How Leaders Think with Kenny Lange

Jason Kramer [00:00:00]:
It's just having a wherewithal to understand what the potential issue is and then coming up with a solution when testing it. Right. Testing is the biggest piece. And you owned an agency. You know what it's like. Testing is huge. And if you don't test things, how are you going to know if it's working or not? It's like they don't just build a car and put it on the assembly line, say, okay, yeah, it's good to go. Let's make a million of these.

Jason Kramer [00:00:22]:
They're going to test all the pieces of the car. Right? Um.

Kenny Lange [00:00:31]:
Welcome to the how leaders think podcast, the show that transforms you by renewing your mind and giving you new ways to think. I am your host, Kenny Lang, and with me today is the Jason Kramer. He is the founder of Cultivize, a consulting firm that specializes in b to b lead nurturing strategies and technology. With 15 years of experience running a creative agency, Jason identified revenue gaps in marketing and sales funnels for distributors, service providers, marketing agencies, and manufacturers. He's talented is what we're saying. He launched cultivized to provide customized solutions and empower businesses to connect prospect and customer data with marketing campaigns and sales team activities. That's vitally important if you didn't know. And when not strategizing in the CRM, he enjoys family time with his wife, two kids, and two dogs in their lively New York home.

Kenny Lange [00:01:25]:
Welcome to the show, Jason.

Jason Kramer [00:01:26]:
Thanks, Kenny. Appreciate for having me here.

Kenny Lange [00:01:29]:
Hey, my pleasure. I mean, we did leave off the part about your scientific research, but I think we'll do that on the part two of the podcast, right?

Jason Kramer [00:01:38]:
Sounds great. Yeah.

Kenny Lange [00:01:39]:
Well, tell me, Jason, what is on your.

Jason Kramer [00:01:43]:
Kenny, you know, I think know the one thing that's always on my mind is the work that people put into their business and is that work paying off? Right. And that can mean a lot of different things. It could be trying to raise capital, it could be doing marketing, it could know bringing on new team members and making sure they're adequately trained. And it always kind of just sits as a business owner with me to think all this effort people are putting in, but how many of them actually take a step back and say, is what I'm doing actually working? Or are they just in this rut where they're doing the same thing over and over without taking that breath and saying, should I keep spending all this money on marketing? Like, are we even making money? Or am I doing it because someone's.

Kenny Lange [00:02:21]:
Telling me to do it right? That is an excellent question. I think I'm struck because I ask those questions. We have our conversations and share war stories of the agency world and about clients. But that question is deceptively simple. What is it that you think is keeping people from pausing? I mean, it took all of 3 seconds to ask that question. Why is that such a hard question for these companies or agencies or anybody that you're working with to ask?

Jason Kramer [00:02:57]:
It's a great question. So to my question, and the answer is that a lot of times you don't know what you know, right. I mean, it's an obvious thing to say, but you don't know that you should be looking at things maybe every 30 days. You're just assuming, okay, my marketing team is giving me a report once a month, once a quarter. That's what should happen, right? Or they don't have the data. Right. So they don't have the ability to say, what is my sales team doing? Are they making the number of calls they should make every day? Is my marketing bringing in the number of leads that we're trying to hit and are they converting? Because you don't have information, you just sort of accept what you have and say, okay, this is what I have to work with, and therefore your hands are kind of tied and you can't make those pivotal, important decisions. So it's not that there's not smart people behind the desk trying to make these decisions.

Jason Kramer [00:03:51]:
They don't have the resources sometimes and the right insight or the right perspective to have someone sort of knock on the door and, you know, Kenny, what did you think about this? Or how come you're not doing this? So they're not being probed in other ways?

Kenny Lange [00:04:08]:
It sounds like they've fallen into a belief that, and this is one of my least favorite sayings, but it is what it is. This is just the way things are. Everybody's flying blind, that sort of thing. Is that what you see is the prevailing wisdom that, hey, we have what we have. There's no real way to know. The second part of that that I might want to get your brain on is you did mention we don't have the data on it, which some people may believe that I am of the mind, that we have maybe too much data and too little insights. And I'm curious about what you're seeing in there.

Jason Kramer [00:04:52]:
So the first part of that is. So there's a recent study that I love, and what it tells you is that over 60% of leads, right. And a lot of companies are spending money on leads who are not ready to buy, will eventually convert if they're on some type of nurturing campaign. In other words, they're being educated and they're being provided content and information to help influence their decision. So it goes to say that if you're spending money, whether you're going to trade shows or you're going and doing email marketing or you're doing adwords, whatever you're doing to bring things into your pipeline, if you're just expecting people to say, yeah, Kenny, this sounds great, let's sign up today. You and I both know that almost never happens, right? Unless you're buying a bouquet of flowers for $50 and you're going to make the decision that day. Most businesses have a sales cycle that could be several months or even years long, depending upon what they're selling. And so if there's not a process involved, then you're putting all this time and money up front just to get the lead.

Jason Kramer [00:05:54]:
But think the sales team has no process and motivation to actually build upon that lead and to continue that conversation and build rapport and management is like, how many leads do we get? That's what they keep asking. And how many converted? But they don't look at the pipeline and say, what are we doing to help convert these people over? So that's part of it. The second part to your question is, yes, there is a lot of data, but I think a lot of it is messy data. Right. So, for example, if you are spending money on marketing, you know what your marketing costs are. You know how many leads are coming in, how much traffic is coming to your website, and all those things right at the top of the funnel. Most companies don't connect that to what the sales team is doing. Right.

Jason Kramer [00:06:41]:
They don't have a CRM or some type of system that connects the dots. So, yeah, we know what we're closing. We know how much business we've earned this year, or how many new clients we've acquired. But where did they come from? Did they come from that trade show we went to? Did they come from a referral? And that's where there's a misconnection between the data. So the other challenge is a lot of companies we talk to and work with in the beginning have messy data. Right. Things are just a complete mess because bad data in is bad data out. So if there's not guidelines on how you're collecting your data, then the data is almost useless in some cases.

Kenny Lange [00:07:23]:
Yeah, I hear a couple of things. One, you mean to tell me that my Google sheet isn't a substitute for a CRM. I'm just kidding.

Jason Kramer [00:07:38]:
I don't want to insult anybody listening to the podcast, but it's not for a business that's in three to 5 million, $10 million space. Being using Google Sheets is not the right place to be.

Kenny Lange [00:07:49]:
I was going to say it's probably not right for a business in the 21st century. You may not insult people. I will. I don't have an agency, so I can do that now.

Jason Kramer [00:07:59]:
There you go.

Kenny Lange [00:07:59]:
But with the data, one can be extremely like, it could be piecemeal, it could be disorganized, sort of the data hygiene piece of it. There can be data integrity. Like we have duplicate records and they say different things. So even if they had great intentions and they were thinking the right way, they may not be able to discern or do a proper analysis of it, which there are great tools out there. There's companies like yours that can help start to sort through that. But a lot of it goes back to the source of the people who are putting in the data, or at least the systems that may have an automated collection, like a forms tool or something else. Right. So if people are thinking about, well, I want to connect the activities, because I think a big part of what you describe that people look at are all lag measures, which for anybody listening who doesn't know what a lag measure is, it is an indicator.

Kenny Lange [00:09:02]:
It is a number or a data point that shows towards the very end of a result, it doesn't show all the activities and the preceding actions. Right. So, like sales, like, hey, we know we closed this many sales, but we don't know where they came from, and we don't know the activity of our sales reps. Those sort of things would be lead measures, right?

Jason Kramer [00:09:23]:
Oh, you're asking me? Yeah, I was waiting for the pause. Yes, absolutely. They would be.

Kenny Lange [00:09:30]:
So it sounds like you can help, and what you are advocating for is let's shift that view. Like we don't forget about that, but we really could do ourselves a lot of good and really push that final number that everybody's staring at if we start focusing on this other part of, whether you call it the funnel or the flywheel, but the marketing and sales process, is that fair to say?

Jason Kramer [00:09:57]:
Yeah. And it's getting really, at the end of the day, it's getting departments to talk to each other. Right. And so it's not uncommon where the marketing team is not talking to the sales team. Right. We know that. Right. I mean, it should be, but it's not.

Jason Kramer [00:10:13]:
And then also, management is like the third wheel to that spoke right, where they're just like assuming that those two teams are doing what they're supposed to be doing. Sometimes it's an organizational structure that's limiting the ability to really have maximum results. And that's something we can help with, too, right, because it's coming in and it's just talking to people just like we're talking today, to start looking through and seeing, okay, where are the cracks? Kind of in the pipe. Where are things not running smoothly? And where is there not a cohesion of collaboration between departments to pass off different information and knowledge? Right. Because it's those cyclical things. If the sales team is saying, hey, we're getting bad leads, but the marketing team is saying, well, we're giving you leads, you're just not calling them. That's why they're bad. And the sales team is just expecting every lead to come in the door to close that day.

Jason Kramer [00:11:10]:
Well, that's not the job of marketing. Right. The job of marketing is just say, hey, we got somebody for you to talk to. And the job of sales to convince that person you're talking to the right company and to convert them into an actual customer.

Kenny Lange [00:11:22]:
Right. It sounds like in your observation, your experience, that part of this is not just a technical, mechanical thing. There can also be some cultural elements at play that are getting in the way of having these two groups really work well together and that you offer some insights to that because you're an impartial third party, right?

Jason Kramer [00:11:49]:
Almost 80% of the time, Kenny, that's the problem, right. Is that the departments, they think they're working collaboratively, but they're not. And that's something we're almost not that we're like a therapy session with our clients, but in a way, we kind of are, because we're demystifying what's going on in these two different departments and making them realize that there is value in collaborating and working together. Now, that doesn't mean they're in the same room having meetings on an ongoing basis and things of that nature. But what it means is that the activity of what they're doing is all connected into the CRM, right? So we're able to look at all that activity together and then management and even us, because we provide ongoing coaching and strategy and analysis of all this data and the moving parts to say, yeah, this is working, the plan we had is working, or it's not. Let's make some pivots and some modifications to actually see how we can get.

Kenny Lange [00:12:44]:
Some better ROI which is phenomenal. And I do think we should probably look at some business cards for you that says Jason Kramer, sales and marketing therapist. But that'd be a cool offshoot. But where do you think? Because I'm thinking about whether it's an agency owner or a marketing leader listening to this, and they're hearing this, they're like, yeah, okay. Yeah, we're not. We're really polar opposites. We're two groups that are supposed to be on the same team, but it feels like we're on opposite teams. Somebody's got to come in internally.

Kenny Lange [00:13:28]:
Even if they hire someone like you who can see those things, reflect back what you're seeing, provide a diagnosis and a recommended plan. Where does that process begin? Is it with management? Is it with maybe high performers on each team? Where does the responsibility and accountability lie internally to help bring these two partners that they should be partners together?

Jason Kramer [00:14:00]:
So it's a great question, and I have a great answer, and the answer is that it's different for every business. So it could be someone like the CRO or the CEO of a company that realizes there's a problem and is trying to dig deep and figure that out. So we come in and start peeling back some layers. But more often, it's the head of marketing or the head of sales that recognizes there's either missed opportunity or there is a problem when it comes to all the efforts that they're putting in. But the reality of the first step is really just having a conversation. So that's something that we provide. We don't charge for those consultations. And for us, it's a consultative approach.

Jason Kramer [00:14:41]:
Right. We're having the conversation to understand simple things, like when you get a lead, what do you do with the lead? Who's responsible for it? What's step two? What's step three? And it's surprising how often there's a fumble and there's no response to that question. Right. Because a lot of times, and for those watching, those listening and not watching, I'm kind of like touching my head here. It's like everything's up in their head. Right. Their process is in their head. And when they're bringing on a new salesperson, let's say there's very few companies that have a playbook and saying, this is what you do.

Jason Kramer [00:15:14]:
You make a follow up three days later, then you send an email seven days later. Then you do this, then you do that. Very few companies have that type of detailed playbook that a sales team is following. And so what happens is that you get people that are just using prior techniques and prior strategies from their previous job and applying that to selling something different, but coming in and understanding what that is and starting to document that is the first step, the second step. And this is something even companies can do. Listening today, whatever software you have, whether you're using Mailchimp, whether using Salesforce, anything in between, what I invite the listeners to do is take a step back and say, how are we using this software? And find the person in the company that is responsible or the person that's the most active user and sit with that person for a half hour, an hour and say, show me how you use Salesforce every day. What are you doing with Salesforce? What type of data can I get out of it and start probing these questions? Because a lot of times, and this is also a common, not only belief, but a fact of what I've seen companies believe. And today, you know, Kenny, I'm even here, we're know on this platform and it's being broadcasted out to all different channels.

Jason Kramer [00:16:29]:
There's tons of technology out there for businesses and a lot of businesses have the mindset this piece of technology is going to solve my problem. It's going to help me reach my goal. And the reality is that you and I both know this platform, Riverside, wouldn't be anything unless there's good content on it and good conversation. So the technology on its own doesn't achieve the goal and have an outcome. It's what you put into it. So if you have a piece of software that you really don't know how to use, or you're not well equipped, or you're saying, okay, we'll figure it out. There's another great Harvard Business review article that I love, and it states that 69% of companies will fail at implementing their CRM, which is a huge number considering the investment of time and money they put in most crms, at a minimum, you're going to be at about 10,000 a year, up to over 100,000 a year. So if you're putting in that much money and you're trying to figure it out on your own, you're never using that piece of software before.

Jason Kramer [00:17:28]:
It's no surprise that there's such a high failure rate. So you need to bring in somebody that not only could help with saying, is this the right technology to solve those problems? And if it is, what is going to be the strategy? What's going to be the phased approach to build it out, but then you have adoption, right? So that's another thing we really focus on in the cultivized team beyond myself, really empowers the people that we work with to say, let's get comfortable with the platform, right? Let's provide that training. We do all our training over Zoom. We hold the hand of the people. It's not just a one time training or hey, go watch this video. We're sitting with them with there answering their questions, and then it's the ongoing accountability, making sure that they're doing all the things that we put all this time into, developing a strategy, saying, are you doing what you're supposed to be doing? And if you're not, why aren't you? And how do we fix that? So there's so many moving parts. But the good news is that the cultivized team, as I mentioned, we do it all for our clients because clients don't have the expertise or the time to figure it out themselves. And with that failure rate, they probably wouldn't succeed anyway.

Kenny Lange [00:18:38]:
Right? And it's great that you all are able to offer that. I want to go back to your comment about with the technology, it's going to solve it. This is the thing that's going to make it all better. I mean, I've heard that too in my career. And one of the things I used to tell my clients is, hey, we're going to set up the CRM, we're going to do all this, but we need to understand your processes absent of any technology. Let's make sure that you're clear and we're clear on that. And then let's design and customize the software to complement and enable and speed up and improve that process, whatever that happens to be, so that you can do more of it. Because if you're expecting this software to tell you what to do, you're in for a world of hurt.

Kenny Lange [00:19:33]:
And like you said, these are not inexpensive decisions or implementations. 100,000 plus is not unusual. If this could end up and has cost people their jobs by going out and just saying, oh yeah, I'm smart, we'll figure it out. I knew this platform, it's a lot like this other platform. I'm going to do that. Something I think in reading between the lines, it sounds like you are also encouraging. Whether you're a sales leader, marketing leader, revenue CEO, whoever is really responsible for this decision, they have to have a level of humility and how they're leading through this, because to change out some fundamental software that everybody in the company uses, that's a huge change. It affects everybody and if they'll have humility and find a partner or an expert or somebody else, even internally.

Kenny Lange [00:20:35]:
Right. Like you might have, like I'd be the chief nerd on the inside, right, to help, but it sounds like that humility is what you've seen be effective in people leading through these large implementations and changes. Is that accurate?

Jason Kramer [00:20:52]:
Yeah, 100%. And if you don't have that, you're just going to hit a brick wall. Right. So if you have that decision maker or that team lead, who says we're good where we are, or we don't see the value, or it's not the technology problem, it's like the team's problem, but it really is the technology problem, then they're just going to run into this cyclical pattern where they're going to keep hitting the same roadblocks over and over and the problem is just going to be buried, but it's still going to be there in the face of the business on an ongoing basis. So yes, you have to have the admittance to say, we can't figure this out on our own. We know there's something wrong. We don't quite know what it is, but we want to take a look and figure it out. And the other piece of it, it's, and I'm sure that you have some stuff, Kenny is a kind of crazy analogy, but like clothes in your closet that you're just like, may never wear, but you have this emotional connection to them and you're like, man, I've had that sweatshirt since college.

Jason Kramer [00:21:56]:
I'm not getting rid of know, even though it's disgusting, but I'll never wear it, but I want to keep it. I think it's the same thing with software. You have somebody that's a stakeholder in the company or an influencer who got behind a piece of software that was expensive, and they just can't bring it to themselves. To admit to say this is not the right piece of software we should be using for our business anymore. And it's not just CRM. I was talking to a prospect the other day, and they use, I'll say it doesn't matter. I have no allegiance, but bullhorn reach for HR and for their recruiting business, and they're like, maybe 5% of our company uses the software. It's expensive.

Jason Kramer [00:22:39]:
I don't know why we use it, and we probably don't need it. We should probably get rid of it. But they haven't right yet. And so that emotional or financial commitment is like, well, we've already spent $200,000 on this piece of software. We're just going to keep it forever even though we're paying $50,000 a year to maintain the license. Why do that? It's easy.

Kenny Lange [00:23:04]:
Like the sunk cost fallacy. Because to change would be what? To admit you made a mistake or something else?

Jason Kramer [00:23:15]:
I think it could be either that or sometimes. Yeah, but we were told know, whatever platform, right? I mean, it doesn't matter. Salesforce, hubsaw, you name it, right. There's hundreds of different pieces of software was the best software to use. That's the advice we were given. So why should we get off of it? Well, yeah, it may be a good piece of software for a different type of business, but maybe not necessarily for yours. So they're brainwashed to think that they have the best piece of software. But like we said before, software doesn't solve problems.

Jason Kramer [00:23:48]:
People solve problems. Or there's that financial commitment where we've spent so much money we're going to kind of just write it out and hope for the best.

Kenny Lange [00:23:58]:
Wow. Anybody go back, rewind, pause. Software doesn't solve problems. People solve problems. I have all these t shirt ideas. I feel like that's a t shirt right there and we'll make it purple for you.

Jason Kramer [00:24:13]:
Thank you. I'm a large, by the way.

Kenny Lange [00:24:19]:
I actually still have some t shirts from my old agency that are in the closet. I'll dig through it.

Jason Kramer [00:24:26]:
But.

Kenny Lange [00:24:29]:
I have run into that so many times people barely adopt. It's not just changing it, moving the data like you've laid out all those pieces now you got to get everybody to use it and everybody to use it in a uniform way. And obviously there's some, to use some technical terms like you could have some permissioning and governance within the software to help ensure that that happens, but nothing is going to help somebody like you can't force people to utilize the software completely, fully, accurately, adequately, those sorts of things. I am curious with, I gave an extreme example like you make a 100 $200,000 implementation, whoopsie. Right? And that C suite person, that senior leader may be losing their job, but pull on that thread a little bit more because there's probably some other more common think that make that an unproductive decision to go it alone or even to change. Because I would venture a guess in some cases you go in and say, okay, well this is the right, you have the right technology, it's misconfigured or you just used it off the shelf or something else. What are some of those other unproductive things of just like, well, we were told it's the best so we're just plowing ahead.

Jason Kramer [00:25:55]:
Yeah, well, I mean let's talk about email marketing. I think that's something that's common that everybody can relate to. And one thing that your listeners may not know is that 69% of people will determine if the email is junk just by the subject message. They won't even look at the actual email. And so not only are you, if you're not being creative with your subject message, you're running that risk. If you forget about all the spam words, right, sale free and discount and things like that that are going to likely get that email to go into spam at the end of the call. I know, we'll talk about it, but if you go to cultivise.com learnmore, we have a great playbook and some other assets there that could help diagnose your current email marketing efforts. And so the topic really here is if you're putting an effort in any area of the business and now we're talking about email marketing, it's great that people open it and click it, but what happens after that? And if you're spending all this money, and I always say, and it ties back to lead nurturing, even if you had a 50% open rate, which is like a high open rate in really any industry, that means that 50% of your list, if your list was 1000 people, 500 people didn't even look at your email.

Jason Kramer [00:27:13]:
So what are you doing to those 500 people on your list to get in front of them if they're not even looking at your email, right. And so there's other things that soul be done, right, remarketing. And some crms like the one we use for clients has a remarketing tool. So ads could be start displaying based on them looking at a prior email. But now they start seeing other touch points. And so the thing to think about is again we keep on talking about the same thing. It's almost like a broken record, but is take a step back from what you're doing, lay everything out on the table and say, okay, yes, we're doing AdWords, we're doing email marketing, and at a very high level what have been the results? And forget about the simple things like we talked before and Kenny, you brought up, there's tons of data. I'm not talking about what was our open rate and did our open rate go up or down? Did we get any business, right? That's what every company wants, right? They want to increase revenue.

Jason Kramer [00:28:07]:
And so if all the things you're doing, going to trade shows, doing webinars, if it's not generating actual closed revenue and qualified leads, probably there's something wrong, right? And there soul be something wrong with a number of different factors. It's your content, it's your list, you're not segmenting. Right. I remember years ago, not even that many years ago, but let's say two years ago, we had a pretty big museum we were working with. I won't mention the state because they were probably one of the bigger ones in the state, but they had an email campaign going out through it doesn't matter all the name, but I'll say it, constant contact. And they were sending out almost 30,000 emails a week to one list. And that list was sponsors, it was donors, it was people that came into the museum one time, it was members, and it was just flooded with so much content that it wasn't doing anything good for the organization because the messaging wasn't specific to the audience. Right.

Jason Kramer [00:29:08]:
They weren't using segmentation, they weren't using dynamic content. And so it's nothing. That's rocket science. I mean, the things we're talking about, it might sound complex in nature, but the reality is they're very simple to implement. They don't take a lot of time to make these changes. It's just having a wherewithal to understand what the potential issue is and then coming up with a solution and testing it. Right. Testing is the biggest piece.

Jason Kramer [00:29:36]:
And you owned an agency. You know what it's like. I mean, testing is huge. And if you don't test things, how are you going to know if it's working or not? They don't just build a car and put it on the assembly line, say, okay, yeah, it's good to go. Like, let's make a million of these. They're going to test all the pieces of the car, right? Is the engine operating? Is the tires working properly? Are the brakes working? Can imagine what a disaster that would be. And I think many businesses don't test enough. And I know I'm sort of going off on a tangent here, but that's what it all comes down to, is, is what we're doing working? If it's not, let's fix it.

Kenny Lange [00:30:14]:
Yeah, I love your point. We can do all of this, but is it generating closed business? Because at the end of the day, that's what it's meant to do in my experience, and I'd be curious in yours too, is one of the reasons we get caught up in focusing on other things other than did my actions lead to an increase in closed one business? And that may be increasing lifetime value or net new business or whatever metric is important to you and drives your economic engine. But I see there are a lot of marketers that I think get romantic about marketing, right? Like they're in love with copywriting and being clever or they got a lot of engagements and that made them feel good. And it should, right? This whole podcast becomes a post. I want people to engage with it. I want people to share it. All those sorts of things. Those things feel good.

Kenny Lange [00:31:21]:
But then salespeople as well love their sales tactics. I'm going to reframe the conversation, right? Like, what's the newest thing? Do you think that people are, maybe they've zoomed in too much on their corner of the world, so to speak, and not looked at what is my impact on the business as a whole as opposed to what is my lange and what is phenomenal about my discipline of marketing, copywriting, designing, sales, bd, whatever it happens to be.

Jason Kramer [00:31:59]:
Yeah. I mean, it's the shiny object system, right? Hey, look at this. I mean, look at AI, how it's exploded in the last 24 months and even really even six months, right? It's one of those perpetual things where it just gets faster and faster as things get more exciting, right? And what things can be done with it. And so, yeah, I think it does happen for some people, but I think that it's not necessarily a bad thing because it's allowing you to test your creative kind of insights, whether you're a copywriter, whether you're a financial analyst, if there's a new way of looking at something from a different perspective, to me, I think it's worth exploring that. But don't spend six months or a year trying that. Give it a shot and say, okay, does this make sense? Is this helping or hurting me? And don't get caught up in, I'm just going to do it. I was listening to another podcast, and the person that they were interviewing was talking about the importance of a morning routine. And so he was having five steps and one of, well, he was using different examples and he was talking about people like Tony Robbins and other people that have.

Jason Kramer [00:33:13]:
So, for example, Tony Robbins would say, take a cold shower. You should definitely do that morning. And the guy's like, I did it. And he's like, it sucks. I don't want to be in this cold. He's like, it put me in a bad mood. It didn't put me in a good mood. It's like just because somebody says to do something as powerful as Tony Robbins is doesn't mean that it's going to be good for you.

Jason Kramer [00:33:32]:
Right. Just because it's good for him. And I think that's the point I'm trying to make. So, yeah, it's knowing your lange and knowing what feels comfortable for you and what feels right is the most important.

Kenny Lange [00:33:48]:
And I love the continual testing. Don't take the six to nine months like you're saying is get out there, find a small version of it. Like, okay, I'm interested. I want to learn more. Let me test. Do a small test, get some data. Do a small test, get some data. Let's start to interpret this instead of do the same old, same old because that's what I know.

Kenny Lange [00:34:08]:
Or I think you make a great point of bringing in old sales or marketing techniques that worked at maybe company a, you're at company b now and it doesn't work. Right. Like I'm just stuck and doing something. It hit once and now I'm forever cemented in that one thing that worked makes me think of Uncle Rico on Napoleon Dynamite. They're saying I'm living too much in the 82. Used to be able to throw a pig skin quarter mile. That's cool. But live in the here and how, right?

Jason Kramer [00:34:41]:
Yeah, that was spot on. That's a great reference. If anybody hasn't seen that movie, it's a classic. You got to watch Napoleon Dynamite.

Kenny Lange [00:34:50]:
It is. So my final question every episode is let's drive this home and think about of all the stuff we've talked about and you've already given some in the middle. But for what we've been talking about, about bringing those teams together, looking at the culture, looking at the data, having tests, all these different things somebody may have heard, basically, I mean, your 1520 years of wisdom coming out in a 35 minutes conversation, where would you tell that person to get started? And most of the time I say, what's the first baby step they could take in 24 hours? Spending little to no money. I might rephrase it for you and say, what's that first test? If it is a step, it could be a test. But what's that first step you tell somebody to take?

Jason Kramer [00:35:45]:
Yeah. So, well, the first step that I would tell people to take is, I know I mentioned before and you might add it somewhere at the end of the show. Kenny is cultivize.com slash learn more. We normally would charge for what we call an email delivery test that's going to check the email delivery of where's your email going after hitting send? Is your domain being blacklisted? What's happening behind the scenes? That mailchimp and all these other systems won't tell you of really what's going on. So if you go there, you'll find that there's an opportunity to get that at no cost. We'd be happy to run those tests because again, you don't know. What you don't know could be dangerous, right? Because you're just assuming everything is fine. So I think that's one thing that is simple, that regardless of whatever email platform you're using, we can run that test for you.

Jason Kramer [00:36:36]:
It's very quick to run it. The results are really insightful. That museum I mentioned earlier, that's how we got them as a client. They thought everything was perfectly peaches and rainbows in constant contact. And not to knock it, but there was all these problems and they had no idea and we brought that to their attention. So it's not my intention to move you off of your platform. Your platform might be perfectly fine, but there might be things you can do to help improve all the effort you're putting in. So that's one thing that I think would be easy for even the non sophisticated listener to do, is to just connect with us.

Jason Kramer [00:37:16]:
We'll run that test and then give you some really great, impactful insights. Yeah.

Kenny Lange [00:37:21]:
Which is phenomenal. I don't know who's attributed to saying this. I'm sure I'll get an email or my producer will look it up and tell me and I'll feel stupid. But a problem well defined is half solved. And it sounds like your tool would help create some. Define it and say, hey, here's the things, here's what's actually going on now we can do something about it, which is incredibly empowering in my experience. So Jason, thank you so much for sharing your knowledge, sharing your wisdom. Please go check out the website, the link.

Kenny Lange [00:37:57]:
We're going to have that in the show notes and so you can go there and find that and feel free to post. Like what do you find? What is your experience? I would love to know. Connect with Jason and his team and let them know how this helped you. But until next time, remember to change the way you think. You'll lange the way you lead. We'll see you our.