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Writer's pictureRoger Courville, CSP

Maximizing your marketing spend | Cliff Quicksell, CSP, MASP, MASI

What can you learn from a guy who’s won 30+ awards for creative marketing campaigns?


Plenty!


(Oh, and is Cliff's last name really "Quicksell?" Listen and find out!)


In this episode of #ThoughtLeaderConversations, V2's Head of Strategy Roger Courville, CSP connects with Cliff Quicksell, CSP, MASP, MASI for serious inspiration in the creativity department. As you'll learn on Cliff's website, he helps those ready to stop letting others dictate the boundaries of their success, has lived the pleasures and perils of owning a business (nearly going bankrupt 5 times!), built multimillion-dollar equity positions in the process. Cliff has worked with clients from Sage Technologies to the Promotional Products Assocation Southwest.


As you listen in on the conversation you will:


  • Understand the value of integrating both digital and physical marketing strategies for more effective campaigns. Don't miss how Cliff has used "dimensional marketing" in connecting the dots for prospects!

  • Hear how real-life stories and analogies can make your marketing message more relatable and memorable to clients.

  • Learn how focusing on key clients and understanding their needs can optimize marketing dollars, rather than casting a wide net.

  • Discover the importance of having a clear, actionable marketing plan, including defined KPIs for evaluating client success.

  • Gain insights on how to create and use detailed client personas and vertical markets to better allocate marketing efforts.

  • Explore real-life examples of creative, out-of-the-box marketing campaigns that drive high engagement and results.

  • Learn the significance of fully committing to a marketing strategy and how it can differentiate a brand in competitive markets.





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Sponsor: V2, LLC, expert virtual and hybrid event production, www.VirtualVenues.com  

Host: Roger Courville, CSP, https://www.linkedin.com/in/rogerc/   


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UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT


  

[00:00:00] Roger Courville, CSP: What can you learn from a guy who's won more than 30 awards for creative marketing campaigns? Well, I think the answer is plenty and hello and welcome. One of those topics we'll get to today will be maximizing your marketing spend, but I know Cliff's got a deep, deep well that we can draw on for a little bit of a chat.

Hey, welcome to Thought Leader Conversations. Courville and this little crew at Virtual Venues sponsors these. This is a little crew that can help you. scale your virtual and hybrid event production team, uh, with a team that helps you focus on something other than tech or logistics, but we're not here to talk about us.

Uh, Cliff Quicksell, C S P importantly, helps those who are ready to stop letting others dictate the boundaries of their success and has lived the life, knows what business owners go through, uh, live the pleasures and perils of owning a business, nearly going bankrupt five times. That's an interesting stat to put out there in your bio clip.

Uh, built multi million dollar equity positions in the process, has worked with clients from Sage Technologies to the Promotional Products Association Southwest, and noticeably, uh, notably, Accomplished as a speaker, boasting the highest earned award with National Speakers Association, the certified speaking professional.

Cliff, glad you're here. Tell us a little about yourself and what you do. 

[00:01:20] Cliff Quicksell, CSP: Oh, thank you, Roger. It's a pleasure to be here. And thank you for the, I call it a gift and an opportunity to be able to share. So thank you. Yeah, I've, I've been in the, um, the speaking realm and speaking to business entrepreneurs, small to medium sized business entrepreneurs for close to 40 years now.

And I, you know, I realized that many times, you know, I mean, probably get into the gist of this during the conversation, but, uh, there was a, There was a major gap for many people not having people that they could rely on or people that they could talk to that could actually help them propel their businesses to the next level.

You know, a lot of these folks. don't have strategic plans and things like that. So how do you, how do you go about, I thought that there's a, there's a certainly an opportunity here for me to reach out to help people like that. And, um, you know, to just try to move the needle for folks at that level. You know, I've been in the, in the promotional space for close to, uh, over 40 years now.

And, uh, I've been speaking as I, as you mentioned at the onset here for, um, you know, the better part of that time. And, uh, it's been, it's been a great journey. 

[00:02:33] Roger Courville, CSP: So I explained the CSP, but you also, uh, M-A-S-P-M-A-S-I, give us a right background on, uh, just in case somebody doesn't know what those stand for.

Like me. 

[00:02:44] Cliff Quicksell, CSP: Well, well, these are two, uh, industry designations. M-A-S-M-A-S-P is Master Advertising Specialist Plus. Um, and I think in the promo industry there's less than, um. I think there's only about 22 people out of an industry of about 30, 000 that have that. Uh, the other one is the MASI, which is Master Advertising Specialty Information.

So I'm, I'm a big, I'm a big believer and fan of education. You know, As speakers, you know this, you know, we promote it all the time because that's the only way you can really get better. And, um, so, um, I, I work towards bettering my own. I love going to, like when we, we talked about going to influence, you know, I, I love going to influence.

I love listening to like a sponge. I try to absorb this information and any nugget that I can take away really, uh, I think if I can help me, it'll translate into helping others. And I think it works well. 

[00:03:42] Roger Courville, CSP: So, you know, when, when you agreed to come on the podcast and thank you so much, you know, I just perused your website and looked at your, you know, your speaking titles or blog posts and a number of things.

I forget exactly where I came up with the, the, the, the title of thinking about marketing span, but I thought, you know, that is an interesting angle when, When it comes to marketers allocating their budgets, what do you see as their biggest challenge when they're with all the things that they've got going on?

[00:04:16] Cliff Quicksell, CSP: From my perspective, I find that a lot of folks do too much. I don't know what really how to frame it, but they do too much, uh, casting the wide net with their marketing and not enough. Target and focusing with their marketing dollars. Um, I, I know that the folks that I work with that have really started to embrace the concept of being able to, you know, understand their, their clients a little bit better.

You know, who are my top clients? You know, what does that look like? And to what I was saying at the onset here is that most people don't even have a plan. Yeah, I've, I've asked people before. Who's your, who in your, your top tier clients, how many do you have? Uh, I don't know, maybe three or four. Okay. Well, what, what is the, what is the impetus behind that?

I mean, how do you measure that? What are the KPIs that you associated with a top level customer? And most people can't answer it. And that to me was, it was really, I was flabbergast really that, that people don't have a strategy and a strategic plan and are taking their, their marketing dollars. And they're just, Uh, basically throwing a get up against the wall and seeing what sticks instead of being really focused about, again, I go back to who is my, who are my top tier clients?

What does that look like? Being able to analyze the client and being able to say, You know what? This is what the ideal client looks like. I'm a big fan also of vertical markets. So if I'm targeting, like in the speaking world, you know, you have a, I'm sure you have an area of expertise that you focus on, and the type of clients that would buy that.

It's the same thing with me, in my speaking. I know, Mine is medium to small business entrepreneurs. That's where my focus is. Could I, could I speak at a Google possibly? But the thing is it wouldn't resonate as much as it would with it from the messages that I carry to somebody that's more in the medium to small size business.

So being able to know your niche, know your marketing, knowing how to spend, where to allocate those funds into the existing customers, and then looking at the existing customers and saying, what are the, what are the, um, the, the metrics involved in that? What, what is the demographic, the demographics, the size of the company, you know, who's the target and how do I find prospects in the same space so that I can, you know, allocate those marketing dollars to try to get more business of like type customers instead of just doing this broadcast.

Uh, like I said, casting a wide net approach, which generally sometimes brings in the little fish and sometimes the big ones. But if you, you know, if you, you have to be, I think you have to be mindful. If you're out there fishing and you bring in one like this, and you don't follow up with it, guess what? It can tarnish and hurt your brand.

So it's better for me to be able to use the correct bait to go after the right people that I want to target. And therefore I want to be able to allocate those marketing dollars, uh, appropriately.

[00:07:39] Roger Courville, CSP: You bringing up just the, the demographic and psychographic profiling. Uh, you know, when my background in, you know, corporate marketing and it was in product marketing where we had to go create specific personas and be very specific about the, the nature of them. But the first time I ever ran into that, uh, actually, like 30 years ago, I did a stint in financial services and I, I I remember being blown away that as I learned that there's a difference between my target market and maybe my actual market because the, the agency that we were working with, we, we sold, uh, financial research to money managers and brokers and they came back after doing an analysis and this was my first ever exposure to this and 51 year old white male that has six digits in the market, who actively trades in their own portfolio six or more times a month.

I was like, Whoa, that's specific. And of course we had, uh, but that's then what they used for their copywriting. You mentioned, uh, uh, that a lot of times entrepreneurs don't have a strategic plan or they may not understand the KPIs. If somebody comes to you, what questions do you start asking them with regard to guiding them in the, in the right direction?

[00:08:59] Cliff Quicksell, CSP: Well, most of the time folks will ask me, you know, what company, what type vertical market should I go after? Um, and I say, well, where do you have an expertise or where do you have success currently? And if we can identify that and kind of drill down at that level, that would be the first place that I would start.

You know, if you had a clean slate and you were able to say, and somebody, if I said to someone in a perfect world, What would an ideal customer look like to you, from a sales standpoint, profitability, engagement, all of those type of things? What would the ideal customer look like? And you know, then they start, you know, going back, well this customer, no, you have no customers.

But you have some business acumen and understanding. What would an ideal customer look like? Well, it would be somebody that was doing 150, 000 a year with me at a 50 percent gross profit, etc, etc. Okay. What markets can drive that kind of, and you know, what are you now currently, what are you doing? Well, I have banking and finance.

I have a hospitality and I have, uh, uh, aerospace. Okay. So of those, let's try to target those markets that fit those profiles. I don't want you targeting somebody that's going to place. you know, one order with you a year where you might get a 4, 000 order, but you're going through this, you're churning through the same information and whatnot, or the same work as you would to get the 100, 000 piece of business.

And sometimes for in my audience, that's very, very hard for people to click because sometimes people in my space feel like, well, you know what, you know, if I, if I got 1, 000 piece of business, that's, that's good. That's good. But you're doing the same work. And so for people to understand, try to get to that understanding where if you really get to know your customer, and then here's the other side of it, what, once you have a customer, do you know what the lifetime value of the customer is?

Okay. And it's shocking that most people cannot tell you that. I've had this customer for, uh, eight years. Well, how much money have you generated with that customer? How much money have you lost? A potential business have you not made? And, you know, what is your attrition rate with customers? How long do you keep them on board?

And to understand those types of things, I will tell you that I find it getting started with people at the grassroots level, at the, at the onset, is one of the things that really makes a significant difference as they start to move ahead. I don't think that you can really move ahead from a marketing and sales perspective, especially when you're looking for help until you can get a baseline from which to work.

[00:11:54] Roger Courville, CSP: Are you seeing any in your market? I mean, you mentioned your target is entrepreneurs in small and medium, large, small and medium companies, right? Are you seeing any particular trends, uh, in, in your market segment? 

[00:12:13] Cliff Quicksell, CSP: The, um, I would say that the,

I would say in some cases, a lot of people, because of what's going on, uh, not to get off on a tangent, but, uh, what's going on in the political and economic space right now and the uncertainty, I find a lot of people are just, uh, willing to give up. I find that as a trend and that's, it's, it's, it's a sad trend to me.

Well, not necessarily give up, but just basically throw their hands up and go, I have no control. Well, but you, you actually do. You actually do have a lot of control and the fact that you're, you're succumbing to what's going on, um, You know what? Everything in life is cyclical. You know, there will be, there will be a, uh, what's the, it's not a reckoning, but there will be a, there'll be a shift.

There'll be a change, right? And in some cases it's positive. In some cases it's not. But at the end of the day, that's one of the trends that I do see. I find that optimism is not as prevalent as it used to be. And for me, I'm, I, you know, to the fault, my, um, a friend of mine once said, he goes, You're, you were overly optimistic.

And I said, but isn't that, excuse me. I said, that's a choice. I mean, I can be a pessimist and a downer, but what good does that serve me or anybody else around me? So I, unfortunately I see that, but, but on the other side of that, I think that the people that embrace what's going on and understand that there's the things that they control, they can control.

They can control. I think that those people really do. It's that spark. And then all of a sudden. it's that inertia that they start creating that makes the difference. 

[00:14:06] Roger Courville, CSP: One of the things I noticed, uh, and I forget if it was on a blog post or someplace on one of your sites, but, uh, That you seem to love emphasizing real life lessons over.

Over theory, would that be a fair way to characterize how you approach speaking and consulting? Um, 

[00:14:24] Cliff Quicksell, CSP: um, yeah, much to the chagrin of my clients, because I, I, I tell. Give examples of stories all the time. Yes, 

[00:14:32] Roger Courville, CSP: that was my follow up. I mean, just, just out of curiosity, do you have a particularly impactful story that, that, uh, illuminates how, how you go about things?

[00:14:44] Cliff Quicksell, CSP: It is. There's a, there's a couple that I could share with you, but one in particular is my, my son is a U. S. Navy pilot. He flies, um, helicopters for the Navy. And before he went into the service, uh, he and I went out on a dad's trip. We went fishing, we went skydiving. We did just hung out. We just did some cool things for a weekend and it was nice.

And we're sitting there and, uh, a very dear friend of mine has a charter boat on the Chesapeake Bay and. We're sitting there and it's just my son and I, the first mate and the captain. And next thing you know, I'm looking around and I'm there's 25 lines in the water. And I go, Frank, there's two of us. And he goes, as long as you have a line in the water, you're dangerous.

And my son turned to me and he goes, that's exactly what you preach to people all the time, isn't it? Each line is an opportunity. So the more opportunities that you put out there in the space is a more of an opportunity for you to catch something or to acquire something. And I was like, he does listen.

It was fantastic. So I use that all the time. All the time I use my, I'll have to give him kudos. Frank Carver owns a charter boat, uh, called loosen up out of deal, Maryland. And he, I'll, I always use it. As long as you have a line in the water, you're dangerous. So if you're out marketing to think about it, it's a great parallel.

If you're out marketing and you send out one email, you have one opportunity. You send out 500 emails, 500 opportunities. And so that's just one story that I, I use quite frankly. Um, yeah. And if you want, I share another one that's pretty good. I learned this from one of the speakers at, uh, at, uh, NSA, but I don't recall the speaker's name, but sometimes I'll take, um, like a, I have a journal that I put together, that's a creative marketing journal, people that archive their ideas, et cetera, et cetera.

And so I'll hold it up during my presentation and I'll say, Hey, let me ask you a question. First of all, I asked the question, how many of you have ever been bungee jumping? Because I have a thing I call the the 23 degree rule and that is When you're standing on the bungee stage with the rope wrapped around you, that's commitment.

But until you get to 23 degrees, you are not committed at all. And I tell that story after I hold up the journal and I say, if I told you that in this journal right here. This will change the marketing direction for you. If you follow the guidelines, if you follow the rules, if you, if you read the FAQs and reach out to me and who would want this in the audience and inevitably everybody's hand goes up and I'll go, but who really wants it?

And everybody's like, Hey dummy, do you see my hands up here? I want to, I said, but who really wants it? And literally sometimes I'll stay, I won't even put it down for like a minute or two. And then somebody will get out of their chair and come up to the front. And I give it to them. I said, that is commitment.

Putting your hand up saying, yeah, I want to go bungee jumping is not commitment. What's commitment is getting on the platform and going 23 degrees. And when you do that, that's committed. And so, and I, and it was interesting. I did that recently. I was speaking in Chicago and I did that and you saw people, you saw people when I handed it off to the other person, they were like, Oh man, all I had to do was get up and I go, you know what?

You said you wanted it, but you didn't want it bad enough. That was the difference. So it was, it's, I love using stories and analogies. It really does make a difference. 

[00:18:33] Roger Courville, CSP: Do you have preferred modalities with regard to when you're working with clients? I mean, email, promotional items, trade shows, do you, when, when you're talking with them, I mean, I, I, I know that.

Do you, do you, do you have a preferred, uh, tactic? 

[00:18:54] Cliff Quicksell, CSP: No, I think that there's a, and I don't want this to sound corny, but I think that, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm a former, I'm a more martial artist. And, you know, I, when everybody else was walking out of the karate kid going, well, that was corny. I was sitting there going, boy, there was a message in there, right.

When he was telling him, you know. You need balance. You can't do it one way. You have to have balance. And, and I, and I believe in that wholeheartedly. I believe email, uh, if it's appropriate doing trade shows. Um, I'm really big into the AI space right now. I mean, it's, I'm doing things for my business, uh, with a partner of mine that, um, are, will probably revolutionize the promo industry as I, we know it.

Uh, but from an AI standpoint, but creative marketing, that's really where I started. And I thrive about doing dimensional marketing that is relatable, that is actionable, that when people get it, it's like. Things that they don't ever, ever see. Like we've done some, we've done some remarkable marketing pieces.

Um, I should have had it out, so I didn't want to dig it out while we're on this call, but, um, I did, we did this remarkable marketing piece to influencers and we've had a hundred percent engagement, 100 percent engagement with this. It's been, it was, it was crazy. And so I believe that, and again, there was a, an email follow up strategy to that, there was a mails follow up strategy with that, there was a dimensional marketing strategy with that, but that all combined together is what made the whole process work remarkably well.

[00:20:36] Roger Courville, CSP: I love the idea and I'm not, um, I'm not a real marketer like you, but I love the idea of direct mail, right? I mean, you go back far enough in history and we used to complain about how much stuff hit your mailbox. Now, nothing hits my mailbox. Meaning I look at every single thing that hits my mailbox as compared to the, you know, 2000 emails that I get a month in, in promotional email or in just various things that I've subscribed to.

So, I mean, I just love the idea of direct mail. Being able to think outside of the box with regard to going, how do I, how do I cut through the noise? 

[00:21:10] Cliff Quicksell, CSP: Yeah. And you know, that's the, you know, Roger, that's the key to this, man. Really, if you think about it, you know, you could send out any number of things, but it, this is why I say it has to be so targeted.

and focused to that, that recipient so that it just, to your point, it just razor cuts right through all the things. I mean, hitting the, you were talking about the emotional triggers. I don't know if you've ever interviewed Faith Popcorn, but she is amazing. If you ever get a chance to talk to her, she wrote a book called the Popcorn Report, and she speaks a lot on the psychographics and understanding those emotional triggers that you hit with people.

that make a, that make a difference. Um, it, yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm with you and it's, it is cyclical. There were times, there was a period in the promo space where people didn't want it, you know, and again, I think it was all age generated. Now all of a sudden because of how prolific email has become and people have just been inundated with it now to get something dimensional in their hands or something that's creative in their hands, I think is really, really cool.

is now starting to come back. It's, and it's, it's been very, very positive. 

[00:22:28] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah. 

[00:22:28] Cliff Quicksell, CSP: Can I get, can I give you an example of that? 

[00:22:30] Roger Courville, CSP: Please. 

[00:22:31] Cliff Quicksell, CSP: Okay. As a speaker, I have the example right here. So I thought to myself, how can I do something creative? And I'm not, I'm one of those type of people that, uh, as long as it doesn't offend anybody, spiritually, mentally, or physically.

The gloves are off. I'm not going to do anything that's risque and off the chart. Like I don't, I don't like that. But for me, I want to do something that somebody goes, how in the world did he think of that? That's amazing. So I came up with this idea as a speaker. I thought I'm willing to invest to be able to get somebody to hire me as a speaker, but I could send a sizzle reel or a book or whatever.

And like everybody else's that's stacked up on their desk, right? How do I do something different? So I came up with the idea, and this is one that I just had done. Uh, but I, I created a box and it basically says, um, um, I want you to sit down and look yourself in the eye and ask yourself this question.

Should I, and when you open it up, should I hire Cliff Quicksill to come speak at my event? And we put the person's replica of their bobble head inside the box. And when they shake the box, it says, yeah, it's like nodding their head. Yeah. So I want you to look yourself in the eye. Now I had friends of mine say to me, that has got to be the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen.

Okay. I've sent like eight of them out and I got four speaking gigs from it. If you think it's stupid, I'm going to keep doing it just like that. I have no, I don't care. Again, that, and here's the emotional side of this is nobody's going to throw that out with their likeness on a bobblehead and their name on it.

No, they're not going to do it. And the thing is people in this, in the marketing aspect, and I'm all about taking calculated risks, but I want to do things that are different. I'm I want to do things that are unique. I want to do things that my competitors that speak in the same space that I am, I don't want, I don't, I don't want this, the person that hires that speaker to go, Oh, I want John over here as opposed to Cliff.

I want them to say, I want Cliff. That's my job. That's how I eat. That's how I feed my family. Right? So, um, I mean, I didn't, I did a piece where I do this thing on creative marketing where I do, uh, my marketing pieces, uh, orange juice can stimulating your creative juices is the name, one of my set segments and I put it in.

I have, when you open it up, it smells like oranges. It has collateral material on the inside. I got two speaking engagements in Puerto Rico the same week, one on a Monday, one on a Thursday from two different organizations, just from sending that out. And the woman that did the introduction for the sales and marketing executives of the Caribbean, she spent 10 minutes introducing me at the audience, showing the piece.

These were all to creative marketers. So again, it's one of those things to your point that I think it really does resonate with people when you're willing to step out of the box a little bit and do things that most people would be afraid to do. 

[00:25:38] Roger Courville, CSP: I've seen even some creative things in the world of virtual events.

Like a client once who, who had a big launch and they were, um, they had targeted a hundred analysts and, and journalists and they sent them all an electric guitar and they were cheap guitars. They were a hundred bucks or something like that. So, you know, multiply, you know, a hundred times a hundred. But they had a hundred percent of people show up to your point.

[00:26:10] Cliff Quicksell, CSP: Yeah. And imagine, imagine what they would, well, they had a hundred percent. So great. That would be, that's fantastic. But imagine if they sent them the guitar strings only and they used each of the guitar strings was like a core value of the event and said, come to the event and we'll give you the guitar.

[00:26:26] Roger Courville, CSP: See, that's why 

[00:26:27] Cliff Quicksell, CSP: there's a lot of ways you could spin that. 

[00:26:29] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah. Tell me about some of your awards. What, what did you, what did you do to knock down all those awards? Was that, uh, like client projects or 

[00:26:39] Cliff Quicksell, CSP: client projects and, and personal projects that I've worked on? The majority of them I would say would be more client projects that I've done for clients.

Um, probably, I mean, to date, I think I've won. I think that bio that I had was a little wrong. I've done over 50 right now. Um, so, you know, and they vary. Um, I did one for a guy, unfortunately, I wish I had it available. I could show it to you, but, um, I did one for a, um, Well, like this one I told you about, um, we did this influencer box.

We haven't gotten an award for it yet, but I would, I put money on the fact that we will. Um, but we did a theme for, uh, like a movie theme. And what we were trying to do is we were trying to address influencers. within these major organizations, because we realize this is one of my clients. It's a packaging company.

They do creative, uh, onboarding packaging. And I said, you know, we need to address the key person within that organization. That knows the key people within their organization that have the wherewithal, the ability and the, um, skill set to be able to sell creative packaging. So we came up with this theme of the movies and, uh, when you, it was a black box and it was big, it was probably 20 by 20 by eight inches deep.

And when you open the box, it was all black. Open the box on the flap where all these movie stars and there was a sound chip that started playing like the MGM, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, right? And we put scent in there too and it smelt like popcorn. So now all of a sudden you're getting a dose of two things.

Wow. The scent, the sound, and then we had a pair of Ray Ban sunglasses in there with a hang tag on it that said, you're going to need these when you open the box. You take the tray out. And maybe somebody put the sunglasses on or didn't, I don't know. But inside was another box that basically said, we want to congratulate you on your starring role.

And when you open the box, There was a video screen in there that streamed of me saying, Hey Roger, I bet you're wondering what this is all about. Why am I getting this video? And I told a little story back to the story part. You know, we realized that you are a superstar within your organization. And you know, the stars within your organization that would be able to, we'd love to be able to set up a webinar with you, et cetera.

But what was really cool is in the bottom, there was a star that had like Roger's name printed on the star and the box illuminated underneath the star and lit up. And I'm telling you, everybody that got that called and said, we were, we were, she, one guy said, I know I've opened this thing a hundred times.

I've got my staff around looking at it. And so we were able to acquire a relationship with, uh, a 1. 4 billion company and become a preferred vendor, like overnight with them. So, you know, it's doing things like that, that, I mean that have that impact. I know. And some people go, well, that was very expensive.

Yeah. But how much would you pay to be connected with a 1. 4 billion company or a hundred million dollar company? Would you spend 500 bucks? I would all day long. So anyway, just, just, 

[00:30:11] Roger Courville, CSP: you get my brain spinning because I've, you know, I've been, See, next month will be 25 years in this space, but I'm, I'm just, my brain's spinning back to various things, clients who have done something dimensional now they haven't, you know, haven't been 500 boxes, but, and I mentioned the guitars, um, Adidas sending out swaths of, you know, of, uh, cloth, meaning because they were like going to do a dog and pony show for the next season's shirts and clothing.

So they sent out, you know, um, physical things. I've seen lunch and learns. I've seen, uh, people send out chocolate, um, et cetera, et cetera. But, um, nothing quite 

[00:30:57] Cliff Quicksell, CSP: for your, for your space, for instance, I had a friend of mine that sent out many safes. to everybody that was going to be on the call. And they said, when you get on the call, we'll give you the combination.

So they were actually able to do a live onboarding right there where people would open up and the different things that they had inside. That's that's creative. 

[00:31:19] Roger Courville, CSP: That's fun. 

[00:31:20] Cliff Quicksell, CSP: That gets people engaged. 

[00:31:24] Roger Courville, CSP: I love, you know, because, you know, a line or a way that I've taught virtual presentation skills for a long time is don't connect to connect through, right?

And think about the physical, the physicality of a person sitting there, right? It's maybe, maybe that's just taking a break and having people stand up and stretch or something like that. But I've actually worked with clients where they hired a DJ. Yeah. And got people dancing, and 

[00:31:52] Cliff Quicksell, CSP: I'll be darn, 

[00:31:52] Roger Courville, CSP: literally had a dance party, et cetera, but I love you got my brain spinning,

I love thinking about how I could put something in their hand so that their dimensionality is more than just a computer screen, right? So that there's a, there's some physical thing, uh, worked. FedEx at one point where they were sending out binders and it was for employee onboarding. Um, but they sent out physical binders with candy and pen to write in and stuff like that.

So that. Even though, you know, the whole thing was virtual, there was a physical dimension to the experience. Somebody had while they were sitting at their desk. So, um, I know that's in a way, probably nothing special relative to the kind of thing that you're thinking about, but 

[00:32:40] Cliff Quicksell, CSP: no, no, no, don't, don't discount that.

I think that that's, I think, you know what? Probably not as much as you, but I probably do 20, 20, 30 zoom calls a week. Nobody does that. Nobody does what you're suggesting, that I've seen. Very few. Imagine if you were able to do that. How would, how would that, I mean, I'm sure there's statistics on it, that level of engagement, how much better would the learning be?

How much more would the retention be from the learning? 

[00:33:13] Roger Courville, CSP: I was teaching, uh, a voice exercise at one point and I, and I had people stand up and, and so they could do this breathing exercise so they could learn diaphragmatic breathing as part of this particular exercise that I was, I was teaching them and one lady type in, she says, I'm in a Starbucks and everybody was looking at me weird, but I did it anyway.

But, and it added some levity because, you know, I, I'm, I'm, I'm reading out people's names and, and dialoguing with the audience, even when it's large. Um, and, and everybody jumped in and started dialoguing too, meaning, you know, responding to what she was talking about and, and it was fun. Um, You're right. Not a lot of people do it.

[00:33:58] Cliff Quicksell, CSP: There was a gentleman from IBM that once said when, and I wish I knew who it was. He said, if everybody's doing it a certain way, go the other direction. And I, I believe that if, if no one is doing that, why not try it? Why not try it? I think that what you just said there, that opened up some ideas for me as well on ways that I can make mine more engaging.

a lot more engaging. So anyway, thank you for 

[00:34:32] Roger Courville, CSP: that. One of the challenges, uh, you know, I mean, All we do is virtual event production, right? I mean, I say we, um, you know, I still have my own independent speaking business, but I'm part time for, for virtual venues and most of it's corporate and that's okay.

It's information transfer and whatever. But one of the core challenges, particularly that marketers face is that people have been enculturated into passivity, meaning. If they show up to the live event, much of the time, if not most of the time, they've just been enculturated to just passively listen. And one of the challenges people have sometimes is getting people to actively participate, right?

Active learners remember your message better than passive learners do, right? And so, just being interactive, like, immediately, right out of the gate. sets a different tone, um, in a virtual presentation. And it's scary how few people do that. 

[00:35:31] Cliff Quicksell, CSP: So let me ask you a quick question because that's interesting. I had a friend of mine that used to work for, I think it was go to webinar or whatnot.

And he was saying to me that they have some back end analytics. I don't know if it's true, but he says where they can actually determine. whether or not somebody is passively listening or actively involved. And I was like, how do they do that? He goes, there's algorithms that they have. And it was really interesting.

I was doing a presentation and I could sense that there was a, a lull. And he said, here's the thing, when I looked at the analytics, when you got to that slide, you spent eight and a half minutes on that. And you could actually see the engagement level just drop. What great information to know that I need to keep it tight.

And I got to go through it to keep people engaged. So is there, are there analytics like that that are out there? 

[00:36:29] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah. So, uh, in fact, go to webinar was the very first platform that had that. And it, what it would do is it would detect the active application on the end user's computer. So if you clicked, you know, webinar and opened up email.

It would now register that your seat as inattentive. And, um, they were the, there's a few platforms that have that kind of thing now, but yeah, I mean, in fact, for me, that's one of the reasons why I've always recommended people use a whole ton of slides. I was, um, use way more slides because here's an exercise for you.

Watch 10 minutes of any form of television and count the number of camera cuts, which is like when it changes from this camera to this camera or changes scenes. Right. So I did that once with a documentary on public television, and it was it was 301 camera cuts in 10 minutes. So We've, we've been enculturated into things visually changing, and I don't say I don't, don't add more content, just spread your content over more slides will keep that rate of visual change up.

Now, it doesn't have to be every three seconds, but is that, you know, if we, what we do in person and, you know, you show up with 10 slides or 30 slides or whatever, whatever you got going, take some of those slides and just explode them out and say, Hey, I could, I could take that one slide and turn it into five slides.

Okay. and just keep the visual changing more quickly. Now speaking of visuals or 45 minute presentation. That's interesting. So 

[00:38:13] Cliff Quicksell, CSP: for visuals, um, I know that, um, most slide decks, if you're using slides should not be a lot copy heavy. So are you a big believer in using, uh, visuals like photographs and things like that to really drive the message?

Yeah. 

[00:38:28] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah, I'm not a purist because, you know, like you, I serve, I serve corporate people, but remember that the brain sees text on a slide as an image before it kicks into reading mode, right? Now the, the, the challenge with, with text heavy slides is that you can read four to seven times more quickly than I can speak.

And, and that increases your cognitive dissonance. But, But we, we digress. 

[00:38:56] Cliff Quicksell, CSP: No, no, no. I think marketing standpoint, I think it's, it's excellent. I mean, look, marketing is about pushing a message, right? 

[00:39:04] Roger Courville, CSP: Right. 

[00:39:05] Cliff Quicksell, CSP: And if I can, if I can make that, if I can use less, if I can, if I can have more impactful information being absorbed.

That's better for me. My message is going to stick at that point. 

[00:39:16] Roger Courville, CSP: Right. 

[00:39:19] Cliff Quicksell, CSP: Do 

[00:39:19] Roger Courville, CSP: you just, do you use PowerPoint? I mean, when you speak in person or how do you, how do you, uh, how do you do your thing? 

[00:39:27] Cliff Quicksell, CSP: I do. I do. I use PowerPoint. I tried to, but you've opened up something for me because typically I like keeping it smaller amount of slides and I just use the, I use a lot of graphics.

So like an image, if I'm talking about. You know, like I do an opening about that. The story I told you about lines in the water, right? Okay. I have a, I have a picture of the back of a boat that has like 20, uh, fishing rods in there. So I can have that up there with one or two words. And I use PowerPoint more for me as a trigger.

When I see the image, I know what I need to talk about. And then I can go, I can elaborate on the messaging, but I'm, I'm thinking that the And again, but you've given me something to think about here. So I'm a presentation I'm doing, uh, tomorrow. I may go back and redo the whole slide deck.

[00:40:22] Roger Courville, CSP: Well, you know, for me, this was just me, you know, trying to figure stuff out creatively, not unlike you, right? I mean, the, the old adage was, Oh, you should have a slide every two minutes or something like that. I'm like, Well, that's not the psychosocially somebody sitting in your virtual audience is having an experience It's a lot more like watching television than a physical being in an in person seminar, right?

So what does television do? So I actually went and looked at some of the primary research that came out of like film schools on you know Like for instance, um, they studied there was a There was a study that came out of UCLA or USC's You film school that looked at the way attention was captured in, in all of the blockbuster movies going back like 70 years, right?

Gone with the wind and Jaws and, you know, Star Wars, et cetera. And they actually found that there was a similar technique that was used to bring people's attention back to, to the screen, because there's no such thing as 100 percent attention. And it was called a moment of, they called it a moment of urgency.

Let's see. And that could be something that triggers the brain, right? It could be a loud noise. It could be a laugh, a flash. It could be something, but, uh, and I forget the, I forget the, uh, the scientific word for it, but it's, it's like, how well can you actually pay attention to something? Even if you want to, and the answer is nobody can pay 100 percent attention and, and oh, by the way, my webinars are not like Peter Jackson producing Lord of the Rings.

So, so I'm like, okay, what do I have to do for a moment of urgency to bring someone back? And because to you, to the point that you, that you rightly made, if your message doesn't get through, You're wasting your breath, 

[00:42:12] Cliff Quicksell, CSP: right? Right. Yeah. That's, uh, you know, it's here. You were kind enough to have me as a guest on your present, your platform.

And yet I'm walking away much richer than I was when I started. So thank you for that. that's, that's amazing. 

[00:42:29] Roger Courville, CSP: Well, um, you know what? We're a little company, right? There's only a dozen of us. We play in an industry with, uh, with a lot of really big people, uh, big clients or big companies. And we thought, you know, what do we do?

We have a really killer team who really knows their stuff. And we know a lot of people. So let's just start having conversations and it's been, it's been really fruitful, but the point and the people that, that listen, right? I mean, we, we don't have a huge audience, but I mean, the people that listen like the fact that we're just having a conversation, right?

You're not making a presentation. And I very much want to say, Hey, People QuickSellSpeaks. com, click QuickSell, but that point of, of, of authenticity is why all of our clients are super long term, you know, the good news is once they, once they come on board, it's all relationship. So, 

[00:43:27] Cliff Quicksell, CSP: yeah, you know, that's, that is such a powerful word is authenticity.

And there's so much fake and phoniness out there right now. And the people that, and when you really dig through the dig through everything and you find out that the people that you're working with are real and authentic, man, there's just something inspiring about that. And you feel there's a comfort level with that, that, you know, that you're going to be treated right.

And that, that's really, that's really, so kudos to you and the team at virtual venues. That's amazing. 

[00:44:04] Roger Courville, CSP: Cliff, what, uh, what questions should I have asked you that I haven't asked you? 

[00:44:09] Cliff Quicksell, CSP: The one that I get all the time? 

[00:44:12] Roger Courville, CSP: Bring it. 

[00:44:13] Cliff Quicksell, CSP: Cliff, is, uh, Quicksell really your last name?

Every show, every time. So to put everybody's, uh, because a lot of, you know, the big thing is credibility is important. And if you start going in and you, I'm a sales and marketing guy and your name is quick sell, come on, most people think I changed it, but I did not born and raised with it. 

[00:44:39] Roger Courville, CSP: I love it. Any final words for our audience in, in there, besides that primary website that I've got up there, quick sell speaks.

com. Any other ways that you prefer to be connected with? 

[00:44:52] Cliff Quicksell, CSP: People can connect with me, uh, directly on my mobile phone, 301 717 0615, or you can connect with me on my email at cliff at quicksalespeaks. com. You know, I have a weekly blog that I do called 30 Seconds to Greatness that I, uh, um, I've had some really good traction with that.

And, um, you know what, I'm, I'm, as to the point about what I, what I would say to your audience, and that is, uh, Um, yeah, you said it, you want better business, be authentic with your marketing. And I think that you, you're going to get not more business. You're going to get the right business with that. And I think that's, 

[00:45:33] Roger Courville, CSP: that's a good word.

Yeah. Uh, the right business. Cliff, thank you so much for taking a little time today. 

[00:45:43] Cliff Quicksell, CSP: Roger is such a pleasure meeting you and getting to know you. So, uh, and thank you for everything and thank you for the, this gift and the pleasure to do this. 

[00:45:50] Roger Courville, CSP: Well, it's, uh, it's mutual. We, I, I. You're a pro. And so I'm, I'm very thankful for you spending a little time with us and we thank you here at the virtual venues for spending a little time with us.

Thanks again to our sponsor today, Virtual Venues, where you can instantly scale your virtual and hybrid event production team. We'll catch you on the next episode of Thought Leader Conversations.

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