Janice Porter: Karen, welcome to this week's episode of
relationships rule. Today I'm excited to welcome Karen Gunther
to the show. Karen has over 25 years of experience as a
professional business development manager, and is the
founder of stay visible marketing with a strong
background in sales, Karen specializes in helping B to B
business businesses connect with prospects and clients through
email marketing LinkedIn and enhancing their overall digital
presence. She's passionate about networking and relationship
building, offering expertise in crm management to support
consistent and meaningful connections throughout the sales
process. Karen is here to share her insights on creating
authentic business relationships that drive success. Welcome.
Welcome to the show. Karen, super excited to be here.
Janice, thank you. You're my pleasure. We've been talking
about this for a while and and I guess I want to start by saying
I love that you you see the power and value of LinkedIn to
help people with their businesses, because you know
that that's where I live and and yet, a lot of people who who use
LinkedIn don't see the relationship side of it. They
see content, content, content, and that's about it. So can we
start there? Can we just, can you give me your take on how you
use it with your clients, or what you you know, what you
teach or what you share with people? Yeah, my,
Karen Gunther: my company's name is stay visible marketing, and
there's a reason for that, because I believe it's about
visibility. And whether you're at a networking event, in
person, virtually on LinkedIn, your website, how often you're
reaching out to people with email marketing or general
emails, it's all about visibility. And with so much
noise in the marketplace, it is so important to have that
ability to reach through that noise, is the way I look at it.
So when it comes to LinkedIn, specifically, as a rule, it's
important to understand the algorithm. Now, I don't know
what the algorithm is, only LinkedIn knows what the
Janice Porter: outcome changes all the time, right, right? And
it's being
Karen Gunther: changed all the time. In fact, I learned
something today that changed since I last looked at it to
this specific action two weeks ago, which is really
interesting. So it seems like once a month there's something
else that's changing when you go to look for a people within a
company specifically. And this is being broadcast in November
of 24 so we have this timestamp for it. When you go look for a
company and you go look for the people in the company, you used
to be able to do multiple search terms to narrow down the person
you were looking for. Now they only give you one in the keyword
part, yes, yes. Just learned that this morning when I was
working with somebody. So it's just they're constantly changing
things. So when it comes to the algorithm, and I was training a
person this morning about this saying, LinkedIn was purchased
by Microsoft in 2016 and they have done a phenomenal job of
monetizing it. So the important thing is, is that, how can you
use the the algorithm that LinkedIn uses for monetization
for their own business, to help you with your business. That's
how I look at it. So it comes down to visibility. So how do
you use that visibility? Well, they look at interactions. So
when you are posting, you want to make sure that there's a hook
in there so that people will respond, and then that creates
an opportunity for you to talk to people. If you're going to
like something, you not don't want to just like it. You want
to also comment on it, because if you comment on it, that has
more credibility when it comes to the more hooks for the
algorithm. If you're going to repost something, repost
something with a comment, because that helps you and the
person that posted the original post. And when they go to their
notifications, they will see that you did that. So the more
often you're popping up, the more visible you are, the more
opportunity they have to be reminded that you exist. There
are so many ways to connect with people. There are so many
connections that we've all made over our careers, it's almost
overwhelming. You don't remember you know somebody. So to be able
to make sure that when you are, you know, calling on a
particular prospect or trying to get deeper into particular
client, you want to make sure that wherever they are that
you're popping up and that visibility can be done through
LinkedIn if you do it carefully and you do it authentically.
That's
Janice Porter: so true. I know that's a big piece of teaching
people how to use LinkedIn effectively in the work that I
do, too. So I. You give me an example of a company that you
might be working with. Did you work with sales teams in or do
you work with you? I know that you do work with different
kinds, different kinds of clients. You have a heart, and
so you help people at university and you you do some work with
students or grad students and things like that. But you also
work with individual, small business owners and bigger
teams. Is that correct?
Karen Gunther: All of the above? Okay, absolutely. I work with
companies that are, you know, up to 100 million, down to, you
know, nonprofits. So I literally just brought on a new client in
the last 24 hours. That's a nonprofit that needs help with
getting certain marketing out and helping help with their
website to get it updated, little things like that. I work
with primarily business to business companies, because I
find that the logic associated with business works a little
easier for me. I can understand that more than going business to
consumer. Consumers have a lot more variability, so I prefer
the business to business landscape. But more importantly,
I work individually with the sales people, as well as with
the sales team. I recently served with a new client where
they want me to help them review their website and making sure
their branding and their their messaging is correct with what
they're saying the workplace right now. They also want me to
work with their individual sales reps, because we were going to
be starting a LinkedIn posting, you know, campaigns for them.
And I want to train their sales reps, not only to have a good
LinkedIn, strong LinkedIn profile, so that when they're
going after their prospects and clients, they look very
professional, but also to train them how to use technology,
tools, chat, GPT, the scheduling task, the scheduling piece on
LinkedIn and others, to amplify the company's message. So when
we do the posting for the company, the sales reps are
authentically posting and reposting and amplifying that
message. And so I'm literally working with a brand new sales
rep tomorrow that's as an on an individual basis, teaching them
technology tools to make them more savvy and better and to up
level their their their own personal profile and their brand
in the marketplace, but by doing that, rising up the brand of the
company as well. So it's an organic search. It's an organic
lift all the way around. I also started with helping them with
their sales force, and I will probably be putting together
more email templates for them to use in their Salesforce, so that
it makes it easier to use technology for their sales reps
to reach out to their prospects and clients with a message that
makes sense. It
Janice Porter: does and it doesn't okay in the sense that
you're such a tech guru that that, in a way, that's your
secret sauce, or your your zone of genius is making it easier
for people, or seeing where you can help them make it easier by
using some tools, technical tools in in the process those
things, like we were talking offline about about a new app
that was being shown to us, or something I see, I just glazed
over When it happened on a call that we were both on, and you
understood it way more than I did, because I'm just the people
person. I'm not I'm not the tech person, I'm the people person.
And I don't say just, I shouldn't say that, I just mean
that that's my my zone of genius is building relationships with
people, and that's what I like to teach people to do as well.
In the process that you go through with, say, these new
sales people that you work with, I'm just curious. I remember
back, I'll give you a little back story. And back in the day
when I was doing corporate training, and I would be the
trainers, were always the last people to go out to the customer
site. They put in, I worked for the telephone company, or I
contracted to them, and somebody would sell them, the sale the
phone system, somebody else would design it and implement it
so that, you know, it rang three times here before it went to
this person and all of the different things around it. And
then the installer would go in and install it. And then we came
in and we trained on how to use the system, from the
receptionist to the CEO to the IT people all different versions
of what they had to do. But inevitably, we'd get there and
we'd see how it was set up, where we had the book that
showed and we go, like, why did they do it this way? Right?
Because nobody asked a trainer or asked the right people to get
those answers. So when you get these new sales people, do you
ever wonder what this guy's doing selling, or what that
woman's doing in that kind of industry? Does it ever not mesh
for you when you're dealing with them? Because you have to deal
with what you have but I. Does that ever happen?
Karen Gunther: Yeah, it actually does. Wonder what the heck's
going on here. Why did I hire this person? Yeah, I need to do.
How do we salvage this situation? Yes, on a different
tact, I do absolutely agree with that, and I will, I will respond
back to the management, yeah, and provide my concerns. Yeah.
Okay, good, absolutely. 100% and that's part of the I do
individualized sales training. I can do, like group sales
training, webinars, seminars, things of that nature. I have no
problem doing that in person or, you know, virtually. It doesn't
matter. I'm happy to do that. But I find that the greatest
shift can happen when I work one on one with a person, regardless
of who they are in the organization. If I can work with
them one on one, we figure out where their speed bumps are with
the technology, and then we move them past that so that their
lives are easier on a day to day basis. And like I worked with
somebody this morning who had their outlook set up, but they
didn't have it set up so that the images downloaded. So every
time they went into an email, if they wanted to see the images,
they had to click the button to download the images. Is a very
common thing, right? Well, what happens is the as I went
through, I said, Do this, and I walk them through the process
for the settings, and I had him go through and shift that so
that it downloads it completely right? Every single time. He's
like, Oh my gosh, that's going to save me so much time every
day. And it's just little things like that that just make our day
so much better, you know. But I sit there and I wonder, why
isn't somebody going through and helping these people, you know,
work through this process, you know?
Janice Porter: Oh, I know, I totally can identify with that.
Because some things I think, Gosh, I gotta call, I'm an apple
girl. Gotta call apple and just ask them about this. And then I
never get around to it. So I'm still doing the same things the
wrong way, or whatever. So I get that, um, so, uh, questions. Um,
you do email marketing with some of your clients, yes, and um,
email marketing, it's become more challenging, I think, and
more complex. So how do you ensure that your clients emails
land in the inbox and resonate with their audience, because
it's hard these days to even get people to open those emails.
Karen Gunther: Yes, that's two different tasks. One is to get
at landing in the email box, landing in the inbox. That's an
entirely different task that has to do with the person's domain
and their DNS text records. Huh, exactly about six years ago.
About five years ago, the that shift happened where outlook
decided to no longer accept third party email platforms. And
so you're saying that email focus
Janice Porter: on you focus on Outlook. Only, no, oh no. I'm
Karen Gunther: just using that as an example, okay, okay?
Because when you're in a Gmail inbox, you'll see that it has
your main email and it has a social and it has promotional
okay tabs. That's just what most people see. Yeah, Outlook
decided to go to something simpler, similar to that, made
it different, and as a result of that, I had to have a crash
course in it and how the handshakes work between servers
to get emails delivered. And I didn't know anything about that,
but now it's just second nature for me to whenever I set up a
new client, to go in and to manage this process to make sure
their stuff gets delivered. So there's that one piece of it
right there is getting it into the inboxes. For those of you
who are listening to this podcast, it's called the DNS
text record, feel free to contact me. My information will
be in the show notes, and I'll be happy to walk you through
that so you can understand that for yourself. For that, it's too
long to explain for this process, talking about here's
way too techie. It's not even worth it to take the time to
talk about that. Now the second thing is, is that, how do you
get the person to open it? Well, there are times and days that
are better to send so that emails will be seen as part of
the normal business day. Somebody think about how you
yourself approach your email in the morning. So in the morning
you get you either looking at your phone having your cup of
coffee, or you're at your computer and your finger is
hovered over the delete button, or you're swiping delete one of
the two. And so that means everything that comes in in the
morning prior to the normal business day starting is now
subject to being easily deleted. So you want to make sure to send
your emails during the normal business day, so not before
people start their business day, and not right, and not during
lunch, because that's another time where people spend time
deleting. So it's just there's a time frame that you send it now.
So the time that you send the email indicates whether somebody
will actually open it or not. The only other thing. Thing that
is contingent on whether somebody will open the email or
not, is the subject line, Oh, there's one other thing and that
they actually know you. So if you receive an email from
somebody you don't know, then you look at the subject, subject
line to see, gosh, do I Is there something beneficial for me in
this email? That's That's it, that that's all there is. So you
always want to make sure it comes from a person's name or a
well known company, you know, if it's a well known brand. So if
you're a smaller company, you want to make sure it comes from
your name as the business owner or the salesperson. And then you
want to make sure that this the subject line. So that's just
for, like, third party emails, even for sending emails during
the day, just as a normal course of business, to reach out to
people, to prospect, you want to make sure that your subject line
is not very long, and that it has you know, relevant
information, so that somebody will open it, and then once
people open it, that's where we get to the does this resonate?
Right? What I really love, and I'll give you these kudos.
Janice, what I really love about your newsletters that you send
out is you do have an engaging subject line. Number one, they
are sent at a time that makes sense for people to open it, at
least for me. And the third thing is, is that I know that
when I receive those newsletters from you, that there's going to
be something in there that will touch me and make me think about
something differently, because that's what I've because I've
spent time looking at your newsletters. At first it was
like, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever, right. It's just
another newsletter. But when I stopped to actually take the
time to look at the newsletter and read it, I'm like, oh,
there's going to be something interesting in here. I'm going
to want to read this. And so I will set it aside so that I have
time and I'll flag it so I can go back and look at it, so that
I can say, Okay, I went through and I read it, and I picked up
the one really cool tip. And it may not even be the thing that
you were intending for people to pick up Janice, because that's
the interesting thing. But I do know that when it comes to
certain people, when they send me emails, that there's going to
be something, you know, in that there for me. So let's get let's
go to the next point. You're sending out marketing emails to
people you don't know and who don't know you. How do you make
sure it resonates? Well, you need to understand their
industry. You need to understand their challenges. You need to
understand what keeps them up at night. You need to understand
what they might be interested in learning more about. And you
need to provide education. If I'm just trying to hawk
something and sell it. It's not going to go through, but if I
offer education as part of the content, then it becomes more
valuable. It's
Janice Porter: interesting, because that's the part I like
the best. I want to make sure that I can teach them something.
And what I've started to learn, though, is that it's okay to
repeat yourself, because not everybody reads it every time,
and so on and and it's different way of saying the same thing. It
might start to connect with, actually, what something you
just said, which is that you know the flavor of my of my
newsletter, well, that's what you get over time, right? But
that that the message is clear, right? It's either about, well,
there's different parts to it, but it's about, you know,
gratitude, or it's about, you know, trusting people and
staying connected and all of that good stuff. So thank you.
Thank you for for that. And okay, just a minute, there was
something else around that I wanted to ask you. Well, let's
go to, let's go back to staying visible. Because it's important
that we stay visible in the marketplace, that we're in front
of the people that we want to be in front of, in a, in a in a
useful way. But what are the common mistakes that businesses
make that cause them to lose visibility. And how do you help
them address these issues? So salespeople, it's, it's kind of
an important thing that they stay in front of people. And
we've all, I find we forget the follow up, or we forget to come
back to people that we've you know, spent the time opening the
door with. Do you find that with your people that you train?
Yeah, what
Karen Gunther: I would where I would say that's, that's a very
large subject. So let me, let me contain my subject. Let me
contain my comments to the sales rep. Because there's a lot of
different there's a lot of different areas to that subject.
When I contain my comments to the sales rep, specifically, I
would see failure to use a CRM, be it HubSpot, gold mine,
Salesforce, whatever it is, I'm a Salesforce baby. So I'm a
Salesforce girl, and I find it to be very helpful. And what I
can't remember everything, and neither can anybody else. So
based on that, the sales reps need to use some sort of CRM,
because you're having to contact so many people, so many times
with. So many different messages that you want to be able to
track what you've done, how often you've done it, when
you've done it, so that you know that you're not pestering the
person too much or too little, and that you provide and you
schedule those tasks for yourself, so that sales, sales
force, or the CRM that you're using becomes your brain to
remind you, so that when you get in in the morning, okay, I have
these 10 things I need to do today, and then you set your
next tasks, you know, for whatever the future dates are
for those so that you're feeding into the system, so that over
time, the first half hour of the day is 100% spent doing specific
prospecting based on previous actions. And I find that most
sales people are reticent to use their CRM tool. But I must say,
this new generation, this Gen Z, that's coming into the
workforce, they are completely willing to use a CRM, which I
have found that to be really gratifying and so much easier to
work with Gen X. Heck no, that's my generation. Nope. We have no
interest in doing that. Millennials are kind of
interested, but only if they see how, based on my experience, and
see how it benefits them, and only if they can see that, and
then the the Gen Z's what I've noticed when they come into
they're like, Okay, this is a tech tool I get to use cool.
They does it for me, great, and they just move into it, and
they've got no problem. And I've been really gratified to work
with the new generation coming into sales, I was a little
concerned at first, but
Janice Porter: okay, so they like the tech things because
they grew up with it and they're comfortable with it. How the
people skills? Zero? Yeah, that's what I thought. Yeah,
yeah,
Karen Gunther: absolutely zero people skills. So you have to
train them more on how to talk. So what I do for that is the
second thing that I find that people don't do that they should
be doing, is they should be practicing more. So the most
important thing you can do to practice is to take your phone,
put it into Voice Memo mode, work with some sort of AI or
yourself to create some sort of script that you can use. Not
that you're going to only use a script, but it gives you
something to work with, to start with, because if you don't know
a product, you have to start somewhere. You need to bone up
on the product. You need to understand the you know, the
brochures and the information and why it benefits the client.
And you need to go through and use that voice memo function on
your phone, because there's something about saying the
script when you are just reading it. I could just pick up a piece
of paper and read it or read it off a monitor, but when you have
that voice memo on and you've got that record on, it changes
everything in the brain, and all of a sudden everything's engaged
and you're practicing, how do these words come out of my
mouth?
Janice Porter: How do I sound? Do I sound authentic? Does it
sound authentic?
Karen Gunther: Exactly, exactly? And then what happens from that
is you're like, Oh, I'm stumbling over saying don't or
do not. You know, I find that contractions work well when
you're speaking, but not when you're writing. So I tend to not
use contractions when I write, but I will use contractions when
I speak. So it's just a difference between speaking and
writing and learning. What does that sound like, and does this
sound correct? So where are people not taking advantage of
opportunities? They're not using CRMs. They're not practicing,
you know, in a live situation where they can hear themselves
and going back and verifying. And the other thing that I find
that people don't do that they should be doing more of is
continuing to learn. Oh, really, just the constant learning there
is, there are so many different ways to learn. There are so many
different ways to improve your skills. Mm, hmm, in all areas of
not only your life, but in your business, aspect of how to do
this better, how to do that better. You know, constantly
learning, you know, listening to podcasts like yours and others,
where you can pick up one more thing of, oh, I didn't think to
do it like that. I remember I had this large meeting that I
was going into, and I really wanted to sound smart. Wanted to
make sure I had all the questions. So I went into my my
podcast app, and I typed in, you know, how to whatever it was,
how to do something or another in a sales call, and, like,
three or four different podcasts, you know, pulled up
ones I've never listened to before, and I was in the
airport, so I took the time to listen to them, and I was busy
taking notes, and I was ready when I had that meeting to ask
some of those questions. So I sounded really smart, and I
actually got really good information. So now those
questions are part of what I do. But it was really interesting
because it was like, Okay, I better bone up on this. I better
learn. There's so many resources out there right now that you
know, something that people don't do, that they should be
doing, is continuing to sharpen that, sharpen that sword. You
know,
Janice Porter: I'm, I'm surprised that you said that, in
a way, because we have so much at our fingertips today to
answer whatever question. I mean, if I if I'm watching
Jeopardy, which is one of my favorite things to do, and I
don't understand something, or I don't know the I'll go and right
away on my phone and. Find out more about it, or if I'm, you
know, whatever I'm crossword puzzles, whatever it is I'm
doing, I want to find out more, or just something I hear on
television that I want to know more about. But we also are so
busy today. Now, I'm also surprised, though, because the
young people are the the Gen Z's you were just referring to. They
were brought up on their phones. And they go to it for
everything. So I think they go to
Karen Gunther: it for entertainment, yeah, with their
friends, but not for business purpose, and not to learn,
Janice Porter: not to learn interesting. Yes, that really,
that's really interesting. And, and then the other thing, when
you said, you just said, they go to it to communicate with their
friends, which is, like the most passive communication piece
there is, right? Which is why they're not good at social
skills. Which is so when you have a client like that, a sales
rep that you're that you're talking to, like that, how do
you bring them around? Because are they going to say, Oh, sure,
I'm going to practice this on my phone, talking to myself. Or do
they willingly do it? Or do you have to push? I
Karen Gunther: have to push. I have to say, I have to have them
set goals. I have to have them practice. And I ask them how the
experience was. So they go off and they do it on their own. The
next time I meet with them, how was that? What did you learn? So
I asked the probing questions, what did you learn by doing it?
And you can tell really quick if they're lying, yeah, you know.
But most of the time, because it's a tech thing and it's a new
way to use technology, they already like using it's kind of
like, oh, I can do that. Oh, that's cool. I'm going to try
that, because they're really so interested in learning, but they
just don't know all of the resources. And you would think,
well, God, they have a phone in their hands. Well, they don't
use the well, they don't use those apps. Yeah, you know. So
if you introduce them to the apps, they're like, Oh, okay.
I'd say, when you're driving, you know, listen to the podcast,
and don't do it every time. And go listen to music and take a
break and let your brain relax, for sure, but at least once a
day, be listening to something.
Janice Porter: You know, it's so funny. Do you see how old I am
when I say this, but it reminded me what you just said of when I
was at the telephone company and I was training soft, what we
called soft skills, to receptionists, and one of the
things that I used to do is sit with the receptionist and listen
to how they answered the phone and listen to their voice and
whatever. And I would say to you know, the odd one. Have you ever
heard yourself on the phone? And I would give them something to
to say, and I say, you know, or they had to record the the
greeting on the voicemail system, or whatever. And I say,
you know, go home, go in your bathroom. Don't let anybody hear
you and record yourself. And then listen to what you sound
like and you'll know whether you need to change it or not. That's
what you used to have to do in the old days, right? And it
wasn't as easy because he didn't have a phone too. You had to get
a little tape recorder Exactly. Yeah, I understand all that, but
it's just so interesting, okay? And it just, there's just so
many interesting things that the kids today, the kids today, the
young people today, do so differently than than we do and
but so much
Karen Gunther: is the same in terms of how business works. It
was interesting. I just was meeting with a student. You
mentioned that I mentor students. I mentor students at
the local school, they have a course specifically for how to
integrate the students into a professional life, yeah. And
which is great. So I was talking to the student today, and he
said, Oh, by the way. I said, Is there anything else? Because
we're wrapping up. He said, Yeah, one more thing. He says,
You do marketing stuff, right? I said, Yeah. And he wants to go
into the supply chain, and so it's nothing to do with
marketing. He says, Well, I was just at this event last week,
and I think they need help with their marketing. Is it okay if I
present the information? I said, Oh, what event was it? And he
told me. I said, oh, and I held up my phone and I said, I'm
already texting with the executive director of that
organization. I started working with them two days ago. Oh,
that's so funny, because I and by the way, the person you met
with, you know, three weeks ago at the networking event. Was
also at that event, but she was in the wrong place, so you
didn't recognize her. So now you have a way to go back to her,
you know. So now we have this total connection. I said, if you
could please do me a favor, could you please let that person
know that you know me and make the recommendations? And now
he's hearing from two people that I'm a good person to work
with, right? Well, that person turned around immediately sent
me that text not an hour ago. Nice, nice saying, oh, this
person recommended you as well. I mean, isn't that it? And isn't
that the way? So business still works that way. It's all of who
you know. And I think that the the incoming you know, business
professionals very much value what their who, their network
knows more so than anything. It's surprising to me that you
would think that they would just go online and find sources, but
they don't. They talk to their the people around them,
certainly
Janice Porter: the the business students learn that faster. I
remember doing a. Uh, going up to with the local university for
their MBA students had an event, and it was to teach them how to
network properly, and they wanted some business
professionals there to to help with the the situation in the in
the event, and there were a lot of accounting students and a lot
of pharmacy students, and they struggled. They struggled with
what to say in a networking setup, or whatever. The business
students, I think, have to come about. They have to learn, or
they do learn more quickly how important it is to build your
network, yes, but yeah, but yeah. Today it's a lot of them
were struggling with that and, and, and it's fun to be able to
share with them, you know, conversation, or to to show by
having those conversations with them in the groups, and they
start to see how much easier it can be to to build rapport with
people and to talk with them. But, yeah, it's, that's the
thing I love to to look at and and so and networking today.
What do you think about you know, we got so much away from
face to face networking, at least I did, because I've rarely
gone back to the face to face thing since, since the COVID
disaster, and I stay online, mostly doing it on LinkedIn, but
then having one to ones with people. What's your take on
that? Are people seeing that they need to be out there in
front of people? Or are they doing it online? Are they using
LinkedIn? Or all
Karen Gunther: of I think that the sphere of networking has
expanded. It used to be in person, and that was it was
starting to be more on LinkedIn prior to the pandemic. It
switched to online during the pandemic, and now that people
are able to get back together, people are craving the
opportunity to be in person with people. Yeah, somehow. Mono, so
I think there's a lot to be said for attending networking events,
because people want to be there and they want to meet with
people. They're craving that, that one on one interaction
with, you know, another human being, you know, just standing
in front of rather than just the computer. But in addition to
that, we've also layered on the LinkedIn and the virtual
connections as well. I mean, so it's like, it's like the
pandemic tripled our opportunities. That's right,
Janice Porter: that's what I thought, too. Something that you
when you were talking about your clients practicing with the
their phone, it made me think of the the value today of voice
messaging as well as video messaging. It makes you stand
out from the crowd. Do you teach them? Do you teach your people
to do that as well?
Karen Gunther: Yeah, absolutely. I use, there's a lot of
platforms out there. I use loom. I don't have any paper
promotional for them. It's just, it's just what I learned on and
I like it, and it's easy, and it's one of the few platforms
that I do pay for, because I do like having that option to have
as many videos as I want. And I create loom videos all the time
for training purposes, Okay, number one, to provide people
with how to do things. And then I do also use it as for sales
purpose to and I train salespeople on how to use it for
sales purpose, so people can show what they want to share
about with a prospect. As opposed to just leaving a
voicemail message, they're actually having their face
there. They're having visual for people to look at. It's really
powerful.
Janice Porter: Is it easier than doing it than not just doing it
on Zoom? Like is significantly easier. Okay, I've used it once
or twice, but I've never really looked into it. So maybe because
I I know sometimes I'll say to a client who I've just brought on
to send out cards, I want you to be aware of the back of the
card, blah, blah, blah, and do this, I'll send you a short
video just to keep to show you what I mean, and I've destined
it on Zoom, but, oh,
Karen Gunther: I would do that on loom, because you're using
their their platform as the basis point. And it's wonderful
because you can use it on your phone. You can if you're what I
find is fascinating. So for people who are in a
manufacturing setting, and many of my clients are manufacturing
settings, so you're sitting there and you're with a client,
and the client is saying it's making this weird noise. You
know, manufacturers like, there's no way it can make that
weird noise. It's just not physically possible, right? So
you pull out the loom video, you show the client there, you start
the button, you show the client, and you have the video. They see
the part running and all this stuff, and then the weird noise
happens, right? And then you send it, and they're like,
Janice Porter: oh, oh.
Karen Gunther: And there it is. And it just, it just stops it.
And one of the things that loom says is their little branding
thing, their marketing thing, they do, we just saved you a
meeting. You know, they really do, because I have a virtual
assistant who works out of the Philippines, so we're on
different time. Schedules. So from one o'clock on my time, I'm
separate from him, and if I have things and I work until 10
o'clock at night, because my husband works second shift, so
that works for me. So I'll go through and I'll create a bunch
of work for him. I'll do it on loom, I'll show him everything,
and I'll send it to him, and he'll when he gets in and when
he starts his shift, he just looks at everything, and it
reports back to me that he's looked at it, so I know he's
engaged.
Janice Porter: And boom, okay, that's good.
Karen Gunther: It's really exciting, because you can
actually see what's happening. And when you use it for sales,
let's say I want to sell you email marketing. Jenna, so I go
through and I do this little presentation. It's like a three
or four slide thing on PowerPoint, and I have my little
face there, and I'm talking, and I have all this wonderful stuff
happening, right? And I take this video and I send it to you,
I see when you opened it, and I can see time you spent on it,
yeah, I know when that happened, and so I need to follow up with
you later that day or the following day. Yeah, that's
beautiful. Or if you haven't opened it, maybe the video, the
email didn't go through, yes? So I can say, Gosh, I'm not sure if
you got this email, you know, but I want to make sure you saw
this, you know, yeah.
Janice Porter: Oh, that's awesome. Those all these little
tricks, right? Using technology
Karen Gunther: to make our lives easier, that's my mantra.
Janice Porter: So okay, we've let me just ask you this quick
question. So if you set a meeting with somebody on a
Calendly or whatever calendar link that you use, does that
calendar link attach to your zoom or does because mine isn't
working properly. So
Karen Gunther: we have, so I have found a way to do that,
because, like you, I have a specific meeting code that I
use. You have your, you know, zoom with Janice meeting code,
and I have my specific meeting code that I use, and I have my
meeting set up in a very particular way so that I can use
it ongoing and it stays specific to that. So when I set up a
meeting, I have it set up in my Calendly, because I do use
Calendly, but that's what I'm missing. You can set it up with
any of the services, and even if you do it through Outlook or
Gmail or however you manage your email or your calendar, you can
set it up so that the calendar link goes through, and heart has
that templated information in there, so the person can just,
you know, and it'll come through. And you have to set it
up in a very particular very particular way. Again, I was
working with a client this morning, explaining how to do
this so that you can do informational interviews. And it
was information, and I said this, and I showed him my
screen. I said, Here it is. Take a screenshot so you can set up
yours the same way. Because if you set this up correctly, and
you do it one and done, then you don't have to think about it
again exactly. It just makes your life so much easier.
There's no fretting, there's no worrying. There's no did they
have the right thing? And especially when it comes to
these, you know, teams, or zoom, or any of these platforms, as
soon as you you know, you have to think about it. Can my 95
year old, you know, grandmother, yeah, get on a meeting with me
if the answer is no, because it's a weird password that you
have to hit Shift to get to the, you know, the ampersand or
whatever. I mean, it's like, no, we have to make it as easy as
possible because it's so hard to sell. Yeah, we have to make it
as easy as possible and let tech make it easy for us to be
accessible.
Janice Porter: Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. We'll have to talk
about that offline, because I think it's one little thing I'm
missing. That's what I think it is. And I know that you're a wiz
with chat GPT. You love using that tool, and that has saved
you a lot of time and hard. It made me a lot of money. Yeah,
really, yeah. Okay. What's the three top things you do with it.
Karen Gunther: I have the paid version. Yes, so do i for $20 a
month right now, and November 24 that's how much it costs the and
the reason I do that is I have, do not have unlimited bandwidth
to do to do chats. I do not have that because nothing has that
that I'm aware of, but I have more options than somebody who's
on the free program, so it allows me more opportunity to do
more. I'm also able, with a paid version to create what's called
the custom GPT. Because I do marketing, I set up LinkedIn
posts, blog posts, website content pages, refreshes,
LinkedIn profile. I have certain things that are already set up.
So all I need to do is put in just two or three pieces of
information and it'll spit out what I need in a close
representation. Because it gets not, you know, 80 90% of the way
there. You have to check it and, you know, make it right, but it
gets you most of the way there. And so I have the paid version
so I can have more opportunity to use it more often without
being stopped. Two to be able to create the custom gpts, which
already has the information parameters in there. It already
has all the instructions in there, and then. So those are
the, you know, yeah, those two things because I just use it all
the time. So you asked to go to the top. Things. The third thing
that I would suggest is continuously learning how to use
it. Most people think, Oh, I'm just going to use it to write an
email. It's like, oh, did you know that you could take this
brochure, attach it to the chat, even on the free version, you
can, you know, attach it brochure and say, Please create
a presentation for me, a written presentation to send to a client
regarding this product. This is their situation. And it'll,
poof. It'll bring out an entire proposal for you. Wow. Number
one, I know it's pretty amazing. It will create PowerPoints for
you. It will create, it will literally create Word documents
and excel sheets. It will actually output to those
documents. There are so many different ways, if you can think
about I've had it create, I've had it plan trips for me. I just
came back from a trip to Alaska, Fairbanks, Alaska to go see the
northern lights, and it was fabulous. And it literally found
the place that we stayed at. I wouldn't have sounded otherwise,
you know. So it was really interesting. So the how it can
be used. So what I do is I consistently keep up, either on
YouTube or through articles that I see online, of the new
features, and I listen, and I join peer groups where I can
listen and see how are people using this technology. I'm of a
mind, and I'm old enough to remember when cell phones were
the size of a shoe box, yeah, back in the early 90s, and they
went really small, and now they're larger again, thank God
so I can read the screen, yeah. And what happens is, is that I
think chat GBT is the shoe box cell phone right now, and it
will transition and shift and change as we go. So I need to be
able to transition, shift and change along with it, and need
to learn how to use it every time I think I don't know if
chat GP can do it, I just throw it in interesting that's the
question, just to see why not. Well?
Janice Porter: And that's another example of always
learning and lifelong learning and being ahead of the game and
ahead of your clients, right? This is so much fun. So I'm just
going to shift a little bit before we wrap up, because I
know that you just started doing Wordle, and I've been doing it
for a long time, and I got stumped on it today, and I was
so mad. So do you do it every day?
Karen Gunther: Not every day? I'd say four out of seven days
of the week. Okay, so every
Janice Porter: morning, when having my cup of tea, usually,
usually every day, I'll do Wordle, and then I do two of the
puzzles in LinkedIn. I do this, I forget the names, pinpoint,
and I do the other one, the cross climb. And I do those
every day, and it only takes me maybe 10 minutes, max at you
know, to do them. But I just, I love the the challenge, and I
love to do puzzles anyway. Now I think I'm going to start doing
Spelling Bee, but that takes longer, and that's a New York
Times one as well. And because I'm a word person and crosswords
at night, so it's fun to see that you're doing them so on.
Have you ever done any of the LinkedIn games?
Karen Gunther: No, I've actually turned off the opportunity. I
mean, I turned off the notifications to do that because
I don't do games. I mean, I do games. What do I do? Spider,
which is a version of solitaire. I do that. Oh yeah, I do the
I've started doing the Wordle. But it's what's interesting for
me about the Wordle is that I need to actually not be
listening to a book, or I have to actually think about it. And
sometimes I have to pull out a piece of paper and write the
words, which is trying to figure
Janice Porter: that's funny. Well, the thing that I like
about, and I've only done it a couple of times, but the thing
that I like about the word games that LinkedIn has brought in is
you can actually use it as another networking tool, because
it shows you who of your connections has done the puzzle.
Wow. So you can ask more interesting now, yeah, so you
can see who's you know, doing like you, and you can reach out
to them if you want. So that's kind of fun and different. Okay,
last question, and I'm sure you'll have an answer for this.
So curiosity is my favorite word, and I love to ask
occasionally two things. One, it's two. Part question. One, do
you think curiosity is innate or learned. And part two, what are
you most curious about today? And you don't have to overthink
it, because there's no
Karen Gunther: writing or learned. I'm going to say it's
5050, it's nature, nurture, right? Yeah. And I think that if
somebody, somebody either has natural curiosity and they
pursue things just as a general rule. But I also do think that
if you start young or start somebody at any age, quite
frankly, on the path of how to be more curious about things,
and the benefits of that and what happens as a result of
being more curious, I. I think it could be very much a learned
item. And I think that's what I try to teach people when I work
with them in the sales training, is how to be curious. How do you
be curious about how to do things differently, right? Yes.
And then, what am I curious about today? I am. I'm curious
about, literally, like you're asking me, and I'm telling an
answer. I'm curious about 2025, because I'm starting to think
now, because it's, you know, in the middle of November, to how
to, how to plan my year. You know, I you and I have talked
about a a program that I'm putting together to reach out to
reach out to my clients monthly. I'm going to be using the Send
Out Cards that you talk about to reach my clients as well with
that. And I'm curious to see how that program comes together,
because I think it'll be really impactful to my business. But I
haven't yet fully formulated that, so it's always in the back
of my mind of, how am I going to put this together?
Janice Porter: Well, just know that I'm happy to have that
conversation with you and brainstorm with you about it. I
appreciate that. Thank you. Yeah, I'm actually talking to a
guy tomorrow. This is kind of fun. Um, this person was
introduced to me by a podcast company because they send me
people all the time, and he to be on my podcast, and I always
have an intro call with them first. So we had this intro
call. He was great. I said, Let's do it. We're and I've
booked him to be on my podcast. But we started talking about one
of his companies, and I think he owns, he's a he's a coach, a
business coach, but he also has this carpet cleaning company,
and I asked him how he you know what? Anyway, I got into
conversation with him, and I gave him a couple ideas, and he
said, Oh, you and I need to brainstorm some more. I love
that. And I sent him a card, and now we're going to talk about
the cards in a brainstorming session tomorrow. So wonderful.
Yeah, that's kind of fun. So I love doing that. So if you're
when you're ready, let me know and and thank you so much for
being on on my podcast. I so enjoyed having you as my guest,
and I appreciate your expertise and in more ways than you, than
you know. So thank you, Janice, so much for having me here. Oh,
you're so welcome. Quite fun to have this conversation.
Actually, know what I'm really looking forward to you. I know
you love to travel, and you're coming up my way next summer,
and we're actually going to meet in person. So that's really
exciting. And
Karen Gunther: that's another thing that I do when it comes to
networking, is I let people know where I'm traveling. And you'd
be surprised at how many people know people or are certain
places. And I try to make that connection. I try to, generally,
everywhere I go, in the United States, I try, or the world,
literally, I try to make a connection.
Janice Porter: Did you do that in Alaska?
Karen Gunther: Oh no, because we're nowhere. Yeah,
Janice Porter: okay, okay, there's nobody around, okay, but
you had a good time, and you saw the Northern Lights, right? It
was fabulous. Oh, fantastic. All right. Well, thank you again for
being here, and thank you to my audience for being here, please
let us know that you enjoyed the podcast, and Karen will put in
the show notes where people can find you. Yes, perfect. And all
right, and thanks again, and remember to stay connected and
be remembered. You.