Own The Space w/Guest Ian Ord. Part 2 of 2

Welcome to the Oil and Gas Sales and Marketing podcast where every week your hosts Mark LaCour and Matt Bertram share proven strategies and real-world tactics to help you connect with customers and close more deals. Let's do this. Welcome back to the Oil and Gas Sales and Marketing podcast. This is part two of two of our interview with Ian with Fifth Ring. Enjoy. So Ian, I sit in there you have a slide deck on paper sitting in front of you. Yeah. What is that? This is a

rhythm of a presentation I'm gonna give earlier on that shows the role of the connective tissue. You talk about the single point of truth. I might talk about connective tissue of the ability for an organization to embrace one system that will navigate from marketing which could include the targeting of prospect, the perfect world prospect, the identification and targeting of prospect through to messaging and positioning, through to

content and what the customer cares about not what the company cares about and that's hugely important. Identification of personas that are involved in the buying decision and what kind of content they're gonna need to move their world towards you, through to acceptance of an opportunity, sales or marketing qualified lead, marketing qualified lead, sales qualified lead before we put the dogs of war on it from the BD function from a data set that we

can find a comfort level of the sales team of putting in sufficient good quality data that allows us as marketers to segment that data and target that data and to cut and slice and dice that data so that we might continue to have a dialogue with these people and nurture it. We've lived through a time each of us where we were responsible for nurturing the deal in a physical space but telephones and in fact...

Playing golf and taking people fishing and buying drinks and getting to know not just your prospect, not just your client but his family and what's important to him and those relationships were nurtured over time because we didn't have the technology to allow us to do it instantaneously or remotely. And all of that is still important but what's the parallel of that nurture? How do we keep that deal going? How do we keep that interest level?

How do we keep that interest level going? Looking at a data set that says it's gone cold, it's gone away, let's start again, then coming through to working with the sales team to say, what's the rhythm of the sale? Let's put that into a gated process. Let's monitor how that gated process works. Let's look at the time frames, the predictability that you were talking about, Matt, in order that we might then be able to have a grown-up

conversation with finance and the chief revenue officer, the CEO, to say this is the value of our pipeline based on the timelines that we've now learned over time. We should see a conversion at 57, 77. Doesn't matter what the rate is. That doesn't matter. That's the reality then. If you can improve it, then the revenue will accelerate and grow. But you can have a grown-up conversation about what the business's true performance metric is.

And Ian, you no longer have CEOs when they're doing board meetings undercutting the revenue projections by 20% for a safety factor. For safety. They're doing that because they know that the numbers are getting from sales and marketing. Typically, they're wrong. They either go over it or they go under it. So they're padding it, right? They're cushioning it. However,

Matt Giaculloby, if you told the CEO a number and you hit that number and he was able to report to the board the exact number ahead of time, I mean, it just blows your mind. Do you imagine what that would do to shareholder value? Oh, it would be insane. And we have the ability to do it. The technology's there. It's not expensive. It's just a matter of changing culture and process because we're doing something different. And I think that may be the hardest part, not

the process, but I think the culture may be the hardest part. Well, I want to add to what you're saying because what I'm seeing with a lot of bigger publicly traded companies across the board, not just in the way on gas, is a lot of the people that are taking over the CEO role are coming out of sales or marketing. Okay. And that's where this culture is starting to change. It's not an engineer anymore. It's also new. Historically, in the

all-in-gas space, whatever engineer had social skills worked their way up the ladder. The entertainment's engineer. Yeah. And they end up running the company. Now, in the industry that is so engineering centric that works, but even in all-in-gas, you're starting to see people with sales and marketing experience climb to the top. And I think it's needed. Well, you sell in everything that you do, right? And understanding marketing is so

integral in how it all fits together. So I think that just as the industry's evolving with the technologies evolving, it's coming together and the CROs and the CEOs understand marketing because I've had those conversations. I'm sure we all have had where you're talking to the CEO and you're talking marketing nomenclature and they're just looking at you like, okay, we're speaking two different languages here. I need to retool it. I need to speak more to the P&L. I need to

speak to the bottom line because they have things when they're talking to you that are running through their head of like, I need this to happen or I need to go do this or I need to do that. And what I think so interesting too is, depending on the size of the company, like if you're like mid-market, the CEO's still selling. Yeah. So it makes sense that more people in marketing sales that understand this are moving into their roles to help guide the company because

the culture comes from the top down. So interesting. And you talked about culture. I gave a presentation on the model that we're talking about today, which we've evolved for ourselves. So we've been the proof point of the model and we are capable of producing on a weekly basis, a flash forecast of the next, a weekly basis because the data set is there. We can produce a flash forecast of the next quarter.

That's amazing. That is cool. So cool. So I presented this to a group of leading business people back in the UK and there was a flurry of conversations over coffee and cocktails afterwards. And then I had this individual come and see me after come and see you next week, whatever you've got, I want. And I knew something about the organization and I said, well, we could give you the system and we could give you the process, but we cannot give

you the culture that's going to make it work. And currently you operate in silos and the biggest challenge you're going to have is a cultural change throughout your organization as to what's important to them. So the ICT people, if you introduce a new system, it's all about security. It's all about yeah. And of course it is about security, but that's not its primary function. That's a challenge, but it's not the challenge from the BD point of view.

I'm not giving you my black book. Okay. Well, without that kind of contacts and things, a lot of the stuff that we want to do up here isn't going to work. Again, we can give you the system and we can give you the methodology, but unless you change that culture, you got to share the information. You got to share your feet. It's not going to happen. And that changing culture is a real hard thing to do. You have to have executive mind. You have to have senior leaders not only

support what you're doing when you introduce this change, they have to believe it themselves. Yes. You touched on something and your experience of working so many sides of this continuum, if you like, from sales, from marketing, from leadership. If the system is deployed and the culture is one of blame, there's no learning opportunity in there. We're not using the data set to learn. We're using the data set to prosecute and to prosecute. How many

people are going to use a system that identifies their weaknesses? Why are we using a system that identifies my development need? There's another opportunity to change the conversation. So they left somewhat frustrated that I wasn't going to give them something, but I knew in giving it to them, it was never going to work. And to your point about perfect world customer and the point that you made, I would spend 80% of my time justifying why they bought it

from the first place. Yeah. And the interesting thing, if that company makes it, as you watch them go through time, at some point, they will change. Oh, yeah. So from a provider point of view, sometimes the best thing to do is just wait. Yeah. Literally just wait. Yeah. And the market forces affect all companies the same. Some of them respond differently than others, but at some point, they will know they have to change and then they'll come back and then

their ideal company. It's all a matter of timing. Timing. Yeah. And I said to the individual, and it was a very positive conversation. And you said it, Mark, if you're prepared to break things, I'm very confident we can help you. If you can get the senior executive buy-in to breaking things, I'm very, very, very confident we can help you and help the business as well. But it has to be around that culture of change. And at the same time, you can't ignore the frontline

people. It has to be whatever change you're bringing in has to benefit them. Yes. Now, they may not see it and you may have to spend time explaining and showing them. And in some cases, you may have to only give them this option so they have no choice but to use it so they can see the benefits themselves. But if you don't have both executive leadership to push the change and then make sure that the change is valuable frontline people, once again, you've got issues

and it's a fail. Oh, for sure. For sure. The strength of marketing and its ability to narrate and tell a compelling story does not diminish. It's not about the plumbing and the plumbing only. And I hope that translates as well. It's about the fluid that goes through the pipe. It's the marketing function, the stuff that we get really excited about, the creative stuff, the right brain stuff, the ideas, the storytelling, the channel planning and all the rest of

it. None of that goes away. It's simply as much more connected to the business outcome. So the comment I have on that and maybe to go a little bit different direction, but I'm seeing this in spades right now. A lot of people are leaning on AI to create a lot of the creative of the branding. And what I'm seeing is a homogenization of the sales process. And so I'm seeing a lot of people running ads that are very, very similar because it's using the same large language

model to create that. Maybe the first person to do it and the first one out the door and the market leader or not market leader, but the first person, the innovator to start using that first is getting that advantage. But now more and more people are starting to use it and it's starting to look the same. And it's not working as well. So I think there's another pendulum. We talked about the ESG pendulum in the past, but I think that there's a pendulum that

swinging back towards the creative, the brand side of things. I'm not saying that these large language models can't do something very soon, but I can tell you what I'm seeing in what people are doing and how it's being implemented today. It's almost like a commodity of what's being offered and you hook it all up and it runs. And then you look at the other ads, like your unique selling proposition is clearly different than theirs, but your ads are so similar

because you're all pulling from the same information. So interesting. I was on a conference this morning, a virtual conference this morning with our agency group, which is a global group of independent agencies. And they were talking about AI and talking about an agency in Germany that has a curation period, a human interface examination. Is it saying the right thing or is it saying the same thing?

And just using it in a stage process, it'd be a great conversation for another time. And maybe we can get our colleagues in Germany who've worked on this to talk us through how they are harnessing it, but where the importance of the human interface is to ensure that it is right and it is distinct and it is differentiated and it is something that they can own as opposed to something that they can rent. It was a really interesting piece of work.

But the guy finished the story this morning to say, in the agency world or the marketing world or even the client side marketing world, we've seen the death knell of traditional stuff when TV took over from newspapers. We saw the death knell when desktop publishing took over from design. We saw the death knell when the internet took over from paper. And now we're hearing the doomsayer saying that AI is going to kill all the

creativity and in-house and agency marketing teams. And I think we are clever people and I think we're perhaps more adaptive people in the world than people confuse Darwin's phrase of the strong survive. He actually said was the survival is not of the fittest. It was a survival of those who were quickest to adapt. And I think the marketing function is perhaps the most agile to adaptation.

Yeah, no, I would agree. And good job on the Darwin, but you're right. Nine out of seven people don't understand what Darwin actually said. And Matt, to your point, that explains a lot to me for the last three or four months. I've noticed that a lot of ads look almost identical. And I just didn't connect it to the AI.

Literally, even the artwork looks like there's a certain look that you that's AI. We have some enterprise tools that can see like competitors, how long they've been running ads for, what the ads are and get an idea of like what's going on. And I'm starting to go, these ads are like so similar. I mean, maybe one or two words are changed, right? And I'm like, if you're both competing on the same market and you're running

the same campaign, you're going to probably get a similar result. And if you're both just cannibalizing the market, then you need to go look for that blue ocean potentially, right? And the only winners Google with the paid ads, because what it's doing is driving the click rate up, the dollar rate up, even though it's the exact same ads coming out.

We've had campaigns of similar types of companies that we've run ads for three years ago and today, 13 cents a click, it used to be. And now we're talking $3 and maybe 13 cents a click. The metrics of the campaign that used to work do not work anymore. So you have to come up with different strategies. So from the adaptive nature, you have to see what's going on in the marketplace.

You need to see what's working. That's the advantage over, I think, traditional agencies and traditional PR firms is they're not working with data. You buy the billboard and you just hope it works, right? Or you buy the magazine ad and it runs or the radio ad. I mean, CTV and I'm seeing so much power right now in streaming radio and CTV.

And there's so much opportunity, but you have to adapt to what's going on. And if this is happening, you have to say, Hey, we got to throw this out because this is just not working and we got to do something completely different or we need to change like who we're going after. And the AI cannot do that yet and take that information and make those changes. Again, I'm flipping the table here, but I've got a question for you.

I don't live in this great country, most of the pity. But I understand that during the Super Bowl, there was a commercial which they boldly proclaimed was entirely produced by AI. And I'm reasonably confident to say it was for Amazon. I don't know. Yeah, I thought you were going to go with the Kanye West ad.

But people have remarked and I've read that it was uncomfortable to view because Oh, it was the Amazon ad. Was it? Tell me more about that because I've only read about it. I've never seen it and I should Google it. Of course. You know, when somebody makes a robot that looks, they try to make it look human to make us comfortable with it,

but they don't quite get it right. So it kind of creeps you out because it's almost human. But it's not. So it's weird. That's what the Amazon ad was. Was it? It was really well done. The editing, the music, everything, the effects, everything.

You could tell a person didn't do it. It was kind of creepy. I'm trying to explain it. But yeah, when I first saw my emotional reaction and I love the Super Bowl ads, right? Because this is like the.

Oh, it's like that's why. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was like, this doesn't fit. This is just weird. Something was not quite right about the ad. And I don't know what part of my brain picked it up,

but I wasn't the only one. A lot of people that day talked about how it's just was creepy, quite frankly, in picking up a Matt's point again, from this online conference I was on this morning with the agency group. They were talking about that imagery constructed in AI,

unless it's gone through a human manipulation process, has a distinct sheen or shadow or. Definitely has a distinct look. Yes. And the human eye, not trained eyes like ours, who have lived in imagery all our lives, but the human eye can detect it.

And for some reason, it creates a little bit of a curiosity or a lack of affinity with the image. But back to Max's point earlier, when the first AI generate artwork came out, I was fascinated by it, right?

For a whole bunch of reasons. Now it's all over the place and I'm tired of seeing it quite frankly. I immediately identified it. I realized what happened. It doesn't touch my emotions

like some other artwork does. I've never tiered up over an AI anything. I have tiered up over like ads for homeless animals. There's just something we're not quite there yet with the AI. We actually use Claude AI a lot internally because it's great to digest a bunch of like technical paper.

Give you a summary for it. But even that tool then over a period of time, I'm seeing that the more we use it, it's figured out what we like and what we don't like, but it also kind of narrows the field. It's not like if on Apple,

they have or actually Spotify is a good one where you can vote up or down on music. If you do it, though, you don't hear other music that you might have liked, which you never exposed. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And as a human, I sometimes want to be exposed to something that's different or novel or something I didn't think of before. And to your point, I don't think the AI can do that yet. So what I thought of when you said that are taking the conversation again in a completely different direction.

The reason that social media and the scrolling happens is you want that shock, a dopamine because you don't know what you're going to get, right? It's kind of like pulling a slot machine, right? You're trying to get that maybe this is going to be OK. Oh, maybe something good is going to happen.

If you don't give that variety to it, that could be some of what maybe you're feeling because there is something nuanced about you just don't know or I want to be enthralled or entertained in a way that I didn't expect. And I think that that's a lot of what branding or marketing can do.

And that's why I like the Super Bowl so much is like, why isn't all advertising I know at that level? You're just going to skip the ad, right? Like people are just going to skip that. People want to watch that ad. If that was the focus on the creative aspect of it,

there's a lot of other things with the Super Bowl of like shared experience and things like that that you get from it. But man, like, why do you say we're going to go all out on the Super Bowl? But something that someone's going to see multiple times in their living room when they're watching a normal show. Why is the standard so much lower?

That's a good question, Matt. I know there's a cost, the big difference in cost between the action quality of Super Bowl ads versus. But if you can get the data on what it delivers, right? Because if people don't watch the ad and they click through it every three seconds, it's all right about the hook when you're doing direct response marketing.

But if you can't even get the message to them because they're going to click out of it, that's a problem. Yeah, that's lost product. Matt, do you remember right after 9 11 of Budweiser? I'm going to cry if I'm not careful. Budweiser only aired this ad one time during the Super Bowl

and it was the Clydesdale horses and they walk up and they look at where the Twin Towers were and they bow. Yeah, yeah. The reason I'm tearing up is that's how much that ad affected me. And that was a long time ago, right? So that ad to this day, I still have an emotional connection.

That's how good that ad was. Can you imagine if they try to sell something, I'd be buying it all the time. Yeah, yeah. But to your point, Matt, why don't they make normal advertisements of that quality that gets hooked? I mean, literally, I'm tearing up now.

An emotional connection. Horses, ballet on their head. That's how people make decisions, emotions. Oh, not necessarily the data. They rationalize their emotional decision with the data. All day long.

But you have the data to show you how powerful that emotional connection and the branding and the storytelling is. So why don't we do more of that? I'm going to probably say something provocative here, but men in particular. And I look at myself, I'm not being a broad gender thing. I can emotionally connect with a brand.

And then I look for data points to justify my decision. And I see other men do the same thing. And I'm not suggesting women don't do it. But I look at some of my colleagues who've made their mind up about something. They are tightly emotionally connected to this something, whether it be a car, whether it be a bike, whether it be a watch.

But they're looking for data points to convince either themselves or others. They've made an informed decision as opposed to a knee jerk decision. I do it to myself. Do you? Oh, yeah. But I know that I'm rationalized, right? And it's usually around something I want to spend money on, right?

I come find some strange reason that it's OK to do it. And then, OK, good, I'll buy it. But I know that that's what's going on. But it is funny. There's a difference in the sex is doing that. Is there really? Yeah.

I was hesitant to go there, Mark, but glad you dived in. No, I'm not talking about any differences in gender or sexual orientation. But there is a difference in the way men and women think about service. Oh, for sure. And women tend to make better logical decisions than men. I'm going to get a bunch of hate mail over there. Sorry.

That's my experience. I'm just not going to add to that. I know we're getting close to wrapping up. So I'll just leave it with you, Mark. Oh, God, I knew this was going to go. We always we always have point.

I knew it was going to go off piece. Now, the math thing I have to decide is do I leave? Have my editors leave that in there or take it out? The magic of podcasts. Originality is what people look for. I'm going to leave it in there.

I'll take the hate mail. But, you know, seriously, though, but you're right. I remember when they discovered lipency and ketchup, which fights cancer. And I go, oh, now it's great. I can eat all the ketchup I want. No, I like ketchup, right? And so I'm just justifying it because somebody came up with something.

I think a lot of sales teams do the same thing. They literally like something. They like this prospect. They like the company. They try to make that work. Yes. If you have the data, though, you could be able to go, you know what?

They're not a great fit. Yeah, I shouldn't go after them just because I play golf. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Nice guy. Yeah. Nice guy. Right. Nice guy. Imagine much more productive. Your sales teams would be if that's how they made every decision.

Oh, wow. A bit different deal, huh? I'm interested as we grew up as the old school way of learning, knowledge, much detail as you possibly could. Immerse yourself in the client's business, learn every nuance that you can in order that you could find that nugget. You could find that eureka moment.

But it came from hours and hours of reading and talking to people and things to find that create without equal moment. And I'm interested in you using Claude to summarize things. I would as a traditionalist, I would always have a nagging. Did it miss something that I wanted? But maybe you've got past that point.

I am past that point. But because for the longest time, I double checked everything. That exact reason. No, that's the exact thing I was worried about. To be sure, to be sure, I didn't realize you were Irish as well. That's right. No, no, no.

A hundred. Is that an Irish trait? To be sure, to be sure. Yeah. But no. And now I've done it enough times to have faith in Claude that if I give it now, be very clear here about technical papers, white papers written about the oil and gas industry,

typically about pressures, temperatures, and they could take a handful of and summarize it so I can understand what's changed in the industry in a quick 300 word read instead of 500,000 words. And technical papers tend to be born to read anyway. But at least that scenario, Claude does a really good job of taking the high level, important parts and condensate it in something that's easy to absorb.

So you've just rationalized that. An emotional issue. You've just rationalized it. I did. Live, applaud that. It's a huge weight off my shoulders, Mark. We always have great conversations. Always.

It's bringing this guy into the room as well. He comes in here with these European dress code now with the kind of fancy collars and cuffs and things. I've got to up my game when he comes into the room. Yeah, and the shoes. Or some good wine outside.

Yeah. And in this case, we're actually shooting video audience. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it, but I may post it on YouTube because it's been such a great conversation. I am a chopper at making short. So all right. So this is part two of our two part series

because we just had so much fun talking to each other. We just kept talking. We do need to wind this thing down. Yes, yes, yes. So Ian. There's wine to drink. And there's wine to drink.

So Ian, people want to find out more about fifth ring. Where should they go? Oh, goodness, well, because you're reach of OGGN in this particular podcast, we have an office in Asia and Singapore. We have an office in Europe and Aberdeen in the far north of the Scottish mainland. And we have an office here in Houston.

And if they go to the website, which is fifthring.com, they'll get the contact details and we'd love to hear from them. Yep. And we'll put a link in the show notes as always, people. So you can just go in the show and click also in the show notes with the link to our two newsletters, our Sunday update and our only guest events newsletter.

Matt is waiting on me for our leadership group that were put together. I have some copy I need to get to Matt that I have not done. So it's my fault we haven't watched it. He tells me every day I'm going to get it to you today. He's no said that in the public games. This is true.

It's been recorded on OGGN. I'm going to edit that part out just for both of y'all know I do. Anyway, the mastermind group is coming together. Sales and marketing people we think need to work together. One of the best ways to do that is let's have an organization where we invite you together and you have no choice but to work together.

That's what Matt and I are doing. All of our social links are also in the show notes. Ian, as always, this has been fantastic. Thank you for coming on the show. Always pleasure. Delight to speak to you both. And Matt, I will get it to you.

I promise I'll get it to you because I have to. That together with your checks in the post are well worn cliches. And on that, we'll close it out. Remember, folks, make a difference and not a sale. Well done. Thanks, boys. Thanks for listening to OGGN, the world's largest

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