2032 – Mastering Outbound Lead Generation with LeadStorm AI’s Matthew Cretzman

0:05Hey there, thoughtful listener. Are you looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers, influencers, influencers, and clients? Well, I've had private conversations with over 2 ,000 leaders asking them where their best business comes from. I've got a free video you can watch with no opt-in required where I'll share the exact steps necessary to be 100 % inbound in your industry over the next six to eight months with no spam, no ads, and no sales. What I teach has worked for me for over 15 years and has helped me create eight figures in revenue for my own companies. Just head to upmyinfluence.com and watch my free class on how to create endless high-ticket sales appointments.

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1:05With us right now, it's Matt Kretzman. Matt, you are the founder of LeadStorm AI. You're found on the web at mattkretzman.com. We've got the spelling, the direct link to that. To our friends listening, just click around in your podcast app. You'll see exactly where you can click on and find Matt's website so you can follow along. Matt, it's great to have you. Hey, Josh, it's a privilege, man. I love the energy so far. It's going to be a great conversation. Thank you so much. Tell me a bit about what you do, who you serve. uh yeah so i'm uh you know a number of things but first of all i'm a linkedin marketing expert so anything that touches linkedin and outbound marketing is where i kind of specialize and niche down within the wonderful world of digital marketing um lead storm by i is a platform that i built out last year and brought to market to solve a couple specific pain points which i'm sure we'll talk about later but uh more than anything i'm a connector uh i'm a relationship guy i uh i'm also just you know strategist for a number of different fast-growing startups and b2b companies and also subject matter experts.

2:03So married, got a dog, two cats, and life is good. Excellent. All right. Well, Matt, go ahead and feel free to put a little meat on the bones in terms of like how you help your clients grow. Yeah, for sure, for sure. So I'll tell you a little bit of a backstory because things are always better when you tell stories, right? So back in 2019, I kind of fell into LinkedIn. At the time, I just came out of a three-year transition from what I was doing, which was leading an international nonprofit. So I've lived in three different countries. I've helped local leaders in all over Latin America and India.

2:37I started an orphanage in India in 2012 in memory of my daughter who passed away. So we can talk about hardships in life for sure and growing through those. And so I went through a heavy transition, 16, 17, and 18. And 2019 was a magical year. I fell into LinkedIn, fell into marketing in the agency world through a friend that hired me and gave me a hand up, not a handout. And in 2019, I felt compelled to do two things, one of which we're doing right now. Start a podcast and number two, go all in on LinkedIn. And so I use LinkedIn as a platform to start conversations with people, to get them on my podcast, and also to see if there's an opportunity for us to add value to each other.

3:15And so when I started doing that, I, man, LinkedIn became this doorway to incredible opportunities and relationships all over the world. So 2019, I started building out like a department within the agency that I was working for. And we started working with, we quickly grew to about 25 to 30 clients within a couple months. And I started doing some things with professional sports teams, fell into that, discovered pro sports teams really know nothing about LinkedIn. and all of their best deals are sitting there on LinkedIn, some pretty low hanging fruit. So I became the LinkedIn guy behind the scenes, helping their sales team implement the strategies.

3:52And then, you know, LinkedIn, it kind of eventually like reached the end of the road, if you will, if you're playing outbound on LinkedIn and not focused on content. So that then led to cold email, which led to this amazing world of automation and personalization and just became really good at strategizing on like hyper-personalized campaigns that start the right conversation with the right person in the right way. And then January 2020, I launched Stormbreaker Digital, which is my marketing agency. I've been doing that ever since. And then just, you know, life was good and helping clients and traveling the world.

4:28I've been around the globe three times because of LinkedIn and relationships that I've formed and deals that I've done with other business professionals. But last year, I came to a realization that there was a gap in the marketplace for a platform that was not only like a best in class marketing automation CRM, but also kind of like an outbound platform too that would automate LinkedIn, cold email, personalization, stuff like that. Because when I was running campaigns, Josh, And for your audience who may be running cold email, they're probably dabbling with duck soup or some kind of automation tool if they're into that kind of thing.

5:11But usually when I was running campaigns, I was juggling like four to five different tools. My data, my LinkedIn, my cold email, my personalization tools. And it was just a lot. I'm like, this is silly. Why hasn't somebody kind of rolled all this up into one and make it easy for people? And so I did it. I packaged everything into one called a lead storm AI. And so you've got, you know, 700 million contacts, you've got the ability to build funnels, landing pages, manager contacts, your pipeline, and then also full like LinkedIn outbound automation, email, text, LinkedIn DMS and stuff like that.

5:46So it's a great, it's a great platform. But really, it's, you know, we're in this interesting era of like data commoditization. And I would say almost like platform commoditization, AI has accelerated the, you know, the ability to go to market with a new tool faster than ever, you know, writing code with Claude or Chachameteet, right? So, so it's not about the tool and it's not so much about the data anymore. It's really about the strategy and how are you integrating your, these outbound campaigns and tools into a bigger marketing campaign and a bigger... So share with me what is working in outbound lead generation and what is no longer working in outbound lead generation?

6:34Yeah, great question. 2019 to 2022 was probably... You make case for maybe a couple of years earlier, but I feel like really 2022 was where the golden era of Outbound like started to taper off. And now there's some great tools out there that can help you, you know, put together campaigns that are just like unbelievably personalized and still feel natural. Clay.com is a great tool of, you know, for your listeners or you like clay.com is great, plugs into your data, hyper-personalizes the messaging and can, some people are using it to replace sales teams. Like it's nuts what people are doing with clay.

7:13But at the end of the day, I think the buyer behavior and interest have changed so much to where if you don't have a brand and you're not creating meaningful content, it's really going to hurt your outbound. So that led to the framework that I came up with called BCT. And it's not unique. It's not revolutionary. We're talking about fundamentals of marketing that you have to pay attention to and you can't ignore if you're going to win. Brand, who are you? Who are you not? Right? content? Are you creating content that people actually want, they're interested in, and educates the buyer, inspires them, makes them laugh.

7:48And if you take those two things and turn that on into your outbound, that's where you're going to win. So there's some industry leaders and voices that are saying things like inbound led outbound. I've seen content led outbound. And it's really just the fundamentals of, are you showing up to help people and giving things the way of value? Or are you just trying to be transactional and get a meeting? That stuff doesn't work as much anymore. You have to. No, indeed it doesn't. No, no. So do everybody a favor and just like, you know, take a step back, see the bigger picture and ask yourself the question, what can I create that's extremely valuable and helpful for my ideal customer that I can just give away to them?

8:29If you put that in an outbound sequence, you'll see some traction and some wins because you're giving first. It's a different way of thinking and approaching outbound. What are some examples of, I mean, because look, I mean, I get a lot of DMs. They never get to me. I mean, I've got team to kind of manage all of that because I'm just too busy to be bombarded with solicitations. You know, I'm running a company. I've got a lot of responsibilities. So I don't, you know, again, I've got multiple email accounts. Email's not going to work for me because again, I just don't have time to be sold at. So what breaks through the noise, Matthew?

9:03you? Yeah. Yeah. So here's what breaks through noise. Number one, you know, if you're not hyper-personalizing your messaging, you can almost forget about it. That template style, like, you know, you feel it. I feel it. I hate it. I hate it. I can tell right away. I'm like, no, archive, delete, spam, sorry, ignore. So you have to be hyper-personalizing your messaging and using much more sophisticated tools like a clay.com or a video personalization tool, SendSpark or LeadStorm. You got to hyper-personalize. Number two, your strategy around data, it matters more now than ever. And so here's a very practical tactic, if you will, that I've used for years.

9:44It still works today with a fairly good level of success. So if you go to, and really what we're talking about is intent, right? If you can get some intent data and understand what's going on in here and what's their world like on the other side, are they experiencing a pain or a problem, is there a signal that maybe you could look for that would indicate, you know, some kind of pain or struggle or challenge, then that's what's going to help you win. So really simple one, go to LinkedIn, put your hat on the mind of the buyer and say, what event would they attend? And then put that word or those, you know, couple words or that phrase in the search in LinkedIn, and then go and filter by events.

10:25And then it's going to surface all of these events that your ideal client is going to to attend because they're experiencing a pain or a problem magic right and so now what you can do with that event is you can actually scrape the attendees of all these events you can plug in the search url for that event into lead storm if you want and it'll automatically extract all the attendees and now you have i kind of have a hypothesis which every good marketer is a scientist i have a hypothesis about where they are in their buyer's journey. If they're attending an event on sales, well, they probably want to level up their sales or they're struggling with sales.

11:00And so I have intent. I also have something in common with prospects. And when you're doing outbound, I've been teaching for years, always try to find commonality between you and them because commonality breeds trust. And so if you have something in common with the event, hey, we're going to the same conference, right you kind of have that feel um and then the third thing is people that are attending a linkedin event are also active on linkedin which that's the you know that's a that's a big hurdle if you're sending messages to people that aren't even active on the platform you're not even getting that you don't get in that bat you got to get in that bat and so those are the three things that help you win with a linkedin event hacking strategy i would say that still works the flip side to that is if i'm you know connecting with and sending messages to other people's events and their attendees i I can start my own event and then invite them to mine.

11:50And now you have that nice like content domino, like what we're doing right now, host an event, invite people to it. I'm not selling you anything. Come to the event. I'm going to give a ton of value away. If that turns you off from my connection request, then okay, no harm, no foul. That's fine. I'm not trying to sell you anything. I'm just trying to educate you and give you an opportunity to learn and maybe level up so you can invite them to the event, jump on, bring a collaborator who owns your audience. Right. and then now they're bringing their audience and you just kind of rinse and repeat every month.

12:21Your website, Matt, is mattcretzman.com. Can you share maybe a little bit about what, like when you're working with your clients, like what that looks like or do you just provide education? Yeah, three specific ways. One, if you get a license to lead storm AI, we have a great support team. We've got 10 full-time team members. We'll jump in with you, give you two onboarding calls that help you think through your strategy, get a campaign up and running, 10-day free trial. you don't even spend a dime and you've already got stuff that's like moving and tons of value. That's the lowest cost to work with me.

12:51The second tier is as a consultant, I have a program that's called the Expert Positioning Accelerator. And that is like a full three-month program, you know, accelerated by AI. I'm not like, I use ChatGPT. I'm an AI expert. No, I mean like real AI tools and processes. And in three months, you come out positioned as an expert with an authority brand. And that's, you know, Josh, I feel like that's been the word of the year for me is positioning is so important, especially for subject matter experts. So that middle one is the three month program. It's, you know, fairly cost effective for people to work with me.

13:27And then of course you have the, uh, the boutique, you know, uh, white glove done for you at the agency level, which ranges from like 2 ,500 to 6 ,500 a month, usually somewhere in there. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and, and Matthew, I know that, um, as we were talking earlier that, um, I mean, And like if we were to give someone, you know, some next steps from here, like if they're interested in learning more about this strategy, you know, and again, you know, in full transparency, I'm very, very sensitive to not treating humans like leads. I'm very sensitive to, you know, not wanting to be a spammer. And I suspect that a lot of folks who listen to this show probably resonate with that.

14:08So again, you know, making sure that any activity is in alignment with our values is going to be pretty critical. So, and again, I'm kind of projecting a little bit there, but what would you recommend kind of these next steps in this learning journey be? I have a phenomenal case study of what this looks like when you do it right. And there's a right way to do it. I believe the same thing about, you know, every type of marketing or sales tactic, cold calling, door knocking, mailers, outbound ads, like it's a channel. The channel is not the problem. It's how are you using the channel? Are you abusing the tool or are you using it the right way?

14:47Right. When you use it the right way, you get results. So Christy Hoffman, you can look her up on LinkedIn. Phenomenal case study of where she came in and I think she had maybe 2000 followers on LinkedIn. She was working at another company and she had been their podcast host for the brand's podcast for 18 months. She was giving away a ton of value. She knew her audience extremely well. She had her own flavor on the podcast and the brand. She was funny. She was relatable, but she was an expert. She was brilliant. And people loved her. But they came to me and she's like, I feel like we're not growing as fast as we could be.

15:24We just want more people to find and hear our content. And I said, oh, have you ever done outbound? And she's like, no, never touched it, never done any kind of LinkedIn automation or outbound, stuff like that. I'm like, wow, okay. So you have 18 months of content and insights into what people actually care about. I was like, okay, we're going to take a step back and put a whole strategy together around the outbound. To make a long story short, we did two things and it worked so well. She now has over 8 ,000 followers on LinkedIn. We went to the data on her podcast episodes and we looked at which ones get the best listenership.

16:00Those then became LinkedIn lives. We would schedule those as a LinkedIn event and she would go live to talk about those things that we know people want to hear about and it's a pain point for them. And so we would set that up as an event and then we would do outbound to people that were within her ICP, just inviting them into her network and to come and listen to the content. her inbox blew up with so many conversations they had to hire somebody to manage their inbox she was spending a couple hours a day responding to messages having deep conversations with people and we created a group hundreds of people jumped in there very quick and if you look at her linkedin she's booked i think her top performing organic post and this is where they work in tandem her top performing, I think organic post got like 72 meetings off of one post.

16:53And now everything she drops out there, people are just eating it up. Why? Because she had a traffic problem. She didn't have a brand or a content problem. She had a traffic problem. We just had to push her stuff in front of the right people. And it just took off. Yeah. So again, your website, Matt, and then for the, you know, what you're talking about kind of the next step. Yeah, website. If you want to go to mattkretzman.com, that's where you'll find out a little bit more about me. I would encourage people if you want to dip your toe in the water and kind of explore a little bit, go to linkedinpowerscore.com.

17:31I'm just launching a book. It's called The LinkedIn Advantage Book, co-authored with a good friend of mine who's written 100 books. I'm trying to catch up. And so the LinkedIn PowerScore, take the assessment. It's free. It'll give you some insights on where you are, what you need to change, and how you can do a little bit better. Nice. Again, that website, LinkedInPowerScore.com. You can click it. There's a button that says start my free assessment right there. And again, it looks like a short quiz that will help you understand what you may be missing out on on LinkedIn. Matt Kretzman, again, you are the founder of LeadStorm AI.

18:11Your website, once again, is LinkedInPowerScore.com and MattKretzman.com. All those links we have in your podcast player right now. Just click around. Matt, thank you so much for joining us. Yeah, thank you, Josh. It's a pleasure.

18:29Thanks for listening to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur Show. If you are a thoughtful business owner or professional who would like to be on this daily program, please visit upmyinfluence.com and click on podcast. We believe that every person has a message that can positively impact the world. We love our community who listens and shares our program every day. Together, we are empowering one another as thoughtful leaders. And as I mentioned at the beginning of this program, if you're looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers, and clients, I have had private conversations with over 2 ,000 leaders asking them where their best business comes from.

19:10I've got a free video that you can watch right now with no opt-in or email required where I'm gonna share the exact steps necessary to be 100 % inbound in your industry over the next six to eight months with no spam, no ads, and no sales. What I teach has worked for me for more than 15 years and has helped me create eight figures in revenue for my own companies. Just head to upmyinfluence.com and watch my free class on how to create endless high-ticket sales appointments. Make sure to hit subscribe so that tomorrow morning, that's right, seven days a week, you are going to be inspired and motivated to succeed.

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