Amie Milner (00:02)
it's the one story. We really always go back to that. like, we know when we implement our clients that they're going to probably have a list of like, we can work in this, we can work in this, we can work in this. But we kind of drive to their case studies first of like, who have you done incredible things for? Who is touting your name in the market already where your referrals are coming in from, because we need to go after more of
those for you and like really specialize you in that smaller net.
Ben Ard (00:54)
Welcome back to another episode of Content Amplified. Today I'm joined by Amie. Amie, welcome to the show.
Amie Milner (01:00)
Thank you, Ben. Excited to be here.
Ben Ard (01:01)
Yeah, Amie, I'm excited. This is going to be a fun conversation. I think a lot of marketers need to hear this message and a lot of them are probably preaching this message to their bosses. So I think a lot of people relate. But Amie before we dive into the subject, let's get to know you a little bit. If you don't mind sharing a little bit with the audience about your career and work history and all that kind of fun stuff, that'd be great.
Amie Milner (01:21)
Yeah, absolutely. My name is Amie Milner. I'm the EVP of marketing and sales enablement at Abstrakt Marketing Group. We did just drop the marketing group from her name, just going as abstrakt now. I have worked here 10 years, and I started at the very entry role of SDR for our clients. We are US based in Canada, in the UK, and we serve about 2000 clients in the B2B space for all things lead generation sales appointments.
setting and really we tout ourselves as a business growth company. Our mission is to grow small to medium sized businesses and help them dominate and attack exclusively, which I'll talk a little bit about in a market. So I've been doing that. I've worked my way up in the company to this role. I have played a lot of SDR management roles along the way. I built our sales enablement department from scratch.
started in an internship and then brought it internally to a full-time team. And then in the past few years, I've added on running our digital strategy and marketing and still the Cold Calling Sales Development Team. So we're a little unique here in that I'm ⁓ in marketing, sales development and sales enablement all for our sales team.
Ben Ard (02:32)
I love it. And that viewpoint of all the different departments and how they work together, I think it's such a unique perspective that you can bring to the table. So I'm excited to dive into that based off of your experience, kind of that full experience that the prospect will have with the company. I think there's a lot of goodness that can come from this conversation. So I'm super excited. So what we're going to talk about today, here's kind of the working title.
Amie Milner (02:52)
Yeah.
Ben Ard (02:56)
niche attack strategy, how specialization wins in B2B sales. So when we're looking at it, Amie, what does a niche attack strategy actually look like in practice? Like, what do we mean by a niche? I butcher the word niche, but I'm going to say it and I'll say it enough different ways, niche, niche, whatever. But, exactly. How does this work in practice? Like, what does that actually look like?
Amie Milner (03:09)
Niche niche niche niche works too. Industry also works.
Yeah, so something that is really unique here at Abstrakt is that the same process that we run for ourselves is what we run for our clients. So how we've grown to an $80 million company and what we're doing in the enablement marketing and sales development team is the same process that we go out to market for our 2,000 clients. So we really tout our own growth strategy and this is how we've gotten there and this is how we're going to help you grow. So we focus in specific.
⁓ ICPs and industries for our clients as well. We take the time to get to know them and know really this core group of industries that they play well in and build out the message from there. Internally, how I see it work is even more narrowed down. And really what we found is that not every single sales rep is going to be great at everything.
Like you will, you'll have those, those golden unicorn sales reps or STRs on your team that can play in every single industry, know all the buzzwords, know the lingo, know how to sell to them. But across the board, most of the time you'll have sales reps that can become really, really great at one or two or three. And you want to play to your strengths from an overall close rate as a sales team to put those people in those spots. So.
What we've done is we have about, I'd say 10 to 20, the list is a little wide, up to 20 niches that we consider our core niches. But then I'd say it pairs down more even so to like the top 10. And we then put sales reps only in about three to four, you know, at a time that they are attacking and appointments being set for them from the marketing and sales enablement and sales development side.
⁓ on the sales development side, same thing, you know, there there's one story. You only need one great story. You only need one great case study in these cases. You don't need to now supply on the marketing and enablement side, bajillions of stories and, keep recreating content because we have a lot of long tenured clients too, in each of these core industries because we've done so well in them. So like, why not just use the same story every time when you're talking.
to someone in that industry and be like, I'll tell you about someone that's super similar to you. We've worked with them for eight years. This is what they came to us with their problem. This is what we've done with our process and they've closed XX amount of business. So then you get super confident in that vernacular when you're telling these prospects on the phone to set appointments and it feels real. We're very into storytelling on the phones.
⁓ for the SDR side and like paint a picture of what we've done for someone like them. And then exclusivity wise, once you get to the pitch talking about that we're only going to work with one HVAC company in a market. So that's our big exclusivity tout. Not a lot of other legion, actually no other lead generation companies do exclusivity like we do. So we break markets up into availability of prospects.
There's only a finite number of prospects that HVAC companies would want to go after, and we're only going to work with one. So we're really, really digging into being niche with them as well when we're going after these prospects.
Ben Ard (06:32)
Okay, I love that. So when you're looking at it and you're specializing in a specific industry or area, like you talked about the power of what you can do when you're specialized, you have the stories you can tell, you don't have to have a ton of messages. I love the focus and the energy that goes towards that. Even the finding of the right people to match to the right industries. I've seen that firsthand, just how good someone can be in one industry and maybe struggle in another. And if you find the sweet spot.
You just ride that and let them kind of find that and own it and really kind of live in that space. How do you as a business? So let's take it kind of both sides of the perspective. You as the businesses you're a part of, how did you find your specific niches? And then how do you recommend your clients do the same thing? How are you kind of preaching this and actually in practice finding the right industries to go after?
Amie Milner (07:06)
Yes.
it's the one story. We really always go back to that. like, we know when we implement our clients that they're going to probably have a list of like, we can work in this, we can work in this, we can work in this. But we kind of drive to their case studies first of like, who have you done incredible things for? Who is touting your name in the market already where your referrals are coming in from, because we need to go after more of
those for you and like really specialize you in that smaller net.
So just recommending them of like, start with the case studies and start where you've had a sweet spot and where you've had success. And then within those niches too, you need to have the right ICP. So when we're recommending to our clients, not only are we going to really start with these couple of niches that you do well in, and then we're going to cast a wider net out, of course, to get you into new industries, but
You need to know, it a revenue fit? Can that type of company, you know, those clients have budgets to afford what your service or product is the decision maker type that typically comes up in those types of industries. So who are we going to be talking to and can they be a champion for your product? A length of sales cycle is huge, you know, and that can really play in into the industries that you're picking to and how long the decision making cycle will be. then service fit.
⁓ Which clients use your solution the way that it's designed? That's really big for us and then touting to our clients. Not that they're gonna need customized packages, they're gonna need discounts to be able to fit in. You don't wanna change what your process is. Your process is a reason why you provide that service and you've built it that way, so can they fit into that mold and be okay with that, not need to change things. And then lifetime stickiness.
we're very into here, making sure that you sell the right customers in the right industries that then hopefully will be lifetime partners for our clients and for ourselves. So which ones have stayed the longest, you know, prospective client, you know, that's just coming on board to abstrakt who are your longest tenured clients. Let's try to model that ICP and those industries after that. So picking the ICP for our clients. then historically for us with abstrakt, ⁓
We came actually from the auto industry before this, our owners, and then they branched off and just, they had seen so much in the businesses in the past they had been in that this problem of where is the pipeline coming from? How are you gonna drive that pipeline? Every business owner is up at night, not sleeping, thinking about where can my next lead come from? So they built this process that business owners would never have to worry about that again, that we would build.
this predictable sales pipeline. We started off in HVAC, know, in loan officer recruitment and realtor recruitment were really huge about 10 years ago. So a couple of blue collar industries and then blue collar just exploded from there. And then along the way we added IT, which then went into software, branches off of that telecom, but
HVAC led to commercial cleaning, which led to commercial roofing, which led to construction and GCs, which led to landscaping, painting, flooring. And the thing for us is that they're all targeting the same decision makers. So again, we have this in and this expertise with everybody typically needs to get to the facility manager or the facility director first and then up to the owners to go and provide these blue collar services. And so we know how to get you into those.
because we have millions of calls across 10 years. So just every branch off of Blue Collar just organically happened in the last 10 years.
Ben Ard (11:02)
Okay. I love that. I love how you expand your industries and then you started with the focus found kind of the industries that sit right next to that, that are very similar. Love the message about you don't have to change your product and your pricing and all that kind of stuff. It just fits and works the way you intended it to. think there's a lot of cool things there. One of the hard things though is saying no, like anytime you have to focus on an industry or a group of people.
You're inherently telling the rest of the world that we don't work with you and you're not a good fit for us. How do you coach people to be okay with that? How do you wrap your own head around that? Because sometimes there are opportunities that sit right in front of our faces and we have to ultimately say no. Like we have to say no to that, especially on the marketing side. Like, you know, you look at your website and like my conversions might go down.
Amie Milner (11:32)
Yeah.
Ben Ard (11:54)
Because I'm actively telling eight industries, we don't actually service them, that we're just focused on these certain groups of people. How do you wrap your head around that? How do you coach around that? How do you think about that?
Amie Milner (12:03)
I think for us internally at Abstrakt and the department that I run, we luckily have a good mix of all of these outbound channels that we're using. we are able to, with our digital strategy, we do cast the full wide net. we have about, I'd say 300 to 400, what we would consider in other industries, one-off industry clients. So we do, if they are a B2B business and they have a product or service that they can sell to B2B,
that ROI makes sense with obviously our package and our pricing. Like we can do this process for them and be successful. So we don't say no necessarily to anybody on the like wide net on the digital side. And I'd say the same with email. We have a very robust email going out, but with cold calling that is a longer sales cycle, it's colder for everybody. I think that's where the strength and play in the niches.
comes in, so you get to be super hyper-targeted and focused in the outbound calling strategy. And this is the same thing that we do for our clients. They're like, we're gonna cast a wide net of a ton of prospects for you in our email and our LinkedIn messages. But then we're gonna be super, super focused on the best fit companies for you in our outbound calling strategy. from saying no perspective though,
I'd say, say no to some potential clients, like we we meet with everyone. So I would encourage any businesses out there, like don't shut yourself off, or make your messaging on your website or anything shut off to where you would be turning away opportunities. That's what really needs to happen in a discovery call and figuring out if that person is going to be a revenue and a service fit and then
being okay telling someone, ⁓ especially on the cost side. Like if you know and they're talking about not being able to afford or they're gonna, you scrape it together, it's probably not a fit right now. They need to grow a little bit more to be able to invest in that type of service or product. saying no becomes more of a looking out for both parties, I would say. And then in your messaging and your marketing, you need to always cast a wide net, but then in your outbound approach, stay strategic, stay focused in the niches.
Ben Ard (14:09)
I love that. So there are certain channels and opportunities on marketing and sales where the wide net makes sense. And then you can filter on the call, but when it is dedicated, specific outreach efforts, your ABM plays things like that. That's where you want to focus and hone your skills in. So I think it's great. Cause I think a lot of times people are kind of all or nothing. Like we only are going to email five people or do this, this or that, but it makes sense to look at those channels individually and say,
This is where we niche. This is where we don't. This is where we focus. This is where we cast the net. So I love that strategy there. Amie, these episodes go by quick and we have run out of time. This has been amazing. Thank you so much for the time and insights. If anyone listening wants to reach out and connect with you online, how and where can they find you?
Amie Milner (14:54)
Yeah, absolutely. My LinkedIn profile is this name right here. AMIE not AMY. then abstrakt mg.com is our website, you can fill out a form or reach out. I'm over the whole team that sets up these meetings. And then my email is just my first initial last name at abstrakt mg.com. Love to talk all things marketing sales enablement love to give advice. The big thing we say at the end of our grow show podcast
is just do something outbound. Whether you use a company like us, whether you use us or you do it internally, absolute must to have some sort of outbound approach to not just be waiting on referrals and inbound traffic, make an outbound approach happen.
Ben Ard (15:36)
I love it. That's amazing
for everyone listening. We will link to everything in the show notes. So just scroll down. You can click on Amie's profile, all sorts of stuff. You can connect there. Amie again, thank you so much for the time and insights today.
Amie Milner (15:48)
Yes, thank
you for having me.
