How to Leverage Social Selling Through Brand Ambassadorship

The human element is something that’s often overlooked in B2B demand generation. It’s important to remember that even in B2B, people buy from people. Therefore, personal branding and brand ambassadorship are key components that can help build trust and engagement.

That’s why we’re talking to the “B2B Demand Gen Queen” Dilara Cossette (Founder & Head of Demand Generation, Focus Image Pro) about how marketers can leverage social selling through brand ambassadorship. During our conversation, Dilara explained the importance of personalization and being intentional in content creation. She elaborated on which pitfalls to avoid and how to get buy-in for social selling. Dilara also shared strategies on how to work with subject matter experts (SMEs) and obtain testimonials.

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https://youtu.be/zACCj5Nl8OI

Topics discussed in episode

[1:18] Dilara explained why the human element is often overlooked in demand generation
[2:45] The differences between a personal brand and brand ambassadorship
[6:28] How to get buy-in from customers to give testimonials
[8:15] Pitfalls to avoid with social selling through brand ambassadorship
[13:35] The importance of having the right strategy and conducting the right research for social selling through brand ambassadorship
[16:54] How demand gen through brand ambassadorship, social selling, and thought leadership content helps companies
[19:41] Tips for dealing with internal pushback for social selling
[22:15] How to work with subject matter experts (SMEs) to develop content for social selling
[23:21] The process of leveraging social selling through brand ambassadorship, and the key components required for this approach
[26:25] The content format that performs better for social selling and demand gen
[27:31] An example of how social selling through brand ambassadorship helped a company to generate positive results

Companies and links mentioned

Transcript

SPEAKERS

Christian Klepp, Dilara Cossette

Christian Klepp 00:01

Welcome to this episode of B2B Marketers on a Mission, and I’m your host. Christian Klepp. Today I’m going to be talking to Dilara Cossette. She is the founder and head of demand generation at Focus Image Pro. She has extensive experience in helping B2B marketing leaders to navigate growth. Her company does this by creating, capturing and converting demand through demand generation strategies specifically tailored to the unique needs of small and mid-sized businesses with B2B demand generation solutions. Tune in to find out more about what this B2B marketers mission is.

Christian Klepp 00:38

Okay, fantastic. Dilara Cossette. Welcome to the show, and I’m so glad to have you on here. And I also want to give a shout out to Anthony Leung for the introduction.

Dilara Cossette 00:50

Yeah, hi, hi, thank you for having me.

Christian Klepp 00:54

Absolutely, absolutely. So without further ado, let’s dive in, because this is, we’ve had a couple of guests previously on the show that have talked about demand gen, but not this specific aspect. So what specific aspect am I talking about here? It’s how to leverage social selling through brand ambassadorship. So why don’t we kick off the conversation with this question, why do you think the human element is often overlooked in demand gen?

Dilara Cossette 01:18

I think if we look at our news feed on LinkedIn, on any social media, as well as open our inbox, we will see that we’re getting tons of messages. They’re coming from individuals, from companies. But when we ask ourselves, do we know those people? Do we trust them? Where they’re coming from? Where is the background? The answer is no, and we all know that people buy from people. They don’t buy from companies. So this is where personal branding is very important, but it’s so much tied with brand ambassadorship and social selling, because there should be someone behind the brand, behind every single brand, the person who will be brand ambassador or advocate of that brand, who will become a thought leader of the industry and also share the expertise. And it’s not necessarily sales people. People really think that, Oh, if we’re talking about brand ambassadorship or social selling, it has to be sales team, not necessarily. I think even if it’s someone outside of the sales department, it’s even better, because the person will sound very authentic, knowledgeable, and that will actually increase the engagement awareness and potentially lead to some really cool conversations that will eventually lead to closed deals.

Christian Klepp 02:33

Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. I had a follow up question there for you, if you can. Is there any difference between personal brand and brand ambassadorship?

Dilara Cossette 02:45

It’s very similar I would say. Personal branding is like, more when it’s like, I would say, maybe you’ve heard about the founder-led company, right? I’d say like, it’s there where the personal branding, the person is building their brand through the thought leadership, founder-led content I would say. This is where the person is building their brand to help the person or the company eventually to sell. Brand ambassadorship. It could be like, really, for a bigger organization with 1000s of people, right, but it’s still important to have this brand ambassadorship. It could be one person, like dozens of people, just like doing this brand awareness. And I would say, like, see it as a more brand awareness, right? We think that brand awareness should come only from the company page when it’s a boosted, promoted content, not necessarily. Now on LinkedIn, you can actually boost a personal post as well. That actually it’s a sign for us that, okay, this is how LinkedIn and all our social media channels, they put more emphasis on personal branding rather than company branding. And I’ve done several tests when we took the same content, we promoted it from company page versus the personal page, and it has 10x more engagement than the company page. So it means that people resonate, you know, and they engage more with the personal content, which leads to the personal branding and personal, you know, promotion as well.

Christian Klepp 04:07

Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. It’s, um, it’s very interesting that you mentioned that, because, you know, I’ve noticed it as well on platforms like LinkedIn. If you look at the company pages, even if they do post content on a regular basis, you see that either their engagement is quite low, or if there is engagement, it tends to be the employees. So it’s kind of like, let’s pat each other on the back and internal high five. We’ve posted something, right? Whereas, if it’s from somebody’s like, as you said, like personal feed, right? It’s, it’s also, to a certain extent, a reflection of their personality, but it’s also a reflection of their expertise on a specific subject, right?

Dilara Cossette 04:49

100% I would also add to that, brand ambassadorship can be not necessarily from the employees of the company. Actually, it will have like, even maybe 100 more results and engagement if that is some something shared by customers, by, you know, other employees, by the experience. So that’s where the reviews and customer support comes in place. Testimonials is now a really good example when you actually promote thought leadership content. This is where you can actually work and leverage, let’s say marketing team, sales team. They work very closely with the CS team to get those testimonials, and it’s not hard to get, like, a few really happy customers, and they would like really to advocate for your brand, just getting a few sentences, putting a nice, really visual, and just like sharing that content, I had a call with someone earlier today, I asked the person. It was a marketing leader in the very big organization, and I asked, like, what is important to you when someone is reaching out to you, what will make you to hop on a call with someone and explore the marketing or sales opportunities? She told me, testimonials. I will believe someone else about the person, rather than the person, no matter what the person is saying, and that’s so interesting, that’s a real feedback of person who is really working with external vendors.

Christian Klepp 06:07

Yeah, no, absolutely, absolutely. And I had a follow up question for you there on the topic of testimonials, because this is a challenge that I see time and time again, even with some of the customers that we are working with, right? How do you get those testimonials? How do you get buy in from customers, to give those testimonials to your company?

Dilara Cossette 06:28

I think it’s, it’s about the moment, right? How to find the moment? It shouldn’t be at the beginning of the you know, your collaboration, and I’ll give that example. You know, we work with… someone is working with a marketing agency, for sure, it’s required minimum few months to get their results. And honestly, it doesn’t mean that the results will be right away positive, because we do a lot of testing and trials and AB testing, so they might be like not so impressive results, but you know better what you can achieve and the moment when you get some really good results, this is a moment to ask testimonials. Another way, an advice for someone who is just starting and they don’t have a lot of clients, or they don’t feel comfortable, or the results are not there, is to ask, you know, someone to give that in return to something for free. So, you know, I’ve heard something recently, and I agree with that, because when you start and launch your own company, or any in the business. You think, like, all my time is like, you know, gold, but I think, like, you should give your time, you should offer something for free. And, you know, it can be service, it can be free trial, if you’re in the product market, if you have a product or stuff. If it’s a service, you can offer free audit. You can offer like, you know, free Trial or something similar, and asking the person if you’re satisfied, if you like it, would you mind leaving a testimonial? That is the best way to get the first testimonials, even without the strong database. And that will help, actually, to close the first clients, and then you can find the best moment to ask for those testimonials.

Christian Klepp 07:56

Yeah, no, you bring up an interesting point there. It’s like leading by helping, right? Leading by helping. Okay, fantastic. I’m gonna move us on to the next question, and I’m sure you will have no problem answering this. Pitfalls to avoid. Right. When it comes to social selling through brand ambassadorship.

Dilara Cossette 08:15

Number one is being too pushy and too salesy. It’s so interesting, but I’m getting dozens of invites, connection invites every day on LinkedIn. And, you know, in the first original message, person saying, like, Oh, I’m impressed with your background, and I would like to learn more. I would like to be connected. Second message down, they’re selling you something. I’m like, seriously, that’s not authentic, right? And I’m not saying, like, I’m not responding. Sometimes the offer is great, and I’m always open to network, communicate, collaborate with others. I truly believe that we work, you know, we work and grow together, because that’s the only way, you know, to help each other and make sure we achieve our own goals. But I would say, like, yeah, try to be salesy. Try to be pushy. I don’t think, yeah, sales outreach, you know, cold outrage, cold calling, all this stuff really worked very well 5-10 years ago. I don’t think you know, especially if you’re targeting marketing leaders, and maybe depends on the industry, but it doesn’t work, right? We’re just overwhelmed with tons of messages every day. But what works when person is really offending and the person really wants to connect, network, offer something without asking anything in return, and that’s the best way right to refer clients, because it’s not only black and white, right? If you meet with someone, the product is not the right fit or the service is not something you’re looking for right now. But there’s always great to have people in your network where you can refer people, help someone else. Maybe you will see a post if someone is looking for specific solutions and you can help someone. I do believe in karma, so I would say, just be nice to people and treat them the way how you would like to be treated? Would you like to be sold? You know, right away the first message? Probably not. So try not to do that.

Christian Klepp 10:02

Absolutely, absolutely. There are so many examples I could give here, but there’s an individual, also a B2B marketer, that I’ve been following online on LinkedIn for many, many years. His name is Steve Watt. He’s also based in Toronto, and one of the posts he put out there, in fact, I think he put it out countless times, is that people do not wake up in the morning and check their LinkedIn hoping to get pitched right. Nobody wakes up in the morning and drinks their coffee and checks their phone and says, Oh, I am looking forward to getting pitched today, right? In fact, there was another guy and I cannot. I’m not. I cannot claim to have coined this phrase because other people have used it, but nobody likes to get pitch slapped, right? And that’s what that is like, for example. Case in point, you know, we get there every day.

Christian Klepp 10:50

Hi, Dilara. Your name, your name popped up, and I was recommended to connect with you, and I’m looking forward to expand my connection, and then you accept the connection request. And then the moment you do, bam, auto, pitch slap. We do whatever the service is that is actually not really relevant to your business at all. And then, would you like to jump on a quick chat to talk about this? And in my opinion, it’s never a quick chat, right? It’s at least 30 minutes.

Dilara Cossette 11:19

Yeah, there are always different tactics and methods. People are asking to get your feedback on something. People are trying to share something, they’re offering like, Oh, I’m working on a case study. It’s like a free something at the end of day, people don’t believe anymore. They know that it’s all about the sales pitch. You know what is interesting? I was really asking someone recently to get their feedback on, you know, the offer that we came up, and the person was like, and we’re having a chat, we were asking some specific questions and so on. Was probably the person. And it happened three times within a week, because I was trying to get feedback from marketing leaders. Three people asked me, are you trying to sell me something? I’m like, No. I was like, I was waiting for the sales speech. I’m like, No, that was a really genius question. I really wanted to get your feedback. Thank you. Have a great day. I’m like, That’s it. People were really asking me, is that it? I’m like, that is it? I told you. It was a real question. Thank you for getting back to me. Do you think that makes sense? Yes, bye. And people don’t believe anymore. They were like, Where is a sales pitch? And they were really asking me, like, is it something coming up? Are you trying to say… I don’t understand the reason of this conversation. I’m like, it’s just a question to get your feedback. It was so funny. Three people. I’m like, Oh my God, right, we overused LinkedIn and, you know, you know, email and everything.

Christian Klepp 12:37

I mean, it’s probably the same reason where a lot of people don’t have landlines anymore, and also why they don’t pick up if they recognize, like on the call display, they see a number that they don’t recognize, right? Because, chances are at somebody like, you know, you can drop any name you want of any of those big corporations here in Canada that are trying to sell you something right, from telecommunications to insurance to internet and everything in between, right?

Dilara Cossette 13:06

Yeah, yeah. Exactly, exactly, yeah.

Christian Klepp 13:09

Okay, I’m gonna move us on to the next question, which where I’d like you to like talk to us about the importance of having the right strategy, but also conducting the right research, right? Because social selling through brand ambassadorship is not something that, you know to use that North American phrase, wing it. It’s not something that you should wing, right? It’s something that needs to be thought out. It needs to be well researched. It needs to be intentional. But over to you, your thoughts.

Dilara Cossette 13:35

I think personalization is a key, and I know like how people are like leveraging AI right now with personalization in order to send one to many messages. I mean, AI and personalization, honestly, I don’t see that matching, because with AI, you don’t need AI to personalize the message. If you’re checking someone’s profile and you refer to the post that you saw or maybe something resonates, maybe you went to the same university, you can use AI. You don’t have to, because that’s your own personalization. That you will take that example and link it, and that will be very personalized. Um, you know, like the emails when they say, like, oh, I noticed, like, someone gave you recommendation, and the person mentioned this, this and this. So the person for sure, like, look into the details, right? And refer to that. There is certain way to do AI, but now I think people are they, they, they relied too much on AI, and now they don’t know how to do personalization, and they call personalization AI, which is still not very personalized, and you can feel it right away. And there’s so many copy paste messages very similar that we’re getting every day. And you can feel right away if it was really written by human or by AI. But I understand also, if you know sales team, they all have quota as well as marketing, and they need to reach hundreds of people every day, because they go after volume. Definitely there’s not enough hours in the day to do all this personalization one by one, and it’s hard, right? Going after volume. I think we’re creating the problem for ourselves first of all, but also for the industry. We’re trying to succeed by sending 1000s of emails. Someone has to send even more. So it’s sometimes like people are overusing and purchasing domains, you know, hundreds of domains in order to send more, the results are getting less. So they have to do more volume in order to get… I mean, it’s hard, right? We’re not making it easier. And if we are where we are now, what’s gonna happen in five years, right? I mean, how will we reach out, how we will talk to people, who will respond, who will believe us?

Christian Klepp 15:46

Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, again, I suppose it goes back to the industry, the vertical, and also like what it is that you’re trying to sell to people, or rather, what service you plan to provide. Because, for example, like the services that you and I provide Dilara, I would, you know, I would park that under consultation. It’s a certain level of consultation. I would, I mean, even for myself, it would be very hard for me to close a deal for a consultation project on a cold call and automated, like, you know, something that’s done through automation, like, you know, an email campaign, an email blast, a blast on LinkedIn. Because it’s a, it’s a multi, as you as you well know, it’s a multi stage process, right? And it’s also about a lot… it’s trust building, right? Because what you’re selling is your expertise. It’s not just necessarily your time. It’s your expertise, because you’re helping your customers to transform their business for the better, right? So to a certain level, that’s not really something that AI could solve on its own.

Dilara Cossette 16:54

Yeah, I don’t think so. And this is where demand gen comes in place. And I would say like it’s across all industries. I never saw any brand that the demand generation brand awareness harm that company. And this is what you can do through social selling. We can do for brand ambassadorship and social selling. And again, I don’t want people to think like if there is a selling, it means that it has to be salesy. Social Selling doesn’t necessarily have to be pushy or salesy. Social selling is something. There’s so many methods to do that. You can share the content. You can be a thought leadership you can share case studies. You can do or whatever you want without even sales approach or asking anyone to hop on a call. That’s part of demand gen, and when you do that, people, it will ring a bell, or they will remember you when the need will come. So let’s say they’re looking for the solution, but they are not in the market right now. You create a demand. It’s kind of like a three steps. You create a demand through brand ambassadorship, social selling, thought leadership content. You have someone on the team who is like an advocate, as a true advocate, and feels comfortable to be on the video, to share the content, to share the tips, maybe weekly product newsletters, something that you share, and you leverage that content. That’s where you create the demand. Then it’s like converting the demand. When the demand is there. This is the way to make sure they find you. This is where you know some paid ads comes in place, where you can leverage some review websites and capturing the demands, make sure you actually capture and assign it to the right sales team, and make sure you actually provide the excellent support there as well. Because if they see that, you leverage and just like share so much tips and best practices at the beginning, you also want to leverage and continue the same level of support.

Dilara Cossette 18:39

As an example, I’ve been working with so many vendors. It’s all all great until you sign the contract. Once you sign the contract, it’s not exactly what has been, you know, promised, right? And you feel the huge difference, I think, like it has to be across sales and marketing. This is where I say demand gen sits in between marketing and sales department, because it’s connecting and building bridges between two departments, and one of the reasons is to make sure we provide and help a prospect, eventually potential customers with the same level of support.

Christian Klepp 19:12

Absolutely, absolutely. So moving on to the next question. And I’m sure you get this a lot right, because more often than not, especially in B2B, there’s not many people outside the marketing function that actually understand the concept of social selling. So what’s your advice to marketers out there that are dealing with internal pushback? How do you, how do you, how do you get buy in from those that don’t understand what social selling is?

Dilara Cossette 19:41

So interesting. I would recommend to start maybe with internal sessions, like more educational content, and then I will make it in a very game type of contest, like maybe, like incentivize or maybe like to make some internal contest, let’s say, you know, announcing the months of Social Selling for sure, it has to be supported with some internal sessions and then to provide them with maybe like support. Because the biggest roadblock for people that they don’t want to share, they don’t want to be judged, and they don’t know what to say and how to say, especially when it comes to product or services, they don’t want to share something which doesn’t make sense, and get a feedback. And that’s the biggest concern. If marketing team can support with educative content, by sharing, what is social selling, what are the best tips, but also support them with the content creation and provide with this tools, and then create a contest, or just like, you know, announce the winner, or like, incentivize that, that will be in a game like, you know, type of you know, environment, I would say that will make sure, like everyone, not necessarily sales and marketing, are involved in social selling. It can be customer support. It could be, you know, through different departments and content might slightly change, but will be something interesting to see. Let’s say how many… The winner is, like the person who is getting the highest number of impressions or engagement, or someone who books a call, I don’t know. And you know, this incentivize can help to increase engagement.

Christian Klepp 21:12

Yeah, something a little bit like healthy competition, if I understood you correctly, right?

Dilara Cossette 21:18

Yeah. Well, if you push too much. It won’t be healthy, but, yeah, it depends. It depends how competitive, competitive they are. Yeah.

Christian Klepp 21:27

Fair enough. Fair enough. You mentioned something that I wanted to go back to right because obviously a lot of what you’ve been talking about during this conversation, when it comes to social selling, is also developing the right content. And for a lot of B2B marketers, to develop that right content, they probably have to almost obviously look outside their function and lean on subject matter experts or SMEs, right? So these SMEs, I would say, nine times out of 10, are not in the marketing function. They’re in different business units, and they’re probably very busy people. So what’s your advice to marketers out there? How can they build those relationships and that rapport with those SMEs and get them on board with the content development?

Dilara Cossette 22:15

Yeah, it’s a very good question. I think if marketer, it’s content marketing falls under like if there’s someone internally, the person usually works with different departments, and one of the biggest challenge, I would say, is to come up with the brand positioning, and also, like, you know, the way how the content is presented. I believe there’s someone internally, the person who really knows how to put the content in the way that it will sound actually authentic, and also will make sense if CS team, or IT team is sharing something that are not related to their, you know, expertise, so that’s something like, you know, content marketers should take in consideration while preparing the content to be shared by the different departments of the organization.

Christian Klepp 22:58

That’s fair enough. That’s fair enough. So we get to the point where I wanted to ask you to walk us through the process, right? And you’ve given us plenty already, but walk us through the process of leveraging social selling through brand ambassadorship. So what are the things that B2B marketers need to do differently to achieve this, and what are the key components required for this approach?

Dilara Cossette 23:21

I think their main point is to find the right person I would say. I mentioned that sometimes people say that, Oh, social selling, it has to be salesperson. Has to be founder. I would encourage actually, to find someone who is first comfortable to be on the video because I think video content is the best performing and it’s easy to connect on a personal level when you share something valuable. For the video conversation, the person has to be very comfortable. The person has to have knowledge in the industry. Usually it could be someone in the product team. Could be sales, it could be customer support. The thing like this is a great example, where they know the brand, they know how the customer, they know the market, and the chances that are comfortable are very high because they talk to people every single day, they are in customer support, and find the person. And it could be again, through the content, you know, create a survey who would like to become an ambassador. It could be changing if the organization is bigger than, let’s say 100 people, or there’s like a more interest. It could be changed every month. For sure, they will require support from the marketing team in terms of the video editing, you know, content creation, posting and scheduling, but that will be the first step to do, to find the person who would like to share the content and work with that person for the social selling. What sales and marketing could do. They could leverage the content and include it in product newsletters, in sales outreach, in LinkedIn outreach. They could, it’s so easy to take that content so like, Hey, I’m just reaching out to you. It could be sales outreach, but still, I would like to share this that you might be interested in or you find insightful. So it’s not a sales outreach. Nothing selling, just sharing, because sharing is caring. And I think that content can be reused in so many different ways. It could be used in product email marketing. Could be used in the marketing newsletters. So it could be actually used in e-blasts. If you know, you know the company is investing in external vendors and supporting that could be interesting idea as well, just to me and make a series of that. Another idea I just thought about that. It’s an interview series, so that person is comfortable to do the 5 Minutes interview, and if the person is actually in the CS team, that will be actually very smooth. Asking clients and customers, also depends on the number of customers the company is having, if they would like to interview them for like a five minutes. And that could be actually the series of thought leadership content.

Christian Klepp 25:58

Wow, you’ve given us plenty already here, but like you know, and there’s also different… mentioned different content formats. So in your experience of all these content formats that you’ve mentioned for social selling, ultimately, also demand gen, are there any one of these that you say would perform better than others? Or Would it depend on the industry, depend on what stage the company is at. What are your thoughts to that?

Dilara Cossette 26:23

The shorter is better.

Christian Klepp 26:25

Okay.

Dilara Cossette 26:25

It doesn’t really matter the industry. I think the shorter is better. I mean, look, people don’t spend hours like, you know, listening hours and hours unless it’s very specific that they really want to deep dive into specific, you know, topic or industry. Other than that, if we’re talking about social selling, it has to be very short. I would say maximum five minutes. To be honest, if you make a series, you can talk a lot about, like, you know, someone very sub, sub topic. If it’s something like, you know, related to one product feature or like, one tactic, I think five minutes will be more than enough, especially if it’s like, not an interview series or just the video, and you’re sharing the best practices or tips, I believe it can be really short, but it will be very valuable. So I would say the shorter is better.

Christian Klepp 27:12

Okay, okay, okay, you’re definitely not the first one that’s mentioned that. So there’s definitely some truth in that. Um, could you give us an example of how social selling, through brand ambassadorship, helped the B2B company to generate positive results, ideally, from your own experience.

Dilara Cossette 27:31

We recently launched a campaign where we collected all the testimonials and put them, excuse me, in the really nice you know, on LinkedIn, you can do a carousel photos, images, not a PDF. It’s like a one long, but they can actually scroll. We combined all that, and we started boosting it, and that was very successful. We actually got a lot of engagement for that specific boosted post, what we also did, we asked the person who is doing the thought leadership content, and we agreed with the person that we’re working. It’s someone working in the sales. Like, the person is overseeing marketing and sales, but he has a lot of experience, so we actually shared that content from his personal page as well, and we boosted both. And people started reaching out to the person because they see instead of the company, sometimes they don’t know who to reach out to when they see that the testimonials or next piece of content is promoted by someone, they click and they can get in touch. We got a really good prospects for one of our clients coming directly from those boosted testimonials of their clients. So like, yeah, it’s step by step, but it’s very successful.

Christian Klepp 28:37

Yeah, and I believe there’s something to be said about leveraging client testimonials that way, because, you know, it’s one thing for a company to talk about, like, oh, you know, this is, you know, we’re so great. Our products and services are so awesome. And there are some thought leadership pieces, but to have the testimonials there, which is basically that company’s customers talking about how this provider, or this company, helped to make them successful. That just adds so much more substance to their claims, right

Dilara Cossette 29:13

Yeah, 100% and, you know, sometimes I don’t know why, but companies are hesitant to ask for testimonials. I mentioned about, like, the best time, and I’m not the only one saying that sometimes I was like, I’ll wait a little bit more, I’ll ask later. I’ll do that. But I mean, it’s never late. Sometimes, like, you know, the contract ends and they don’t, they actually churn, and you never have a chance to ask. So in addition to just like, also trying to find the best time and thing, like, you have to have a lot of courage and just like, let’s do it. This is where the customer support can come in place. I don’t know, maybe like, every third month when you still kind of like, you wrapped up on boarding, but you’re still getting the first results. I would say, Yeah, on the third or fourth month will be the best time to ask for testimonial, but it has to be kind of like documented somewhere. Okay, on 12 week or 42 week, we’re asking for testimonial. At least it will be easier to compare. Are we getting positive responses or negative responses? Because if someone doesn’t want to leave a testimonial, I mean, it doesn’t really matter when you’re asking that person. Another thing that could happen you started working with one person, the person is leaving and you don’t know who to ask, just… So, yeah, the quicker is better. But I would say not to quicken up. Depends on the industry and services or product offerings, you have to, like every company should think about their own timelines of asking testimonials, and then they can create a file, collect them, and, you know, set a minimum, maybe three, then, just like, boost a post with three, then collect two more. Just recreate that. Just have five. But sometimes it was like, Okay, 10 is perfect. I’ll wait for 10. Just start with three. Three is better than nothing.

Christian Klepp 30:57

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, okay. Dilara, this is what I call the soapbox question. Okay, so what is a status quo in your area of expertise that you passionately disagree with, and why?

Dilara Cossette 31:14

I think when people say we don’t… When I meet with people, especially like CEOs and founders, they say marketing doesn’t work for us. And I’m like, What do you mean? I was like, well, we invested in paid ads 2000 and it didn’t work. I’m like, Okay, so just put a x on marketing. Yeah, we don’t believe in marketing. And I think even when people work with agencies, right? And there’s so many agencies out there, and they all have unique approach. If it didn’t work with one or two, it doesn’t mean that all agencies are bad or like, for example, you hire someone and the person doesn’t match, you know, or aligned with your values. You let that person go. You don’t just, like, eliminate the title entirely. You still look for another person, right? The same thing with agencies or fractional folks or external vendors, if it didn’t work, you know, with one or two, it doesn’t mean that you should just, like, completely forget about that. I would say, like, yeah, when I hear marketing didn’t work, I’m like, you had a bad experience with marketing. It doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work, because it works for a lot of companies.

Christian Klepp 32:20

And this is, I’m so glad you brought that up, because this is the reason why it’s so important to yeah, sometimes I hesitate to use this word, but to educate yourself, right? It’s to also educate yourself and understand what’s out there that you have options and so that people can also make informed decisions, right? It’s absolutely right for you to say that you know people… I guess, as humans, we tend to say, Okay, we have had one one bad experience, and as a result of that bad experience, we tend to put labels, or throw people into boxes, as I like to call it, and we have this preconceived notion of certain people, certain industries, certain professions, and there’s always this negative connotation or association, and I totally agree with you that we have to get out of this type of mindset, okay, that, yes, you had a bad experience, but perhaps maybe you can look back at that, and I always say, do an autopsy to see what went wrong, and not to play the blame game. It’s to do investigation. All right, this is what happened. This is what didn’t happen. This is what didn’t work, and this is probably the reason why. So moving forward, what can we do, or what steps or procedures or systems can we put in place to ensure that this doesn’t happen again, right?

Dilara Cossette 33:43

Yeah, 100% I think, like looking back, is very important to analyze. Okay, maybe it was not enough budget. Maybe you didn’t choose the right channels, maybe you didn’t, you know, work with the right agency, right? Or maybe you didn’t hire the right fractional person. There’s so many why? Why? Why? But I agree with you 100% you have to look back and say, okay, it didn’t work. Lessons learned. Let’s move forward. But it doesn’t mean that you have to say, no, never again, right?

Christian Klepp 34:12

That’s right. That’s right. Well, you know you and I both are entrepreneurs and we’re business owners, and we know that that’s how we grow, that’s how we learn, right? It’s through the mistakes that we make.

Dilara Cossette 34:23

Oh, yeah, 100%. Every single day. You know, you make something small by mistake, that’s for sure, right? Well, I always say, if you don’t make mistakes, and I think, like, it’s not my expression, something like, I’ve heard like, a long time, though, if you don’t make mistakes, it means you don’t work, you know? I mean, like, it’s very straightforward, right?

Christian Klepp 34:42

Yep, that’s definitely one way of looking at it. That’s for sure. That’s for sure. Okay, so here comes the bonus question. So with all these conversations that we’ve had in the past, I did come to realize that, like me, you’re also a student of languages. Let’s put that way. You speak a few languages, and you’ve learned a few along the way. So if you were given the opportunity to learn another language, what language would it be? And why?

Dilara Cossette 35:11

I would say it would be Spanish, because my daughter, she’s going to high school, and she will be learning Spanish, and my husband started learning Spanish a few years ago, but I think 6 language would be a little bit too much. So I’m not quite sure about that. So I’m like, I’ll still give it another thought or so, but yeah, it would be Spanish.

Christian Klepp 35:28

Oh, nice, nice. It is a beautiful language, and in this part of the world, very, very useful.

Dilara Cossette 35:37

Oh, yeah, 100% and I also know that it’s if you speak French, it’s also easier to learn Spanish. There’s so many similarities, like, like, you know, simpler version, it’s not other way around.

Christian Klepp 35:49

Absolutely, absolutely. The difference, I would say, is that the speed at which language is spoken.

Dilara Cossette 35:56

Yeah, exactly right.

Christian Klepp 35:59

Fantastic. Dilara, thank you so much for coming on the show and for sharing your expertise and experience with the listeners. A quick introduction to yourself and how people out there can get in touch with you.

Dilara Cossette 36:09

Oh, I’m an open book, you know, my LinkedIn inbox is always open. I really get back to someone who is asking for help advice, you know, or just want to connect. I think, as I mentioned, we grow together. And I’m always happy to, you know, share my expertise and knowledge, because you never know right where our path will cross in future and how we can help each other, because it’s all about networking. So yeah, I mean, I’m on LinkedIn, I’m an open book. Always like sharing my knowledge with people.

Christian Klepp 36:40

Fantastic, fantastic once again. Dilara, thank you so much for your time. Take care, stay safe and talk to you soon.

Dilara Cossette 36:46

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Christian Klepp 36:48

Bye, for now. Bye.

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