Jeremy Boerger joins Joshua Maddux on this weeks episode of In The Bunker to talk about Gaining The Attention Of Decision Makers. Jeremy talks about how he is working to get the attention of the c-suite and decision makers. He notes that he is still working on overcoming it and how partnering with other service providers has been very helpful.

Our episode highlights:

• Get your product honed in. What’s the problem that you are going to solve, and explain it in 5-10 words or less. C-suite NEVER has time to read anything, because they are putting out fires… How can you solve that pain point and NOT be one?
• Become the thought leader on the topic. (blog, LinkedIn posts, Book, podcast, other)
• 4 most important words in business are “I know a guy/girl”.
• If this does not help you, tell me why so I can make sure that I can help the next person.

Bio: Jeremy Boerger’s work in asset management started way back in 2000 fighting the Y2K bug. At that time, he set out to approach ITAM in a way no one had tried before: Jeremy began combining data theory with automation and self governance while consultants were answering tickets and running inventories when he began​.

The Pragmatic ITAM Method grew out of the success of ​his experiment and today, companies and organizations hire Jeremy to implement better solutions and coach their teams to ensure the positive results are permanent. ​

Jeremy is on the Board of Advisors at Neocor. His previous roles before starting Boerger Consulting include: Manager ll at Mercy Health, Asset Administrator at Atos, Associate, Enterprise SAM: JPMorgan Chase.​

When Jeremy is not traveling or staring at multiple monitors​ you’ll find him hanging out at home in Cincinnati with his wife, kids, and two very large dogs.​

Links:

• Website: https://www.boergerconsulting.com
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremyboerger
• Book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1637420145

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Welcome back today.

We have Jeremy Berger with us on the show.

Jeremy was faced with the challenge of getting the attention of

C-suite execs and decision makers.

There's so much to discuss in this, and I know as a business owner,

myself, this is such a huge challenge.

I'm super excited to jump in and have this discussion with Jeremy today.

Thank you, Joshua.

It's going to be here.

So let's jumping a little bit, get to know you a little,

what is, what is your background?

Who are you?

How'd you get here?

What does that look like?

Give us a little intro.

Yeah.

Spent most, all of my career leading up to starting my own business in it.

In particular little section called Asset management, which helps

organizations be better stewards, cost optimization, really around their

hardware and their software expense and about let's see, it would be in 2017.

I realized that my approach for tackling these problems in

medium and large businesses is unique enough that it should be.

Pranced out to other people and I could reach and help and coach other

folks a whole lot better on my own than just being full-time employee

at some sort of large organization.

It's now 20 22 and we're we're going strong.

I always love, and this is a whole nother topic entirely, but

that transition of I was an employee.

I realized that I had this knowledge that not only my employer needed,

but tons of other companies need.

And just that sort of switch, essentially, that just flipped of there's a whole

market out there that needs this.

Yeah.

I actually, I got really lucky because I had a opportunity to speak at a national.

For asset managers and after giving a presentation, I had the opportunity.

In fact, I mentioned it in my book.

I had the opportunity to sit down afterwards.

We were closing down it's the, it was called EO or no Evo.

And it's the line bar next door to Michael Jordan steakhouse in Chicago.

On the miracle mile.

But the long story short is that there were a couple of other people

that were experts in the industry.

And I looked at them point blank and said, I think I'm really on to something.

And they looked at my notes and they talked to me a little bit more and

they said, yeah, this is something that could really be useful.

And it encouraged me to pursue it.

Two years later from that conversation started writing a book, put my own

shingle out and haven't looked back.

That's awesome.

I always love that transition.

It's just, it's such a cool aspect for business owners to, you realize that

there was a need and you could help them.

And the opportunity was the timing was also right.

My wife was, God bless her is a project manager and a pretty

darn good one on her own right.

And very secure in her job.

And she was like, you know what?

This is a passion, but.

You don't have to pay for college yet.

We don't have to worry about kids.

And we're pretty secure if there's ever a better time to

try to strike out on your own.

Now's the time to do it.

Of course, that the counter argument to that was I'm going to watch it like a Hawk

and make sure that you're staying on task.

God bless those project managers.

That's awesome.

Your office is at home.

Yes it is and which is nice change of pace after commuting

almost one of the full-time positions that I had, I was commuting three

hours by car three times a week.

Wow.

Yeah.

So that really,

that alone will make you want to quit your job.

yeah,

And I know, starting your own business and having a home

office are definitely challenges and they're, on their own.

And the main challenge that we're talking about today actually is getting the

attention of C-suite and sort of those decision makers and how that obviously

for your business, you're going in, you need to talk with, CTOs, CIOs need to talk

with these types of guys who understand.

Hey, if we don't know that we have 200 laptops, one can go missing or,

you're paying for a software and it's 40 bucks a month, but it's $40

a month for a thousand employees.

And you're not realizing that 10% of your workforce got laid off or, five

people quit and you've got licenses that are just running that aren't being used

or even worse.

The the dreaded audit letter shows up.

And you're not exactly sure whether or not.

You've paid for all the software that you've gotten installed in

your environment and with COVID now you can't go physically and

check to see what your employees have installed on their computers.

So yeah there's a lot of challenges.

That's exactly.

Yeah.

The C-suite is really my target audience.

They're the folks that have the most risk.

They've got the most to lose and not just not just monetary either.

There's also reputation.

You do not want to be.

The next colonial pipeline.

Colonial pipeline is a good one.

Because it was a cyber security kit, but the entrance came

on a abandoned VPN account.

And so I was talking with a couple of cybersecurity folks and it's

no, that's not cybersecurity.

That's asset management.

That's something that somebody should have said, Hey, this account hasn't been

long, been hasn't shown any activity in two weeks, three weeks, pick a number.

We need to recover that license.

Turn that off and start asking questions on why is that thing?

but that's the tricky part though, is exactly it.

You've got the C-suite tends to fall into two camps.

One is ignore it.

Don't even mention it.

Don't even talk about it last, the audit happens or the break-in happens

and then, the other camp is we can.

Broadcast that we've got a problem, but we're going to try to fix it on

our own inside hush, so that, big, scary vendors don't find out about

it and then hit us with an audit or hackers hit us with a security breach.

So how do you get these folks that are very reticent to admit they have a

problem to admit they have a problem?

Quite honestly, I'm still working on that answer, but there's a

couple of ways to get around it.

The first piece of advice that I'd have to tell folks that I've learned is that

you are an expert in what you are doing.

You need to find an expert in the stuff that you.

Aren't good at doing, and it's very difficult for solo entrepreneurs and

self-employed and those kinds of folks, to look at the cost of bringing in a

partner or bringing in help or hiring an outside firm and justify that expense.

You, as a business owner have this direct line between I make this money.

This feeds my kids.

If I spend this money, I am not feeding my kids.

And you've got to get out of that.

You it's fear-driven but you can't be an expert in all things.

And for coaches and consultants.

Yeah, that's how we live our lives.

That's how we make our money.

That's our sell.

That's our reason for being is that, Hey, Mr.

C-suite, Mrs.

C-suite.

Your team is having trouble because they don't have my particular skillset.

Bring me in.

Eat your own dog food.

You don't have all the skills, bring other people in it.

I'm sorry.

That was a bit of a rant that you got me charged up there a bit, but

no, that's really good.

It good.

Getting that in.

I would also say in, at the same time, getting good advice, finding your own

coach, finding your own partnership.

Not just for networking to find the next big deal, but people that you admire that

are willing to strike up a friendship and willing to give it to you straight.

There are blind spots.

Again, you're not the expert in everything.

You're going to miss things that.

Other people are going to be able to see and help you compensate for in

fact, maybe we need to make a little plug you and I found each other

through the the alternative board.

And my coach Quinn Wang has been phenomenal in helping me

navigate in particular, this craziness that COVID has done.

I agree with groups, like tab the alternative board,

I've talked about this before and I love tab because it brings together.

Like-minded business owners in the sense of we all want to grow and do

better, but not in the sense of same industry, because if you've got a

dozen people who are all in the same industry for me, I own a digital agency.

I'm in a mastermind with other digital agency owners, but we sit around and talk

about the problems that we're facing.

That only we have dealt with the same thing.

And as soon as I go to my tab group, and I say, man, I've been facing this issue.

Someone goes, oh, why the heck haven't you tried this?

It's okay.

We had a dozen agency owners in a room who all couldn't figure out a solution.

And as soon as you step outside of the realm of expertise, really,

and you get into someone else who just asks a question, you know,

and I think it's amazing in our tab group specifically to watch.

The format and tab is someone brings a problem to the table and people

are allowed to ask questions are not allowed to provide answers,

solutions, suggestions, anything for the first like 10 minutes or

so they have to ask questions.

And so oftentimes the business owner actually gets to a solution

by other people asking questions before any sort of solution aspect

is even come to the business owners already self solved by people, asking

them to further explain a problem.

And there's actually in the development space like developers,

software developers do this a lot.

It's called rubber ducky, debug, and you basically have an inanimate object

that's on your desk, a dock or whatever.

And you explain the problem to that inanimate.

Out loud and because your brain is stopping and process stopping,

trying to solve the problem.

And it's now thinking of how to explain the problem.

It's a whole different thought process.

And when you do that half the time, you figure out your own solution.

That's very similar to the Socratic method.

That's still leveraged in medical and legal circles.

Six Sigma, eh on the engineering side is very much Socratic method.

Bang on questions in that mean questions, but questions about what's going on.

And one of those questions is going to kick off a thread that can completely

come around to the to the solution that you're seeking or identify a

problem that you didn't realize.

What I know for me, there's been some of them that are, Hey,

this is the problem I'm dealing with.

People are like the last three or four questions.

That's cool.

That's not the problem I'm dealing with.

That's the outcome.

That's shown its head because of this underlying issue.

And sometimes there's people in the group who, help walk through that or help talk

through it, or, I was Having an element of well, should I hire this person?

Or should I, maybe, do some of those tasks internally and then outsource

like accounting or something else.

And Hey, three or four people brought together, Hey, these are who we like,

people who we work with and instantly the process of, now it's, I need to

send two emails and the problem solved.

I can't stress enough on how important it is to have the the

breadth and the uniqueness of the of the different people that are involved.

One of the best pieces of advice that I got actually came from a local.

He started his own brewery rather successful.

It's over here in Cincinnati, Ohio called brink brewing.

If you haven't heard of it, try the musi.

And but I was talking with him because we both participate on

the neighborhood redevelopment committee and that was helping him.

Build out his a microbrewery and get on its feet.

And he said, one of the best pieces of advice that he had been given

that he then passed on to me is even though microbreweries now are like

on, it feels like they're in every neighborhood on every street corner,

there is always room for good product.

And the question is, what's your product?

And is it good?

And it's like,

you know what that translates to what I do quite well.

And what is my product?

what am I offering?

and is it really a good value?

Is it does it taste good?

Does it scratch the itch that you need?

And I've taken that advice and run with it and have really appreciated it.

So you just never know where the next good idea is going to come from.

Which is why you want to listen to podcasts like this and talk to different

coaches in and try to gather that wealth of knowledge and that all stems

from that idea that you are not the expert in all things, stick to what

you know, and ask for help and advice where, you need it where, your lacking.

I will say the one thing that I know with tab

personally, that's been awesome as well is the aspect of, I've got a

team, I've got, handful of employees.

And if I go to my team and I say, Hey guys this is what we want to do.

There'll be like, okay, that's what we're doing.

And it's no.

What what are your thoughts on it?

Yeah.

And my team is pretty open in the sense of, they'll be like,

yeah, that's a terrible idea.

But for some companies, as the boss, you may not have that

relationship with your employees.

It may very much be a, the boss said we're doing it so I don't care we're doing it.

And so there are ideas that I'll bring to my tab group that they'll

be like, that is a horrible idea.

How is that in line with your mission, vision values?

How has that in line with, Your goals for this quarter or this year, like

that is totally counterproductive.

If that's really what you want to do, that's great.

But you got to check your goals because that is not in line with any of them.

Oh, yeah, no, I've I can, I could tell you of two instances where

my tab board is blocked me off the edge because I thought, this is direction

it's going where I need to, better to be on the forefront than the back end.

And they were like whoa, whoa, whoa,

whoa.

Well, There's a opportunity cost here that you need to be really careful about.

That might be a story for another time, but they were right.

And I was glad that I didn't pursue that otherwise.

I could be, what I am doing would have been fundamentally different

and not necessarily what I enjoy.

That's big.

Yeah.

It's been, awesome digesting this and as we're, getting towards

the end and wrapping up, but.

Those decision makers and those people that you're reaching out to, really the

biggest aspect is, having people around you having that type of stuff, what

are some advice for people facing that same challenge of attempting to contact

C-suite or decision-maker type people.

Well, let's take it back to the idea of good product.

The first thing is to get that product honed in.

What is the exact problem that you can solve and explain it in

five, maybe 10 words or less that's because the C suite group that you

are talking to has a time problem.

Almost always.

They are way too busy.

Putting out fires, dealing with the crisis the tyranny of the immediate, when their

real function is supposed to be that long-term vision movement to one year five

year, 10 year plans for the organization.

You can't be that person that's bringing up the next issue.

You've gotta be the person that is solving that pain point.

The way that I am trying to solve this, and by all means, I don't want

to say that I have crack this night.

Is to establish myself as a thought leader.

I, very honestly talk to C-suite folks when I make my introduction

and tell them what I do.

And it's yeah.

And I wrote the book on this subject and that gives folks,

a chance to pivot either.

They're very interested because they're a reader and they want to know

more or they can beeline to the bar.

But to have a book, to have a website or a blog or even the posts on LinkedIn

that can provide some sort of help for that crisis to help not just the

C-suite to Find more information about the crisis, your, or to give them a

better idea of how they're going to get their arms wrapped around whatever

problem that they're trying to solve.

That really helps.

So really the credibility piece.

The second piece is the five most important words in business

right now is I know a gal.

Or I know a guy it's all about the personal connections.

I tell you one of my big regrets is spending a whole bunch of money

to talk to a person that taught me how to spam LinkedIn connections.

And no that's just not going to do it.

It's all about personal connections and finding the opportunity to make

that that emotional connection.

These folks are lonely.

I have found on the C-suite, they don't have a lot of people that they

can talk to about their problems.

They've got golf buddies, they've got volleyball groups or whatever

other places they can go to.

Be with their peers and talk, but very rarely are they ever able to sit

down and have a conversation about a business problem that somebody

isn't trying to sell them something.

And the nice thing about having that sort of credibility is you

can start from the very get-go.

I'm happy to tell you what I know and if it helps you great.

And if it doesn't help you then.

Tell me why it doesn't help.

So it helps me know what I can do for the next person that does that does seem like,

but after you have those conversations, They talk, the C-suite starts to talk

to their peers and their friends.

And I can tell you if two two people that I have been in contact with because

they referred and for, I wasn't able to help them in their particular business,

but they learned enough about me and what I do that they referred me to

a couple of friends and colleagues.

Who were suffering from the exact same problem that I'm able to solve.

And we've had some pretty good we've been able to have some pretty good success.

That's awesome.

There's a ton to unpack there.

I think like one of the elements that you just mentioned right towards the end was

if this doesn't help you tell me why, so I can make sure I can help the next guy.

And I think that element.

with going back to the very beginning of what you start wrapping up with, which

is really getting your product honed in.

if you're doing a product pitch, if you're doing a proposal pitch and someone says

this doesn't resonate with me because X and you're doing 2, 3, 4 proposals, and

you get the same response multiple times.

There's an underlying foundational issue, either a you're pitching

to the wrong people or B you're pitching the wrong thing.

And those are the aspects.

I think it's that sort of repetition of learn something, make it better,

learn something, make it better.

When we build a website, our last call, as we're launching the site with the

client is What about this project.

Did you like, and what did you not like?

Like where did we mess up?

And those are elements that we've had clients go, Hey, I've really,

didn't like that you did this.

I felt like that just wasted a bunch of time or that did this.

And sometimes maybe it's we explain the process a little bit and

they're like, oh, that makes sense.

That's why you did it.

Okay, cool.

We need to explain better why we do X or Y or Z, With one client,

they were like, man, this one form that I filled out was just so long.

Cool.

How can we shorten that up?

How can we make that easier, make that more of a casual conversation

and just really make it a better experience overall, whether it's

a buying cycle sales cycle, and just moving into being a customer.

Well, there's the evil twin of the imposter syndrome that

a lot of people like to talk about.

It is the innovator's dilemma, you know, your product so well, you know, your

space so well, you assume everybody else has the same amount of knowledge as you.

And so you come at your potential clients, you come at your target audience and say,

Hey, all of this stuff, isn't it great.

Here's all these acronyms, here's all this stuff that we can do.

And everybody just looks at you.

And it's we don't want to admit that we don't know.

What we're talking about, but obviously we're not smart

enough to be able to keep up.

And we're just going to politely nod our heads and say, thank you very much, but

no, in that's something that, really the really smart people, the entrepreneur

mindset can get so trapped and knowing their stuff so well, they forget that.

Sometimes you got to dumb it down.

Sometimes you got to slow it down and just talk about the stages.

What stage are you in?

And we're still poking at this.

That's great.

Poke away.

Let me know something bites you.

And then we can talk some more and slow things down.

We are.

So sometimes we get so focused on the next sale, the next

opportunity, the next wiz-bang thing.

We forget that there's a whole journey that has got to happen.

And these people have got to come along to it.

We can't, we know the ending, we've seen it before, but we can't spoil it for them.

That's really good.

There's four stages of the sales cycle.

The sale is physically stage number three.

And so many times business owners try to influence that stage rather

than any of the other three stages.

Most businesses spend so much time trying to influence that one stage.

And the sad part is the more you influence that single stage is the

more you influence buyer's remorse.

It's just, it's so crazy.

And it drives me nuts.

How easy is it to fall in that trap?

When you see the direct connection between the sale and feeding your kids?

Yep.

Very true.

I think we, as business owners as entrepreneurs have all sort of fallen

into that trap and all had that aspect at one time or another, you know, we've all

sort of you know, gotten trapped in that.

Well, It's been super good chatting.

I know we'll have links to your LinkedIn and your website and

all that in the show notes below.

But where is that number one spot for people to reach out and connect with you?

Is that your website, LinkedIn?

What's the best one.

My website, www.burgerconsulting.com.

Crazy German spelling.

That's B O E R G E R.

consulting.com.

It's been super good having you on the show today.

Appreciate the time, appreciate the knowledge.

And just chatting through this with us.

Oh, my pleasure, Joshua.

Thank you for bringing me on and good luck with you and my best to you and yours.

Awesome.

Appreciate it.

Thanks.

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