Dive into the world of B2B account-based marketing with Matt Reiners from Arch BioEnergy. Learn about the importance of crafting compelling stories, understanding your customer, and what Arch BioEnergy is doing to revitalize communities through innovative business practices.
In this episode, Matt explains his journey from large-scale ethanol production to founding a startup focused on waste transformation and decarbonization. He shares insights on crafting unique value propositions for different customer segments, maintaining deal momentum throughout the sales process, and the importance of authenticity in brand storytelling.
If you're considering ABM as part of your go-to-market strategy, this episode explores a unique application of this method. Matt discusses the differences he's experienced between a "one-to-many" marketing model and a "one-to-few" approach to B2B marketing.
1. The transition from mass marketing to account-based marketing (ABM) in B2B settings
2. The importance of deep customer research and tailored messaging in ABM
3. Storytelling techniques for high-level presentations to sophisticated audiences
4. The potential for renewable energy projects to revitalize rural communities
5. Common mistakes in B2B marketing and how to avoid them
6. Tips for starting an effective ABM campaign
Matt: But having those partners at our side to help craft our storyboard so that then we can take our information, do our research on our customer and paint, hopefully, the Mona Lisa for them, right? That's really, it all kind of converges into that information gathering world. And it's about, you know, having tight stories, having good understanding of our value, and then making sure that we can message the things that are gonna resonate to that specific receiver of information. And again, it's never the same with two different groups, right? We never are, it may be a similar, but it's never the same.
Intro
Bill: Welcome to the Missing Half podcast where we're discovering what's missing in manufacturing and B2B marketing. Today, I've been looking really forward to visiting with this guest is Matt Reiners from Arch BioEnergy. And Matt and I go way back to share some scars and some stories from the days gone by. But Matt, thank you for joining us. I really appreciate you coming on the show.
Matt: Bill, it's a pleasure to be here. Looking forward to the chat today.
Bill: Great. So Matt, you and I, we kind of got together and built a relationship back in, and it's kind of funny to say this because it seems so long ago in what I call that COVID crazy market, right? There was a lot going on and there was just some crazy things happening and you and I worked looking at some GPOs specifically in the hospitality industry, trying to run some big, large national and almost international contracts in the sanitation and hand sanitizer space. So we kind cut our teeth together in that wild time. So that's kind of where we started. But those were some interesting moments, right?
Matt: Yeah, a little different world now than what we were living in back then when we first met, certainly. A little more certainty in our lives, to be sure.
Bill: Yes. Yeah, and which I'll take it right like I today is much brighter than yesterday in that regard. So we'll take it.
Matt: Yeah, right, every day I wake up and the world is boring. That doesn't bother me after living through that.
Bill: Yes, there's a I think it's an old Chinese proverb that says, we live in interesting times. And I think that person was very bitter and angry and wanted to like really dampen everybody's day when they thought about that saying, right? Because it was not a was not a saying of hope. It was not a hopeful philosophy. So anyway, well, Matt, you've had an amazing career and worked in some different situations, worked for some very, very large companies, and now you're in your own company with a smaller group. Could you tell us a little bit about Arch BioEnergy? What is Arch BioEnergy? What are you guys trying to do? And I just find this is a fascinating story, and really I'm excited for you guys and what you're trying to accomplish.
Matt: Yeah, Bill, you know, Arch BioEnergy is a waste transformation company, really. You know, the world is short on decarbonization opportunities, in particular in the fuel space. And, you know, we've had a ton of great innovation. I actually came from the ethanol industry, which is where I cut my teeth. And Bill, certainly you and I met each other, but, know, came from that world. That's really first generation fuels, right, biodiesel, ethanol, even to some extent, renewable diesel. But as we look at further decarbonization and really it's less about, you a greenie or not? It's more about, there's a demand out there in the marketplace for decarbonization products. Some of those are consumer driven and some of those are policy driven. And so really what Arch BioEnergy does is we're taking waste in a second generation fashion and we're transforming that into renewable diesel and sustainable aviation fuel. So we take waste organic biomass. In our instance, it’s forest residue that used to go to pulp and paper and guess what, nobody reads newspapers anymore. So there's plenty of it laying around and it truly is waste. We're not cutting down trees in a forest just to use in our process. This is the leftovers from what Home Depot gets, what Menards gets, what's, you know, what the big box stores get. And we take that and through a process that we've worked closely with some technology providers to develop further, we convert that into, to diesel fuel and jet fuel. And so that's our world. We're just a waste transformation company. Today we're focused on wood waste from the forest, but long-term we can use, the system's been tested on over a hundred different feedstocks. So kind of the world of waste is our oyster, Bill. We just get to decide which waste we want to convert, but it makes a highly valuable, highly decarbonized fuel product that can go into the marketplace that exists today.
Bill: So one of the things I think that's really compelling about your story is, and let's take all of the politics and all of the different thinking around decarbonization and the green movements and all of those things out of it. You are living by the old saying of one man's waste is another man's raw material. So this to me should not be controversial at all because we're not trying to displace something. We're not trying to get rid of one industry over another. This is, let's take what's available without making very many changes in the environment, in the production cycles or whatever, and have it help everybody achieve these goals of decarbonization. Does that feel right?
Matt: That is exactly right. I mean, there's literally no change to the shape of the industry, the forest products industry with us entering the market. They just drive to a different driveway with this waste product. Instead of leaving it in the forest or taking it to the few remaining paper mills, they just turn into our driveway. So we're not disrupting anything that's happening. And really you could make that case about corn ethanol and renewable diesel using soybeans, right? But, look, back when those markets came to be and those products came to be, we were overloaded with commodities, right? And so initially that was a waste transformation activity or certainly a supply and demand corrector to some extent, right? It's taking things that were available and converting them into usable product. But we just do that with a different usable product and a different waste, right? That's all we're doing.
Bill: Well and certainly as we have seen, you know, I used to do about a billion pieces of direct mail a year early in the 2000s, right? In the late 90s. Certainly that industry doesn't even exist anymore, but that is not coming back. When we get our mail at the post office for our company, it used to be, they used to bring it in in boxes. Now one person can carry the one to three letters that come in a day, right? And it's just, that's not coming back. So there is no currently, no other alternative for this pulp or this by-product in that forestry segment that is going to have that significant churn rate or burn through rate or whatever you want to call it usage, right? So that's, that's, that's amazing. Whenever you look at this market and you look at how you guys have identified it. And I mean, this is really an entrepreneurial journey, right? I mean, you're looking at a parallel process from corn and soybeans, right? From the ethanol approach. But this has really been an upstart for you and a couple of individuals to really envision this and bring it to market. Can you tell us a little bit about that entrepreneurial journey?
Matt: Yeah, you know, it's really, it's a kind of a convergence of opportunity, right? And then knowing the right people that are gritty enough to say yes to jumping into something like this, you know, going from, you know, the world where your paycheck is secured every day and the process is pretty easy, right? It's eight to five and you go, you leave and you go do your thing. You know, talking to a couple of other guys, dumb enough, as dumb as me to say yes to that, right? I tricked them. We all tricked each other, but you're exactly right. I mean, you know, we, we kind of, started this business with a goal of figuring out how to bring some of these second generation fuels to market. When we started, we didn't really even know how we were going to do it yet. We just knew that there was an appetite in the marketplace, both from the consumer poll and from the regulatory environment that these things needed to happen, right? There's somebody some way needed to make it happen. And we looked at that as a huge opportunity, certainly a lot of risk. We're not dumb, right? We looked at it and said, look, there's a lot of risk here, but you know, we've got the right team. We've got incredible scientists, incredible business people, and then myself on the team that are, you know, whatever I am, but that are all more than capable of figuring complex things out. And so that's really how we kind of decided to take the journey together. And it probably wasn't the easiest discussion I've ever had with my beautiful bride, but you know, she trusts me and I guess the other guys, their brides trusted them and here we are. So it's been an interesting journey thus far though, certainly all sorts of ups and downs and it's the startup world, right? Every day you wake up and your job is whatever is in front of you. I'm the sales guy and the innovation guy, right? So I run a parallel path around commercial activity, marketing, and then science. But there are some days where I am the PowerPoint builder or I am in talking to the investment bankers or I am out raising money or I'm doing whatever, right? And so you're constantly, we're all constantly uncomfortable. But in that process, we're constantly learning as well, right? I've gained so many financial skills that I did not know I could obtain and retain through this process. It's just been incredible for me. And I think a lot of the guys on our team, there are some scientists, but some of them aren't. And so they've been able to learn a bit of that from me as well, right? And from Dr. Jerry on our team, as we've worked through the chemistry and the physics and the thermodynamics and all of those fun things that go along with the process as well. So. Yeah, everybody's sharpening their axe every day. We just don't know what we're sharpening it with yet.
Bill: Sure. And then as in any entrepreneurial process, you hit it off of stones, right? That axe gets hit off a stone sometimes and sometimes it strikes the wood. No pun intended with the talk about the renewable forest products. But the, I think that journey you talk about, I saw something on the internet the other day, so it has to be true, that nobody knows what they're doing. Some people just do it anyway. And I think that's the credo of the entrepreneur is that you’ve just got to go figure it out. And Matt, I've loved seeing that transformation in you from where you came from more of that nine to five guy, right, corporate guy to now a guy who's out there doing it. And, you know, just making it happen. I love seeing that. And I want to follow up on something else you said. I think anybody who has a partner who is an entrepreneur definitely earns so much respect, right? Whether it's that wife or husband or whatever that is the co-teammate of that entrepreneur. They deserve a Nobel Peace Prize. They deserve like whatever that they're just amazing parts of our team and they put up with a lot. So no we recognize that call out as well.
Matt: Well, I just got to say my I'm just settling the score. My wife started a gymnastics business 20 years ago, right? And she tricked me the first time. So I'm just settling the score with this one.
Bill: And Matt, as long as you believe that and keep telling yourself that you're good to go, right? No, but yeah, you're.
Matt: I still go cut her grass and do all the maintenance work around the gym, right? So she doesn't have to do anything with Arch BioEnergy. Fortunate for her.
Bill: And congratulations to her, think, because correct me if I'm wrong, but she's opening her third facility currently. Is that correct?
Matt: We've got two open and we're, yeah, we're looking at a third. So we will see what comes to be. But yeah, certainly she's, it's been a fun success story to watch. And actually I've learned a lot through that process too, because, know, that's a, we're selling a service there, you know, in the form of gymnastics, we're selling a product in our world, but I've learned a lot of the marketing nuance and a lot of those types of things from her as she's grown those muscles in her business over time. So it's been, it's been nice to work on this together.
Bill: No, that's great. Well, and that's interesting because my dad always used to tell me that deals and growing business are all the same amount of effort. It's just how many zeros are on the end. And, you know, certainly she's working on more of that direct to consumer market with, you know, one to many that gets to one to few who are actually her students. You're working in a little bit different market right now with the ABM and a very narrow target audience. Well, and maybe, you know, let's shift gears and talk about that. Matt, one of our goals here at the Missing Half podcast is to discover what's missing in manufacturing and B2B marketing. And I certainly think your story really provides some stark contrast to different approaches to market. And let me frame that up a little bit. So at Poet, you had a ton of employees, you had a number of salespeople, different target markets, different target customer groups and the way they bought and the way you went to market. And then today you have a company that has a very narrow handful, like probably count them on one hand. Maybe if you stretch, you could get onto the second hand. You certainly don't have to take your shoes and socks off, right? This is a very small group. But those are just two different ways to go to market, right? One to few and then one to just a couple. So could you maybe talk about, you know, starting with your experience at a very large producer and how many people you had there and that whole sales and marketing process and then how that compares and contrast to what you're doing today?
Matt: Yeah, absolutely, Bill. So you know, during my time in the ethanol business, were the largest company, Poet was the largest ethanol company. And you know, we had a footprint of facilities all across the upper Midwest, both Eastern and Western Corn Belt. And we had a massive customer base. I mean, we're pumping out, you know, millions of tons of sellable product every year, which means you have tons and tons of customers. And they were in many different sectors. We had people that were feeding pigs, feeding chickens, feeding dairy cows, feeding beef cows, feeding shrimp, feeding fish, right? On one side. And then we had people who were making diesel fuel, adding calories to an animal diet. Any number of things. We just had asphalt, right? We were selling stuff into roads. We had just a mountain of customers. In a very unique, each of those customer groups was very unique and how they thought right. For example, the animal food guys, they thought about protein and calories. So right, we sold a grain byproduct from the ethanol production process, they looked at that as a calorie in a protein product. And then we sold them vegetable oil, the corn oil that we extract from the kernel of corn, and they looked at that as a calorie, right. And so we were speaking to their animal food language, right? Going to the renewable diesel business and the biodiesel business, they did not care. They were looking at chemistry and BTU value, right? They were looking at quality, the purity of the material because they were going to convert it into a BTU, not a calorie that's burned by an animal, but a calorie that's burned by a car, right? Or a truck. And so the way you speak to those people is very different. We were selling one or two truckloads to the animal guys. We were selling one or two train loads or many, many train loads to the biofuels guys, right? And so we had very different messages in the way we marketed. We had very different tactics with how we got our message out. We launched new products. We do those types of things, depending on what kind of vertical we were active in. But I wasn't alone doing that, right? We had expert, actually the guy that led our business, Greg Brooklyn, I'll give him a shout out. He's probably one of the best marketing brains I know. And, you know, he really launched our business into a dynamic marketing model where we had a team of people that helped us you know, survey the market, go to, you know, start to think and act and speak the way our customers thought and act, did and spoke, right. And it really changed our ability to market our product because, you know, we were an old fashioned trade firm. And that sounds bad to say an old fashioned trade firm, but it was what worked in the industry in the past. And so when you're moving millions of tons, if it isn't broke, don't change it, right. But in that world, we were able to really change the way we marketed directly to each of those individual sectors. And it was really to see that impact to see that change in philosophy, that change in messaging and that impact. And when everybody's aligned around that tight story, the value that tight story could bring, that was really cool. Now fast forward to where we're at today, right, where I don't have, you know, a whole marketing staff, and a whole sales staff of, you know, 50 people or whatever. You know, now where we're at today is we have, as you mentioned, one plant, one customer kind of a mindset, right? And so we're not selling to the masses trying to get this kind of collective informational interest. We're building a specific message to a specific customer's want, desire, need, trouble, problem, whatever you want to call it, right? So it's a very different world for us. We're not shooting a shotgun. We're snipers in this world, so to speak, right? We're very pinpoint message. takes a lot of, instead of worrying about what the graphic looks like, we're reading quarterly reports to Wall Street. We're reading their press releases. We're reading everything and anything we can to try to understand what their real problem is and whether our product is the solution to their problem. That certainly wasn't the foundational element of what we were doing in that broader kind one to many environment that we were operating in prior or that I was operating in prior.
Bill: Matt, that's so interesting that you recognize that difference because when we look at the larger or broader B2B market, we're looking for problems and solutions that we can find and replicate and then scale. Right? So if Poet found a specific recipe that worked for a beef producer, then they would try and find every beef producer in the country they could sell that to. Right? So they scaled it up. In this case, in your current situation, you're looking for such tailored solutions with no real runway of scalability because the end user here, your potential client has such a problem and a unique need for a solution set that's so customized to them that there is no scalability. Right. Cause the next customer you may get, they would have their own set of challenges. So that's so interesting that you recognize that. And I think when we look at ABM, account-based marketing, for anybody who doesn't understand that or that acronym, account-based marketing, ABM, we really have to take a different look. The fundamentals are the same. We still have problem definition and we have to provide a solution. But the depth of solution finding and problem definition is a hundredfold in ABM. And we really have to make sure we understand that client really, really well. Maybe even better than they understand themselves and really help them define their problems, help them find those solutions. One of the things I think that's interesting in this ABM approach is you have a lot, even though it's one client, you have a lot of stakeholders involved in these decisions. And when we look at the buyer's committee at these firms, but then we also have the regulatory community, the environmental communities that are influencing these decisions. Could you talk a little bit about how you've tried in this ABM approach to these very narrow group of clients how you're really trying to message and make sure you're prepared for all of those stakeholders from the CFO to the like all the people who are involved in this whole process.
Matt: Yeah, absolutely. But you know, let me give you a couple of examples, right? So the let's talk about the big oil and gas guys, for example, inside the government regulations, there are some rules that actually obligate them to purchase a certain amount of renewable fuel products. So in that instance, we're really speaking to hey, how can we either reduce the cost of their obligation, right, for them to meet that obligation? Or how can we expand the margin per gallon that they're achieving by meeting that average. So it's all about the dollars and cents for them. But if you flip it to like an airline participant, for example, there really isn't a huge obligation for the airlines. It's a consumer obligation, right? They're being asked by the customer to decarbonize. They're being asked, or for example, the big oil and gas guys are in the US. They're being asked to decarbonize, but the airline isn't, the US isn't. But if let's say United or Delta take off out of Chicago and head to Europe, when they land, they're obligated, right? They have to have, they have to have a certain amount of renewable fuel incorporated into their, to their entire fuel supply there in order to comply. So there's some really unique pieces to how we speak to each of those different groups, right? One is about cost of compliance and the other one's about, this is how you make your customers happy. And then there's a third group that we speak to. And this is the, you know, think of the UPS, DHL, FedEx, you know, whatever package haulers and their world is, Hey, I'm being asked to provide a low carbon supply chain. For my front end suppliers of packages that I fly around because the consumer is demanding a low carbon supply chain. Well, now they're not, again, they're not obligated by some government rule that says they have to reduce their carbon footprint in their activities, but rather they're under a customer obligation and a supply chain obligation to participate in a green supply chain in some way, shape or form. And so for them, it's an even different message than what we have with the airlines or with big oil and gas companies are those obligated parties that as we call them.
Bill: Well it it seems to me that some of these companies who are not obligated by regulation, who are just responding to the market, also need to recognize kind of FOMO, fear of missing out. If the most cost effective and most advantageous approaches to decarbonization are, if that supply chain is gobbled up in the regulatory climate, and then the regulatory climate extends itself to these voluntary compliance type of organizations. They're going to be left with a much higher cost situation because the supply of lower cost, more efficient decarbonization opportunities will be absorbed. And then they're going to, know, so if all of sudden in six months, UPS gets hit with this and Delta and American already ate up all the efficient supplies, well, they still have to meet the regulatory environment. They're just going to have to pay more money. So I think that's a great message for your team as well is that just getting in front of this, because let's be honest, if it's in Europe, it's probably in California. And if it's in California, three days later, it's across the United States. So it's just the nature of these things. And we're not going to get into whether that's right, wrong, or different. It's just a fact. So let's just deal with the facts of life, right? So I think that's very interesting. And when you look at the way you guys are communicating to market, I think is fascinating. And then as you've walked through like how deep your research is. And I would like to take a moment and really talk about that because I think one of the things that's missing in manufacturing and B2B marketing is that we don't know our clients well. And we need to double down on whether it's voice of customer research, whether it's in your case, you're dealing with publicly traded companies that have earnings reports, press releases, social media, however we can ingest information about our potential clients and their target markets, their industry verticals, we need to be doing that. I mean, Matt, you've in prior conversations, you mentioned you guys even went to some universities, did some research on your supply chain to make sure that this wasn't like pie in the sky or an apparition. Like, could you maybe talk about not only the research you did from a market standpoint, but then research you did to prepare you to communicate to that market so that it wasn't just because Matt said, but because the university such and such also is backing this research and those type of processes.
Matt: Yeah, absolutely. You Bill, you hit it right on the head with account based marketing. It's all about the details, right? I can, again, I can take a shotgun approach when I have a million customers that I can go after every guy that owns a beef cow, right? That's one way. And, you know, there's a lot of, Hey, I just need to make my name known and then hope my locational advantage is good enough to capture that business. Right. In the world we work in, every single detail matters, not just in the features, options, and benefits that we message to our customers. And certainly that is why we're doing the research. Because we have a lot of features, options and benefits, but I have to figure out the ones that resonate, right? So we spend a lot of time digging into again, their quarterly reports, understanding who's on their board of directors, their decision committees, right? Trying to figure out those bios to find out where did they come from? How do they think, act, react, right? That's all work that we do. We never make the same presentation twice, right? Like we go to one big oil and gas company today and tomorrow if I have a second big oil and gas company, guess what? It's not the same presentation because I'm hitting on a different series of features, options and benefits. To that end though, we, all of these folks in every one of those environments, they need a degree of simplicity, assurance, risk avoidance, right? Nobody wants to be the clown who bet on a billion dollar project or a hundred or even a hundred million dollar project and have it go sour, right? And so, to what you mentioned earlier around university activity and valid third party external validation that we aren't crazy. We have spent a lot of time on that. We've worked with the University of Arkansas at Monticello, who's kind of the area expert in the of the Southeast part of the United States and the University of Georgia are forest products experts. So when you think about that supply and demand balance around, you know, forest products and the departure of paper mills and hey is there going to be a, you know, a silvicultural change or the way they grow trees, are they going to change that to reduce the amount of this waste that's available and those types of things. We spend a ton of time with them learning so that we could take that and incorporate that message of, look, this is a sustainable system with a sustainable supply that is risk free for our side of the house, right? Our feedstock supply is very well assured, right? Then we take it through our reactor and on the back end, we make molecules, right? We make these hydrocarbon molecules. Well, guess what? We better show that there's a degree of consistency and a degree of repeatability there. So we worked with world-class scientists at the University of Purdue who probably are, they're certainly the smartest people I've ever talked to. It's crazy. They have some really unique ways of dissecting very complex molecular structures like we have. We have about 2000 compounds in the output of our system. And we were able to work with them to provide the necessary validation to our message that yes, it is what it should be. It looks just like what will come out of a barrel of crude oil, except for it originated from a tree for us, right? The only difference is can you carbon-14 date it, right? This, this kind of age signature. That's the only difference you can tell a barrel of of sustainable aviation fuel produced from oil is, you know, millions of years old because of its carbon-14 footprint. And you can tell ours is a hundred years old because of our carbon-14 footprint. That's it, right? But having those partners at our side to help craft our storyboard so that then we can take our information, do our research on our customer and paint, hopefully, the Mona Lisa for them, right? That's really, it all kind of converges into that information gathering world. And it's about, you know, having tight stories, having good understanding of our value, and then making sure that we can message the things that are gonna resonate to that specific receiver of information. And again, it's never the same with two different groups, right? We never are, it may be a similar, but it's never the same.
Bill: So Matt, think you just hit on something that's so, important. And I think is this is something that I think we all are missing or can miss in ABM. And that is storytelling. Even if we're presenting a billion dollar opportunity to a group of highly educated, highly sophisticated, very motivated and very sophisticated, whatever you want to call them. I mean, these are heavy hitters. These are really smart people and they're very aware of all of the things that are impacting them. Even in those ABM opportunities, the storytelling in a presentation is so critical because even they will tune out if it's just death by PowerPoint and so many details and so much information. I mean, they know after you make the presentation, you're going to send over the decks and the white papers and those type of things for their scientists and their people to validate, right. So when you're presenting at that high level, have you seen that storytelling being such an important component of your ABM strategy?
Matt: Absolutely. Look, you've got to get the hook in quick, right? We always talk about, in our team, we always discuss what's the hook, right? Look, because they're big oil and gas companies with a huge balance sheet. So every person that looks like us in the market also calls them. We're not the first guys in the boardroom, right? We're not the first guys to present to them over Zoom or Teams or whatever. So our story has to be unique and compelling and differentiated from the others. And really that's why we take the time to put together the storyboard, to accentuate the hook early and often, right? To let them know, you know, to bring it back to them. We want, I don't know if you're familiar with the step-up card model, right? But the idea that it needs to hit to them at some point and it needs to hit to them at some point relatively short into the presentation, early in the presentation, so that you can get them engaged. If they, again, we're the hundredth guy that's showed up to their boardroom. So if we don't get them engaged early, trust me, they're checking their phone, they don't care, they got other stuff going on. They're running, know, multi-billion dollar businesses worth many, many more billions than that. They've got, you know, thousands and thousands of shareholders. They do not care about us unless we make them care about us. And so the way to do that is that message, that hook, that those features, those options and those benefits and how we research those and make sure that we're hitting on things that keep them up at night. That is so critical to us is to ring that bell early in that meeting.
Bill: No, that's so true. And I say this all the time and my team, if they watch this episode, will get sick of me saying it again. In B2B purchasing today, no one cares about who you are or what you do until they understand that you recognize their problem and can provide a solution to it. And we see corporate communication, whether it's on a website, social media videos, whatever, companies are missing the boat because they want to start with like let's take a video. They want to have this slow fade into a picture of the building with the logo in front of it. Who cares? Everybody's got a building. Everybody's got a, a sign and you know, manicured landscape. Who are you? What problem do you solve? And does that solve my problem? Okay now I'm interested in learning about your company. And I think you guys are right on here with set that hook early because if they recognize that you care about them and understand their problem, they're more inclined to listen. Because if not, they're checking tee time. They're off on the next, know, when are they booked at the club or whatever. That's such an important insight into what is missing in a lot of ABM marketing. Matt, when you were, go ahead.
Matt: Yeah, they can build through the, the other piece that's important is in those environments, especially that first engagement with a, with their broader team, we're not trying to get a yes, right? I'm not trying to leave that meeting with a signed contract. I'm trying to get ahead of the rest and get the second meeting, right? And get that continued interest. And that's so important. I think people miss that a lot of times we've heard that from people that we've dealt with is they're like, you know, a lot of people show up and go, you're just an obligated or you guys are an obligated party. So you have to do business with us. And they shake their head and go, no, don't. So 99 more guys waiting in line out the door in the lobby. That would be happy to deal with us. Right. So, you know, for us, it's about that, that introductory call has a different shape and feel than the second call, than the third call, than the contract discussions, right. I mean, it's a kind of an iterative, you know, process that build it's the snowball that builds on itself. But if you if you don't get their interest, as you mentioned early and often, you're forgotten the second they walk out of the board room.
Bill: You've also just hit on something else that I believe is missing in manufacturing and B2B marketing when it comes to ABM. We'll talk to a lot of potential clients and they say, we don't really need marketing because we only have that 10, 20, 50 in our target market. Well, the reality is you don't need attraction marketing. You know who they are, you've identified them. You need bottom of the funnel to validate your company, to validate who you are. But what we really see is that sales enablement function. When you move from that marketing journey to that sales journey. And you do have the, are we a fit call in the discovery. And then you, you know, listen to more of their specific needs and then move them to the proposal. And then you move to the, know, objections to the proposal meeting or however you're, you've defined that sales life cycle. That's where you need to be really crisp the whole way through. And I think one of the reasons why some companies lose these deals and I've seen it before is they do really well in that first presentation, that discovery presentation. And then as they get closer to the finish line and closer to pay dirt, the amount of effort they put into the proposals and into the storytelling decreases. And I don't know if they get so excited about closing the sale that they just forget the fundamentals of continuing to insert the hook, continuing to present the story or what it is, but it feels like we see an inverse relationship to the amount of effort that should be involved in the presentation and storytelling towards the end of the process as what we should see. So I love what you're saying there because that's so important to recognize what could be missing in someone's process.
Matt: Yeah, and we talk in terms of deal momentum a lot, right? And that's really how we kind of frame that, that activity up. And there, we see it, we've even made that mistake in our business, right? Where, where you've gotten to know the people that you're dealing with closely well enough that things become a little more casual, right? And to your point, you maybe that momentum begins to slip a little bit. And that's exactly where you hit the valley of death, right? That's exactly where you begin to spin your wheels. And things don't advance the way they're supposed to. And eventually you lose the deal or the deal changes so wildly in shape and form that it no longer makes sense for either party. So we talk a lot in our weekly groupings inside Arch BioEnergy about maintaining our deal momentum, serving the customer, continuing to serve in a professional manner with them and continuing to all center around the message and the momentum of the deal. Because time, as a developer, right, as a startup, time is our most valuable attribute. We don't have endless amounts of money. But what we do have is 24 hours in a day, seven days a week, right? That's what we can commit to the project. And so we have to be smart with our time and continually build that deal momentum.
Bill: No, that's a great insight and takeaway. I think that's so important. Matt, one of the other things I think that's so interesting about what you're doing at Arch BioEnergy, mean, not only are looking at decarbonization, not only are you looking at a supply source from someone's waste stream, but you're looking at potentially revitalizing communities in the United States in what we would almost call back country, backwater, not in Austin, or Charlotte or New York City, but in towns that have been absolutely decimated with the manufacturing, leaving these communities for the past 10, 15, 20 years. And I think as you talk about this, I mean, I personally believe that we're recording this two days after the stock market dip in August and we're in an election cycle. I think the word jobs is going to become a huge conversation piece, not only with our friends on both sides of the aisle in DC, but at the dinner table across America. The word jobs and income and all of those things are really going to become at the forefront with the economic situation we're in. And you guys are potentially putting together something that could revitalize some communities. Could you talk a little bit about that, please?
Matt: Yeah, absolutely Bill. You know, I grew up in a very tiny town in Northeast South Dakota. And you know, our town saw a big shot in the arm when an ethanol plant came to our neighborhood, right? We had one built about 10 miles from my family farm and it completely changed the dynamic. We had really one primary employer, which was a giant cheese factory, delicious cheese by the way, but a giant cheese factory. And that was really about it, right? All of the other stuff we had had in this little town had gone away. We had this this kind of nice sized insurance company, we actually had a skyscraper strangely enough in my tiny little home town of 5,000 people, built like a nine story building, it was a big office building. But that industry went away and left our little community decimated, right? And so I got to see the value of that new entrant, that quality entrant. And it wasn't just because it, I mean, that plant only added like 60 jobs to the local community, but it added incrementally more dollars, right? The price of the corn. And guess what? When it's a little ag community and everybody's got a little more money in their pocket, Main Street thrives, the gas stations thrive, the little alco store we had thrived, right? Everybody did better. You know, fast forward to where we're at now, as you mentioned, when these paper product companies left the places where we're doing business, they left huge holes in the local economy. You know, for example, one of the towns, the primary town where we're focusing our activity in Arkansas, they had a big pulp and paper mill there that employed about 10% of the entire community. And they closed their doors. Well, guess what? When 10% of the community loses great paying jobs all at once, it decimates the local economy, right? And they've never recovered. This happened 20 something years ago. And they're still trying to recover. There's still poverty. There's still what we call EB5, or basically carve outs inside of the government where if you build something inside of this area, you get incentives because it's so, the economy's in such tough shape, right? And they're looking to do anything and everything they can. Couple the jobs with the fact that today, because there is no liquidity for these waste forest products, the value of land is suffering. The value of the forest product industry is suffering, right? There are loggers that are living on their last dime. There are trucking companies that are living on their last time, because there's no more money to go around, right? Yeah, they're getting it moving, they're all surviving, but they're barely surviving, right? And our model we bring in, we want to pay people fairly. Certainly our jobs inside of the facility are going to be excellent, well over the median pay scale locally. But we've also struck deals with the forest products guys that are going to pay them a little help, a premium to keep them in business, right? We're willing to pay them a staying alive wage to do their job, right? We don't want them to just do it for their pennies. We want them to do it and be able to grow and expand with us as we grow and expand. Now that doesn't mean we can give away the farm either doing it, right? But we can come to reasonable, you know, contract terms that allow them to know that they have a degree of profitability ahead of them. And so that they can reinvest those dollars into their business and grow their business with us because without them, we can't grow either, right? We can't double our plant locally. We can't build the second plant 100 miles away. We can't do any of those things if that economy as a whole doesn't pick itself up. So I think that, you know, yeah, it's fun to be, you know, in the green world. It's fun to be a capitalist, right? Whichever of those two we’re in business for it doesn't matter. They're kind of one in the same anymore, right? But in reality, for me, the probably the most important thing that certainly like the one of the reasons I get up and work this hard every day is for that is that economic that kind of community rehabilitation, the realization that we can bring these jobs to that local environment. And, and, you know, again, I got to watch it when I was a kid and how it changed everybody's, you know, quality of life around me. You know, these guys deserve it too. These people, you know, they deserve it too. You know, they had, they had this huge business go away and nothing in return for it, right? Nothing showed back up to help them. And we'd really feel like our project can be a huge boost to that local economy and really get things spinning again down there.
Bill: I grew up in and still live in the Rust Belt. Over here in Pittsburgh, Akron, Canton, Cleveland, up through St. Mary's, this whole Ohio, Pennsylvania belt was part of the Industrial Revolution when they first found oil here in Petrolia Valley and just amazing growth with steel and coal. And then just all sorts of manufacturing that then supported the auto industry. Well, when I was a kid, those things were king and there was money everywhere and workers, know, laborers, blue collar workers were making great money and all of that went away or at least the bulk of it. And our communities are still trying to recover. Pittsburgh has recovered with a lot of eds, meds and technology. It's made a transformation, but certainly the towns, you know, another 30, 40, 50 miles away from Pittsburgh have not. And Main Street is empty, factories and building, I mean, you want a building, you can get a three, 400,000 square foot building for nothing, because there's just no competition for it. So we've certainly seen that. And I think when I look at your story, that's probably the most compelling thing to me as well, Matt, is if you can, if your team can not only achieve some of these sustainability, environmental decarbonization goals, but also do that while shaking hands with capitalism and industry. Because let's be honest, everybody who's on both sides of that discussion can't have everything both ways. We have to find a meeting point where the environmentalists and the capitalists shake hands and move forward and there's benefit for everybody. And I think you guys are doing that and that excites me because that's where we're actually going to solve any problems that exist out there is when we meet in the middle. We know it's going to have it the whole way. their whole, you know, list of wants and needs. So I think that's just amazing and I'm excited to see that. I think when you look at your brand story, that's kind of the next phase for you guys is how you're going to start telling that story in those communities so that you can perpetuate and get that next plant or get that addition or whatever, because that's going to be something you guys will have to communicate to different stakeholders, no longer the investor, but the governor, the mayor, the local politicians, and just the local homeowners and the workers. So that's really exciting.
Matt: Yeah, it's been exciting. Certainly we've tried to be a little below the radar with our brand initially, right? Because we're out securing property and we're out securing supply contracts for our wood. We've kind of wanted to be low key while we did that. But now that we're kind of to the point where we are now, we certainly have a brand to build, not just for the marketplace to understand, but as you mentioned, the local community, right? We need their support. We want their support, we want their support. We want the local government and the local agencies' support to help us make sure we do it right, and all of those different things. So it all kind of compounds on each other as you start to build that brand. We're certainly more than just a name, we wanna take on a personality and we want it to be a personality that the community likes, right? And embraces.
Bill: So I think the good news for you guys, and this is just my personal slash professional opinion, the good news of your brand story from what I'm aware of is all that needs to happen is it just needs to be told. Because you and your team are the real deal. You guys are authentic and you have a great story. And that story checks all the boxes on both sides. So I think I'm going to be excited to watch and be a spectator and a fan of this growth. Because I think it's really awesome. One of the challenges for marketers is we really try to find clients that we're just telling exactly what's going on as opposed to sometimes clients will ask us, well, can you say this? And we're like, what is that true? You know, and you have to walk a fine line, right? Cause we still have to eat as well, right. And you got to make sure. And then you have competitors who make really outlandish claims that are completely untrue. So you have to work through that difficulty, but you guys have a real story. It's authentic. The outcomes and the benefits are amazing. And I just really want to commend you and your team for the vision, for the, like just the commitment to this vision. And hopefully we'll hear some exciting news in the days, weeks and months come about the progress you guys are making in this process.
Matt: Yeah, I appreciate that. That's our number one goal every day, right? Is to get this thing done for the benefit, like you said, not just our investors, but everybody that's surrounding our project and how we go about doing it, think is a, hopefully it's a legacy we can leave in the right way, right? There's been a lot of swings and misses in this business. There are unfortunately a few people in jail even from the segment that we play in who didn't do it right. And our intention every day as a group, we check each other to make sure that that's never us, right? We're excited for that story to be told and to be out in the cutting the fuzzy front end of this this gen two fuel market as it evolves.
Bill: That's awesome. So Matt, one of the things we like to do in these discussions is do a little bit of a round robin, like speed dating questions about what's missing in marketing and so what are some of the biggest mistakes you've seen manufacturer or manufacturing or B2B marketers make in their processes?
Matt: Taking the customer's need for granted.
Bill: I like that. That is so good. Whenever you look at mistakes in ABM processes, is there anything specifically like what would be any mistakes you've seen that you would recommend someone avoid in an ABM marketing process?
Matt: Yeah, I think don't assume everybody in the boardroom knows what your acronyms are and what you're there to sell them, right? Oftentimes we walk into a boardroom and we're throwing around all these government acronyms and guess what? The CEO of the company in an oil refining business does not care about, that's not his language, right? And we always take the mentality that we want to assume no one knows anything in the room until proven otherwise, and then we'll ramp up the discussion from there. But certainly we've made that mistake plenty of times.
Bill: No, I love that. That's so important. And as marketers, we're one of the worst groups as far as using acronyms. I mean, there's so many of them. And I always tell our team and my team reminds me, Bill, stop talking in alphabet soup. You actually have to say what you mean. So that's great. If someone was going to start an ABM campaign today in their market, do you have any tips, tricks, top three things you would focus on or a roadmap you would be able to provide to help them get started on their ABM account-based marketing journey?
Matt: KYC, know your customer. It is so, so, so important. And notice how I led with my acronym there, Bill. Know your customer. It is so important. 100% of what you're about to do and how you're about to build your message is about knowing your customer. You have to know them. You have to know what keeps them up at night.
Bill: Oh that's great. And I think those are the type of things, I think, especially as we see a younger generation of marketers enter our profession, that they're so quick to use Siri, quick to use Google, quick. And some of these things, we just need go back to the basics of recognizing the human being that is across the table from us and recognizing, hey, number one, they want to cover their proverbial rear end and not get fired, two, they would love to get promoted this year. Let's start there, right? Those are the basic human needs in Maslow's hierarchy, right? We need shelter and food. And then let's start moving up to what would this success build and what would that look like if that were true? And if you were able to bridge the gap between goal and where you are today. So I think those are really great insights, Matt, and I really appreciate those. Well, Matt, this has been an absolute delight. I have always enjoyed your perspective and the different experiences you've had and your ability to see markets and processes the way they exist and then also to be able to see the way they should be and then work towards bridging that gap. So I really appreciate that about you. I’ve just so enjoyed this conversation and just really want to thank you for taking the time today.
Matt: Yeah, Bill, I really appreciate you giving me the opportunity to share our story and share some of the trials and tribulations we've been through here as we've been working on this development project. So thank you.
Bill: Absolutely. Thank you for joining the Missing Half where we're discovering what's missing in manufacturing and B2B marketing. Please subscribe or leave comments. Thank you and have a great day.