BRX Pro Tip: Success Story – Corporate Training
Stone Payton: [00:00:00] And we are back with BRX Pro Tips. Stone Payton and Lee Kantor here with you. Lee, for our Success Story Series, one that we want to make sure that we talked about was the one with the corporate training client.
Lee Kantor: [00:00:17] Yeah, this was another one of our longtime clients that came to us, and they were having a hard time getting in front of the HR leaders that they felt were necessary to build relationships with. It was a crowded marketplace. There’s a lot of people that do something similar to what they do. And they were really having a hard time differentiating themselves from other players in the market. So, what we suggested and co-authored with them was a show that spotlighted the learning leaders. And by inviting them on a show, this opened up a touchpoint or we call it a relationship-building moment between their salespeople and this learning leader.
Lee Kantor: [00:00:57] And when they started being able to really leverage to this, and the salespeople that really leaned into this started asking lots and lots of learning leaders to be on the show. And instead of saying, “Hey, I’m with this corporate training company. If you need training, contact us,” they were saying, “Hey, learning leader, you’re doing some interesting work. Why don’t you come on our show that our company is sponsoring, and let’s talk about some of that innovative work that you’re doing?”
Lee Kantor: [00:01:25] And the learning leaders loved it. They came on. We were getting learning leaders from the largest companies in the world coming on shows. They were coming when we were doing trade shows. They’d come into the trade show floor where they wouldn’t enter normally because they’d be bombarded, but they were coming on our clients show in order to tell their story. And it was really a game changing way to differentiate this firm from others. And it really kind of launched them into a really aggressive national growth opportunity for themselves. And the show has been serving chief learning officers of the largest firms for years now.
Stone Payton: [00:02:05] So, this particular one, I remember in the early going, there was some real skepticism that learning leaders, VPs of organizational development, chief learning officers, even at that time, some folks who were running the diversity and inclusion efforts in these middle market and, sometimes, very large organizations, there was some skepticism that they would want to come on the show because these people might not have the same kind of sales and marketing message agenda that many of our guests do. And I come from that corporate training and consulting world. I was skeptical.
Lee Kantor: [00:02:46] Of course, what we discovered is this group of people, perhaps more than many others, they want to contribute to the profession. They have a personal brand to continue to evolve and promote. They really do want to talk about the work that they’re doing, and traditional media is not providing that platform. And so, to work with and through this client, with and through what we call a power partner, the associations to reach out to these chief learning officers, these VPs of these learning divisions and organizational development, I mean, once they realized what we were doing, and how we were doing it, and giving them a platform to share that thought leadership and share the great work they were doing at X, Y, Z, company, man, you couldn’t stop it if you wanted to. It just catapulted, didn’t it?
Lee Kantor: [00:03:50] Yeah. This it was a game-changing shift for them. And it really validated the importance of kind of creating this blue ocean opportunity for yourself in a space that didn’t have, really, what we were offering, a radio show that was serving that kind of group. And it allowed our client to be the only sponsor of a show that is serving that group.
Lee Kantor: [00:04:15] So, they got kind of no more confusion. It became clear what they were about and what was important to them. And they were really serving this group really effectively and efficiently by supporting and celebrating the great work that was happening. And it opened so many doors for these folks. They were making sales in areas just by inviting people, people who didn’t necessarily even come on the show. They were still creating the relationship-building moments around the show that enabled their salespeople to really penetrate and really get some traction and some business in the markets that they were serving.
