How to Attract New Clients as a Fractional CMO with Dean Waye

The Virtual CMO Podcast

Season 8, Episode 7

In episode 122, host Eric Dickmann talks with Dean Waye - CEO of WayeCreative, a copywriting firm helping businesses and fractional CMOs attract, impress, and lock in new clients.

Dean Wayne also co-hosts "This Audience Means Business," an interactive LinkedIn live show where he and his guests discuss and review company messaging.

You can connect with Dean on LinkedIn and Twitter.

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Tips on Attracting New Fractional CMO Clients

In a noisy world, it’s not always easy to find new clients and stand out from a crowd of competitors. You must have a messaging that resonates to attract, sign, and retain new clients. Dean Waye shares some tips that can help fractional CMOs message new clients effectively to help win more deals. He shares his thoughts on how to build copy that hooks and lands:

1. That Second Right Answer: An idea pair no one considered. But so powerful and obvious (once you see it).
2. Tone: With a second right answer in hand, we can use the perfect tone — assertive. Not aggressive, but we’re not selling from our heels, either.
3. Anti-Resistance - Inertia, apathy, distrust, or reactance are always with us. Let’s thread ALL the needles with a single piece of copy.
4. Level Up or Down: Inform, inspire, or transform? Create copy that slips past the gates, crowds, and pretenders. And sticks.
5. Go Ahead; It’s Safe Now: We've established trust and desire. Now, someone’s going to introduce you to their boss. Or their credit card.

Highlights from Our Conversation with Dean:

“And I oftentimes encourage founders who are considering some sort of fractional agreement- Hey, this is a problem that I'm facing, I need you to go figure this out because oftentimes in a early stage business. And so oftentimes what I'm doing is I establish a short-term project for someone to be able to figure out without a whole heck of a lot of constraints, and are they able to do it? Are they able to achieve what it is that you want? And did you work together well?”

• [00:03:18] Why do you think salespeople struggle to know what to say?- According to Dean, you cannot succeed over a long sales career unless you have hardcore resiliency. The first thing he tells salespeople is- look at your pitch deck, look at these slides, let's figure out what phrases you're going to say while this slide is up.
• [00:04:57] When you look at the difference between a speaker, a salesperson, and website content, how do you look at framing those messages differently?- All content that you're going to read, all commercial content, marketing content, all lives on one of three levels- informational, inspirational, and transformational. If everything's down on informational and nothing in B2B, especially if you're not doing anything on the inspirational level, then there's nothing for them; they don't see themselves in your story. You're supposed to be telling them their story with you in it, not your story, and hoping that they care.
• [00:07:40] How did you get interested in helping fractional executives, particularly fractional CMOs, with their messaging?- Dean Waye has a one-hour service called perfectlydescribed.com, where he started writing on the advice of a strategy coach. It is usually a one-hour Zoom call, where participants fill in some raw information, and Dean walks them through the process.
• [00:20:00] The importance of having meaningful conversations- If you cannot grow the business to a particular stage on your own, that should not be viewed as a defeat. There's so much that needs to be accomplished as a one-person team. It’s important to bring others into your business conversations as you attempt to scale.
• [00:23:09] How do you look at marketing when you have those discussions with these founders?- Not until founders deeply understand who their customer is and the value they are providing should they make big marketing investments.

New Fractional CMO Clients and Other Resources Mentioned

• WayeCreative LLC- Company Website
• This Audience Means Business (LIVE from Tuesday to Thursday)- Listen here

Live Stream on YouTube