Using Data to Connect with Prospects | Stories With Traction Podcast

SUMMARY: In this episode, Will McGinnis and Matt Zaun talk about how companies can utilize technology to capture a prospect's data and then use that info to strategically connect with them.

WILL MCGINNIS BIO: Will is the Director of Sales at FullThrottle.AI, which is a company that helps businesses identify and measure data, so they can position themselves for future growth.

For more info, check out Will here:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/willmcginnis/
https://www.fullthrottle.ai/

MATT ZAUN BIO: Matt is an award-winning speaker and storyteller who empowers organizations to attract more clients through the art of strategic storytelling. Matt’s past engagements have catalyzed radical sales increases for over 300 organizations that range from financial institutions to the health and wellness industry.

Matt shares his expertise in persuasion with executives, sales professionals, and entrepreneurs, who he coaches on the art of influence and how to leverage this for profits and impact.

For more info, check out Matt Zaun here:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattzaun/

 

 

*Below is an AI-generated transcript, which may contain errors.

 

Matt Zaun (mattzaun.com)

I'm always intrigued by different pieces of technology that can help us connect and serve our clients better.

That's why I'm so excited for today's conversation because today I am joined by Will McGinnis, who is the director of sales at fullthrottle.ai, which is a company that helps businesses identify and measure data so they can position themselves for future growth.

Welcome to the stories of attraction podcast Will.

 

 Will McGinnis (FullThrottle)

Thank you. It's great to be here.

 

Matt Zaun (mattzaun.com)

I really appreciate your time and I was fascinated by a conversation that we had several months ago. You were talking to me about different elements of what you do, the technology that you have.

It was extremely intriguing to me. I know my audience. So we get a lot out of it. Now before we dive into the technology regarding full throttle dot AI, can you just dive into your background a little bit?

How did you get to full throttle?

 

Will McGinnis (FullThrottle)

What position do you do to what you do now? Sure. Um, background on me, uh, been in sales all my life.

Um, since I was 18 years old, uh, something that, uh, has just been ingrained in me. Uh, love being, you know, a people person, that makes me think of office space, but, um, I've just, I've just been ingrained in it.

And, uh, at a very young age, got, um, my foot in the door in a, in a technology company.

And after that, um, after the taste of commissions, I got into the automotive space. Um, and I was in software and automotive for another, you know, eight years or so.

Um, and I parlayed all that experience into a role that wasn't an invest. book and I had the opportunity to be a Facebook Canada and work with very large brands and the CPG and the restaurant space and spend some time in Toronto and then after that I found myself at post-COVID wanting to be back home here in the States and the DC area and did a little start-up like most Facebookers do or meta and did a little start-up for a year.

I love that start-up they're doing great but found my home here at Full Throttle.AI just a year ago actually.

 

Matt Zaun (mattzaun.com)

Nice. So I really like what you said regarding getting that book for sales early on. I did too. I love sales, I love connecting with people and someone years and years ago gave me this awesome analogy regarding sales because often people view sales as a dirty word and he gave me this awesome analogy and he said if you were a doctor

And there was someone that was sick and you had what they needed to make them better and you withheld that from them.

That would be egregious. Like that would be horrible. You'd be a terrible doctor. And it really spurred on this mentality in me that we have different services and products that we can connect to our clients to make their lives better, to help them and their mission.

And if we withhold that, we're doing them a major disservice. And I love that. And it spurred on in me to be more focused on sales and providing value to my clients.

I appreciate you mentioning early on you were fascinated with sales and really enjoyed connecting with people. I do want to highlight you mentioned Facebook.

So I'm sure a lot of people are listening thinking, you know, what was it like working for Facebook?

 

Will McGinnis (FullThrottle)

What was your experience there? So can you dive into that a little bit? Yeah. Um, and before I do, I want to say though, um, I agree with you and I love your analogy and what I would say is like the thing that I love.

of most about sales. And I agree, sales can sometimes be misconstrued as a dirty word in heck. You know, 10 years in the automotive space, actually 13, and the automotive space sales is definitely an interesting dynamic there.

But where I've really, really found my success in not only doing it myself, but also leading salespeople is active listening.

And to your point, that service of understanding needs, I think, is a critical aspect of successful salespeople. It's understanding the businesses that you're talking to, understanding their problems and understanding their world.

And hopefully, happening to work for an organization that can fill some of those gaps. So in regard to my time at Facebook.

You know, it was an interesting time. It was in 2019. So it was like, you and I have had previous conversations when I first met you about politics.

But I definitely want to be political in nature at times. But from a professional standpoint, I like to separate the two.

And it was really difficult to understand the needs of clients in that political spectrum. It was a very volatile time at Facebook because every client has different needs.

And opinions, personal opinions are irrelevant in that regard. Because at the end of the day, what those clients need and want is to obviously sell their products, bring their brand to light.

And crime. And it was a, I think it was a critical time for Meta and Facebook as well to grow and adapt in regard to brand safety and ensuring that their customers, users and brands alike, can deliver their ads and their, you know, connect them with each other in an environment that makes sense for all parties.

So it was not only was, like, within six months of starting a Facebook COVID hit. So not only, so not only was Facebook a fascinating onboarding, but it was also drinking from a fire hose while also learning to work from home 100% of the time on a screen.

And so that was, it was my favorite most challenging experience in my career, I would say, working at Facebook.

 

Matt Zaun (mattzaun.com)

I would do it all a very good. Yeah, so it's interesting to me. I'm just, I'm thinking of the word culture because I think prior to COVID, and I don't know what, what Facebook's culture is now, but prior to COVID, I, the public perception was that Facebook had an incredible culture, right?

A lot of different goodies and different things that they did for their people. And one of the things that's been a major shift, culturally speaking, it from a societal perspective is culture has shifted company wide because a lot of culture was based on being in a physical location, right?

Being together, you're under one roof. You, there's a lot of different things that happen. And a lot of companies, I feel they, they miss their way, so to speak, because everyone kind of scattered and everyone's working from home and they didn't have that element of culture.

Now, there's a lot of elements of culture that run very deep. I actually did a podcast with a gentleman named Ricardo Gonzalez, one of the best conversations I've ever had regarding company culture.

It's absolutely fascinating talking about how deep it goes. Can you speak to your experience with culture? your prior and then post COVID at Facebook, did they have challenges kind of bringing people together so to speak from a unified mission?

 

Will McGinnis (FullThrottle)

Yeah, I would say you're not wrong. The three meals a day was cool. You know, catered lunch, catered breakfast, you know, you could, not three, two, two meals at the satellite offices, the big offices, unlimited snacks and all that stuff.

That part was cool, but that's just tech in general, I feel. My first day in onboarding on Facebook, I think one of the most enlightening experiences I had was that they really tried internally to build culture and bring awareness to other cultures that made up the organization.

Facebook's like a hundred thousand at the time, maybe. I know they've made some massive cuts, but one of the most fascinating conversations that I got to be a part of was they called it elevate at the time.

I forget what they changed it to, but it was people of color, specifically black owned businesses back then, and they were, they had a whole program dedicated to help small mom and pop businesses get started on Facebook.

I immediately signed up coming from Baltimore, spending my entire adult life in Baltimore. It was important to me to like raise my hand immediately.

And I got to, I got to envelop myself also as a learning experience, being assigned to a couple different bakeries and ice cream shops, one in Atlanta, one in Chicago.

And I got to like have a one on one experience with, you know, this woman who owned the ice cream shop in Atlanta, and I got, every month we got 250 bucks to dog food was their, their title of this like.

like their dollars, their, you know, monopoly bucks. And I got to spend $250 with her to help, you know, start a campaign.

And I think the coolest thing about that culture, that part of, you know, driving culture was, I got to spend time with a, you know, a black owned female owned business.

And my favorite thing about it was, we took that $250, it was around, it was right before Valentine's Day and the Super Bowl.

I think they fell on the same weekend that year. And with our little campaign, we did like a little video and all this stuff.

And we, she sold more ice cream cakes in that four week span than she had ever in her nine years of being open.

 

Matt Zaun (mattzaun.com)

Why that was just like really, like it was just a really great experience.

 

Will McGinnis (FullThrottle)

And there's a lot of that internally. Prior to Facebook, I will say I had the benefit of being at another organization, most of my automotive career.

career was at Cox Automotive, part of the Cox family of businesses in Atlanta, a private company that is like Cox Media, the Turner Broadcasting, all of those things.

But I was part of the automotive arm there. And I will, I will proudly say that that was a great environment.

We, we spent a lot of time giving back to the community. And yeah, I've been very lucky there.

 

Matt Zaun (mattzaun.com)

So thank you for sharing that story. I appreciate that. And for that, that owner, I can't even imagine that's life changing, right?

What was it? That was cool. That's really cool. So let's talk about full throttle dot AI. So based on all your background, your position now with full throttle dot AI, and you're doing a lot to help businesses identify and measure data.

So can you talk a little bit about the technology? Because when you first explained this to me, I was blown away by it.

 

Will McGinnis (FullThrottle)

So kid, for everyone listening, can you just explain different elements of the technology and what it does? Yeah, of course.

Yeah. So our tech, we built eight years ago, not almost nine, I guess now, and about four years ago, we stood the product up as a company, thus both Ronald.ai.

We were born out of an advertising agency, and as I said, on the outset, cater to car dealers. And we built this system in a method of, I'm open in two components.

One, collecting data into activating advertising. And what does that mean? Specifically speaking, what we do is we identify and collect and build first party audiences for our brands by way of opt-in technology, which we just won our patent on the tech and how we derive this information.

About three months ago, two months ago. So proud to. to say that the way that we collect this information is patented.

And as I said earlier, privacy is important and specifically speaking, what we do is it's opt-in technology, so we do it without the use of a cookie or user ID, mobile ID, IP address, any of those fingerprinting identifiers that are kind of in the wash with, you know, deprecation of cookies obviously and, you know, all of those other blockers out there.

What we do is unique. And what we then do is derive that opt-in, opt-in information into household data, postal addresses and build that true first-party audience of those, unidentified non-transacted users on those brand's websites and so building that audience of that first-party data, the second component.

is we activate marketing to drive them back to do what we all want our perspective customers to do is convert.

So through various levers, display, social video, smart mail, which is direct mail pieces. We also have our testing, addressable audio, address and we have the ability to go by way of TV, some traditional mechanisms that we have there.

Just in a, in, in to sum that all up in household immersion, full immersion to drive that brand, drive that conversion up for that customer.

We kind of sit nice and we nestle ourselves right in between that initial advertising, that traffic driving advertising that that you spend all your money doing.

And all of that lead follow up and all that time spent and all those like the great stuff the leads and.

You know, the conversions, you want to drive that. You want to take care of that kind of sit right in the middle and we like to call ourselves a force multiplier.

We take all of that, all of those people, those users that did not convert and we go and, you know, focus on bringing them back home to drive that conversion rate up.

 

Matt Zaun (mattzaun.com)

Wow. All right. So before we talk about the force multiplier, I want to backtrack a little bit. So collecting data, identifying data.

So I'm sure there's a lot of business leaders listening to this and they're thinking, okay, we're doing everything we possibly can.

Our marketing departments are doing everything they can to drive traffic to our website, but they don't want it to end there, right?

They wanted to convert and they may be having a very difficult time converting that. So they figured out a way to get eyeballs on the screen.

What would you recommend for them to be mindful of regarding identifying data? Tell, tell us a reason or a couple of reasons why it would be good to identify data and position that data once it's collected.

 

Will McGinnis (FullThrottle)

Yeah, so I think there's a couple of thoughts there. I want to be clear that our intention is really not the identification as much as it is the driving of those users back.

And so there's a lot of players out there that identify demographics and all of those things. And there's organizations that sell that information and buy that information.

We do not consider ourselves a data company. We're not like that data exists in those individual accounts and that stays there.

And it can only be extracted by that brand's party. That's their first party data. It's not merged with any other data.

We do that purposely to prioritize privacy, to prioritize honestly just protect those accounts and their data for that specific brand.

So as those advertisers out there that are trying to. to collect data and build data for advertising purposes. I'm not saying don't do that.

I think there's a lot of ways to drive your brand up, right? You know, specifically targeting a specific area that's around your store if you have a physical location or specific demographics based on like, if you're targeting married couples versus single people and all of those things.

Where I would say our uniqueness is, and where I think we're a little bit of a disruptive organization, is that our priority is on all of those people that already know who you are or have heard about you and are researching you, but not converting.

They're interested. They're raising their hand and they're not converting. And I want to take advantage of that step of users and browsers to enhance your

 

Matt Zaun (mattzaun.com)

or offering. All right, so just to make it on a thing to your question. Yeah, no, you did. I think so.

I think it'd be helpful for people listening. I'm going to just kind of create a scenario and you can kind of walk me through this scenario because this fascinates me.

I'm very intrigued by, you know, you mentioned the fourth multiplier of people that are interested, but they're going back and forth.

Do they? Do they not? So let's talk about a furniture store. So imagine a large furniture store. Obviously they have chairs, they have beds, they have what a furniture store would have.

And there, you mentioned, you know, married for a single. So let's say there are a lot of married people that are going into this store.

So they're going in, you can see on the website, there's different clicks coming from a certain county within the United States, maybe different towns within that county.

So there's all this data being collected. There's a lot that can be done with this, whether it's beds, whether it's chairs, whether it's office furniture.

So How would you position, what would you say to this business that already has a bunch of people coming to their site, they're clicking around, maybe they're bouncing, maybe they find that the same people are coming to the site again and again, but nothing's happening with it.

They're not opting into email, they're not doing anything with it. What would be the first thing that you would recommend to that entity to do right out of the gate?

 

Will McGinnis (FullThrottle)

Yeah, so Google GA obviously has data on all your traffic, right? Most websites are going to have analytics attached to it and you can go in, you can see, you have X amount of unique sessions, you're seeing all that information, maybe you have Facebook ads that drive traffic to your site and you're pulling that information through those pixels.

But in a lot of cases, those audiences that you build in those environments. They stay there. You can't do anything with them, right?

And so the difference of what we do is that instead of identifying those unique, you know, those users that you can say, oh, like this county, I got a lot more or whatever the case may be, we, what I would suggest to answer, try and answer your question if they were partnering with us.

Like the great thing about what we do is we're identifying those users, those that opt in anyway. And that a healthy, healthy percentage.

And those users are now, you know, those handraisers are, that's yours, that's your audience. That's your audience to then choose how you want to activate against them.

The great thing about like not to get like two into our own product, but it is unique, is that, you know, we also know when they are returning users, right?

We know when they come back. We know how often they come back. We know what pages that they visit.

due to the fact that they, you know, opted in, were able to then, you know, collect that data on our clients behalf and they can choose to act on that information.

Whether that be by way of a marketing tactic, you know, some of our clients will take all of that information, all those returning users.

In fact, working with a furniture store, 20 that used that example, just yesterday, working with a furniture store, that we're going to take all of those returning visitors that didn't transact.

So this furniture store is used to a high turnover volume, right? They're used to customer comes to website like, it's all because most users just look at the success, right?

They just look at that, that 4% that converted, they just like they're very excited that 4% represent represents X amount of revenue.

It's really great. And they want to grow that revenue. But we oftentimes we ignore that 95%, 96% aren't converting.

And so what we're going to do is take those returning visitors that didn't transact. some custom mail pieces actually.

We're gonna test the mail with them because they are actively researching. They're coming to the website. They're not converting just yet.

And being able to hit them display and social and video and mail allows that brand to continue to be in front of them in a unique way.

Because one of the big things that I didn't really discuss but is that cookies are going away. Like Chrome is the only one, the only browser today that still allows third party cookie retargeting.

You know, Firefox Edge I think is still maybe an opt-in but Firefox Edge is far away. For the most part, no third party cookie target.

Target retargeting. So those retargeting mechanisms that we know products of 10 years ago that was like the number one thing to do that's going in a way.

Google kicked the game down the road to next summer. And so those retargeting. experts while still important. Like you're missing a big chunk of that audience.

And what we do, I like to say that we have a targeted approach to that force multiplication, sorry about that, because what we're doing is specifically targeting those specific households that are researching that client's website.

 

Matt Zaun (mattzaun.com)

Sure, yeah, so there's something that you said I want to focus on. So you'd mentioned again and again, right?

So you said 4% conversion, that's awesome. It's converting, it's really adding to the revenue piece, but then there's that 96% that is not.

And it's amazing today where we are and where we've come in the last decade. I saw, I don't wanna misquote it, but I saw an article several months ago that was fascinating to me on just the difference a decade ago to get someone to pull something off a shelf versus today.

How many messages, how many advertisements, all these different things that they need to see to do it. It was so fascinating.

I actually used Coca-Cola as the example that if Coke rolled out a new product to get someone to pull that product off the shelf a decade ago, verse today, it's staggering the amount of times that people need to see it again and again and again and again.

I don't think businesses think enough about that. So I really like what you said. There is a huge missed opportunity with that 96%.

I mean, imagine tapping into that as a business owner, just eating away at converting that. It would be huge.

So I really appreciate you mentioning that. So talk to us a little bit about it. It's funny to bring up Coke because they were a client when I was at Facebook.

 

Will McGinnis (FullThrottle)

Yeah, really? And I often think about those big CPG brands and how they would use something like this because I think it'd still be valuable even though those CPG brands are like the advertised brand versus can.

version. But to your point, brands like Coca-Cola spend a lot of money just trying to make sure their brands in front of those eyeballs.

 

Matt Zaun (mattzaun.com)

Sure. Well, and also I like the example because doing a lot of good that are not as recognizable as Coca-Cola, obviously.

And Coca-Cola spends billions with a B, billions of dollars a year in advertising, which is fascinating because it's one of the most recognizable brands on planet Earth.

And they spend billions of dollars in advertising, which should prove to medium businesses out there that in order to be relevant, they need to continue to get their message in front of people again and again and again.

If brands like Coke are dumping, I saw again, I don't want to misquote it. I could have swore I saw that they spent $3 billion last year in advertising alone.

Right. So that is absurd. Now that's only 10% that of their revenue, right? It's they bring in a lot of money, but that's, that's a lot for a brand that's one of the most recognizable brands in human history is Coca-Cola and they spend billions in advertising.

So that should mean something to, to other businesses out there regarding getting messages in front of people. But I want to, I want to shift gears and I want to talk about your team because I really appreciate not only what you do that your technology, but also the team.

I've had an opportunity to meet a lot of individuals on your team and there was a reoccurring theme that I heard again and again and again and that was culture.

A lot of people really value the culture that you have created. So I want to talk about that. What, what do you think separates you from, from other companies when it comes to culture?

Is there something specific that positioned your team to, for a lot of people to say that you have an incredible culture?

 

Will McGinnis (FullThrottle)

Yeah, you know, I, I love to take, try to for that. I'll take a little. a little bit. I'll start with our leadership, right?

Our CEO built his out of agency 31 years ago out of his mom's garage with a partner and they have continued this growth, this rapid growth year over year in their existing business and then creating this new one.

So there's a lot to be said about the culture that exists currently today, which is just in our entire organization.

And that really goes down to the family-like atmosphere, even though we're full throttle.ai is a little over 100 employees and then stream I think is 550 like we're completely isolated now.

We're two individual companies, full throttle.ai is a remote 100% remote company. And so culture is important, window remote because you don't get to see each other a lot.

And so hiring is I think a critical part of my job, ensuring that the people that I hire fit within the team.

So I don't, specifically, personally, I don't hire for like a position in HVAC as an example. I don't hire for a vertical.

I hire based on capabilities with people and with our team. It's important to me that the people that I hire are, one, can bring to the table what we need them to bring to be successful because I don't want anyone to come here to not be successful, but to fit within the team.

And so when I think about your question about culture, I think where I prioritize that is consistency. So in the virtual world that we live in, we have a daily huddle every morning.

Some of those are like, you know, like this. morning talking about pipelines and sales force and like, let's make sure we update this and that.

And then other mornings we're just talking about, you know, this past weekend's like St. Patty's Day, like what did everyone do or did, did everyone, whose kids are on spring break or, you know, what are the case may be?

Sometimes it's 15 minutes of, of just catching up. Um, and I think that does a lot to just kick the day off for the team.

Um, and it's often used to like collaborate on different things. Another thing that we talked about this morning was just more on a technical, um, perspective about our product and we, you know, we went 10 minutes over to talk about that.

Um, I would say that's a big thing. And then the other thing, like, um, I may have mentioned to you before personally, but I'll bring it up again.

I personally try to bring my team together at least twice a year, um, for a summit. Like, let's get together three days.

Let's get that's you know iron sharpens iron. Let's talk about what's working. What's not Set the table for h2.

Let's set the table for q4 or whatever that like whatever the timing is and then on top of that You know it's camaraderie around You know Spending a little money team dinner.

Let's team outing. Let's go. Let's go to a baseball game Let's go bowling. Let's go do something fun together To just build camaraderie and that usually I can see Even just coming from a conference.

I just took three of my reps to I can see that cohesion Carry for for quite a long time after sure I think if if most Businesses and I'm I'm even talking to my leadership think That spending money and I'm very grateful for my leadership by the way I was just kind of a joke but investing in your people Spending a little money for a little money for a little money

bit of fun is a great way to drive results. I'm proud to say at the end of this month, I'm sorry, at the end of April, I am running a race because my company sponsored our whole team.

So there's five of us running a race in the near future. And it's all because of like our people in culture team.

That's we don't have an HR team.

 

Matt Zaun (mattzaun.com)

We have a people in culture team. That's pretty cool. That's awesome. That's awesome. I appreciate you sharing that. There's a lot of wisdom with what you said.

So I appreciate that. I also really appreciate this conversation. I know you're extremely busy. So thank you so much for your time today, Will.

There's three takeaways I'm going to take away from our conversation. I know a lot of people listening probably got other takeaways, but my takeaways were I really appreciate you mentioned active active listening.

I know it might sound cliche, but you talked about understanding their world, meaning our clients. world. And I appreciate that because I know you practice what you preach.

We were on a call several months ago where you said, Hey, I'm not interested in my goals. I'm focused on their goals.

So you actually believe what you're saying. And I really appreciate that. So active listening is absolutely critical. I also appreciate you mentioning the again and again piece.

And we talked about Coca Cola, how much just the sheer amount of money they spend on messaging and how businesses should be mindful of targeting to their client base.

But these messages, it needs to be focused on again and again to build up a bigger conversion. You mentioned 4% of the 96% businesses should really be looking into beefing up those numbers in a big, big way.

So I appreciate that. And then I really appreciate what you mentioned regarding company culture. You talked about the people's capabilities with people, right, that we're human.

It's really it's something to really focus on that communication piece. And I think a lot of people can learn from your daily huddles.

So I think it's really important to continue to communicate and connect with our teams. So thank you. I appreciate everything that you had shared.

If people want to find more information on a little bit more about you, or they're very interested in full throttle.ai, we're the best places they can go to find that information.

 

Will McGinnis (FullThrottle)

Yeah, definitely. Thankfully, you and I are connected on LinkedIn. So just hit me up the same way. I would love to connect open to feedback, open to curiosity and challenges.

I love challenges more than hand raisers to do business. So if there's anything I said that you disagree with, I would love to connect with you to just understand your perspective.

So find me on LinkedIn and you can find us at full throttle.ai.

 

Matt Zaun (mattzaun.com)

Perfect. I will include both those in the show notes. People can just click and go there.

 

Will McGinnis (FullThrottle)

But thanks again, Will. I very much appreciate your time and this conversation. Yeah, thank you. And always focus on the 96%.

Don't always focus on your wins.

 

Matt Zaun (mattzaun.com)

I'd love that. Thank you. I appreciate that. Well said.