Conversation Intelligence Hero Spotlight: Chris Erckert

min read
Conversation Intelligence Hero Spotlight: Chris Erckert

Look! Up in the sky! Is it a bird? A plane? No, it’s a Conversation Intelligence Hero!

Invoca’s new “Conversation Intelligence Heroes” program gives our customers a platform to highlight the successes they’ve achieved with conversation intelligence technology. It also has perks like personal branding opportunities, VIP invites to regional events, access to private beta programs, and more. 

As part of the program, we’re putting a spotlight on our most inspiring heroes. Today’s featured hero is Chris Erckert. He’s the Channel Director at BBQGuys, one of the most well-known online retailers of barbecue grills.  

Check out our Q&A with Chris below, where he shares his career highlights, advice to younger marketers, and how Invoca helped him drive innovation faster than a speeding bullet.

How has being an Invoca advocate helped further your career? 

Before I used call tracking, I was a Senior SEM Analyst. After I started using call tracking, I became a Channel Manager. After upgrading to Invoca, I became Channel Director … You do the math!

How were you able to gain support for conversation intelligence in your organization? 

Invoca’s content has been great for getting conversations started about expansion. When we’ve paired that with an in-house playbook and ROI math, we’ve been able to get a lot of buy-in from the organization. 

Can you give us a quick overview of your Invoca use case and your results? 

We chose Invoca because of the scalability it offered. We wanted granular call tracking from 15+ marketing sources and our previous call tracking platform wasn’t able to support that. 

The second value Invoca brought to the table was its signals. With these, we can focus on calls around a topic, like product launches, spikes in support calls, and much more.

Invoca has helped BBQGuys in the following ways:

  • Advertising: Building objection busters into the marketing and removing sales roadblocks.
  • Sales: Allowing us to coach the sales team on common questions.
  • Support: Identifying customer issues for changing the product mix or developing new ones.

Want to hear more of Chris and team’s story? Check out this video from Invoca Summit.

How did you get started in marketing?

I started in project management for an eCommerce development house. When they realized recurring revenue was where it was at, we collectively turned our attention to ad agency services for eCommerce. Once we got a taste of recurring revenue, we realized we needed software to scale. From there we ended up building Google Shopping management software. 

What are some of your career highlights?

I’m sure like many, there hasn't exactly been a non-stop line of gold-star experiences. It’s more like you take on a challenge, get beat up a bit, come out alive and you are rewarded with this puzzle piece. Now this usually — but not always — extends your existing skillset, which you can now expand on by starting the next challenge and sometimes that piece is only useful later on. (We all know that feeling when an experience long ago comes back not to haunt us, but to help us.) Nevertheless, the race is to get a sense of the bigger picture, before your old pieces fall away over time. 

That all being said, my individual success in marketing now takes a backseat to coaching my teams. I want them to enjoy their own success and share the view of the big picture with me, just as long as they maintain their hands-on expertise so they always can walk the talk.

What are you passionate about outside of work? 

If we’re measuring by time, reading. I have two recommendations for all the readers out there: The Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson and The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday.

What future trends do you predict will happen in marketing?

There are two that come to mind:

  1. Hardcore privacy from the likes of Brave browser, where the business model is privacy first. 
  2. More black box automation in ad platforms, giving less control to the practitioner and the business as a whole. 

What are the biggest mistakes you see marketers making?

I often see marketers at much smaller companies trying to replicate results of Fortune 500s. Don’t try to be Apple, Nike, etc. Instead, take a deep assessment of where your company and product are at. This can be very different, as the company could be at mass adoption, but the product could be at an early adopter stage. Do the things that match that stage — or even one stage below — as you’re probably overestimating how much people care.

What advice do you have for younger marketers?

  1. It doesn't matter where you start — get so good at what you do that “they” can’t ignore you. 
  2. While on the path to excellence, don’t get distracted. Don’t get sucked into other people’s BS. Be helpful, but don’t be a doormat for lazy coworkers or poor managers. 
  3. Your excellence should earn you the opportunity to take on a bigger challenge or role. If you’re denied, find a new team or company that values what you do. 
  4. Every job is hard work if you’re pushing yourself to be great, so you might as well work for a company that is aligned with your core beliefs. If you don’t find yourself there, see Step 1. 

Claim Your Cape and Become a Conversation Intelligence Hero

Are you interested in becoming a hero? Turns out you don’t need to get bit by a radioactive spider. You just need to be an active Invoca customer and participate with the community in some of the following ways:

  • Media articles/interviews
  • Internal or external speaking opportunities                                    
  • Case study interviews
  • Press release features
  • Supplying a quote
  • Sales reference calls
  • Social media competitions 
  • Sharing expertise and best practices in the Invoca community
  • Logo placement 

What do you get out of it? Below are some of the perks that Conversation Intelligence heroes enjoy:

  • Elevate your personal brand
  • Connect & learn from peers
  • Gain access to private beta programs
  • Win industry awards
  • VIP invites to Invoca regional events

You can register to become a Conversation Intelligence Hero here or scan the QR code below. Just remember: with great power comes great responsibility. 

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