Steve Comes is a principal at Comes & Zeyben, a leading marketing firm that works with some of the biggest names in tech including Cisco, AWS, and Dell. During this episode, Steve and Greg discuss and give a great example of what it means to be agile and innovative particularly in light of COVID.
With the pandemic, we have lost the opportunity to get together with prospects in person…or have we. Comes & Zeyben has demonstrated what innovation means by developing an offering they call Virtual Experiences . Think turnkey, virtual event planners. The seller picks a theme (e.g. wine and chocolate pairings, meal preparation) and lets Comes & Zeyben know who they would like to bring together. Comes & Zeyben then handles the rest! They design the theme, work with providers and order supplies, send invitations and confirm registrations, ship everything to the prospects or customers, arrange for the experts to participate, MC the meetings, and coordinates all the follow-up with the guests. And these are shared experiences. Everyone invited to a specific event is going through the same experience -whether that is tasting the wine and chocolate or making a meal with the assistance of a chef. And the experiences don’t all have to involve food or beverages. Comes & Zeyben also has a list of great speakers and performers, like members of the cast of Hamilton, that can join as well.
And this is not just pomp and circumstance. Comes & Zeyben is all about delivering results. 97% attendance. 95% retention. 100% repeat. Millions in pipeline. Decision maker involvement.
Steve's closing comments are always search for new ways to engage with prospects and customers and remember that usually requires a new mindset.
Greg Dickinson: Welcome everybody to the convenience economy Podcast, where we talk about how things have changed, and people are opting for things that are more convenient. I'm really excited about our opportunity to talk today with Steve Comes. Steve is a managing partner of Comes and Zeyben. And before we get started into the topic that we're going to talk about today, Steve, why don't you introduce yourself and your firm to my audience?
Steve Comes: Great, glad to be here with you, Greg. So Comes and Zeyben is a marketing consulting and Creative Services Agency focused exclusively, almost exclusively on the technology marketing space. So our clients are Cisco, and AWS and Dell Technologies and Google and all the partner community that surrounds those those companies. And we deliver services in a couple of ways. One in a consulting portion of the business, that's your technology, marketing experts that are go to market through awareness, preference, purchase loyalty, you know, all the phases of the marketing lifecycle. And those folks are new in career, the most seasoned people full time, part time on prem remote, you just name the type of resource that you need from either a skill or be able to scale in your organization. And we've got the folks that are capable of doing that. So think about them as experts in the marketing discipline, and the content development side, and then we pair that up with a creative services. And this is a bit unique in the marketplace. Because oftentimes, you'll have great consulting work done by a firm, but then have to turn around and hire a creative agency to then put it into the form factor. So we've actually created a hybrid company where both of those disciplines are together. And so those creative resources are designers, and animators and videographers. And so we literally can do all the strategy work with you content development, and then design and develop the final assets. So that's Comes and Zeyben, we've been around for 18 plus years, and to work all over the world.
Greg Dickinson: Yeah, I've known Steve for a long time. And he's very, very successful. And as much as I'd like to dive into those, you know, that that, that repertoire of services that he offers that has made his company very, very successful. I was talking to Steve A while back, and he mentioned something that I'd never heard of before. And I want that's what we're gonna talk today and what he's named it, it's new. It's called what it's virtual experiences. Steve, what is a virtual experience?
Steve Comes: Well, if you think about what we used to be able to do this past summer, before this, this past year was we got together at conferences, and we took people to dinner, and we went into a show and you know, we had an experience with people and that was about having, you know, conversations and content and location. And the pandemic obviously put a tremendous dent in the our ability to do that. And so we thought what what about a way to be able to help facilitate some of those experiences because people are so weary of sitting in front of their computer, watching a talking head and trying to absorb content, let's blend together the experience that they might have had in the past when meaning wine or food or you know, an activity and also pair that up is being sponsored by a company like Dell, or elastic and creating experience for those customers. And that can either be a loyalty building thing for you know, that audience or it could be a closing opportunity. So we can go into more details of how we do it. But that's the idea.
Greg Dickinson: So cool, because I listen, I'll confess right as to when I when I first started reading about you know, quote unquote, virtual events, right and you're like your name virtual experiences better but virtual events of software companies, right, where Hey, we're moving this year to virtual I thought to myself, you know, that's not really going to work because I know for at least for me, personally, my opinion was I go to events because A. The location was usually pretty cool, right? Especially a guy from the northeast, it was always on the, you know, Arizona, California, right, Florida someplace nice. Second, I wanted to go there for the network. And then third, I went for the content but it sounds like what you guys have done it said hey, that's probably maybe somewhat real. And you decided to make it more than just someone on the virtually speaking but bringing bridging those two things that bring them together I think that is really really innovative and and cool. What What did you specifically see, you know, kind of the market drivers it said, well, boy, we changed the way people were doing it and B. you know, what was the market drivers that you thought would make it successful? I mean, they I'm sure we'll get into it, but they're probably a little bit of work and a little all together and making them professional and polished so what did you see that you said you and your partner said let's go try this virtual experiences and create something new
Steve Comes: Yeah the the need to connect with people is still there and the need to influence your prospects through the sales cycle is still there and the only way of doing that today is you know doing it via zoom or webex or you know the online collaboration tools or email and you know it just is not the same as what you might have had when you sit around with a group of people for an hour and you know cover a couple of topics and you know converse with them so we wanted to try and create that same atmosphere and that same ability to you know get to know people and and and sell and influence and market at the same time so you know we've paired up experiences so you know one example is we've got a couple of nice wineries we live about an hour south of the napa valley so we've got connections to a lot of wineries so we'll ship out a box with two beautiful bottles of wine and we have a chocolatier who used to be at the french laundry and nice box of chocolates with it and the company will sponsor that event so dell might kick it off for 15 minutes at the beginning and then we've got the vintner and the chocolate tier talking about pairing you know chocolates and wines together and then they'll close it up at the end and it just gets people you know to be exposed to you know you as the company and then in a much more relaxed state and more willing to participate you know our our attendance is that we'll cover more metrics at the end but like 97% because everybody ultimately wants to show up to have the experience
Greg Dickinson: Right right so let's peel that back a little bit so so you know and i want to let my audience know at the end steve's gonna tell you how to find his you know his company's website because i think you know today would be great if we got a picture of the picture sometimes speaks 1000 words it's very elegant what his company has put together but steve like sixth grade level so so one of your customers decides hey we're gonna do an experience you've got a choose from one of the experiences you've already kind of built and figured out but but what like walk me through what happens so people can kind of appreciate how this 97% turns out right i mean there's a lot of a lot of work in between you know walk me through that i'll ask a couple more questions
Steve Comes: Sure it's an end to end experience so you don't have to be an expert at any of the steps of the process so we will partner with you you identify the customers you're looking to influence whether they're the latter stages of the sales cycle or with dell is an example they have a women in tech group that they want to get together every month and so we facilitate that you know that experience and it's end to end meaning you pick the folks you want to invite and we will build the creative the the invitation the registration form help send that out confirm that they're going to attend get their addresses buy all of the supplies so if it's food if it's a charcuterie board if it's you know the wine and chocolate or cheese and we ship all of those track the shipping confirm it's been received will then host the event for you so we'll M.C. it with you so introduce your speakers help facilitate q&a throughout and then do follow up so it is a literal turnkey solution and then we have as as greg mentioned a whole portfolio of offers from very high end very inexpensive that you can that you can pick from depending on what your customer event is but the cool thing about it is we've done this many many times in fact we did 15 experiences in december alone so we know how to scale it we know how to run it we know how to be able to deliver it on time and on budget
Greg Dickinson: Wow that's fascinating i mean it really is innovative on your part i think about what what you know we used to do is right we go into a city and we'd invite right prospects maybe we get a couple customers you know sprinkled in and we take off at dinner right we always pick something you know we're we're doing one of the jockey club in new york because it was they had this underground vault that they used to hide people in when prohibition was going on so it was always like there was always some theme there other than just a nice dinner and then bring it together and what you've done is you've tracked you figure that out you said hey there needs to be something you know interesting like this idea of me receiving a box with wine and chocolate and then having someone kind of tell me about that right so because i couldn't you know anyone could ship me a bottle of wine and chocolate but it's the how you've you know i always say that it's not the idea it's the execution of the idea so it sounds like you've put all that together and made it a really enjoyable experience i'm sure right if it's wine do i get to taste some of the wine while i'm on the on the call?
Steve Comes: Absolutely yeah so you're popping that open you're listening to the winemaker talk about how to pair that with a particular chocolate the chocolatiers talking about five or six different chocolates you've got and how she put them together. And which goes with which etc. And I'll give you a sense I'll run through just some of the categories of things we've got so Tao beautiful restaurant in New York, we ship out a, you know, a full menu of appetizers, entrees and cocktails, and you then have a dinner hosted by the chef at Tao. And so you're actually making that dinner while they're making it and learning how to do that. We've got Taco Tuesday, which you can do any day of the week, and we ship you all the ingredients and then help you put it together. Charcuterie board making so we ship you this high end board, plus the meats, cheeses. You buy the vegetables locally. And then how do you design it, put it all together. We've got in a relationship with a whiskey maker in New York, ship your three little bottles of that. And if you don't want to alcohol, you can do mocktails, coffee. And then we also have your traditional speakers. So we've got a gentleman, we call him Sammy the hacker. He hacked my space early on in his career, and he's just amazing as it relates to security, Gabrielle Reece, some folks from the cast of Hamilton, they'll come on do a little song, answer questions, got an improv group, we've got access to the executive producer Ben Silverman of the office, very timely and right. And then Kevin comes in and does a little cameo experience. So all kinds of things like that. And as I mentioned, it's end to end. So everything from the design of the invites all the way through the end of the process. So those are examples of things we did. Okay.
Greg Dickinson: So anyone listening to podcast today is excited, right? I'm thinking about wow, this is really cool. I just I really love the way, you know, you kind of take in the the necessity of you know, listen, people buy from people they like people buy from people that they trust, right, and it's hard, right? It's hard today, you know, we at Omedym, we talk about this idea of digital trust, right? If you if you got to establish some type of level of trust and relationship, even if it's a digital way, and you guys have have figured that out. So excited about that, let's let's kind of shift to results. Right, so so you get teased a little bit early on about about engagement, but walk me through some of that, like, in your mind what you guys have seen from from results, cuz I'm excited, right? I mean, I think everyone people gonna want to call you and talk about this. But But what's the outcome?
Steve Comes: Yeah, perfect. You know, if you're going to spend the money and do something like this, it's got to produce a good result in my mind. So we track that very carefully. So attendance, we get 97% attendance. The only reason why the other 3% is because someone got sick, or couldn't make it for the you know, that reason? But everybody literally shows up because they're going to talk to the cast to Hamilton or they've got an amazing cooking experience, right? So they're all there. retention. Number two, they're there 95% of the time, wow, they stay to the very end of the presentation, the only reason they drop off is because sometimes we go along. And we go along, because there's usually a really active q&a session throughout. So we get, you know, the winemaker to talk and introduce the thing. And then, you know, answer questions from people about making wine or sipping wine, or whatever it is. And we end up going a little long sometimes, but 95%, retention, 100% repeat. So every single one of the clients we've worked with right now has come back, and we're doing multiple events from them. Millions of dollars in pipeline that's tracked by, you know, Google and the others, we've seen some really great results that they've given to us, anecdotally, some of the larger deals, for one of our clients closed as a result of this, we obviously didn't sell the deal, but it just helped move them to the last step. And then lastly, I would say, we really get executive level decision level people participating on both sides, both the client side in terms of, you know, the Google people showing up to you know, talk about their group or whatever. But more importantly, on the prospect side, and then the customer side, because they know it's going to be experience, it's not just going to be a talking head. And so you get the people that you're trying to influence to participate. And I think that's probably the biggest, it's not tangible in the sense of a metric, but the level of folks, you know, EVP's and SVPS and VPS you know, are all attending these things. So it's a it's a great influence and it's all sales driven. So everything has to be sponsored by if you want it to be the you know, the sales organization, you know, if it's a if it's a loyalty group, you know, the woman in tech etc. It's obviously not, but the rest of them, you know, are generally you know, trying to move things along to the close.
Greg Dickinson: Alright, okay, a couple questions in there. So so I think I heard you say this, but I'll just want to clarify is that is that if if I'm Google and I've sponsored this and you mentioned her name, so I'm going to go ahead and do it as well. They decided to do a you know, a virtual experience. They get right they being google get a little bit of time to me talk about, you know, what their what their what they want to market or about right so they get a little bit of time in there to kind of you introduce them and they get a little bit of time kind of like you would if if you're doing a dinner maybe the you know the most senior person in the room stands up and starts talking about the company is that is that am i hearing you correctly
Steve Comes: 100 100% but we want to make sure it's not a you know a giant sales pitch. Yeah it's just a sponsorship that's it.
Greg Dickinson: Yeah no i get it yeah i get that and then and then the other thing that was kind of interesting you said is that you know executive level and i and i and i selfishly kind of bring resemblance back to the fact that you know that the people that use our software here at Omedym right executives do they're kind of demos or product experiences at night and on weekends and i'm guessing part of the reason you're getting you know this executive 100% is because of the fact that you're doing these events at night and you know not during nine to five when they have jobs right it's hard to get a cfo ceo you know c level you know edp to go do something during the day they're busy and so i think that's that's contributing as well right
Steve Comes: Absolutely we timed it based on what the client wants obviously and then you know timezone issues and things like that that we have let me clarify one thing we got decision makers i think that's even more important because it doesn't necessarily have to be the title you know at the top of the food chain yeah you know it might be the technical decision maker but we're getting the people that they ultimately want to participate to participate and so that's that's the key
Greg Dickinson: Yeah i think that yeah better said than when i said anything because end of the day what that's what our customers report back is that you know ultimately today right it's no longer really a decision makers sometimes it's a buying team or a buying committee and you want to get them together so that's a good point the last kind of area one that just just out of curiosity i just don't know is that so if i if i if i did this and someone did this event and there's you know and you're invited right from the company you know some people can they see each other right as it is it kind of like pictures and stuff so they can kind of have a little bit of fun themselves that's often the y'all and i'm finding one of my customers or one of my prospects they all know each other are pretty close to each other but they get that experience too i mean they can see each other?
Steve Comes: Totally yeah you know we hosted through webex or teams or you know zoom or whatever form the choices and you know everybody's on video we really encourage everybody to be on video so you see each other you participate if you're making something you see each other's you know and product we have to hold it up at the end and you know if you want and yeah it absolutely builds community and in fact that was one more thing was your ad in terms of just not necessarily just always a selling motion we're also doing this with you know advisory groups and communities so if you want to invite and enhance that relationship you've got with a community or maybe you've got a strategic customer advisory board and you want them to meet once a quarter and have an experience instead of just you know a business meeting so it applies in any situation and we just tailor that experience based upon the audience and
Greg Dickinson: Love it yeah i can see i mean listen we could talk for four hours on on different uses right but i think at the end of the day i love the idea that you know reward like you know we were a little bit grant but what we were thinking about but we were thinking about you know how do we reward some of our customers that have been using our technology for a year right you want to at least let them know right so hey listen unreal right i think i think this is really really interesting i love the fact that you've kind of you know taken something that get used to work and it doesn't work anymore and you said no we can work we can make it work and make it better and i think some of these things are right there's you know there's clearly analogies to some of the stuff that we do here at Omedym that they're better than before in a new way using technology so congrats to that steve i always like to end you know my podcast with asking right my guests had to give some advice to the to the audience and there's one thing you've been in you know business for a long time so i want you to do two things for me one is how do people get in touch with you if they're interested in what you're doing you know your kind of linkedin urls and your website and then your contact information and then you know it's all good if someone leaves this call today this podcast today says boy i learned something new i can take it back to the office what would that one thing be right that you know there's a lot of things that one thing you say hey go try this or or whatever so give me your contact information and a little bit of a little bit of suggestion there and we'll and we'll wrap it up.
Steve Comes: Absolutely all right so the company is Comes & Zeyben, comes ampersand zaven Zey ben and steve comes so you can find us at the c and z marketing comm on the web and there's a place where you can just contact me through the results and cnc or you can drop me an email so it's s combs comes at c and z marketing calm so that's all that stuff i think the takeaway much like Omedym you know greg is changing the way that you can engage with your prospects and your customers and it takes a different mindset to think about what he's doing and that software and how that can ultimately influence the sales cycle and you know the progressive companies are looking at that and saying hey that's a different way of approaching us and so i would say you know think about change Changing the dynamic of engaging with your customers and you know, using virtual experiences. You don't have to do them through us. You can do them any way you want. But use a virtual experience change that dynamic of the of the conversation and don't make it just a talking head. Don't make it a sales pitch all the time. And ultimately, you'll you'll influence those, you know, loyalty comes from behavior first, sorry, from from the influence first and then the behavior second. So, you know, get them engaged, have them have a great experience, and ultimately the the behavior will will follow.
Greg Dickinson: Fantastic. Great advice. Steve, thanks so much for being a guest today that I think my audience is going to love this session.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai