How to Get ANY Meeting: The Genius Behind Contact Marketing | Stu Heinecke

0:00Stu Heinecke:People are following what I guess are called best practices. For one, they're probably using a lot of email sequences. The copy is always too long. I'm not going to pay attention to this. We only have one opportunity to make a first impression. Chris Dopperson, he was thinking, I want to collaborate with my hero, Johnny Cash. And it wasn't until he got very audacious and took a big risk by landing a helicopter on his front lawn that it pushed the needle far enough that they made the connection. This is something that you can take away from this podcast today. So you don't have to be a cartoonist.

0:36Stu Heinecke:You don't have to fly a helicopter. I would do some research, find out something about what their personal interests are and passions are and what they're talking about. Find something that you can use as a gift and send it to them.

0:50Stu, welcome to the podcast.

0:52Stu Heinecke:Thank you so much. What a pleasure to finally join you. Thank you for joining us. So we're going to kick off big open question as we do. Who are you and what problem do you solve? Well, I'm Stu Hynek. I'm your guest. Obviously, I guess your audience knows that. But I live in Washington State on an island, a little bit north of Seattle. And I write books, but I also create campaigns. I've been creating campaigns my whole career. And I'm one of the Wall Street Journal cartoonists. So all of those things have combined beautifully. It might sound a little odd, but especially joining cartoons with marketing.

1:33Stu Heinecke:But it turned out when I first started out that readership surveys were showing that cartoons were almost always the best read and remembered parts of magazines and newspapers. And I thought, perfect. I love doing them. I was just so interested in it and so involved in it. And great. They're like the ultimate engagement device. So that's in fact, right how it went. Created a lot of record-breaking campaigns. I've been nominated to two halls of fame for marketing. I've been named the father of contact marketing from my book, How to Get a Meeting with Anyone. You can see it over my shoulder. And yeah, so I help people.

2:14Stu Heinecke:I really just help people get better results. But that takes form with sales reps or with sales teams to help them break through to their top prospects and accounts. And in other forms of campaign, it's just, you know, better results, higher response rates and higher returns on investment. So, yeah, that's pretty much it. Nice. So if we think about maybe the typical salesperson who might be doing all the things wrong, let's call him Marco for this conversation. So what is Marco doing at his desk every day? What symptoms is he struggling with where you and your books might be able to help him? Marco, yeah.

2:58Stu Heinecke:Well, you know, there are people doing a lot. People are following what I guess are called, not a guess, I know they're called best practices. And a lot of those best practices betray us because, for one, they're probably using a lot of direct mail, I'm sorry, email sequences. And somebody's written it for them or they wrote it themselves. Probably somebody's written it for them. The copy is always too long. Nobody's going to read that. They can see the slug at the bottom of the email and they realize, well, this is just broadcast. I'm not going to pay attention to this. and they think that the key is to keep sending more and more and more of those, but all they're doing is getting more and more ignored and wearing out their welcome more and more and more.

3:44Stu Heinecke:So we only have one opportunity to make a first impression. And I always think that it's just, it makes so much sense to send something that wows someone, something that maybe is a little audacious, something that causes people to say, I mean, if we're interrupting their day, we want them to go from, here's the interruption, oh, who's this? What is this? To, oh my God, who is this? This is incredible. I want to meet this person. And so I think in all instances of however we would describe Marco, if he's using sort of traditional best practices, he's not standing out ever because everyone else is using the same thing.

4:29Stu Heinecke:That's why they're best practices. so um then he's probably never standing out he's probably never taking the right kinds of risks um and and he's probably never getting through it's probably ready to change his profession so stew let's let's stick on marco then let's say marco he's he's listening to that he's saying okay right i feel like the cogs are moving but stew i only got 100 pounds how can i get someone's attention with just a hundred pounds? Uh, send them a hundred pounds. That's one way, but that's just kind of a bribe. I would, you know, I would find out as much as I could about each person that, that, um, that you're reaching out to.

5:14Stu Heinecke:So, you know, find out what I miss. It's pretty easy to do. You can do a profile scrape and go to their profiles on LinkedIn and other social media platforms, find out something about who they are, where they want it, where they, Maybe where they went to school, that's really basic stuff. But really, it's more like, what are they talking about? Are they posting about anything? What are their stances? What are they really excited about? And you can go much deeper than that. ChatGPT will help you go much deeper than that to just get research on the person and find out who they are, who they are as people.

5:48Stu Heinecke:Because you might find that someone is, I don't know, they're really interested in airplanes. and then, you know, doing something with an airplane would make, or an airplane theme would make some sense. Or, you know, you might, maybe you might buy an out-of-date or out-of-print book, maybe an antique book on airplanes. Maybe something sort of historic. I don't know, something about airplanes. Send it to them as a gift and you can buy something off Amazon, and something used and send something that's relevant to who they are, what they're excited about, that they love the Tour de France race. Get them something about that and say, you know, I was doing research on you because I wanted to ask you for a meeting, and I discovered that you were really interested in the Tour de France, and I just happened to have this book.

6:39Stu Heinecke:It's actually out of print now, but it's about the first 10 races, and I thought you might enjoy that. And really, I hope it might earn me the chance to talk to you for a few minutes. I would do something like that. Show them that you've actually done some work. The other thing is that we have to have relevance. You can't just, I mean, you could fire up a flare gun at their window and get their attention too, but there's no relevance to it. So you really need to know why the reason that you'd like to get in touch with them is relevant to them or how it's relevant to them. So are they, I don't know, and again, I don't know, what does Marco sell?

7:18Stu Heinecke:Maybe we should find a little bit more about him. I don't think he knows. Okay. Well, then he's going to have a really hard time. We should find that out too. But, you know, understand how your solution fits in. Like what kinds of problems are they experiencing that you actually know that they're experiencing? And how can your solution help? You really ought to come in with that kind of relevance. is there then i'm gonna maybe thinking devil's advocate standpoint here is there a sweet spot and a boundary between so i could do lots of research on you stew and i could fire over some personalized outreach that is suddenly about what school you went to and the street you live on um the time and suddenly it gets kind of creepy but is there a fine line i mean if i i live on amble road on an island.

8:08Stu Heinecke:And if someone sent me, actually, if they even sent something here, I'd be a little nonplussed. I don't want to receive things here. But I don't have any affinity to my road, the road I live on, or really even where I went to school. It was so long. I had to have some, but it was a great place to go to school, but it was a long time ago. And so if I got a mug, I went to USC. So if I got a USC mug, well, I don't know, I can get those myself. I don't get them because I don't really care that much. But if you delved a little bit further, if you delved into my profile a bit, just into some of my posts, you'll find that I'm really very, very interested in bodybuilding.

8:56Stu Heinecke:I mean, I've been working hard, been working out hard to get into bodybuilder shape by my 70th birthday, which just was a few months ago. That's kind of an odd thing. Most people my age are not doing that. And so that would be a great way to reach across the divide and say, hey, you know, I saw your post, and either I have a question, because I would love to do the same thing, or congratulations. I mean, I think you're the oldest. I probably wouldn't like to hear I'm the oldest. on the big scene, but whatever. It's okay. I'm working on a new book called Playing Your Fourth Quarter. If you knew that, boom.

9:35Stu Heinecke:These are great ways to break through. So, I mean, mentioning my road won't do it, but mentioning Playing Your Fourth Quarter surely would. If you're in that fourth quarter of your life and you're curious about that, I would be going, oh yeah, sure, let's talk about it. Do you see the difference? and so we're still not talking about what what marco sells but he'd be a lot smoother on the on his outreach if he was able to if he was able to dip into those things or you know i mean the book over my shoulder how to get a meeting with anyone it was it it um was named let's see um harris uh i don't think i pronounce his last name but he's the publisher of sales Daily, he named How to Get a Meeting with Anyone the number one sales book ever written on prospecting.

10:28Stu Heinecke:And that was just last year. And I was like, wow, okay, I know it's not true. It can't be true, but I'll take it. That's great. So I mean, if you know things like that, then, and they're not hard to find out, then I think it makes it easy to reach across. I connect with people all the time because of that i think where it goes wrong is where and this is going to sound so stupid but when personalization is done on mass i think that's where people struggle you know i was creating direct mail that's how i started was i created direct mail campaigns that used cartoons with personalization so the cartoon was always personalized about the recipient and we were, let's say, reaching toward a persona.

11:18Stu Heinecke:We knew for Forbes magazine, we knew that the audience was, the people in the audience were probably at least stock investors, but they were investors and keenly interested in business and certainly their own business success. So that's a really easy persona to play to with a cartoon. And so we would send out these mailings that were, again, they're about the recipient. I mean, there's a cartoon on the front of the envelope, and it's about the recipient only by dropping in first and last name. But we'd sent a couple million of those out, and it ended up setting new records for response. So I don't think it's that.

11:59Stu Heinecke:I don't think it's – it's not – I mean, personalization at scale is not the problem. It's just poor or weak personalization that I think really falls apart. Does that make sense? I think there's a big description there. Yeah, definitely. I think when I think of personalization en masse, I think what you say there is like knowing a persona and doing something personalized to that persona. But let me just share this. Yeah, sure. I'll share a DM with you that I got 30 minutes ago. and this is um this is personalization hi jack i see your director at we have a meeting that is personalization but that is weak as we know totally weak yeah yeah but but i love i love your work so what i wanted to get into is obviously getting the meeting is one thing and then approaching that meeting and there's probably like a level of reciprocity if you've done something that's um you know i mean bodacious it stands out it's got my attention okay cool you've gone to that effort i'm going to give my time and effort back to you but that doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to buy of course but how do you have you found any ways to that that that line between that transition period of how to approach those meetings differently because you've done something that's probably a bit more disruptive.

13:29Stu Heinecke:That's a tangle of things together. My first and foremost objective for clients is to get them in, just to get them talking with the prospect and not so much carrying them through the meeting or through the sale because that's a lot of other areas of expertise that'll make that happen. But, you know, we know that if you have a solution that makes sense that they're not using now, they're not using your competitor's version of it, or maybe they are. And the competitor's version is weak. And you can talk about why it's weak and how you can create a benefit to them. But I will just tell you that I want to – my objective is to get you in touch with the person in such a way that, as I mentioned earlier, they're saying, oh, my God, who is this?

14:22Stu Heinecke:This is amazing. And so there are some great stories of things that people have done to make that happen. And when that happens, I think that when it's actually – that could be the whole feature of the meeting of the transaction. They just really admire you for what you just did or what you showed them. And they'll end up, that'll carry it through a lot of the process of, I mean, you know, we know that people buy from people they know, like, and trust. They don't know you, then they like you, probably. They probably like you a lot. That's probably what's happening. And there has to be some amount of implied trust, but they don't know you.

15:01Stu Heinecke:So when you first connect, that's the situation. So you really have to, I guess you probably have to turn up like a lot. And, and there are really interesting ways of doing that using contact. I call it contact marketing in my books and that's sort of what it's being called now. But there are ways to turn up the like portion of that equation so that they're just saying, look, I just, I don't, I don't know who you are, but I really like the way you think. and I want to know what you sell, why you reached out, and let's figure that out because I really like the way you think and I think that that belongs in my sphere.

15:44Stu Heinecke:Does that make sense? Perfectly. I mean, I could share. Would you like me to share a story or two? Yeah, I was just going to say, what's your sweet child of mine campaign, the one that's the the hit that gets the wins every time well i mean i i use cartoons all the time i still use them i'm going to use them in the mailings but i realized i i discovered very quickly that if i sent a cartoon to someone um and i i'm one of the wall street journal cartoonists that helps i mean i'm known as a cartoonist here so um but if i send them a cartoon about themselves it's treasured and um uh it better be funny let's hope it's funny but and on target but otherwise It's treasured.

16:29Stu Heinecke:So people aren't going to throw them away. And I use them all the time in a lot of different forms. But, you know, when I did the research for how to get a meeting with anyone, the wonderful thing that – the best part of that, I should say, is that I was discovering all these really crazy, clever, audacious things that people were doing to break through to someone who was very difficult to reach. Maybe we would call them impossible to reach. but when they did that um things changed for them drastically and so there's and i've got a bunch of stories like this but if i if i may i'd love to share one with you now please good do you know do you remember the singer songwriter chris chris dopperson i don't think i do what was he a band or was he uh he's a he was a um country um uh singer songwriter he used to um he used to performed with Johnny Cash and John Jennings.

17:26Stu Heinecke:So from that, from that ilk, but he, um, he was, his story starts when he was, I guess, a captain in the army and he was, uh, he was a pilot, a helicopter pilot. And, um, and he was stationed in Germany and he was thinking, well, when I get out of the service, what am I going to do? What do I really want to do? I know what I want to do. I want to become a singer songwriter. And in fact, I want to move to Nashville and I want to be, I want to collaborate with my hero, Johnny Cash. And that wouldn't be easy, right? That doesn't, especially now, he's dead. But otherwise, it wouldn't be easy. It would not be easy to get through to.

18:04Stu Heinecke:So he thought, okay, good. And so when he was discharged, he moved to Nashville. And a friend of his knew that he wanted to meet Johnny. So he said, look, he's going to perform at our, I don't know, our venue tonight. And I can get you in. If you come to the stage door at 1030 tonight, I'll let you in and I'll introduce you. Oh, man. All right. So, he showed up and there was Johnny. He was ready to go on stage. He was like pointed toward the stage, ready to go. And the stage manager tapped him on the shoulder and said, hey, Johnny, I just want to introduce you to my friend here, Chris. And he turns and said, how are you doing?

18:43Stu Heinecke:Or something like that. I don't know. And then went on stage. So, not much of an impact. And so they thought, okay, all right, all right, I've got to do something more. I'm going to go to the studio where he records, and he spends this all day long, all the time. And I'm just going to get any job, any job I can get. And so he got a job as a janitor. By the way, he's a Rhodes Scholar, or was a Rhodes Scholar. He was way overqualified for this, but he got the job as a janitor. And sure enough, he started to get to know Johnny a little bit, but Johnny knew him as a janitor. He's not going to collaborate with the janitor.

19:19Stu Heinecke:And so finally, Chris, it's just, I've got to do something to break through this. And so he was still flying helicopters now for the National Guard. And so while he was on a training mission, I guess, something like that, he decided, okay, on my way back, I'm going to stop over at Johnny's house, land on the front lawn, and hand off a demo tape. and that certainly would have got, well, anyway, so that's what he did. Showed up at the house in the helicopter and then the stories diverge from here, whether Johnny tells it or Chris tells it. So Chris is saying, I handed it off to the house manager and he came out and was wondering why the helicopter was there on the front lawn, but he handed it to him.

20:05Stu Heinecke:And then Johnny would tell a different story. He said, let me tell you about how I met Chris. he flew, well, he was our janitor, but then one day he just showed up in a helicopter and he stepped out with a beer in one hand and a demo tape in the other and Chris is saying, no, Johnny, I can't, there's no cup holders in the helicopter and you can't, I need everything, both hands and both feet to fly a helicopter. But what was really interesting about that, they became, from that point on, lifelong friends. Johnny helped him a lot, brought him into the highway. They met a big, I mean, this band of legendary country singers.

20:44Stu Heinecke:And the thing that I love about that story is that Chris was trying these different methods. And you could say that, you know, having a friend backstage who could make an introduction was sort of like best practices. Not enough to move the needle, right? I mean, it just wasn't enough. It made no impression whatsoever. You could liken those to email sequences. I mean, that to email sequences. And so then he thought, okay, fine. I'm going to turn it up a notch and became the janitor. Well, just got any job just so he could be near Johnny and get to know him that way. But that wasn't enough. It didn't position him properly.

21:28Stu Heinecke:And it wasn't until he got very audacious and took a big risk by landing a helicopter on his front lawn that it pushed the needle far enough that they made the connection. And I think this happens in outreach all the time. We do things that are not, they just, they don't show up. They blend into everything else. If we're trying to just connect through LinkedIn, if we send DMs, and I think that DM you were talking about earlier, Jack, was from, was that on LinkedIn? Yeah, we'll talk about those in a moment, I hope, because they're horrible. They're so horribly done. But those things don't generally create much of an impact.

22:10Stu Heinecke:And it's not until you turn that knob way up, the Audacity knob, way up until you can actually make, well, just break through the clutter, break through, I don't know, resistance perhaps. But so that you can make enough of an impression that they're saying, wow. Well, in this case, Johnny knew who he was. He's not saying I don't know who this is, but I love the way Chris thinks. We got to do something together. And that's when everything changes. So what's an example of a time where you walked the line and did that yourself? Well, I have to preface this by saying not all meetings are business.

22:50Stu Heinecke:Okay. I guess, you know, I saw my wife in a magazine and wrote to the magazine and said, I'm working on a film project. I want to get introduced to this model. I don't know who she is, but could you help? And they wrote back and said, well, her name is Charlotte. She lives in Copenhagen. We don't know if she speaks a word of English. Here's her photographer's name and number. Good luck. And obviously, I'm telling you, she's my wife. So that's my best meeting ever. And I went to Copenhagen to meet her, and we spent the day together. And that was amazing. That's my best meeting by far. Oh, wow. But for business, we should refocus again.

23:33Stu Heinecke:I've sent cartoons to presidents, so U.S. presidents and prime ministers and lots of CEOs and C-level people and top decision makers and broken through a lot of the time. There was one radio host, and we're in completely different markets, so I don't think you'll know who he is, but he was very, very popular across the country and just a big, big name. and he was in the Los Angeles market where I was living and so I would listen to him. He was funny, really funny as hell. And so I loved his humor. And so I was listening to him and he was having sort of a feud with one of his sponsors who pulled out.

24:18Stu Heinecke:And so I created a cartoon and sent it over to him at Kiss Studios in Hollywood. And he called me up and said, hey, come on in, let's meet. And he's been my client ever since. I've been creating his Christmas card every year with these personalized cartoons. And we've been doing that for about 40 years now. So that was kind of interesting. But I don't know. I've broken through to a lot of people and gotten a lot of things to happen. And it usually follows this impression that I've made, either because they might recognize my cartooning style. I don't know. But, but, um, uh, I think there, there, there's the impression that, oh my gosh, I've seen this guy's work all over the place.

25:05Stu Heinecke:And, and, uh, and here's this one coming. I'm hearing from him. So, um, so I get through a lot because of that. Does that, does that answer the question? Yeah, definitely answer it in a way you'd never expect it, but that's good. I love, I love, I love the story about how you met your wife as well. That's beautiful. Um, when you think about uh sending cartoons and and this content marketing how were you approaching a copy or maybe the ask of the next steps how are you thinking about that well i mean i i often will um send something and then my first question my first follow-up is did you get it just something very simple and my my my um you know my goal again is just i want to start a conversation and so if they got the piece that I sent, they're usually not saying, yeah, I got it.

26:02Stu Heinecke:You know, that's it. It's a dead end. But they're usually saying, yeah, I got it. I showed her. We love it, actually. Oh, great. Well, if I could, I'll tell you why I sent it to you. Or actually, I probably did tell them anyway why I sent it to them. But I think we have an opportunity to collaborate or to work together and I'd love to explore that with you. Could we spend a few moments doing that? And so it's a very easy conversation. But I just generally ask, my first ask is, did you get it? Nice. And then, Stuart, it felt earlier like there was a gripe with LinkedIn copywriting messages. Tell me.

26:45Tell me everything.

26:46Stu Heinecke:The one that you just read a few moments ago, So at least they got your name and, oh, I see your director. They knew a little bit about who you were. So they looked at your profile, at least briefly. A lot of them don't even do that. They will, and I don't know, I think they all copied and pasted the same copy. And it's, hey, I see that we're connected to a lot of the same people. And I'd really love to find out more about what you do. Are you kidding? You don't know what I do. Why are you reaching out? And, you know, it's really easy to know that. If they'd said, on the contrary, if they'd said, hey, Stu, I just bought your book.

27:33Stu Heinecke:Just wanted to say thank you. I'll respond right away because I'm thankful, you know. But if it's just, hey, hey, listen, you know, I know, I see we're connected to a lot of the same people. I don't care. That doesn't say anything. All it says is you're lazy and you didn't do any homework. You just sent this to everyone. So because it's probably not likely that we're connected to the same people. It's just a lie and not a great way to start out a conversation or a relationship. So, Stu, if I say weed growth and I'm thinking in your world, what am I referring to for our listeners? Well, I wrote another book called How to Grow Your Business Like a Weed.