Shownotes
Episode 160 Frederick Dudek (Freddy D)
B2B marketing with Richard Levy centers on aligning sales and marketing to win today’s 5% in-market buyers while educating the 95% who aren’t ready yet. In this episode, Richard shares 25 years of lessons—from Santander’s graduate scheme to leading Sophera Marketing—on building demand without racing to discounts.
You’ll hear why thought-leadership newsletters outperform hard sells, how to use global cultural nuance in messaging, and why AI is a true business revolution to embrace—not fear. He explains “market in the gap” thinking, anti-discounting discipline, and the power of warm introductions to create lifelong superfans and compounding referrals.
If you want practical B2B marketing that compounds trust, this conversation gives you the frameworks and field examples to get started now.
Discover more with our detailed show notes and exclusive content by visiting: https://linkly.link/2HjPO
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Key Takeaways
- Sales–marketing alignment: Use field feedback to shape messaging and offers so both teams pursue the same ICP.
- Win the 95%: Create consistent, helpful content for out-of-market buyers; save hard sells for in-market moments.
- “Market in the gap”: Validate demand before building; a gap may exist simply because nobody wants it.
- Thought-leadership newsletter: One BIG monthly question, zero pitching, long-term trust > short-term clicks.
- Anti-discounting stance: Discounts pull demand forward, crush margins, and train buyers to wait. Hold the line.
- Global marketing nuance: Adapt tone to culture (e.g., UK indirect vs. Dutch direct) while keeping fundamentals constant.
- Embrace AI: Treat it like the internet shift—learn it, pilot it, and lead the pivot.
- Introductions > referrals: Warm intros collapse sales cycles and transfer trust instantly.
Guest Bio
Richard Levy is a marketing consultant and mentor at Sophera Marketing with 25+ years in B2C and B2B. He began on Santander’s UK marketing graduate scheme and now guides SMEs globally on strategy, measurement, and executive mentorship. Richard is known for his “95% out-of-market” approach, anti-discounting discipline, and a no-pitch monthly newsletter that compounds trust.
Freddy D’s Take
Richard’s operating system is pragmatic: align sales and marketing, respect buying timing, and earn future demand with useful ideas. His “95% not in market” lens reframes content from lead-grabs to trust-building—exactly what turns ecosystems into business superfans who advocate long after the campaign ends. Global examples reinforce that fundamentals travel, but tone must flex by culture. His stance against discounting protects perceived value and lifetime margin, while warm introductions convert because trust transfers.
This is the kind of strategy I help clients implement through my SUPERFANS Framework™ in Prosperity Pathway™ coaching within the Superfans Growth Hub.
This podcast is hosted by Captivate, try it yourself for free.
One Action
The Action: Launch a monthly, no-pitch thought-leadership newsletter.
Who: Marketing lead + founder.
Why: Nurtures the 95% not buying now; compounds brand trust and future pipeline.
How:
- Pick one pressing audience question each month.
- Publish a 600–900 word answer; no CTAs besides subtle brand line.
- Send to customers, partners, prospects; post on LinkedIn.
- Track opens, replies, and future inbound mentions of the article.
Links referenced in this episode:
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Transcripts
And in B2B, a big believer in the theory that often 95% of your target market are not in the market at this moment.
Intro:But I am the world's biggest superfan. You're like a super fan. Welcome to the Business Superfans podcast.
We will discuss how establishing business superfans from customers, employees and business partners can elevate your success exponentially. Learn why these advocates are a key factor to achieving excellence in the world of commerc.
This is the Business Super Fans Podcast with your host, Freddy D. Freddy, Freddy.
Freddy D:Hey, super fans.
Freddy D:Superstar Freddy D here. Welcome to episode 160 of Business Superfans.
Freddy D:The Service Providers Edge podcast.
Freddy D:In this episode we're joined by Richard.
Freddy D:Levy, an MBA qualified marketing leader who's.
Freddy D:Helped global brands and growth focused companies alike turn underperforming campaigns into powerful engines of profitability. Richard tackles the challenge every service based business faces. How to connect brand and performance marketing.
So your message not only resonates but converts.
Drawing on experience, leading teams across UK, EMEA and North America with brands like GE, Santander and MoneyGram, he's mastered a balance between strategic vision and agile execution.
If you ever struggle to make your marketing deliver measurable results, Richard's insights show you exactly how to align creative and commercial impact. Welcome to the Business Superfans Podcast show. Richard, great conversation that we had before we started recording. You're from London.
I'm from originally France, so we're neighbors and now I'm across the pond. So welcome to the show.
Richard Levy:Thanks very much Freddie. It's lovely to be here. Thank you for the invite.
Freddy D:Let's pivot back a little bit. And how did you get started into the whole marketing aspect of things?
Richard Levy:A little bit more by luck than judgment to be honest.
I left university many years ago and in the UK there's what we call milk round where when you leave you apply to join as many companies as you wish to which are accurate schemes. And it's a bit of you have thousands of applicants for each role as you can imagine.
And I was fortunate enough that Santander, which is a big Spanish bank but has UK presence, took me on their marketing graduate scheme. So that's how it began.
And then some 25 years later, I'm still here learning about how marketing's work has changed a lot in those 25 years, as you can imagine. But that's how I got into it. It wasn't pre planned.
Freddy D:Yeah, you mentioned it. It's changed. Yeah. I remember back in when I started doing sales in the mid-80s and running regions.
I had to learn marketing myself because I was here's a territory, you've got these particular states, nobody knows about us, here's a brochure and go to work. And I had to find prospects and everything else, so I had to learn it. So I got kicked into the deep end of the swimming pool to learn it.
So you came up in a similar way, but you had someone pull you up in a sense.
Richard Levy:Yeah. Marketing and sales, I think they should have a close relationship. Certainly a B2B, maybe a little more than B2C.
So when it's business to business, the sales team and the marketing team really need to be aligned on who are the kind of customers we're going after, what's our main messaging, et cetera. So that's pretty key. We said that the sales guys are in the field, they're hearing what customers really want, the feedback, et cetera.
And it's really important they feed that back into the marketing team as well. So that should be quite a prosperous relationship when it's working well.
Freddy D:Oh, absolutely. You hitting the point right on the money.
Because really it's the left hand needs to know what the right hand's doing and the right hand needs to know what the left hand's doing.
Because if it's not in sync and the marketing department says this is what we're going to do, the message and you need to go sell it and it doesn't resonate with the audience, aka whatever industry you're marketing and whether it's B2B or B2C, you're going no place fast.
Richard Levy:100% agree with you. And I think we've all been in business is where businesses tend to get bigger, to be more internal looking than external looking.
And that's a challenge because then they produce products that we think, hey, this is what the market wants without really testing that in the market and seeing if that's what the market wants.
And the best people to answer that should either be the marketing team who really should be that customer advocate in the boardroom, or the sales team, as you say, Freddie, are on the front line and hearing the truth. And the truth sometimes can be difficult to take.
But it does need both the marketing and the sales team to really be very customer orientated and bring that back into the business.
Freddy D:Sure.
Because I remember when I was in the industry there was times where they were developing features and functionality that really was like, okay, you're creating this because why did you get any feedback from the user base that this is something that they Want? No, we think this is pretty cool. It's going to be this, do this really cool stuff. Yeah, that's not going to work.
Richard Levy:Totally agree with you.
And you can either have the exceptions to the rules like Apple who go out and before the customer knows they want something, they give it to them, but they are the exception and we can't really use that as a benchmark because they're literally a company in a million. The majority of us mere mortals have to either go to customers beforehand and say, would this be of interest to you?
Now you've got to bear in mind the customers often don't know.
There's that famous Henry Ford quote about if it asked a customer or they wanted, they would say a horse that went faster because they can't imagine in those days a car. So you just gotta be careful. The customers don't often always know.
But then you can make things and then test on customers as you go along and say, is this the kind of thing that we would use? So there's different ways of doing it, but whatever way you cut it, the customer demand has to be there.
The other way of phrasing it is there may be a gap in the market, but is there a market in the gap? So there may be a gap because there's no demand. And if there's no demand you can make the best whatever you want.
But if people don't want it, it's going to be a short lived experience. Yep.
Freddy D:And there's many companies that unfortunately get caught down there. They think they got a great widget and a thingamajig and all their friends like it.
And maybe one or two businesses wanted it because it was specific for them, but for the vast market it goes no place. You're absolutely right.
Richard Levy:Great. And friends can also tell us what we want to hear. Where the end customer tends to be a bit more brutal with the truth.
So you've got to have the nerves to really go out to the market and ask them.
Freddy D:Yep.
So let's talk a little bit about some of the things that you guys offer and how do you guys work with the companies and what type of companies you work with?
Richard Levy:Yeah, I tend to work with small to medium sized businesses who really are looking for marketing guidance or mentorship. But my business is split into three actually. There's the teaching side which probably isn't quite so relevant for this.
But then the other core two aspects of it is the marketing consultancy which is the majority and that's with sort of small to medium sized businesses and that could be globally, that can be a business in Arizona as much as it might be a business in London, because the marketing principles remain consistent. And then I do also marketing mentorship, which is really aimed at CMOs who just need someone to bounce ideas off.
Because I think what happens is a lot of people get promoted and promoted because they're really good at their job. Then you get to the C suite and it's an entirely different job and you're just expected to know.
And so having an outside voice or someone who can coach and mentor, who's been there, seen it, done, it can be really helpful.
And on the consultancy side, it can range between starting from scratch on the marketing side to a marketing department that's up and running but maybe not producing the results or looking at it from a more structured point of view or sometimes Freddie people come to me with a specific issue and the two common issues I'm facing at the moment are how do I know as a business owner I'm actually getting return on my investment? That's always the question of how do we prove that?
And then the second bit is how and when will AI disrupt or change for the better or worse my business? So they're the two common questions that I seem to be getting at this moment in time.
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Freddy D:I always say that there's three kinds of people and from the business perspective, there's a those that make things happen, B those that watch things happen, and C, those that wonder what the blank happened.
Richard Levy:I agree with you.
And it would be those in the first category, those who make things happen who will always win out, especially when you have a revolution and I don't use that word lightly with AI of what's coming down the track. So what's already here, but also what the future will look like. My advice to anybody would be to embrace that, learn about it and be able to pivot.
Yeah, absolutely. Because burying your head in the sand and pretending it's not happening.
If we go look, both you and I experienced enough to remember when there was a pre Internet era and the Internet was coming. And you had some people that said this is what will transform the business world or the world we live in generally.
And you had others saying that because they don't change is uncomfortable. The winners there were the people who embraced it. And I think it's going to be exactly the same with AI. I think that much of a change is coming.
But embrace it, learn about it and see how it can improve your business.
Freddy D:Yeah, Be in front of the curve.
Richard Levy:100.
Freddy D:Because, Richard, is a fact that when I was in the Software in the 80s, we put out one release a year. That was where it started. It was a big release and it had big QA and everything else. Then it was a big thing. Wow.
We're going up to two releases a year. Then it became four releases a year.
Now days with the Internet and everything else wait five minutes and they push out an update because of the fact that something got messed up. So it's a completely different game. And I know so many companies that were very successful companies are gone today because they didn't pivot 100%.
Richard Levy:There's the famous example we always use in the UK, Coda. I don't know if it's a sort of general example that's used around the world. Kodak in the UK used to do those little cameras you get.
Sometimes you still get the retro ones at weddings and then you take in and you get your film developed and then people say they didn't really adapt. However, I think it's a bit harsh from Kodak because it wasn't the digital camera that took over, it was the phone. It was.
Suddenly everybody had a phone in their hand. And the core competency of Kodak wasn't phones. The other example people give is Blockbuster.
The back in the day in the uk, certainly we used to go on a Saturday night to a store, pick a rental Movie.
Freddy D:Yeah, you remember, did the same thing.
Richard Levy:Hope that it was in. Now you have any movie you want to watch on a streaming.
And interesting when you talk about pivoting, because one of the best companies who did pivot, who don't always get the credit, but with Netflix, Netflix started off with a postal DVD service where you'd watch it, post it back, get another one, post it back. And then I think they were ahead of the curve when they saw streaming was going to come in. So look how these companies pivot.
And we talked about Apple before Apple started off as a computer company. Now look where they are. People have to pivot fairly constantly to stay ahead of the curve, because that curve doesn't wait for anybody.
Freddy D:And that's where marketing really comes into play. Because you've got to educate the audience on how things are changing, in a sense. And yes, you got to solve a problem.
But at the same time, as we talk, using Apple, for example, people, they come out there and they come up with a whole new capability. Steve Job basically changed the whole world when he came out and says, a thousand songs in your pocket.
Richard Levy:Yeah.
Freddy D:And that was the marketing of it. And it wasn't really talking about how cool the widget was. It created an emotion. You get a thousand songs in your pocket, in the ipod.
Richard Levy:Fantastic. And if you look at how songs or the music industry has changed, when I was growing up, it used to be a cassette.
And then I would record a program in the UK called Top of the Pops, which was every Sunday night that the charts would be played and you would record it onto a cassette and listen to it. But of course you'd have to fast forward it and rewind it and stop it and change the other side of the cassette over. So it's quite a hassle.
And now you look at where we are today and you have unlimited songs in reality, on your phone, it Even 20 years ago, you'd have to go and buy an album. If you remember, at stores like HMV in the uk, you go and buy an album.
Now you can just sell actually only like song number seven, that's the one I'm gonna buy. And you don't even buy it in reality, because if you're using something like Apple Music or Spotify, you're renting it.
You don't actually technically own it. If you close your account, don't have it anymore.
made since let's say the year: years, you look ahead to: Freddy D:Yeah, let's talk a little bit. You mentioned that you've done some stuff global. What have you found when you're working with different markets?
The fundamentals are probably the fundamentals, but there are some uniquenesses that need to come into play. What are those?
Because for our listeners that are marketing in beyond the United States, or they could be in Germany, they could be in Australia, the uk. How do you market your stuff globally?
Richard Levy:Really interesting, isn't it? Because the first thing to say is you're absolutely right.
If you look at those two countries, the country you're in now and the country I'm in, I'm living in a country of about 65 million people.
And you're living in a country sort of six times that size, where, as I'm reminded by my friends in Texas, very often the state of Texas is bigger than the United Kingdom.
From a sort of land mass point of view, you're talking about two very different cultures joined by a common language, but different in many other ways. And then you've got Australia, which is a sort of culture of its own as well.
So one of the things, you're obviously in the uk, you can reach far more percentage of the population relatively economically than you can in the US because it's just a totally different scale and you have your states. The principles remain the same. The principles of who am I targeting? Is that segment profitable? Am I charging the right amount?
How do I distribute this? Do I go direct? Do I go via a third party? How do I promote it? As in what channel do I use? Will remain consistent. But you've also got.
And you were saying before at the beginning, you're from France originally. If you compare the culture in the UK and the culture in France, it's two very different cultures in the way people live.
Freddy D:Talk differently to the audience.
Richard Levy:You're talk totally differently. Let me give a silly example.
But in the uk we tend to be quite polite and we go around the issue and we don't ever quite get there and we put a bit of nuance and we hope the person gets it at the other end. Well, there's some countries in Europe, Germany, for example, the Netherlands probably actually would be a better example.
They're very direct, they say as it is. And if you're marketing in the Netherlands.
Freddy D:Yes, boom, straight line, no detour in your face.
Richard Levy:And you have to accept that. So as a marketeer, what I found working across was anything outside the UK would have a different culture and a different view.
And you have to be humble and you have to have the humility to go into a market like France, Germany, Austria, the us, wherever you mention and understand that the culture that you think is the norm is not the norm. And how do you learn the best you can about what the culture norms are in that place?
And the easiest way to do is to have friends or colleagues or someone who is French. If we use Branch as the example, who can educate you, but you need to be educated.
The biggest mistake we can make this from a marketing sense, from a sales sense, from a political sense, is believing that everybody is like us and everyone wants to be like us because one, it's just not true and secondly, that kind of arrogance can breed disaster. So know the cultures you're working with and they're all different. The American culture's very different from the British culture.
And when I was in Australia, that's a very different culture from both the American and the British.
Freddy D:Yeah, I remember. You bring me back, remember. And I've shared the story in the past.
I was trying to get a distributor into Japan, was a master distributor for the Japanese market in the manufacturing space. And their whole culture is very different as well, hugely different. And they loved the technology, but I was making no traction.
We talked about the thing, I talked about the business, the opportunity, the software and the margins and the contract going no place. I'm in Australia with my distributor there. We go out to dinner. And his first name was Paul. I go, paul, what am I doing?
You've worked with the Japanese. He goes, what are you talking about? He says, I'm talking about the business, the opportunity.
He goes, shut up about that stuff and start talking and asking them about their culture and things like that. And I flipped the script and they told me they took me out to places because I wanted to see some things. They recommended some places to go visit.
And when they came to the United States to visit our office and make sure all was good, I spent two hour meeting and then I spent about four hours driving around the whole Phoenix Valley. So the experience stuff. And then a couple months later, I got the order, they signed the agreement and they became a master distributor.
But I had to pivot my whole approach.
Richard Levy:I Couldn't agree any more, Freddie. 100.
When I used to go and visit international markets, if we had a meeting on the Wednesday, I used to try and arrive on the Monday and just spend that Tuesday, that day in between, wandering around the market. If we were in retail, looking at the retail shops, just seeing how people behave because you get a feel of it.
And I used to say that one day in the market is worth more than 30 days sitting in an office because you live it, you breathe it, you smell it, you taste it, you understand it, you talk to people and you're still going to be a long way from being a local.
But it just shows an ability to say, I don't know this and I think it's a mistake a lot of businesses make when they're headquartered somewhere to assume the rest of the world thinks like they do and they don't. And even the laws are very different. The employment laws in the US are very different from the employment laws in France, for example.
You couldn't be more opposite.
So when you work with companies, as I did, like GE, when GE was like the place to work 20 odd years ago, a lot of it was about educating our US colleagues as the nuances and the differences in the markets because it was such a ge, such a US centric business, that it's down to us in the markets to say, actually we might talk with one voice, but maybe we have different accents.
Freddy D:Right, so let's go into a story of a customer that you worked with and you really transformed their marketing approach and they became one of your biggest super fans and promoted you to a lot of the people that they know a lot of.
Richard Levy:What I do, Freddie, because I run my own business, is word of mouth. I don't have the sort of super budget of the big companies. So you're really relying on the quality of the work you do.
And in B2B, a big believer in the theory that often 95% of your target market are not in the market at this moment. And to prove a point, I'm going to flip to B2C and then I'll go back to my B2B example.
But in B2C, for example, when you see an advert for a car, it's very unlikely, 95% of the time, Freddie, that you're looking for a car at that moment in time.
But the idea of the advert and the understanding is there's you look at various companies and then when it comes to buying the car, they're the ones that come into your mind. Because you've seen during the time you were out of the market, they've bothered to talk to you. So now flip it back to B2C.
And exactly the same kind of principle. If you're selling software, if I'm selling marketing services to companies, they're probably not sitting there tonight ready and going.
If only Richard was in. My life would be so much easier. But marketing probably 95% of the time is fine. For them it's that 5%.
So what I try to say to companies, and this is the one bit of sort of very simple, but just because it's simple doesn't mean it's easy.
But it's that sort of transformative view, is you're talking to people who are in the market now, so you need your short term wins because quite honestly, we have bills to pay, we have staff to pay, we have factories to load up, whatever it may be. So you need to get the 5% motor in, but you also need to get the 95% who aren't in the market understanding who you are and why you exist.
And any kind of hard sell to them just doesn't work because they're not in the market today. It's an irrelevancy.
I always say to people there is something you can do that's different to what I see 99% of companies doing and that's to produce great thought leadership content that is genuinely helpful and that's not trying to sell anything. Businesses find that difficult. They say, can I just put a bit of a sales message at the end? And they're going to, no, you can't.
Because what you're trying to do is just give your brand positive mind space in that customer so that when they're ready to buy, they said, I've read five or six articles by Richard on marketing. He really seems to know what he's talking about. He's got the experience. Now I want to go talk to him.
So what I do, for example, is I do a monthly newsletter and anyone can subscribe, just email me and I'll add you to the list. And I talk about the one big marketing issue that someone has come to that month.
So last month it was about pricing, this month it's about how AI will impact search engine optimization and how do we manage that. And honestly, Freddie, in this newsletter I tell people who I am and then I just get on with the question. There's no selling, it's nothing.
And the amount of business eventually I get from that newsletter is that in a year's time when you come to me, Freddie, and say, hey, Richard, I have a marketing issue. It's because you've read my work and you think this guy knows what he's talking about.
And that's the advice I've given to business who have transformed, is you have to think long term as well as short term. And a lot of businesses, it's very short term thinking. I'll give you another example. I work with a retailer who loved discounting.
I'm very not a fan of discounting at all. It just doesn't do it for me. And they say every time I discount, demand goes up.
You say, yeah, but what happens in the two months when you go back to your normal price, demand goes down. So what you've done is you've brought that demand forward at a cheaper price.
Your sales figures might look good for that month, but what about the month after that and the month after that when everyone who would have bought in that time has now come forward and you've just killed your profit margin. And so it's just trying to make people think a little bit more holistically than just what's on the plate today.
Freddy D:Yeah.
Because what you're bringing up is an important aspect because you can create a quick discount and get a quick turnaround of purchases, but really in the long run, you've actually hurt yourself because people are going to say, okay, you know what, we're going to wait for the next sale. And so everybody sits on their hands because they know, okay, he's going to go for 90 days or six months and then he's going to put out another sale.
We'll wait to buy it then, 100%.
Richard Levy:And it also damages the product because it makes the product appear that it could be cheap. Therefore, if you're selling your consultancy services and you say, hey, I'll tell you what, I'll do that one for a hundred bucks.
I'm just making up numbers. What that tells me is you don't really value your consulting services that much, but Your valuation is 100 bucks.
Now, if you now sell it and you say, no, it's a thousand bucks a day and I can't reduce that.
Well, that does, is subconsciously sends me a message that says, this guy has a lot of faith in what he's doing, he's holding the line and therefore he must be good. So you can actually look, you can't go ridiculous, Right.
If you said, I want 50,000 a day for my consulting service, sadly no one's going to pay it but as long as it's within the spectrum of realism, reasonable. Yeah. It tells me something about you. It says, this guy must be good.
Whereas sometimes things can be when they're so cheap, you just think it's not very good. Or when someone's just ready to discount the minute a challenge comes, you think you don't value your service very much.
So I know that they've hit more difficult days, but Tesla used to be a really great example of this. He never discounted, you want a Tesla, you paid the price the Tesla was worth.
And in a way that makes you think, I must be getting a lot of bang for my bulk. I don't really want to get into the whole Tesla Elon Musk world, because that's different in principle. I like the fact of. Hold the line.
Freddy D:I'm going to go back to something you brought up and that was that most of your business has been word of mouth. And so really you've created super fans out of those people.
Because otherwise, what I look at as a super fan for definition is someone that's going to be telling everybody that they know about your business and the services that you provide. Whether it's services or product or whatever, that's what a super fan does.
It's like a sports team where sports team's winning, they're behind them, the sports team's not doing so well, they still stick with them because you create a super fan, they hang on for life. And so you've mentioned that. So what was some of the things that you did that really made those individuals want to become superfans and promote you?
Richard Levy:I think there's two things, Freddie. I think one is when you're on the outside like I am, because I'm obviously a sultan.
The only person whose interest I have at heart is the business I'm working for. And it can actually be much easier to give that message, good, bad or indifferent, when you're on the outside than when you're on the inside.
Because when you're on the inside, you can be concerned with how am I going to be perceived? And career risk. And I don't want to pin negative. When you're on the outside, you don't have any of those concerns. Right?
You're just there to tell the truth.
So I try and be very honest with my clients and sometimes I go in and they're spending money and the first thing I say is, could you just stop spending any money? Just stop. We're going to need three months here just to work this out and Then we can go back to it.
And I think people appreciate that because most people will go in and say, hey, let's do this campaign and let's do that campaign. I'm very much saying, let's start. The second thing is as a consultant is you need to prove value every day.
And if you want to use your sports analogy, you're only as good as your last game. It's a quote we use here quite a lot. And for me, I'm only as good as my last day. If people remember me fondly on that day, that's good.
If they don't, I have a problem. So I have to prove myself every single day.
And the third thing I try and do also is that I might agree to work for five days, but the reality is I'm going to be working for seven or eight, but I'm only ever going to charge you for five. So it's about going over and above and saying I'm here to win this business, as in I want this business to win. What do I do that makes sure it wins?
I think the final thing is you have to then be honest.
What happens with me in a consulting career, I've noticed is that I could be in a business between three and 24 months, depending on what the need is. But there comes a time where there's a natural ending. You've come in, you've set up a marketing department, it's working well.
We're getting a great return on our spend. Everyone knows what we're doing, our tech stack is good, they don't need me anymore.
And I think one of the things people respect is when I come to them and say, guys, why don't you get a full time person based in the office? Half the price that you're paying me, I'll do a great handover, I'll even recruit that person for you, and then I'll be on my way.
And I'll always be here if you need to bounce ideas off or you need to call. But fundamentally my time is dumb.
And when you do that, and again you put the business interests up center of what you're doing, I think people respect that enormously. So I always say I try and make myself redundant in the end. As in I'm not needed. We're there, we're doing what we need to do.
Freddy D:And what you do is you also, you're bringing credibility to yourself because okay, you did the job, it's working and now you're onto the next one, but you're still available for them. Because those relationships, you need to really keep those relationships alive because that becomes your sales team.
That's your super fan that you've transformed that business and you don't want to cut that off. I've worked with some customers.
I had a digital marketing company for a little while and then I still have a couple a handful of customers been working with for 10 years.
Richard Levy:Yeah.
Freddy D:And they just little tweaks here or there and we've been together for 10.
Richard Levy:Years and that's a tribute to you and to them and the relationship that you build.
And one of the things I always say to people, if I could give one piece of advice to any consultant out there in whatever field, it's when the end comes, do it properly. Leave. Right. Thank them. Genuinely thank them. Stay in touch.
A couple of months after you've left, I was trying to drop a note and say, how are things going? If you need anything, let's just jump on a call and I'll chat you through my thinking of it with no motive. But I want to get paid for that.
But I want to keep that relationship going so that in two years time either they recommend me to someone else and become a super fan like you've been saying, or they need me again. They are my sales team and therefore I need to keep them wanting to sell me.
Freddy D:Yeah, because you've got that time invested. They've gotten success from working with you. So they want to help you.
Because one of the things that people forget to realize is that your customers want you to be successful as well. It's not a one way street where it's all about them and they want the success. They're happy. I tell people, you need to be able to share that.
Hey, because of you, our customers, we've grown by 15% this year. They're happy to know that because then they know that they're working with a company that's going someplace 100%.
Richard Levy:I couldn't agree with you more, Freddie. And that genuine recommendation.
You may be working with a small company today, but if they're a super fan of yours, to use again your quote, you don't know who they're talking to tomorrow. You don't know who they know in other businesses. You don't know anything.
So if you think of them as your fans and your advocates, you're in a good place. And I must prefer I distinguish between advocates and ambassadors. Ambassadors for me give people paid to promote a company. I don't do that.
I haven't got the money to get Anyone to pay to promote me. So therefore, I'm relying on advocates.
And advocates is much more genuine because people genuinely advocating for you, genuinely promoting your business because they believe in what you're doing and the impact you've had on their company.
Freddy D:Yeah, that's who I call superfans. I just coined the phrase business superfans because I think it's cooler than advocates. And I was lucky I trademarked it. So I'm good.
Richard Levy:No, absolutely.
Freddy D:But, yeah, you're absolutely right.
Because the other thing that people all forget is that person, they may be the business owner today, they may sell the business, they may go someplace else, or they may not be the owner of the business, but they be the director of marketing, director of sales, director of operations, whatever it is, they all know what you've done in that company. And they may go someplace else and work in the company says, oh, wait a minute, we got some issues in marketing.
Let's call this guy that I know that worked with us. And let me tell you what they did for us. And this is why we need to bring them in. And boom, you're in.
Richard Levy:I went out for a coffee with someone yesterday who I worked with in a previous company. They were an agency we brought in and we were talking.
Like we did collaborations, we worked together, the usual conversations you have 10 times a week. And then I went on a WhatsApp group and someone said, I'm looking for someone who does this service. And I advocated for them. I was their superfan.
Funny enough, I was out with a business today who do exactly that. Let me introduce you by email and I'll let the two of you work out or figure out how you're going to work together.
That superfan behavior for me have no nothing, nothing to gain, nothing to lose, other than I want this business to do the business. Who said, does anyone know of a provider? And I know I'm a super fan of the provider. So I then put them in front of them that you imagine.
No one has asked me to do that. No one has. But I'm doing it because I'm a super fan.
And in the same way that I see super fans of what I would call football clubs, what you would call soccer clubs here. It's exactly the same principle. You want the people you know and you trust and you relate to and you grateful for to do well.
And I think if you're managing to get that as a business, you're doing something right, because people are doing it out of their own free will because they want to Help, Sure.
Freddy D:And the other thing that you said that I want to really emphasize there is you use the word introduction because referrals is one thing and referral you still have to chase.
An introduction is a hundred times more powerful than a referral because that's a handoff, that's an endorsement, and you're handing that off to somebody else and you've created that introduction so they're not even going to consider it anybody else, because they already respect you. And the fact that you're promoting this person, that's your go to person and that collapses the whole cycle dramatically.
Richard Levy:100% agree with you. And it's about trust.
Business in the end, like anything, like relationships, where you go on holiday is about, I have enough trust that if I'm going to go to X and I'm using this travel agent to book it for me, it's because I have trust in them. And if you can build that trust in whatever business you're working in, then you're 95 to 98% there, because that trust is so huge.
And I think that the superfan model that you're talking about is about, how much do I trust somebody? Do I trust someone 100%. Because when I advocate you, Freddie, my reputation is on the line as well. If I say, hey, Freddie's you've got here.
And if Freddie messes around and doesn't deliver, they come out to me and say, you recommended this guy. What were you thinking of? So everyone has a bit of skin in the game.
Freddy D:Yeah, very important, because you have to have the relationship with the person that you're recommending to understand that they can actually deliver what you're doing.
So you, like you said earlier, you were a super fan of this individual and that's why you advocated for them, because of the fact that you were a super fan.
And that's what I keep telling people, is that you really need to look at the entire ecosystem of a business because there's people who talk about thought leadership and people talk about employee experience and customer experience. But the reality is it really is the whole ecosystem because you've got suppliers that you got to deal with.
And so how's the communication going with the suppliers?
You've got distribution, if you're dealing with distribution, you've got complementary businesses and you've got ancillary businesses and they're all tied together.
And so if you've got a culture in a company that's not going very well because the management needs improvement, that's going to transcend to everybody and vice versa. Someone's fired up and you can tell by the tonality when you're talking to somebody if they're really enjoying their organization.
That is contagious as well.
Richard Levy:Totally agree with you. I got a phone call about a year ago from someone actually in your part of the world and they said, I see you've worked with X person.
We think you'll bring them on board as a non executive director, what's your view? And I was very positive about that person and I assumed that it happened.
I hadn't worked with that person fairly for about five years and suddenly whether they get that any day role is in some way down to what I say in a confidential conversation. But because I had a good relationship with that person and I trusted them and we'd worked together five years later I'm advocating for them.
Five years, that's how it could be five years, it could be 10 years. They probably never know that I was asked. I'm sure when they got the role no one said, hey, I spoke to Richard and this is what he said about you.
And if he hadn't got the role, I'm sure no one would have said we spoke to Richard and he put us off. So this is true impartiality, never going to be quoted.
But I remember that five years later I really like working with them and I would support them doing that next. There you go.
Freddy D:And that's proof in itself in a whole idea.
Richard Levy:Yes, 100% agree with you.
Freddy D:So as we come to the end here, Richard, how can people find you?
Richard Levy:I'm pretty active on LinkedIn. I'm Richard Levy one someone obviously got there before me so I had to put a one next to my name. It is the number and also available in email.
Richard R S C H A R D Levy L E V Y Saphira which is S O P H e r a marketing.co.uk so Richard Levyfera marketing.co.uk or on LinkedIn and I'm very happy to engage in debate, discussion, answer questions and if you want to be put my newsletter just email me and say yes and as I say, I'm just hoping it provides a little bit of help and guidance for people.
Freddy D:We'll make sure that's in the show notes. Great conversation and really appreciate your time being on the show today.
Richard Levy:Likewise Fred. I really enjoyed it and thank you again as I said at the beginning for the invite. I appreciate it.
Freddy D:Yeah, yeah, we'll definitely love to have you on the show down the road. Great conversation.
Richard Levy:Thank you. Let me know man.
Freddy D:All right. Cheers mate. What a great conversation with Richard Levy.
Freddy D:One key insight from Richard is that.
Freddy D:Success in both B2B and B2C depends.
Freddy D:On keeping your brand top of mind.
Freddy D:Even during the times your audience isn't ready to buy.
Richard reminded us that only about 5% of your market is in market right now, but it's what you do with the other 95% that builds trust, credibility and long term business superfans. That's a powerful reminder for every service based business leader.
Play the long game, deliver genuine value and your superfans will remember your name when it matters most.
Freddy D:If this episode brought you value, leave.
Freddy D:A quick 5 star review. It helps other service based business owners discover the show.
Thanks for listening today and remember, one action, one stakeholder, one super fan closer.
Intro:We hope you took away some useful knowledge from today's episode of the Business Super Fans Podcast. Join us on the next episode as we continue guiding you on your journey to achieve flourishing success in business.
