IAM1339 – Sales & Marketing Professional Helps People Leverage LinkedIn

Jessica Koch has been a National Sales and Marketing Professional for more than 25 years. She has spent the last 10 years working with a consulting company, expanding the company's industries to include: National Government Accounts, Fortune 500 Clients, National Power Utilities, Hospitals, and Universities/Colleges. Before working with the Consulting Company, she worked with a Marketing Firm where she interviewed, hired, and trained a sales team for Fortune 1000 business-to-business promotions; including Washington Gas Energy Services, Verizon, and Disney. She oversaw and assigned territories, and her team was consistently the top sales producer for the company. She has traveled and lived in numerous states throughout the country, as she is the daughter of a Retired Navy Service Member. Her family is active in her local church, and they enjoy hiking, camping, canoeing, time at the beach, exploring state parks, and just walking Solomon’s Boardwalk on an almost daily basis. Jessica also enjoys reading, scrapbooking, painting, sewing, and baking.

• CEO Story: Burnt out and tired of working in the corporate world. While seeking what business to start, Jessica volunteered to teach in a class, and as a surprise, she experienced pure joy. The emotional response and the energy from her class were reflected in her. Another confirmation was when she did a workshop at the women’s conference she felt bursting with joy. And that was the start of her consulting company.
• Business Service: Training a corporation on how to use LinkedIn. LinkedIn-specific training and webinar. Marketing and sales plan.
• Secret Sauce: “Selling proposition, that speaks who I am and it tends to attract”
• CEO Hack: One Minute Manger
• CEO Nugget: Think about reciprocity and share what you know with the world (e.g. A LinkedIn platform)
• CEO Defined: Time freedom and build a legacy

Website: www.jessicaLkoch.com
LinkedIn: jessicakoch1
Jessica's Store: Jessica Koch's Shop

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Transcription

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00:20 – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

00:28 – Gresham Harkless

Hello, Hello, Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast, and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Jessica Koch of Jessica L Koch Consulting. Jessica, it is awesome to have you on the show.

00:39 – Jessica Koch

Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.

00:41 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, what I wanted to do was just read a little bit about all the awesome things that Jessica has been able to accomplish and been able to do. So you can get a little idea of all the great things that she's been able to do. Jessica Koch has been named a national sales and marketing professional for more than 25 years. She has spent the last 10 years working with a consulting company, expanding the company's industry to include national government accounts, Fortune 500 companies, national power utilities, hospitals, and universities and colleges.

Before working with a consulting company, she worked with a marketing firm where she interviewed, hired, and trained a sales team for Fortune 1000 business-to-business promotions, including Washington Gas Energy Services, Verizon, and Disney. She oversaw and assigned territories, and her team was consistently the top sales producer of the company. She has traveled and lived in numerous states throughout the country, as she is the daughter of a retired Navy service member.

Her family is active in her local church and they enjoy hiking, camping, canoeing, time at the beach, exploring state parks, and just walking the Salomon's boardwalk on an almost daily basis. Jessica also enjoys reading, scrapbooking, painting, sewing, and baking. Jessica, it's awesome to have you on the show. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:51 – Jessica Koch

I am. I AM CEO, I'm a well-rounded business professional, a mother of 7, big sew, the whole deal. Exactly.

02:00 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, we have to have all that on there so we make sure we know exactly who you are. So what I wanted to do, which could you expand a little bit more upon your bio and tell us a little bit more about your CEO story and what led you to get started in your business.

02:11 – Jessica Koch

Well, I did as it says, I spoke across the country. I worked with this firm for many years which helped reduce operating expenses for Fortune 500s as well as government entities across the country and universities. So I got to speak at many of their national conferences. And genuinely what brought me to being the CEO of my own company was I was burnt out and tired. I was working for other people, literally making other corporations millions of dollars and group pipelines and managing and training sales teams.

And often sales professionals can be not always, but often underappreciated and undervalued. And, especially as you become more senior in this field, you know, younger people come in and if you train them well I was doing, it's very the corporations to pay them out to earn their skills and beat the challenging for them. Some money is too large to pay for a 2-year hiatus, but I had the savings and the ability to take 2 years and just spend it with our youngest daughter. And everyone says, oh if you do what you love, work a day in your life.

Years. I mean, I'm obsessed with absorbing every bit of the I and sales front that I come onto only mostly because I love it. But I h could I convert that into that would make my heart make me happy and bring m I would say to people vol a little bit. I'm embarrassed arm twisting for me to vol teach a class for the loco I was kind of done with the business world and I was honored of course to be asked and I just wasn't sure I wanted to get my feet back into the business market at all But under the understanding that I was not gonna join the chamber at that time, I wasn't working for anyone, I didn't have a business, I would go and teach this class.

What happened was a light came on for me and I experienced that pure joy, totally to my surprise, sharing this information. They held the class, it was standing room only, and it was 1 of the largest turnouts they'd ever had. And the response and even the emotion during the class teaching it, the energy was reflected to me from the audience and the room. And for me, that was it. I was by this bug, I was, I still kind of drug my f a company because I still would look like exactly.

Because of the response of a woman's conference that attendees. I was one of the key speakers. I taught a workshop and this bursting joy. And at that point, I still didn't have an official business and I was still getting many requests to consult and work with them. So it kind of took on a life of its own, say, and it used to actua they irritate me, you know like just do what you love put my finger on. What did that look like? And I feel immense and co time I work with 1 of m I do a training, I'm devel videos.

I do a webinar and I am bursting with joy. I mean, to the point of butterflies and excitement in my stomach that we're gonna do this again, not from fear or nerves, because I'm excited we get to do this again. So I think that's kind of I mean, my story found me almost.

05:50 – Gresham Harkless

That makes perfect sense. And that's sometimes how it happens where the universe kind of pushes you in the right direction, whether you want to go or not. Exactly. I guess could you tell us a little bit more about what exactly you do? What are your products and services for your business?

06:02 – Jessica Koch

What happens is the door I for all these years, all of LinkedIn being on as an I have been on, I think I years of their I And so I often start with training a corporation how to use LinkedIn. And I use that sort of as a social hub because it ties into Facebook and Twitter. And then I'm developed. So I do some LinkedIn-specific training and webinars and I'm developing some training videos. But the other thing I'm providing companies is, like I said, a lot of times my introduction to that company is because of LinkedIn.

But what I'm formatting is helping them link into multiple platforms with their content efficiently, We're developing a marketing and sales plan, a sales and nurturing system, and a cycle. Follow a process that's more uniform. I'm working with several companies that have locations in 5 different states and many locations and helping them just develop some cohesiveness so that there's a little bit easier accountability for the sales manager.

These are things I designed and developed as I was you know doing the job for other corporations. So I kind of honed it and fine-tuned it and I've done a lot of research on the psychology of a sale. What moves people to action? What does this look like? So we're building marketing content plans as well to hook into several, usually between 5 and 8 platforms is what I suggest to clients depending on their industry.

07:28 – Gresham Harkless

I wanted to ask you a little bit more about you and your business. What do you feel like makes your business and yourself unique? What's your kind of unique selling proposition?

07:37 – Jessica Koch

Well, I think 1 of the things that I do uniquely, I don't know about it being a selling proposition, but it's kind of, it speaks to who I am and it tends to attract. I haven't had to pursue a lot of these come to me, which is very bit of a shocker for me f because I have learned to follow up, be persistent, and not pesty a line. You know, it's an oc you know, right? But my voice speaks loudly I started volunteering like ride the line, you hazard, you know, right?

The thing my voice spe is how I started is volum I'm doing a big event for we have filled and sold o coming out this Friday in where I'm teaching work is for the nonprofit all It's a big workshop we have out tickets for a room co in the liberal library wh a workshop and the benefit Alliance and with a chamber the chamber has lasted it take space there because going to benefit. The non-lived route for all inter nonprofits is that the businesses come are pay, and then the proceeds are going to support this organization.

And I've done many of those types of free training, free speaking events, and I think that has opened the door. So 1 of the unique things I teach is reciprocity and what I call cause marketing. And I encourage every client that I work with based on their level of comfort and what organization or cause is important to that in their marketing advantage of, oh, we're g work with us because when and business and companies I talk the talk and I walk the walk. When we give, it allows, I feel like our hands are wide open and it allows for us to receive.

And business just comes because, you know, you do the research, There's a lot of competition for about every industry out there. And as humans, the idea of a sale and obtaining a client is moving them to action. 1 of the things that that individual from the psychology of the human being evaluates is connected to something bigger than both of us that speaks to me.

And when there companies that can provide the same service and the same price competitively, the 1 that's supporting the local humane shelter or th or you know, whether it's or whatever makes their h is what pushes that rises just a little bit for know what I'm gonna go wi get what I need But these people are involved I care about that's bigger and that moves them to ac the things I think that's I do that and I encourage to be a recipe for success for me.

10:23 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome, awesome. Yeah, it's important to make sure that you're giving and you're providing kind of an opportunity for you, not even to do it from a selfish standpoint, but just doing it to try to impact and make the world a better place, so to speak, which is why a lot of people start their businesses and organizations. So what I wanted to do, kind of switch gears a little bit to talk about a CEO hack that you might have, and this might be an app, a book, or just something that you do or use on a regular everyday basis that makes you more efficient and effective as it is.

10:50 – Jessica Koch

From a standpoint, I would say working with a client or working minute manager was phenomenal for a CEO nugget now.

10:59 – Gresham Harkless

Now word of wisdom or a piece of advice, maybe even something related to LinkedIn that you have that you can give to other entrepreneurs and business owners to be more effective and efficient.

11:09 – Jessica Koch

I would challenge people to think carefully about that piece of reciprocity and what in the community they can get involved in on whatever level, and, share their knowledge about something. I'm constantly on a soap box of it's so simple to write an article on LinkedIn. And when you take the time to write an article on LinkedIn, you insert a photo quickly, you put a headline, can insert a video, you can do a voice-over video with a PowerPoint, very simply to do a training, share what you know with the world because you can make an impact globally because the way social media works, LinkedIn's articles are a living webpage.

So that can be email, text, Facebook message, LinkedIn message. It is a living webpage of its very own. That URL can be sent anywhere. So if you take a few minutes that can make they're happening in your community is that something they co do. We need that. We this is what we're gonna only to you push it on like din to have 40% of the globe as a platform. So Bilanth the opportunity for getting a story or a need is g multi-purpose that 1 eff machine pushing it out to Twitter, having that video, and having that youtube d article so that you can be made an image.

So we can go on Instagram, it can go on Pinterest, it can go Snapchat. So there's like all these things and it can have those that URL embedded into the link. And so you're making a wave of a movement, sharing your knowledge and sharing whatever it is to the world that genuinely difference and the different actions equaling a big re encourage people to write month for business and on greater than you or just with something that can I than you? I think that that will track a business, but I think it's most important why we're here.

13:15 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, no, you're right. And it's incredible. Like, you talked about being altruistic, making sure that you're giving, but being able to use these social media sites like LinkedIn to be able to do that, because they carry such a large reach to be able to touch people across the globe, like you mentioned.

13:30 – Gresham Harkless

So I think that's a phenomenal kind of CEO nugget that a lot of entrepreneurs and business owners can take into account. So kind of the last question that I wanted to ask you was your definition of being CEO. Like on this podcast, we're hoping to get different types of quote-unquote CEOs and kind of redefine exactly what that means. So I wanted to ask you specifically, what does that mean to you?

13:47 – Jessica Koch

So for me, it's g cliche, but it does never me. I get to plan how gonna grow in that strateg land. I'm doing it so that 100% be leveraged to my trading time for money plan. Some of it I will be joyful and I want to inter that my success does not go to my time. So I'm not going to money. That's not the point it is because that brings them to interact with clients. Strategically, do you have the ability to decide yo when you're not going to want your income to make that happen?

And does that make it happen so that it does not always involve your direct interaction by fostering a good team? There are different things that you can do as a CEO that give yourself freedom. And I think that for me is the most important about owning my own company and also being able to leave it as a legacy for my children. So whatever I build here, I'm willing to my children. I know some other business opportunities have that willable law, which is fabulous. But I feel like that's a big check mark for me on what's important is having that ability to build something that I lead to my children.

14:57 – Gresham Harkless

I think that's a phenomenal kind of insight and definition of what it means to be a CEO. So, Jessica, I wanted to thank you so much for taking some time out of your schedule. I wanted to kind of give you the mic or the floor, so to speak, so you can give us anything additional, whether it be word of wisdom, piece of advice, or tell us anything additional about your business and then how people can get ahold of you.

15:15 – Jessica Koch

So I have 1 quote. So this is the Jessica Koch quote and it came because I was the mother of so many children. Now is later sooner. I always got the, oh mom, I'll do it later. So now is later sooner, so do it now. And That's a great quote from Jessica Koch if I do say so myself, right? And they can find me on my website, jessicaelkoch.com.

15:39 – Gresham Harkles

Thank you so much for all you do and for taking some time out of your schedule. And I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

15:43 – Jessica Koch

Thanks so much. I loved it.

15:45 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Please tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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