On this episode of B2B Marketing Methods, Terri welcomes Matthew Breman, Senior VP of Marketing & Operations at ProStar GeoCorp and Mayor of Fruita, Colorado. Matthew’s career has taken him from MTV and Nickelodeon, to Disney, to running his own marketing agency — and now to leading growth for a publicly traded technology company. Along the way, he’s learned how to adapt messaging for wildly different audiences, whether it’s cast members at Disney, customers at his agency, or residents of his hometown.
The conversation dives into one of the most complex areas of B2B growth: channel and partner marketing. Matthew shares how ProStar shifted from selling software directly to end users to building partnerships with hardware manufacturers, distributors, and sales teams. That change created new challenges in scaling training, activating partners, and making sure salespeople understood not just the product but the full value proposition for their customers.
Matthew also draws parallels between marketing leadership and community leadership. From identifying champions inside organizations to building trust and consistency in messaging, he shows why successful channel strategies depend on relationships at every level. If you’ve ever wrestled with scaling through distributors or keeping your messaging clear across multiple partners, this episode offers practical insights and stories from the field.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
- Channel and partner marketing strategies
- Training and enabling distributor sales teams
- Adapting messaging for multiple audiences
- Building trust and alignment with partners
- Finding champions to drive adoption
To learn more about Matthew Breman, connect with him on LinkedIn at:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewbreman/
Or, email him at:
To learn more about Terri, connect with her on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/terrihartley/
To connect with Marketing Refresh, visit: MarketingRefresh.com
Full Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Terri: Welcome to B2B Marketing Methods. I’m your host, Terry Hoffman, and I’m the CEO of Marketing Refresh. Let’s face it, embracing digital marketing is daunting. This podcast was created to make it more approachable. Join me as we talk to CEOs, sales leaders and revenue growth experts who will share lessons learned and tips from their own journeys.
[00:00:28] Terri: So welcome today to another episode of B2B Marketing Methods.
[00:00:33] Terri: I am here with my guest today, his name is Matthew Breman. Matthew wears a lot of hats.
[00:00:38] Terri: I’ve had a couple guests on lately who are just all about wearing lots of hats and Matthew’s another one of them. I’m going to let him introduce himself, but we’re going to, let me just give you a little, a little preview of what we’re going to be talking about today.
[00:00:59] Terri: We’re going to focus on a new topic that we haven’t really covered in our series yet, and we’re going to talk a lot about channel and partner marketing and the challenges that [00:01:00] come along with that type of business model when it comes to your sales and marketing programs. We’re going to talk about how to activate your partners, how to make the dealers and distributors really an extension of your sales team and how to go about some of the training that’s necessary to make sure that those partners are educated on your product and how it fits into the solutions that they’re selling.
[00:01:22] Terri: So, it’s bigger than a marketing conversation today, but marketing is definitely a key part of it. So with that preview, welcome Matthew. Thank you for joining me today.
[00:01:33] Matthew: Thanks for having me. It’s a honor to be here.
[00:01:36] Terri: Absolutely. So, let’s, you’ve got some branding behind you there, but maybe you can, you can talk a little bit about one of the hats you wear and also kind of give people a little bit of information on, the other hat you wear in our town.
[00:01:50] Matthew: Okay. Well it is funny because I didn’t realize what was behind me in terms of both those hats.
[00:01:55] Terri: Sure. Perfect planning.
[00:01:58] Matthew: So, I am the [00:02:00] Senior Vice President of Marketing and operations for Prostar Geo Corp. We’re a small publicly traded company. Our offices are in Grand Junction, Colorado. We’re traded on the Toronto Exchange. So a little bit different of a setup than most companies. So that’s my day to day like nine to five. I wish it was nine to five. That’s my like seven to 6:00 PM job.
[00:02:21] Terri: Okay.
[00:02:22] Matthew: And then the other part of it is I am the mayor of the City of Fruita, Colorado.
[00:02:27] Terri: Right. Of which my husband and I are proud residents. For the past few years, we love our town, so much.
[00:02:33] Matthew: It’s a cool place to live.
[00:02:35] Terri: It is. It’s like a little, like you and I were talking about when we were planning for this interview.
[00:02:39] Terri: It’s like a little Mayberry.
[00:02:41] Matthew: We live in a bubble and I’m grateful for it.
[00:02:45] Terri: Mhmm
[00:02:45] Matthew: It’s, you know, people know each other and there’s a lot of community involvement. So it’s, we’re very fortunate.
[00:02:51] Terri: Yeah. For, for sure.
[00:02:54] Terri: So, I guess before, before we dive into the topics, I previewed, I think it’s really helpful to have some [00:03:00] context about your background . You have had a super interesting career background, right?
[00:03:06] Matthew: Very non-linear.
[00:03:08] Terri: Very nonlinear and some pretty huge, very well known brands that will stand out as you kinda go through your background. But tell us about where you got your career started and kind of some of the key steps that you’ve taken throughout your career.
[00:03:25] Matthew: So sometimes I hesitate to say this, my undergraduate degree is actually lighting for musical theater.
[00:03:31] Terri: Mm-hmm.
[00:03:31] Matthew: Like that’s what I went to for my undergrad work. But from, which is a little bit different of a background for anything. But, uh, after graduation I ended up working for MTV Nickelodeon at their studios based in Florida.
[00:03:46] Matthew: So I did about 2,500 episodes of television with them and then projects all around the world, not just in television, but live events and then actually retail. Was part of their flagship store in Chicago, which was ton of fun with [00:04:00] MTV, Nickelodeon, Paramount, Star Trek. I mean, it was like all the fun brands that you could ever want to work with.
[00:04:06] Terri: Yeah.
[00:04:06] Matthew: It was like being a kid with a really big, you know, checking account. So that was a lot of fun. Those opportunities don’t happen that often.
[00:04:14] Terri: Right.
[00:04:15] Matthew: So from there I went back and got my MBA. And from there, another small brand, Disney, hired me out of the MBA program and I started and ran their internal creative agency.
[00:04:31] Matthew: And how I kind of describe that is like all the cool stuff you see on tv, I had nothing to do with that. You get to the parks and like all the cool stuff in the parks. I had nothing to do with that. So my audience was actually internal, so about 110,000 cast members throughout the entire organization.
[00:04:52] Matthew: That was my audience, which was great training because it was really about messaging and less about [00:05:00] the branding. That was up to the other grades. So did that and then, decided I wanted a life. My wife and I were living in two different cities at the time, so we moved to Western Colorado where I started my own marketing agency.
[00:05:14] Terri: Mm-hmm.
[00:05:14] Matthew: Did that for, I don’t know, over 10 years. Grew it. We were recognized as one of the top three in the state, and then was getting a little burned out with that. Sold off most of it, kept a couple fun clients. Prostar was one of my clients and they made me an offer to come on board as just as they were going from privately held to a publicly traded company.
[00:05:37] Terri: Mm-hmm.
[00:05:37] Matthew: So I got to do that transition with them, and that’s where I’ve been for the last five years.
[00:05:42] Terri: Wow. You’ve had you, Yeah. To say it’s been a diverse, interesting path is like you can’t say that clearly enough. Right? I think what’s interesting too is you just very quickly recapped so many different types of audiences and audience types and [00:06:00] ways to reach out to people, but like you and I were talking about when we were planning for this discussion, it’s at the end of the day, it’s like the message and being clear about your message is, is just a key fundamental, no matter who you’re marketing to or who you’re entertaining, because you’ve got a mixture of those things in your background, right?
[00:06:21] Matthew: Yeah. You call it know your audience, know your ICP, you know?
[00:06:24] Terri: Yeah.
[00:06:27] Terri: So tell us a little bit about, what is PointMan? What is Pro Star? What do you do?
[00:06:33] Matthew: So we are a software development company.
[00:06:36] Terri: Mm-hmm.
[00:06:36] Matthew: And we play in the geospatial world. So our product is called PointMan. It’s, works on any mobile device, Android, iOS, and there’s also the desktop side of it.
[00:06:47] Matthew: What we allow you to do is connect your phone to a precision GPS receiver or an electromagnetic locate device and locate buried utility [00:07:00] down to the centimeter, with centimeter accuracy.
[00:07:03] Terri: Okay.
[00:07:04] Matthew: So, and the reason the problem that we solve is in the United States, there’s about a half a million utility line strikes every year, which is about one every minute of every working day.
[00:07:16] Matthew: And that puts people at risk, it puts the environment at risk, it puts business at risk. I mean, there’s so many factors of things that can go wrong. You know, we’ve seen pictures of homes exploding because of gas leaks. That’s what we prevent and we do it at an unbelievable price.
[00:07:33] Terri: Mm-hmm.
[00:07:34] Matthew: And we do it where, we could do training for about a half an hour.
[00:07:40] Terri: Mm-hmm.
[00:07:40] Matthew: And you could start to go out there and find buried utilities down to that centimeter accuracy. I mean, right now the process is you go to do something at your house and you call 8-1-1 and they come out and they take their locate and they spray paint on the ground.
[00:07:56] Terri: Yeah.
[00:07:57] Matthew: Okay. Well you don’t know if that’s accurate because [00:08:00] there’s no data behind it. It doesn’t last, and if you need to do something else, they have to come back out. I mean, we’ve seen utilities located incorrectly by over a hundred feet and then accidents happen. Yes, unfortunately it happens far too often.
[00:08:18] Matthew: I’ve also seen them come out and spray paint snow. Two days later, it melts and you’re like, we have no idea where anything is.
[00:08:26] Terri: Yeah.
[00:08:26] Matthew: With our technology, you can go back and, you know, you could put a pencil in the middle of a football field and 10 years later walk back and go right to that pencil.
[00:08:35] Terri: Wow. Okay. Yeah. And I know, just a little, very little bit about your industry, and I know the centimeters matter,
[00:08:43] Matthew: Yes, we save
[00:08:44] Terri: for safety.
[00:08:45] Matthew: We save lives. We save money.
[00:08:47] Terri: Mm-hmm.
[00:08:47] Matthew: We save time.
[00:08:48] Terri: Who are some of the industries that are using your product?
[00:08:53] Matthew: The utility locate industry is using our project, SUE, which stands for Subsurface Utility [00:09:00] Engineers.
[00:09:00] Terri: Okay.
[00:09:00] Matthew: They use our product quite a bit, and then a lot of large corporations use it initially. In the state of Colorado, if you have any interaction with CDoT, Colorado Department of Transportation, and they’re right of way, as it relates to utilities, you have to use our product.
[00:09:17] Terri: Okay.
[00:09:19] Matthew: And a lot of times that gets used if oh, or somebody’s planning on building a building or if they’re planning on some road construction, they will first go out and use our product to locate what’s currently there. Okay, so before construction even begins, they’re able to go out and locate all the utilities.
[00:09:37] Matthew: They take that back to the office, use it in the design process, and then when the work actually happens, they load. Nothing ever goes as planned. You know, you go to put a line in here and you discover, which happens quite a bit in Colorado. There’s an old railroad that’s been buried over, and so you have to adjust where the lines go.
[00:09:55] Matthew: And so you can put do as-built as you’re putting it in, bring that [00:10:00] back to your record, and that way you have extremely accurate location data. They’re 10 years down the road if something needs to happen, you know exactly, exactly where, where stuff is. And it’s a spaghetti. I mean, it’s a spaghetti of stuff under the ground.
[00:10:16] Matthew: You have water, you have fiber, you have sewer, you know, uh, electrical. You have all this stuff at different layers, and you look at some pictures and they’re literally laying on top of each other.
[00:10:27] Terri: Yeah.
[00:10:36] Terri: Um, well, so in, in order to bring your product to market, you, you really lean pretty heavily on your channel partners, right?
[00:10:40] Matthew: Yes. We’ve had a shift. Originally, we’re just selling our software and then leaving it up to the end user,
[00:10:47] Terri: Okay,
[00:10:47] Matthew: to figure out how it all works together.
[00:10:50] Terri: Okay.
[00:10:50] Matthew: Which, as a startup, sometimes you have to do, and we had to do it. What we figured out was we had two issues. One [00:11:00] scalability, on that, doing it that way is very difficult.
[00:11:03] Matthew: The scalability part of that’s because of onboarding and training you do. It’s much harder to do. Everybody is a one-off and you, we couldn’t grow our sales team fast enough and support it with that model. So then we shifted and looked at who’s actually using our product. And like I said, they’re using, high precision GPS units.
[00:11:24] Terri: Mm-hmm.
[00:11:24] Matthew: Or they’re using em locate tools. Well, they already are selling to our clients and our software enhances their product.
[00:11:36] Terri: Ah.
[00:11:36] Matthew: So we did a shift and started talking to the hardware manufacturers and saying, listen, we can be really good partners on this, you know. Our product doesn’t work without yours, and we make your product work so much better and bring that much more value.
[00:11:54] Matthew: So we started reaching out to the hardware manufacturers, going through that process to get them on board [00:12:00] and see the value of what we do.
[00:12:01] Terri: Yeah.
[00:12:02] Matthew: Now those hardware partners have different sales models within their organization. Some of them mostly do direct sales, but the majority of them have, distributors.
[00:12:15] Terri: Mm-hmm.
[00:12:16] Matthew: That they sell their product through.
[00:12:18] Terri: So it sounds like you ran into a challenge with, going to market with that channel partner strategy.
[00:12:25] Matthew: Yes. And first, the hardware manufacturers like, this is great. We get it. We agree. It’s a great partnership. We enhance each other’s products.
[00:12:35] Matthew: We can help each other with sales.
[00:12:37] Terri: Yeah,
[00:12:37] Matthew: that was really the easy part.
[00:12:40] Terri: Mm-hmm.
[00:12:42] Matthew: Figuring out the finances between the two organizations was, that was the easy part. The hard part came was great, we’ve signed this agreement, now we gotta figure out how to spell it.
[00:12:56] Terri: Yeah.
[00:12:57] Matthew: And then, so we’re looking at the distributors and we’re like, here you [00:13:00] go.
[00:13:00] Matthew: Here’s our product, and they’re looking back at us going, okay, what are we supposed to do with this? And, you know, what’s in it for us? And why should we care?
[00:13:09] Terri: Yeah. So tell me about how you’ve started to work through that. How do you navigate that challenge?
[00:13:16] Matthew: So low hanging fruit. At first we looked for the larger dealerships, or distributors, and I use those words interchangeably.
[00:13:25] Matthew: We started looking at them and saying, okay, and started having those conversations with the leadership teams there. They got it. They understood the value of it, but then it was also like going, okay, leadership at the distributor level gets it. How do we actually get the boots on the ground to get it?
[00:13:47] Terri: Which is key.
[00:13:47] Matthew: And yeah, which is absolutely key. And for us it was, they know their audience, they know who they’re already selling to, they know the repeat customers. They have those [00:14:00] relationships, and now we’re trying to, you know, slide into those conversations.
[00:14:05] Terri: Mm-hmm.
[00:14:07] Matthew: And help them move our product, and there there’s some resistance to it because they’ve been successful selling hardware.
[00:14:14] Terri: Yeah.
[00:14:15] Matthew: And they didn’t necessarily, at first understand the value of adding our software to it. Or they’re like, oh, we already have this other piece of software that we sell, so we’re good. We’re good. Like we’re making our numbers, we’re making our quota, you know, we’re good.
[00:14:34] Terri: Which isn’t even, it’s like, it’s not even a lazy reaction.
[00:14:38] Terri: Right? That’s a, that’s a very true human being reaction. We’re all, if there’s no big reason or driver to change
[00:14:46] Matthew: Yep.
[00:14:46] Terri: Why are you asking me to change.
[00:14:49] Matthew: Exactly.
[00:14:50] Terri: Right. Yeah, so like what, how did you respond to that?
[00:14:54] Matthew: So it’s the “wiifm” what’s in it for me?
[00:14:57] Terri: Mm-hmm.
[00:14:58] Matthew: We spend some time looking at how [00:15:00] they get paid, how they make their money, what motivates them.
[00:15:02] Terri: Mm-hmm.
[00:15:03] Matthew: And then starting to do the mind shift of how they become more valuable to their clients. And it was the shift of you, you shouldn’t be selling just hardware. You need to sell a solution.
[00:15:20] Terri: Right.
[00:15:21] Matthew: And by offering a solution, your product becomes more valuable. You’re actually able to sell more of your product.
[00:15:30] Matthew: Because you have, you’re not just selling a piece of the the power, the piece of the solution. You’re giving them the whole package and you can tell them when you walk out the door with your hardware, it’s going to work and do what you need to do and it’s going to work for your team. They don’t have to go back and now, right, I have this piece of hardware. How do I make it work within the system? And then you are also going to get all these support calls, like, I thought you said it could do this, [00:16:00] and it doesn’t. And so some of that was also a trade off. Um, it’s like, this is not, maybe not the best example, but if you’re watching Netflix and it doesn’t work properly,
[00:16:13] Matthew: you get ticked off at Netflix, you don’t get ticked off at your internet provider.
[00:16:17] Terri: Or the TV like.
[00:16:19] Matthew: Right.
[00:16:20] Terri: Yeah. Whoever made my TV isn’t getting a bad call from me. Yeah.
[00:16:24] Matthew: Exactly. So by also by partnering with us, when something doesn’t go right, we actually get those phone calls. The distributors, it eases up their support, their need to support their clients as well.
[00:16:38] Terri: Got it. So coming back to messaging, you kind of talked about your sales model as a startup and then how that shifted as you started to think about scaling and focusing more on a channel strategy.
[00:16:51] Terri: How did your messaging, about like who you are and what you do and your value proposition. Did you have to [00:17:00] consider changing that at that point?
[00:17:03] Matthew: Yes and no.
[00:17:04] Terri: Mm-hmm.
[00:17:04] Matthew: We’re, we’re not going to change who we are and what we do and how we, you know, what’s important to us, but we had to adapt that message for them.
[00:17:15] Terri: Mm-hmm.
[00:17:15] Matthew: Because it’s no longer just PointMan coming in. It’s me like we had to give them the verbiage, the messages, and the marketing material to say, Hey, I’m part of this organization and this is part of the solution.
[00:17:28] Terri: Right. Yeah.
[00:17:30] Matthew: So our portion of that’s still the same, but it had to dovetail into who they were and how they talk to their clients. So for me, it was kind of hard not to control, let’s say the graphics. Like, no, that’s not how we do things. You know, we still have to keep our brand standards. But sometimes you look at stuff and you’re like, Hmm, that’s not quite how I would’ve laid it out.
[00:17:52] Matthew: But the distributors, what they’re doing has been successful for them, and we couldn’t come in and say, Nope, change everything.
[00:17:58] Terri: Right.
[00:17:59] Matthew: Our reality [00:18:00] is they know their audience, they know what they’re looking for, and they know how to sell to them. So we had to adjust how we gave our message and kind of hand it over to them to let them
[00:18:13] Terri: Okay.
[00:18:13] Matthew: kind of modify it a little bit to fit who they’re talking to.
[00:18:18] Terri: Yeah. I want to see if I’m right here. It sounds like you also had to create a message and probably like a whole release program to get the salespeople excited about making this part of their solution. So it’s like you had to consider them as an audience.
[00:18:35] Matthew: Absolutely.
[00:18:36] Terri: Well, the distributors and the dealer.
[00:18:38] Matthew: First we had to market to, it wasn’t, you know, at the dealer level, it was more of a conversation.
[00:18:44] Terri: Mm-hmm.
[00:18:45] Matthew: You at the high level of the dealer, they got it, but then it was marketing and having to sell to the sales team about why, and that was a process to get the sale, the distributor sales team on board.
[00:18:58] Matthew: And then we had to do the next step, [00:19:00] which is then give them the tools and the messages to sell to their customers. So it was very much multi-level.
[00:19:07] Terri: Yeah.
[00:19:07] Matthew: And each kind of level, you know, we had some learnings
[00:19:12] Terri: Yeah.
[00:19:12] Matthew: as kind of the process on it. Yeah. But so you know, it’s selling to the salespeople, then giving them the tools to sell to their clients.
[00:19:20] Matthew: And once again, different hardware manufacturers have different audiences. Product A may be more appealing because it’s a hundred percent made in the USA and people are more concerned about that. Other products may be to a more budget conscious buyer, so we had to even make sure we were aligning with that.
[00:19:41] Terri: Yeah.
[00:19:42] Matthew: And then to even complicate that even further for us, what do you do with the dealer that sells two pieces of hardware? We work with both. Then how do you kinda walk that line? Like you could buy product A or product B from us, but no matter what you want add PointMan to it.[00:20:00]
[00:20:00] Terri: Right. And like you said, your product doesn’t change. It’s, it’s the same product going on these
[00:20:06] Matthew: Yes
[00:20:07] Terri: devices and being sold in through these channels. But you had to really understand those pain points. What are the challenges for each. ICP in that equation, not just the end user.
[00:20:18] Matthew: Right.
[00:20:18] Matthew: Yeah. We first went out and said, here’s kind of how you talk to the audience. And the sales teams were like, that’s good for you. And then it was flat and we’re like, ah, maybe we need to back this up.
[00:20:29] Terri: Yeah.
[00:20:30] Matthew: And so we’ve spent a lot of time internally going, okay, how do we give them enough information about our product?
[00:20:37] Matthew: H
[00:20:37] Matthew: ow do we give them the value proposition and train them to a point where they can talk about it, but they don’t have to be the subject matter experts.
[00:20:47] Terri: Yeah.
[00:20:48] Matthew: So we did it at a couple different levels. So the first thing we did is we looked at the sales managers, we brought the sales managers in, and we did it through a series of webinars.
[00:20:57] Terri: Mm-hmm.
[00:20:58] Matthew: Which at first was [00:21:00] adjustment for us. because normally when we do demos, we love to go into the details.
[00:21:04] Terri: Mm-hmm.
[00:21:04] Matthew: Like, oh, you can look at this NEMA stream, you can do this. That’s not their world. So we had to keep it at a very high level to help them understand why it’s a solution and we’ll help them.
[00:21:17] Terri: Yeah.
[00:21:17] Matthew: And then once we got them on board, they were great. They’re like, our entire sales team needs to do this. So then it was training, doing the same thing and doing webinars for the sales team. Once again, doing a product demo at a high level, helping them understand how it’s now a solution, but then understanding what’s the benefit for them, for the sales people to offer it as a solution.
[00:21:44] Terri: Yeah.
[00:21:44] Matthew: Why does it help them? Why does it make their job easier, and how can they go show their clients why this is the way you want to go and the value proposition to them.
[00:21:56] Terri: Well, so what you’re, just as a marketer listening to [00:22:00] you, I’m like, he saw each one of those people as a different ICP and thought about the journey that they’re going through, right.
[00:22:08] Terri: And what they want to hear at different points. And building that relationship with your brand evolves like they something at the beginning and then it evolves as they learn more. And you didn’t just try to dump that all on them at once, or maybe you did in the new, yeah.
[00:22:27] Matthew: Yeah. In all honesty, we did kind of try to dump it all at once. Is, you know, as a marketer, the hardest time sometimes is to talk about yourself because you know everything and you want to like, just like, I know my product, I love my product. And you want to discuss everything. Part of the job is marketing is like, okay, no, let’s, let’s figure out what the key points are, what the key messages are,
[00:22:51] Terri: Right.
[00:22:51] Matthew: For your audience, you know? Once again, we like to talk about all the features.
[00:22:56] Terri: Yeah.
[00:22:56] Matthew: Make sure we’re switching it to them to understand the benefits.
[00:22:59] Terri: Yeah. [00:23:00] And
[00:23:00] Matthew: at those different levels, they all have different benefits.
[00:23:03] Terri: Exactly, and I sometimes you only know what’s too much by giving too much and then having to figure out what needs to be pulled back.
[00:23:13] Terri: If you give too little, you can’t even get the engagement to get that feedback that you need.
[00:23:20] Matthew: Finding those champions, like when you start it, it’s always finding like that one or two people that just get it.
[00:23:29] Terri: Yeah.
[00:23:29] Matthew: Like when the minute they see it, they’re like, oh, I totally understand why we want this product and why our clients want it. And then you do, you spend some extra time with those champions, you handhold them a little bit more because what you find is they’re the ones within their organizations, which will help you the whole way through.
[00:23:51] Terri: Okay. Wow. That’s okay. I love that.
[00:23:54] Matthew: Always, always like, you know, if you can find the early adopters within the organization [00:24:00]
[00:24:00] Terri: mm-hmm.
[00:24:00] Matthew: They can make your life so much easier.
[00:24:02] Terri: Yeah. So I guess what’s interesting to me about the whole conversation we’re having is if you don’t have those like stakeholders identified and know who each one of your ICPs are and understand what their pain points are, and understand what messages are going to resonate and who your champions are, and how to motivate them, it really, it’s just such a tried and true practice and method that it, it doesn’t matter what you’re selling or what you’re doing, you have to have that part figured out first. Or you could waste a lot of time and money out in the market.
[00:24:35] Matthew: Yes. And what’s slightly different about this is there’s a trust factor. We have to trust the salespeople on the front line, that they know their audience and what’s important to them, and then you need to glean from them what their ideal customer profiles are.
[00:24:53] Terri: Okay.
[00:24:53] Matthew: Like, so we’re not on the front line going, oh, distributor, here’s who you should be going after. [00:25:00] Here’s your, you know, ideal customers. They already have that information, that’s why they’re successful. But there is a bit of trust of going, okay, if you say this is important to your clients, we’re going to work with you and make sure we can dovetail our messaging into that.
[00:25:17] Terri: Yeah.
[00:25:18] Matthew: But that may be completely different than another distributor.
[00:25:23] Terri: Yeah.
[00:25:24] Matthew: And there is that level of trust that you have to be like, all right, you’re still in business, you’re successful. You clearly know what you’re doing, and we have to believe that you know what you’re doing and then work with you trying versus trying to force it on you.
[00:25:37] Terri: Yeah. I bet
[00:25:38] Matthew: There’s a lot of levels to this.
[00:25:39] Terri: Yeah, there are a lot of levels to that. I have a feeling it was a journey to get to what you just described to me. Like that didn’t happen overnight, nor would I expect it to happen overnight because it’s pretty complicated.
[00:25:51] Matthew: It is, and it’s not an industry. This is new to the industry.
[00:25:56] Terri: Mm-hmm. Okay.
[00:25:57] Matthew: You know, precision locating, it’s [00:26:00] fairly new and this type of technology is new to the industry. There’s been practices done for, I don’t know how long. So it’s not only like the end users are having to change their business practices.
[00:26:15] Terri: Yeah.
[00:26:15] Matthew: And that due to the industry. And so it’s like everybody trying to adopt it once and there’s regulatory factors that are happening, which are really influencing it. You know, everybody’s trying to become more efficient, and more streamlined in their operations. And now the technology is catching up to where it helps them. We’ve had enough case studies and it’s been proven enough now that more and more companies are going, oh, like we have to adopt technology into our workflow, or we’re going to be left behind. So there’s also a lot of learning all the way around.
[00:26:52] Terri: Yeah. No, there is.
[00:26:58] Terri: And I think I was going to ask you a little bit about your view on [00:27:00] like how often you review that and try to keep it updated? Specifically the part about your channel strategy, like are you. Are you going back to those salespeople who know their industry and asking them if conditions have changed? I mean, AI is a major influence. The way people’s awareness about GIS location technology has to be growing and changing.
[00:27:22] Terri: So does that impact how your message is evolving?
[00:27:27] Matthew: It does. So, you know, once again, like anything with marketing, some of it’s, you know, you look at the data and with our backend systems, we can track who has what licenses and when we’re working with dealers, we know the serial numbers, so we know what’s coming from where.
[00:27:42] Matthew: Okay. And so you can look at those trends and be like, hmm. Why isn’t this growing as fast as we had hoped it would be? Are there technical issues? Are there messaging issues? And it’s having those conversations.
[00:27:54] Terri: Yeah.
[00:27:55] Matthew: And really making sure. And then it’s also sometimes we get feedback. [00:28:00] We’re like, oh, we didn’t realize this was necessarily concern, which we’ve never talked about.
[00:28:06] Matthew: So we now have to go back and go, okay, how do we discuss this?
[00:28:10] Terri: Yeah.
[00:28:10] Matthew: How do we internally make sure it’s accurate? And then the other challenge is.
[00:28:15] Matthew: Even for us, the technology is changing so quickly. And you brought up AI.
[00:28:21] Terri: Mm-hmm.
[00:28:21] Matthew: And how AI is also coming into the geospatial industry at a level that you wouldn’t necessarily expect.
[00:28:34] Terri: Mm-hmm.
[00:28:34] Matthew: There’s companies out there that, from satellite and from public information on social media, are able to get a rough estimate where buried utilities are without ever sending somebody out into the field.
[00:28:47] Terri: Wow.
[00:28:48] Matthew: Now is it, is it accurate?
[00:28:51] Terri: Yeah.
[00:28:52] Matthew: No. But if you, I mean, for easy example, you have an open field and if you need to locate the utilities, it’s [00:29:00] nice to say, be able to say, okay, using AI, here’s where we think they should be, and it gives you a place to start versus a maximum blank canvas that you have to figure out.
[00:29:11] Terri: Yeah.
[00:29:11] Matthew: And so, okay, great. Once again, as we look at solutions, people are like, well, wait a second aren’t you concerned that that’s going to take away from your market? And it’s no, just the opposite, it actually helps us.
[00:29:26] Terri: Yeah.
[00:29:26] Matthew: But understanding once again, it switching from that hardware and then very siloed approach to saying, okay, we’re here to provide solutions. And depending on what your challenge is, there’s lots of different pieces and parts that can plug into that solution. Our great advantages we’re the integrator of all those different solutions.
[00:29:50] Terri: Mm-hmm. I have to think the more people get accustomed to being able to realize [00:30:00] there are ways to locate those utilities. Their need for accuracy probably changes throughout a project, and it also would be vastly different based on like me as a homeowner versus an engineer in the field who’s looking to put a civil diagram together for a highway expansion.
[00:30:19] Matthew: Yes.
[00:30:20] Terri: Real different needs and,
[00:30:23] Matthew: Oh, very much so.
[00:30:23] Terri: But just that awareness like, oh, I can find that information. The more that becomes, um, kind of a universal known, I would see that helping your product for the people that needed it to be within a centimeter.
[00:30:38] Matthew: Yes. That is critical. I, so like two different examples.
[00:30:42] Matthew: Our project was used or our software was used on the I 70, project in Denver.
[00:30:48] Terri: Mm-hmm.
[00:30:49] Matthew: Which I was one of the largest projects that had in terms of utilities that had to be moved.
[00:30:54] Terri: Okay.
[00:30:55] Matthew: And part of that project, there’s a fiber line and I trying to [00:31:00] think, it’s for one of the exchanges. Now I may, I think it was NASDAQ’s.
[00:31:05] Matthew: The fiber line goes right along the highway and can, like the penalty for hitting that, it’s like half a million dollars a minute. I mean, it’s just, I don’t know if that’s the actual number, but it’s extraordinarily high if you disrupt that fiber line. So on that project, having that centimeter accuracy was so critical to them.
[00:31:28] Terri: Yeah.
[00:31:29] Matthew: And being able to identify and then have anybody that’s out working on that project, being able to hold up their phone and going, oh, there’s a fiber line here. Let’s really be careful of what we’re doing here.
[00:31:43] Terri: Right.
[00:31:44] Matthew: You know, which is a huge, I mean, that alone on that project was just a, was such a savings for them.
[00:31:51] Matthew: So you have that, and that’s a financial motivator for the end users, right? Of why they want to do it. And even then, the construction company isn’t the one [00:32:00] doing the locating. They’re the ones hiring the locators. So the end construction company has to also see the value because they ultimately end up paying for it.
[00:32:08] Terri: Okay?
[00:32:09] Matthew: So there’s that value proposition, but then there’s also, once again, depending on the market, and we have states now looking at, as a homeowner, you call 8-1-1 because you’re going to put up a fence.
[00:32:21] Terri: Mm-hmm.
[00:32:21] Matthew: They come out, they mark it, they put spray paint on the ground. Great. That spray paint is gone.
[00:32:26] Matthew: There’s another project coming up, you call 8-1-1, they have to go back and do all that work again and figure out what’s on your property and that costs them money. Versus going, oh, we’ve already located that piece of property, we have all the data already. No need to send somebody back out in the field, we’ve got it.
[00:32:44] Terri: Right.
[00:32:45] Matthew: It’s a different business model, different, proposition to the business.
[00:32:51] Terri: Right.
[00:32:51] Matthew: In terms of their saving and, you know, the value to them.
[00:32:54] Terri: Yeah. And different level of risk for sure, but still a big deal to that particular [00:33:00] homeowner if something goes wrong and probably all the neighbors on that street.
[00:33:03] Matthew: Yes.
[00:33:04] Terri: So does your business still have its own sales team, or do you lean just on your channel partners and how has that evolved?
[00:33:13] Matthew: No, we, we still have our own sales team.
[00:33:16] Terri: Okay.
[00:33:16] Matthew: There’s a couple reasons. First of all, we work internationally. I mean, our product works anywhere in the world. There’s some challenges with that. And so we have, you know, one person that’s, you know, has the worst hours because they’re always on the phone with Australia.
[00:33:30] Terri: Okay.
[00:33:31] Matthew: I feel kind of sorry for them, but it’s just, you know, there’s the time zone differences and so there’s that, and we don’t have those relationships with the distributors in other countries.
[00:33:41] Matthew: So that’s one reason. And then we also have people call us direct. They find about our product online, they have information, you know they want more information and there’s people that, have legacy products that aren’t going to a dealer looking for new hardware.
[00:33:59] Terri: [00:34:00] Yeah.
[00:34:00] Matthew: That still want our software. So we work with them as well.
[00:34:03] Terri: Okay.
[00:34:04] Matthew: And then we have larger organizations that come to us and go, help us think about this. Before we even start talking about the hardware, let’s talk about our needs and how you fit into it as the software. So we deal directly with them, and then sometimes we’ll bring the hardware manufacturers behind us, which they love.
[00:34:23] Terri: Yeah. Oh, I bet.
[00:34:25] Matthew: So we try to make it that win-win.
[00:34:27] Terri: Yeah. So you’re, you’re creating an environment where you’re not competing with them, you’re figuring out, maybe they pull you in most of the time, but maybe there are instances where you pull them in as well. Because I know that sometimes with channel marketing programs, you kind of develop this unintentional conflict or sometimes it’s an intentional conflict and that can cause quite a bit of friction, but it sounds like you’ve kind of designed it so that you’re not creating that friction. You’re trying to make,
[00:34:57] Matthew: We do our best.
[00:34:59] Terri: Yeah.
[00:34:59] Matthew: Yeah. It’s a, [00:35:00] it’s a lot of meetings. It’s a lot of conversations to make sure that you’re not stepping on each other’s toes.
[00:35:06] Terri: Mm-hmm.
[00:35:07] Matthew: Um, and then, sometimes it’s at the dealer level where you, once again, you may have a problem where they sell competing hardware.
[00:35:13] Terri: Yeah.
[00:35:13] Matthew: But yet you’re the software solution that works on both. And so you do as much as you can to be neutral. But if we’re brought in. As part of that sales process, you have to walk that line of, you always want to do what’s best for the end user. And so sometimes you’re like, you know, this hardware may be better than this hardware.
[00:35:36] Matthew: And you really have to have those conversations at the distributor level, because you want to make sure you’re not stepping on toes at that level.
[00:35:43] Terri: Yeah. And you’ve gotta have trust in the relationship at the end of the day.
[00:35:46] Matthew: Yes.
[00:35:46] Terri: Yeah.
[00:35:47] Matthew: And there’s sometimes, you know, you’re like, oh, this would be a great deal for us.
[00:35:49] Matthew: And the distributor or the salesperson may be like, no, it’s not a good deal for you because X, Y, and Z, and you have to have that trust with them.
[00:35:58] Terri: Yeah.
[00:35:59] Terri: Well, I want to [00:36:00] make sure before we finish up our conversation that we do talk a little bit about your hat that you wear as the mayor of the city of Fruita.
[00:36:09] Terri: It’s fun living in two different worlds. I know. I mean, let’s get ready for a big old left turn here in the conversation. So, but it’s a left turn, but still a lot of like common threads in the marketing story is that in your role as mayor, what are some of like civil things and kind of political things aside when you think about messaging to the community?
[00:36:33] Terri: How do you approach that? Like what are the things that you’re thinking of strategically to figure out how to develop that message to the community?
[00:36:42] Matthew: So, I will not make this political at all.
[00:36:44] Terri: Yeah.
[00:36:45] Matthew: But the nice thing in Fruita is you don’t run as a Republican or Democrat or an Independent, you just run as an individual, which is great.
[00:36:54] Matthew: It also creates a blank slate in terms of what you talk about.
[00:36:57] Terri: Mm-hmm.
[00:36:57] Matthew: Because there’s no [00:37:00] party or whatever that you have to kind of deal with. Coming from a marketing background, it’s a, there, there’s kind of two phases. One is you have to get elected.
[00:37:09] Terri: Mm-hmm.
[00:37:10] Matthew: And so that’s like a standard campaign. We live in a small enough community where it’s a lot of coffees and you’re meeting with people, you know, for me it’s, you identify your principles and make sure that’s what you talk about.
[00:37:20] Matthew: And then it’s a lot of coffees, a lot of yard signs and just getting out.
[00:37:25] Terri: Yeah.
[00:37:25] Matthew: They’re fine. Great. You get elected, you come into office and then you’re like, uhoh. Now what? And so for the hard part for me is like I come from, you know, with a marketing background, like I know my ideal customer profile.
[00:37:40] Terri: Mm-hmm.
[00:37:41] Matthew: Like, you know, they’re this age, they’re this, here’s their income, here’s what they’re interested in. All of a sudden you come into a municipal level, everybody’s like, everybody’s your client. And you really have to kind of figure out, once again, I always get back to [00:38:00] principle based leadership, but your messaging has to follow your principles and it has to be consistent no matter what the audience is.
[00:38:10] Matthew: But it’s a very, very different kind of way that you deliver it.
[00:38:16] Terri: Right.
[00:38:16] Matthew: It, it was, it was a little bit of a learning curve.
[00:38:19] Terri: Mm-hmm.
[00:38:20] Matthew: At first to go like, Nope, I’m only going to talk to this group. And you’re like, oh, nope. Messed that one up. So, and really, how do you do that. And then the other challenge is from, you know, so that’s as an individual, but then as a city.
[00:38:34] Terri: Yeah.
[00:38:34] Matthew: Like communication is key. Community engagement is so important and how do you reach people who may not be all that interested until it doesn’t go the they the way that they want it to, and then they become very interested. So how do you kind of push that information through all these different channels?
[00:38:55] Terri: Yeah.
[00:38:56] Matthew: And then getting that feedback on how people are listening to you.
[00:38:59] Terri: [00:39:00] Yeah.
[00:39:00] Matthew: You know, and I kind of joke about, we just did a community survey and only 67% of the respondents realized the city had a website and you’re just like, oh, this shouldn’t be this hard. But, you know, but fair enough.
[00:39:15] Terri: Yeah.
[00:39:15] Matthew: You know, we do mailings to every house, you know, once a quarter, like how much outreach can you do to all the different communities?
[00:39:26] Terri: Yeah.
[00:39:27] Matthew: To make sure that they know what’s going on, make sure that their voice is heard. And it’s very, it feels sometimes very scattered and shotgun approach, but you just gotta hit as many of those groups as you can.
[00:39:43] Terri: Yeah.
[00:39:43] Matthew: And it’s a very different way to think.
[00:39:46] Terri: I’m sure it is. I, you and I have talked about this before, I think. Our community is small. It’s a, you know, well, I moved here from Houston, which is like four or five, 6 million people, whatever it is these days. And what is [00:40:00] the population of Fruita of 10, 12,000? I don’t even, I don’t even know.
[00:40:03] Matthew: We’re just under 14,000.
[00:40:06] Terri: Okay.
[00:40:06] Matthew: Yeah. And we’re, and we’re seven square miles
[00:40:09] Terri: is just, you’re making me love living here even more just with those numbers.
[00:40:13] Matthew: But I worked at a place. That had 45,000 employees on a 47 square acre campus. Like, I worked at a place larger than where I now live.
[00:40:22] Terri: What a difference. That’s crazy, but what I was going to say is something that I think is really interesting about our community is that you go to some cities or towns and you, they have like a homogeneous feel. That is not how Fruita is. Which again is another reason I like it here. It’s there’s a very diverse culture and there isn’t a, like a consistency in thought where you, where you meet people from Fruita and you’re like, oh, they must be like this.
[00:40:52] Terri: No, that isn’t how Fruita is.
[00:40:56] Matthew: No. Yeah. And there is a little bit of secret sauce in how that, I mean, that [00:41:00] didn’t happen by accident.
[00:41:01] Terri: Yeah.
[00:41:01] Matthew: And I would love to take credit for it. I can’t take any credit for it, because this is stuff that takes decades to build.
[00:41:09] Terri: Yeah. But that makes it harder to message and communicate because there is this kind of very wide variety of things people are looking for and trying to find that common ground I’m sure is
[00:41:25] Matthew: Do you want to know part of the secret sauce?
[00:41:27] Terri: Yeah.
[00:41:28] Matthew: So part of the secret sauce is there’s like five, seven percent of any community that’s highly engaged.
[00:41:35] Terri: Yeah.
[00:41:36] Matthew: I mean, that’s just kind of the way it works and you see them at all the same events and they, you know, they’re kind of always showing up.
[00:41:42] Matthew: What works well for Fruita is we have boards and commission, and some of those are through our charter and some of them are designed by council as an important area. And those boards and commissions are very diverse in terms of [00:42:00] livability.
[00:42:00] Terri: Mm-hmm.
[00:42:01] Matthew: That’s a whole separate group, which focuses a lot on, the senior population within the community.
[00:42:08] Matthew: We have a arts and council. Highly, highly involved. So we have all these, you know, boards and commissions that are out there, and those all attract that 5% within their community.
[00:42:23] Terri: Okay.
[00:42:23] Matthew: But then we do a lot of time and effort. Matter of fact, we have one of these tomorrow night, where we get all the boards and commissions together.
[00:42:31] Matthew: For a meeting to talk about what they’re doing to educate each other, because we know they go back to their individual communities and discuss it there.
[00:42:39] Terri: Okay.
[00:42:39] Matthew: It’s, once again, it’s finding those advocates within each one of those communities that can help push that message. So it, we, you talked about this before. You look at our Thursday night concerts
[00:42:50] Terri: mm-hmm.
[00:42:51] Matthew: That we do in the summer. Every group is there.
[00:42:55] Terri: It’s been in us, every group. Yeah. It’s, it’s crazy. It really is.
[00:42:59] Matthew: It’s so [00:43:00] much fun.
[00:43:00] Terri: Yeah.
[00:43:01] Matthew: And that’s because all those different kind of boards and commissions are out in their community talking about it and bring them all together in that one big space.
[00:43:10] Terri: Yeah, it, it’s, I remember the first one of those that my husband and I went to a few years ago. We put our lawn chairs out on the lawn of city hall. It is. And you, you have this like cool little band playing and you look around and you’re like, I have seen people from infant to people in their nineties, and the people in their nineties are out there on walkers, dancing to the Bluegrass band and every age in between.
[00:43:39] Terri: And in such a small community that is incredible. Full field every Thursday. Um, it, it’s, it’s,
[00:43:47] Matthew: it’s a lot of fun.
[00:43:48] Terri: It’s really wild. Yeah. It’s, it’s really, really fun. Uh oh, I better stop talking here. Everybody I know, all my friends here in Fruita are going to be like, stop talking about Fruita. We don’t want more people to move here.
[00:43:58] Terri: Which is hilarious. That’s a whole [00:44:00] different challenge you have to deal with. Yes. But I think, so something I’m hearing that is like a parallel is you talked about champions in your kind of nine to five life, right? Identifying these champions who can move it forward, and that seems to be what you’re describing.
[00:44:17] Matthew: It’s funny, I never thought about it until you brought it up.
[00:44:19] Terri: Yeah.
[00:44:20] Matthew: Those boards and commissions are almost like distributors for the city. I, I, I never thought about it until you mentioned that, but yeah. There is a lot of similarities.
[00:44:29] Terri: Yeah. It’s like they’re helping you get that message out and kind of the ones who want to stay engaged and involved, and they’re the people who will be followed.
[00:44:38] Matthew: Yep.
[00:44:38] Terri: Yeah. People listen to them. So that’s pretty cool. You arrived at the same strategy.
[00:44:44] Matthew: Never really thought about it.
[00:44:46] Terri: Yeah, that’s neat.
[00:44:47] Matthew: But now I gotta think about that some more and like, you know, what are the lessons learned from both of these?
[00:44:51] Terri: Right.
[00:44:52] Matthew: That might cross over.
[00:44:53] Terri: Yeah, that’s, that could be pretty interesting.
[00:44:55] Terri: I, I bet if you think back to your Disney days, [00:45:00] probably a lot of similarities with that huge employee base that you had to market to.
[00:45:05] Matthew: Yes.
[00:45:06] Terri: Yeah,
[00:45:06] Matthew: They were broken. The sections were different in terms of how they were identified, but very much so, because you had senior level all the way down to Frontline.
[00:45:18] Matthew: And then part of my responsibility was also because our audience was the cast member and we looked at, casting, which is their, outreach for hiring group. We’re like, they’re just not our cast members yet, so we should help market to them as well. So we had the whole gamut.
[00:45:35] Terri: Oh yeah,
[00:45:35] Matthew: we did the college program.
[00:45:37] Terri: Yeah.
[00:45:38] Matthew: How do you get 16,000 interns a year?
[00:45:41] Terri: Well, I have a brother-in-law who was a cast member. He went to the University of Florida and that’s must be how you found him was through that program.
[00:45:48] Matthew: Mm-hmm.
[00:45:49] Matthew: Yep.
[00:45:49] Terri: That’s pretty funny. Wow. I learned a lot in this conversation.
[00:45:54] Terri: So I really appreciate it. I think we’ve got a lot of good nuggets. I know there are listeners of our program who [00:46:00] are in a space where channel marketing is really important. And I think you shared some really great stuff that can help some companies out there. So I appreciate it.
[00:46:08] Matthew: Well, I’m glad and thanks for having me and
[00:46:10] Matthew: Yeah. I enjoyed talking. I mean, this is great for me. I get to talk about what I’m passionate about, so thank you.
[00:46:15] Terri: Yeah. No, you’re welcome. Thank, thanks again.
[00:46:17] Terri: If people would like to connect with you, what’s the best way, I guess, for them to do that?
[00:46:23] Matthew: You can, I’m on the website of PointMan.com.
[00:46:27] Terri: Okay.
[00:46:27] Matthew: There’s that. So I’m easily accessible that way. And then with Fruita, you know, just go to the Fruita website and. Look for the mayor and my cell phone number and emails there.
[00:46:37] Terri: Just look tall, just look for the tallest guy at all the events. We’ll include the link to the PointMan website.
[00:46:44] Matthew: Probably more on the PointMan side than the city side.
[00:46:49] Terri: We’ll include that in the show notes and, you know, I, I encourage you to reach out to Matthew if you’ve got questions about anything or with me. For the same. Um, but thanks again. I really appreciate your time [00:47:00] today.
[00:47:00] Matthew: Oh, thank you,
[00:47:00] Matthew: it’s been a pleasure.
[00:47:01] Terri: Thank you for listening to B2B marketing methods. Please be sure to follow us on your favorite podcast channel and leave us a review. We’d love to hear from you and connect. You can find me on LinkedIn or visit our company [email protected].