You don’t drive growth the way Buurst is without a truly innovative product and a truly innovative marketing team. Join Stephen Spector, the marketing lead for Buurst, a super-charged company changing the face of high-performance storage technologies for cloud and the edge, as he shares his ideas on how he is helping Buurst become a dominant player in the space.
It is not often that you find a developer turned marketer. But when you think about how creative and smart good developers are, it is not surprising to learn that Stephen Spector, marketing lead for Buurst, started his career in development. Stephen is not content to follow the old school rules or even some of the new school rules. Like all marketers, Stephen believes you have to meet your prospects where they are. But unlike other marketers, Stephen doesn’t just rely on traditional social media channels, like LinkedIn, he uncovers what tools people are using in local markets, and taps into his prospects there.
Stephen also understands that the people he is marketing to are changing. The way they learn and want to consume content is just different! People like video. People like to self-learn. They will go where they need and do NOT want to talk to sales. So to get prospects into the mix, meeting prospects where they “are” is about making it easy for them and yes, giving up control. Check this out. Stephen and his team hold leads until he is sure they are qualified. A marketer holding leads. Unheard of!
So how is he driving awareness and growth for Buurst? Through video and making it accessible. Stephen says “Buurst is a massive video company. With a library of over 250 videos.” Video is so much easier than writing a white paper. That is what led Stephen and Buurst to Omedym. People want to educate themselves and no one wants to talk to sales. How can prospects buy if they don’t want to talk to sales. But with over 250 videos that creates it owns challenge. So, Stephen needed to figure out how to share the video content without it becoming too much. His answer is Omedym. Giving prospects the ability to self-learn in a really convenient way. And while the prospect is self-learning, so is Buurst. They get to see what questions are asked, what people are interested in, and how engaged they are. That goes back to holding back leads from sales until Stephen and his team knows they are really interested!
Connect:
Connect with Stephen on LinkedIn and learn more about Buurst by visiting https://www.buurst.com/.
Connect with Greg on LinkedIn and check out Omedym’s website and their LinkedIn and Twitter
Greg Dickinson: Welcome everybody. We're gonna do a convenience factor podcast today. And without further ado, let me introduce my guests. I'm so excited to talk to Steven Spector of Buurst Stephen say, Hello.
Stephen Spector: Hello, Greg, welcome. Well, I usually I run podcasts, I'm usually recommend guests. It's unusual to be on the other side, so to speak of the microphone.
Greg Dickinson: Well, now now that you just led me to this. Now we're gonna talk about control today. And what I'm gonna talk about is we're gonna talk about control and the lack thereof within b2b selling today. So, Stephen, you've been in b2b a long time you guys are doing great. Tell me a little bit about your background.
Stephen Spector: So I have, I have my old school developer, longtime developer, where C was the name of the game, right? If you weren't writing C programming, what were you doing? And to me today in Fortran, it's, I did fortran I took a class in high school, I went to a summer camp at Miami University in Ohio. And I learned Fortran, I even had the graph paper, we had to count the spaces, right? Because you could only put certain statements of Fortran in certain columns. So but I did not do as my father would make fun of me. He'd say, Well, you didn't do cards. So you didn't do real computer. To this day, I'm not a real computer scientist, because I didn't use cards. But after writing software for a long time, I decided that, in fact, that wasn't that good. When you meet people that are great developers, I consider them artists. I do think development is an artistry. And, you know, when you start working with people like that, and then you go, you know what, I'm okay. But these people are in another level, let me go find something that I can excel at. That doesn't just depress me every day.
Greg Dickinson: I'm with you. That's a funny story. I joined Ariba 1997 and prior to that, I was I'm a computer science major. Yeah, I was doing programming I did some commercial stuff, etc. And I walked the halls of Ariba and there's Paul Haggerty, he's a CTO came from next right with nine you know, guys. There's not a book in his office that like one book and I'm thinking to myself, Wow, it's so funny. I had the guts one day to ask one of the guys how come there's no like, I had a million bucks, right? Cause I didn't know how to do anything I learned. He goes, he, the guy said, Greg, we're programming Java, we're actually writing the book. From that day forward I'd ever taught that. What's your background? It wasn't and had nothing to do with development, right? Because I did not even want to pretend that I was in their, their league of geniuses, right if the artistry of creating so it's just a sideline, it's funny story you told
Stephen Spector: It's no, it is because you know, you read cut all the time and stuff and I put a solution and I get a bug. And then you know, whether it was a Citrix other place that had been at the other developers look at it, and, and they give me this look like, come on, you know, you're just, it was very basic by the book approach. And then I read other code, and I'm like, Oh, this is Yeah, hold on a sec.
Greg Dickinson: So you migrated into marketing. What are you seeing today? What's your what's your, you know, what's keeping you up at night? What are you thinking about and the role of marketing? I think that's, we could have 12 podcasts because I think the programmer or being a marketer in itself, but let's not go there. Let's talk about what.
Stephen Spector: So you know, marketing is really interesting. Right now, I've spent a good part of last 15 years really focused on content and social media. And where social media was 15 years ago, where social media today is really different. And I am also a huge believer in video, which brings us to how one of the reasons we work with you guys. But I can tell you social media is so different. You know, 15 years ago, if I went on Twitter, and I'd post stuff about our product, or about a feature or something like that, there'd be a gaggle of people not a gang, but a gaggle of people ready to discuss it, to have discussions, they used to be a group. This is going back a while there was the cloud harati. If you were into Cloud 15, 20 years ago, there was a whole group of people around the world discussing cloud all day long that they argued, and for me, when I thought of Twitter, that's what I thought of. Those days are really over. And Twitter's actually for me as a business user, has almost collapsed at this point. And it's interesting as LinkedIn has come up, to take that space. And so it's almost at this point, LinkedIn is really the only b2b channel left in social media which has really changed things. So I have pulled back some from you know, is that the only way to go and and the answer is there's so many other ways to go now. But you have to still meet your customer where they are meet your prospect. You know, I always say where, what do people like to use? What tool what content? How do they want it and it's our job as marketers to deliver it there. Even if it's a lot of small spaces, you know, we explore social media tools in Brazil social media to tools in Japan, and so the world is so everyone is so specialized into their spaces.
Greg Dickinson: I think there's so much stuff right that you I got for a while there, I was a big Twitter guy and I would read everything and and I bet you in the last I don't know year I you know, it's on my phone, but I don't. It's just there's so much minutia there that I can't find the stuff they used to be, to your point great people that would give tips right on try this or try that or you know, I can read about it to be a debate right to be statement, and then there'll be debate and you can learn from debate wasn't confrontational, just a great way to learn to hear a counter argument to, you know, something, and now it's just it's stuff, right? It's just minutia. And, you know, I think I'm thinking the same with LinkedIn. But I'm also starting to see, you know, more and more. Part of the word abuse is not the right word. But but
Stephen Spector: But it's heading, it's heading to being irrelevant. It is the writing, the writing's on the wall. So So what as marketers, what do we do? What do you do? And so well, the one thing I know is that, and again, old people like myself, Greg, I won't call you old you're younger than me. I'm sure it but we'll laugh. I don't know. But younger people, like videos, people want to self learn, you know, my son's in high school, and him and his buddies, how do you learn? And the answer is we don't learn at school. You know, he's taking a computer science class this year, and I go, what are you learning, he goes, nothing, because I learned that this summer, when I watched a week worth of YouTube, and I taught myself how to do things. People self learn, the younger people, new generation, even myself, I try some self learning, I'm just poor at it. But people want to learn something themselves, they will go where they need to go to get the information. So you know, Buurst, we are a massive video company. We have for you know, a small company of less than 50 people. We have over 250 videos right now. That is enormous video library content. Exactly. And my problem is, how do I let people find that content? How do I share that content? How do I you know, I can like how many how many videos can I put on my website before my website becomes too much. And and one of the amazing things that I've noticed lately and we used to come a company called rev.comm that does translations and captions, you know, for $5 I can put a video caption into probably 100 languages for $5 a language there is no more language barrier. Microsoft now has I don't know if you've seen this, there's new features in Word and PowerPoint that they don't tell anyone. You can talk live in PowerPoint in a meeting. And in the bottom PowerPoint will caption and over 80 languages in real time. Yeah, people watching it, I saw a thing where I can give a PowerPoint presentation. And people can get a what are those, codes, QR codes, you clicked QR code. And on your phone, you can watch the video and in your language, everything I'm saying in English is in your language. So we are, my mind boggles on these things, right? But we need to take advantage because you know, people can now get their languages, you need to make sure that all your tools, that all your content is accessible to people
Greg Dickinson: It all boils down to that's why we call this podcasts a convenience factor right at the end of the day, people you know, I'm not an electrician by trade, but I was doing some work in in my in my hobby shop, right. And I got all done. I watched everything on YouTube. I watch everything, you know, online videos and learned what I needed to do. And I called an electrician last night and walking through with FaceTime. And he's like, Greg, like, how'd you learn all that? I said, Well, I didn't sit through a 13 hour electrician class. I won't do it. I looked at you know, five minutes here. 10 minutes here. 13 minutes here, right? Just putting it together at my convenience. It wasn't nine to five, I'm working nine to five, we find that even your buyers Stephen are not buying from nine to five because they have a day job. You know it depends. Yeah, and huge enterprise company. There's a procurement department is something to consider around but but but you know, take the 50 employee up to 5000 employee companies, right, they have a day job and yet then they have to go the CTO or the CIO needs to go and then they need to go research. First. They do it before nine after six, and on weekends. So that's what that's why your videos are so key because you guys have a technical product that technical buyers not going to read a 30 page, white paper on Buurst. Sorry
Stephen Spector: And we don't have time to write a 30 page white paper, we don't have the skill. And it's in the and unfortunately for people who like to read more than video, the world's changing because it cost me too much to make that 30 page white paper and just get your perfect video so much easy, fast, easy. It's done is done. And it is funny though, you mentioned learning and stuff like that. I'm completely beyond putting a nail on the wall for hanging a picture. That's as far as I go. You know, we had a couple years ago our dishwasher disposal broke. My wife goes on YouTube watches the video hurting the kids go down to Home Depot buy one. And you know, they watched step by step to the video and they put a new one in themselves. You say just amazing. So you know, that's really you know, Greg, that's what led us to your company. That's why when we've talked And you know, I see how what you can do, it is the right way to do it because people want to be educated themselves. And no one wants to talk to sales. Yeah. Right. sales people, as an old engineer, salespeople scare me. They're there's too much pressure. There's too much. It's not buying a used car. But anytime someone asks for money from me, and I'm sure there's a lot of people like me, I, that's confrontational. And I don't want to get involved in that back away. So how can I buy products? How can I learn about products if I don't want to talk to sales? Yeah. And it's almost like, I hate to say this to salespeople, but a lot of sales is moving to basically you're just an order taker. I terrible way to say it but.
Greg Dickinson: But I but a little bit of that, right. But I think the other thing is that what you and I talked in the past, right, the buyers journey is 60, 70, 80% of the of the sale now. So used to be right, if I want to know anything about births, I had a call you I had to go talk to your sales team, they were the keeper of everything. They had every morsel of data, I needed to solve my problem. Now, I got 11 sources, on average, to go find all the answers. And at the very end, I call the rep because I got three or four questions I want to hear, you know, person when you guys do things like like when I'm doing my journey. Now I can go to birth and find out what kind of company are they? What How do they start, right? What's their business? How does it work? Right. And I can learn all that. And then now I've made up my mind, i'm all engaged. Right. And I think that's that last 20%. And eventually price comes up. Right. But I think salespeople need to adapt adopt to that market needs to adapt to the fact that you don't own right, that if you're going to knock on the door.
Stephen Spector: No. You do not own the chat, you don't own the process.
Greg Dickinson: Yeah, yeah, you know,
Stephen Spector: And I think if we look at a solution, like G2 as an example, we've been studying the G2 where people put reviews and stuff, and I know I've gone out and do a lot of reviews from people, but that has real power. And there's real good stuff. I just as a marketer, how to use G2 is a different question. Because you know, everyone's trying to make money. That's what businesses do. And so I'm not sure how to use it best. But, you know, I like reviews from other people. But I want them to be real, right? It's the old Amazon review problem. How do you know if these reviews on Amazon are real? Or they're fake? Yeah, exactly. And, but that's a big part of it. But you know, I can tell you, Greg, we've, we've use your product for over a month now that we launched, and we've done a big campaign to teach people how to use it with blogs, a lot of social media pushing out talking in our sales. But you know, one of the things we talked about earlier, Greg, was that, I looked at the top five questions people ask, and this is just our first month on the tool. Basically, they're looking to see who else uses you, your small company, what other customers trust you that matters. So give me credibility, then they're looking at, you know, what is your business model? How do you work? You know, who are you how do you work? Yep. But then to me, it got more interesting as they started looking at, you know, how much what's your cost? What's your performance, the things we market on the second set of questions. And what makes me feel I have to say really great is I know that my marketing, focus, my marketing messaging is correct, because people using the tool are following you know, we, you know, as you said, Greg top of funnel, and clearly top of funnel your tool has reached so we had 71 different individuals this month, getting started. I love it. 71 people answered their own top of funnel, and began with self qualification.
Greg Dickinson: 71 people took place, you know, at their convenience. And I think one of the things you guys do well, that I really harp on people is that to your point of authenticity, right, that that if you create a video and you're a marketing person, which is you know, kind of it's kind of strange, I'm about to say is that most marketing people say it's got to be professionally done, I need I need lights, I need music I need fade in and fade out and the people walking down the street. And you know what? We've now have, you know, 10s of 1000s of prospects of connections and no that's not authentic. We know that's made up it's make believe it's not real, what's real is Stephen, get in front of a camera and saying, Let me tell you about Buurst. Let me tell you how this works. Let me you know, etc. And then you know, not just you but other people, we call that everyday content, right? Because it's what you do every day. If I call to you up to ask you a question. You would say Hold on a minute. Let me get the lights set in my room. Let me get the right suit on let me get. You just answer my question. That's what people want. And if you swear or if you make a mistake, you say Oh darn, I went to the wrong screen. That's okay because it's real.
Stephen Spector: I love this term. I have to tell you Greg, I never heard everyday content. I love it. It is now it is now going to be the new mantra at Buurst so congratulations. I love it.
Greg Dickinson: Give me your word. What's your word you guys have coined?
Stephen Spector: I don't have one.
Greg Dickinson: Videotenuously?
Stephen Spector: Well, videotenuously is our word that we have been advertising and so I've given full approval for you guys to steal it. I do love the word. But I I think you're you're just so right on all this stuff. Because we push out I mean, podcasts, right? podcasting is not you know there's professional podcasts. I don't listen to professional podcasts. Right, right. In my business, you know prior to this I did a podcast with, with a founder of a company I've known for many years. And, you know, we did almost three years of podcasts, almost 200 podcasts, they were 40 minute long discussions of in depth, technical content, on edge, cloud, things like that. And we didn't edit them. We just, unless there was a space or a dog barking whatever. We just played them. People said us people said, right, you're gonna Yeah, it's it doesn't matter.
Greg Dickinson: It's authentic. Right. And you know, and I think to your point, right, my podcasts that you know, are not an hour long anymore, like yours probably aren't
Stephen Spector: Now, I've shortened. I've shortened down.
Greg Dickinson: I used to say which I get my kids yelled at me. I said one day, I said well podcasts are the same length as a commute. They said, dad no one commutes. Like you got me, you got me right. Because, you know, that's what they would they would listen to you make fun of their father, right? Hey, Dad, that cheese man. Yeah. But listen, I think you peel back the onion. Where is your buyer? How do you how do you talk to them? They want to learn, they don't want to they want to watch not read, right? And they want authenticity, right? And then when they get their information, and there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of people that are afraid to do what you're doing, Stephen, they want, they still think they can hold that control. They own the sales cycle, they own the the marketing message and everything has to be and I What do you think of that?
Stephen Spector: Well, Greg, come talk to our salespeople, because we're beginning scoring, where we're going to delay giving leads to sales, until we're confident that the sale has a greater chance of closing. So Greg, I'm going to bring you in. And when salespeople freak out, I'm just going to blame you. And then and then they won't bother me. But we are moving heavy in that direction now. I actually believe and again, I learned a lot from your tool, looking at these things. People need to absorb enough content, but I as the company or as a marketing, I shouldn't make the decision for the salesperson of when we're going to give them to sales. The customer, the prospect needs to make that decision. So the trick point is how do I as a marketer, do that? How do I let them make that decision? And this is something we're gonna work on and do some research. Now. I'm going to research I'm going to go to YouTube, or I'm going to go look for podcasts and find that answer. But clearly, you know, and I think it's more than b2b now, right? Even b2c is this way. Actually, I think b2c is ahead of us. You know, when I want to buy a lawn mower or something, you know, I go out and read 100 different things. I don't just I don't go to a store and ask someone. The old days ago in a Sears, I you know,
Greg Dickinson: Craftsman is on it. I mean, that's the what we tell people is people still buying relationships, but it's a now a digital trust. And here's my digital trust. I live on a farm. I have hobbies. If I need to learn how to take care of weeds in the pasture, I do all this homework research call the company ask questions. they've established they I asked they answer and guess what when I go to buy, that's where I go first. I'm gonna say I'm guarantee they're gonna get the business. Right? That's where I go first. Because they they've established that trust by Hey, what about this? What spreadsheet? I will how far does it get to go? What's the next year? Gosh, do I have to use this chemical what hurt my horses blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then when the day came, I made up my mind on what I'm going to go do. I went to them. And I think that's what you're saying is if Buurst can establish digital trust in the self service and not be afraid to be a little bit. They're anonymous. When they're ready to buy the raise their hand and they'll say, Stephen, we're here now and we're ready. That's what you want sales to deal with. You guys are still kicking tires, six months from now.
Stephen Spector: The salespeople is and this is why when I look at buying cars, as someone who hates buying cars, the sale, the car process still runs the old school way where you go in I don't, I don't do that. Actually, if I have to, I go find some guy who's a ruthless sales guy. And I ask if he can buy it for me and send him in and just but it's different.
Greg Dickinson: But now it's carvana, and you just you buy it online and delivered to your house. I mean, the whole world is changing, right? You know, I laugh because I tell people all the time. Listen to me ask you one question. It's Friday night, you're ordering pizza? Do you and you got a choice of calling or going online. 95% of you are going online. I don't care what age you are. My dad goes online. He's 90 years old, right? People do not call they don't have to know
Stephen Spector: No because it's inefficient. But of course there's also downsides there but that's a separate podcast on. it's because we don't want to deal with people anymore. And as a as an engineer and someone who's a bit I have 50/50 introvert and 50/50 extrovert so I only have so much extrovert and I have to say Greg I'm using all my extrovert this morning. So the rest of day No one's gonna talk to me.
Greg Dickinson: You're talked out.
Stephen Spector: But it's I always choose being introvert first. Yeah. And in going online and ordering without talking to people. That's always the best.
Greg Dickinson: So hey, Stephen, welcome to the podcast. I thank you. You're sharing some nuggets with it with the with the audience. And I think the, you know, you're you're in that unique position of being able to be honest and look at, hey, the buyers aren't necessarily coming the way, I can't get them to opt in, I can't do they won't request a demo, they won't, you know, opt in for everything. So let me serve up some stuff in a format they like, which is video, let him search it. Let them find topics, then let's take that information back and get better at what we're doing. It's a flywheel.
Stephen Spector: Yeah, I'd say you know, one addition to that. No one wants. Getting a demo means a sales meeting. We just launched three weeks ago, an entire try it now yourself tool. Engineering fill the whole way for us that people can try it without ever talking to us. Yeah. And you know why we have to do that because people don't want a demo
Greg Dickinson: Especially technical people.
Stephen Spector: Very much so Yes, sir.
Greg Dickinson: We wrap this thing up. I appreciate your time, and we'll connect real soon, Stephen. Take care.
Stephen Spector: Thank you, Greg. It's good fun.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai