought you were getting a pumpkin pie recipe, right? And so I love that story, just because it's so demonstrative of, you know, people's short attention spans and people going like, oh, yeah, pumpkin pie. Great. But but the reality is, it can create so much havoc, if you don't have that relationship with your because I mean, like, imagine a scenario where the two organizations are very siloed. And all the sales team is going marketing's a joke, they're just giving us leads for pumpkin pie recipes. Right? Whereas if you've got a decent enough relationship, you can have that conversation. Okay? No, no, that's not what this is, let's figure out how we can work together to improve that.

Kenneth Kinney 32:53

It is really a difficulty because this is something I love to put up pictures of silos, and talk about breaking down silos on stage. But I don't think a lot of times until you've worked in that kind of complex environment, that you could really understand the power of aligning your marketing with a consumer until you've run into just significant hurdles. And again, funny even funny examples like that. Yeah, where they're disconnected. So Well, John, is this a very everybody that comes on the show? What is your favorite kind of shark and why you're on A Shark's Perspective.

John Asbell 33:30

I mean, so can it help me eyes and tell you I could probably live in a in like three or four different kinds of sharks.

Kenneth Kinney 33:33

So not a lot...not many on the Mississippi River

John Asbell 33:36

Yeah. Oh, no, not at all. If you know, I would say a tiger shark, just because they kind of have the cool striping. And that's just a cool like, it's like two cool animals put together like a tiger and a shark. So I'm gonna go tiger shark.

Kenneth Kinney 33:50

That's, that's the so two days ago, I spoke on stage and I showed a video of me swimming and touching a tiger shark. Oh, really? Massive dark. Now it's one of my favorites as well. Well, John, it's a special time this show. Are you ready for the five most interesting and important questions that you're going to be asked today? I am ready. Alright, so a little bit of what we talked about was the superpower of language, really up use for the C suite and around but what's a better language to learn Spanish or French?

John Asbell 34:21

Who? Yeah, I'm gonna go Spanish. Just because I feel like you've got a higher likelihood of running into somebody that speaks Spanish in your everyday life as an American than someone who speaks French.

Kenneth Kinney 34:35

We don't have a border issue with people from Quebec. We do not cross. So, right. Alright, number two, we also talked a little bit about superpowers, which would you rather have the superpower of flying or invisibility?

John Asbell 34:52

I think definitely flying. I've always had a little bit of a fear of heights. And I feel like if I could fly, that would just immediately go away because there that immediately removes all of the danger. So I would go I would go.

Kenneth Kinney 35:04

Well, in truth, though, but if you did have the power of invisibility, you could tell everybody that you were. They didn't see you, but you were busy flying. Oh, that's very true. Yeah, that's great. Just make up all kinds of lies. Yeah, I was up there, flying through the buildings. Alright. Number three, who would win in a fight? The Justice League or the Avengers? That's we talked a little DC Marvel.

John Asbell 35:26

Yeah, we did. You know, I would probably the Justice League. It's one of those things about the characters in the Justice League is more like gods. You know, Superman is like a god, you know, really. And so like, you know, I would have to go Justice League, even though I'm probably a bigger fan of the Marvel characters.

Kenneth Kinney 35:44

Alright, number four, more preferred Legion channel, say product line, if you will. Air conditioning and heating or plumbing?

John Asbell 35:58

You know, they both have their plumbers, their their pluses.

Kenneth Kinney 36:03

They both have issues. If something breaks, there's a real urgency.

John Asbell 36:06

Oh, yeah. They're both very urgent. They're both very urgent. You know, probably air conditioning and heating, I would say is the is the favor just because the the cost benefit is just a lot is a lot greater on that one.

Kenneth Kinney 36:22

Fair enough. All right. Number five, the most important question that you're going to be asked today, biscuits or cornbread. Oh, biscuits. Yeah, this gets for sure. No doubt why so

John Asbell 36:33

easy. I do like cornbread, by the way, I don't mean to like say good jalapeno cornbread. Like he can't beat that. But, but a biscuit like a biscuit can be dessert, or it can be part of the meal. It's just super flexible. And like, I appreciate that. You know that that characteristic of my food?

Kenneth Kinney 36:52

Amen. No reservation there. So John, you and I should probably start a self help group for marketers who've been through some of these communication struggles. But where can people find out more about you find out more about ARS, what you're doing and keep up with you and more.

John Asbell 37:06

Yeah, I mean, you'll probably LinkedIn is the best place I'm pretty easy to find on that on that platform.

Kenneth Kinney 37:14

Alright, John, thank you so much for being with us today on A Shark's Perspective.

John Asbell 37:18

Thank you again, it's great.

[music]

Kenneth Kinney 37:25

So there was my conversation with John Asbell, the Vice President of digital marketing at American Residential Services, operating under the name ARS/Rescue Rooter, which is one of the nation's largest networks and suppliers of HVAC and plumbing services companies. Let's take a look at three key takeaways from a conversation with him.

Kenneth Kinney 37:42

First, great point for anyone in any role. Remember, you do your job every day, and senior leaders are making decisions based on the hours of nuance work that you're performing. Each cut, a leader looks at a problem, a common one that you're all trying to solve, but in a very different perspective. And they're all thinking about what you are saying from very different angles. When you think of problem solving, it's easy to look at a Rubik's Cube and think that everyone sees the same colors on each side the same way. There's a blue next to a green, above a red, and so on. But not everyone is looking at the same side of the cube. And remember, they trust your expertise, or should at least, but you have to communicate to them what the solution is and how you're going to get there. From their perspective, the better that you can understand how they look at the different signs and explain how to solve the problem, then it will also allow you to move further up into leadership positions. Because that skill allows you to earn trust. I love this quote from John, you're trying to build trust, or you're trying to improve the trust that already exists. So true. And that applies whether it's communicating with a C-suite, your team agencies, etc. Over my own career, I've recognized when this power existed in me in roles, and I've seen it in others. I wish even that I did it well all the time, but we're all continuing to learn and improve.

Kenneth Kinney 39:00

Second. So how do you learn the skill of C suite whispering as I call it, John says is through repetition. And that's true. But it's not always just hitting fastballs nonstop, some of the greatest batters generally knew well, how to hit curveballs. And you'll get asked a lot of questions fastballs in curveballs by leaders. John said, If you can't answer the question, then that's like putting blood in the water. So understanding what their perspectives are, what they care about, will help them move forward and move your initiatives forward. And a great reminder, these are just people that you're working with who just need to understand what you have to say.

Kenneth Kinney 39:35

Third, a good reminder of clarity. Draw a line from your ads in your messaging through your team through consumers through your call center your agency's clients to the C suite or even just your peers communicate with clarity. The more you communicate with clarity, the better expectations can be mutually understood. It's something I continue to work on every day, and I hope you will, too. Got a question send me an email today. enough at a shark's perspective.com

Kenneth Kinney 40:02

Thank you again for the privilege of your time, and I am so thankful to everyone who listens.

Kenneth Kinney 40:07

You have a superpower but whatever that power is. Your job today is to be just super like a Super Shark. See you soon and join us on the next episode of A Shark's Perspective.

(Music - shark theme)