How Playing Poker Made Me a Better Marketer

Before I started Saleswhale, I used to play (live) poker semi-professionally.

Here are 3 thoughts on how playing poker can make you a better marketer.

1. Quality of outcome does not equate to quality of decision

As humans, we are wired to equate the quality of a decision with the quality of its outcome.

Poker players have a term for this: "resulting".

Experienced poker players understand the dangers of resulting. It's the temptation to deviate from your strategy, just because a few hands didn't turn out the way you wanted to in the short run.

As marketers, it can be easy to succumb to short-term pressures, instead of staying the course.

Here's an example from Saleswhale -

Prior to the pandemic, we were relying heavily on in-person events and outbound marketing to drive the majority of our leads.

We suffered a top of the funnel collapse of >80% when the lockdowns started on the 17th of March.

We decided to pivot. Take content and building digital experiences (such as webinars) a lot more seriously.

In the first few weeks, there was a lot of skepticism - both internally and from investors, around our content strategy.

Blogging and sharing authentic content seemed like such a frivolous thing to do.

There was skepticism if people would even register for our webinars.

Our early attempts struggled to get off the ground.

But deep down inside, I knew that this was a sound strategy. We needed to stay the course. And continue to iterate.

While it's still too early to judge if our efforts are a definitive success, our latest webinar has already driven 800+ registrations, and accelerated our sales pipeline (2 days ago, we just closed another stuck deal that was reinvigorated because of said webinar).

2. Set good defaults and seek out the ground state

The next time you observe a live poker game, pay attention to what the players are doing when they are not in a hand.

You will notice the novice poker players are generally distracted. Fiddling with their phones, chit-chatting with other players, consuming alcohol and getting inebriated (a no-no for me at the poker table).

The experienced, semi-professional poker players are watching intently. Following the action of every hand, even though they may not be involved. That is their default state.

Why?

It's all about context.

You want to build an accurate representation of the ground state - understand the table dynamics, the tendencies of each player, who is running scared, who is on tilt etc.

It's the same for marketing.

The best marketers I observe are constantly observing and learning. They are signing up for webinars that have nothing to do with their business, deconstructing marketing strategies and tactics of other companies, and maintaining a swipe file of good ideas.

They are talking to fellow marketers. Asking them questions, picking their brains, probing and seeking, like an endoscope. Trying to collect information to understand and exploit the "meta".

They are talking to existing customers every week. Asking them questions about their professional lives, top challenges, key concerns etc. What content do their customers consume? Where do they hang out? How do they see the world? They seek to intimately understand their customer - because, what can be more important in marketing, than understanding who you are marketing to?

As a marketer, you need to have good defaults.

3. Think in systems and close the loop

Terrible poker players think this way - "Oh, I played 6-7s in the cut-off and I lost money. I'll just fold 6-7s in the future."

Good poker players are more nuanced. They know that it's often not a single input that causes success or failure, but a multitude of interconnected elements.

"I have a loose-aggressive player that is sitting in the button (the position after the cut-off). He typically raises the button 80% of the time. It's highly unusual that Rick, who usually raises when opening in the UTG position just limped in. Even taking into account implied odds, I am not deep-stacked enough to make calling a 3-bet from Rick a profitable play."

You see this often in marketing reviews as well, especially with novice marketers.

"Oh, our outbound ABM campaign didn't work. Outbound ABM doesn't work for us."

This demonstrates either (a) a lack of experience; or (b) lack of rigour.

One simple way I've found useful to force more rigour, is to ask Five Whys.

1. Why? – Outbound ABM campaign didn't work. (First why)
2. Why? – We did not manage to book any demos. (Second why)
3. Why? – We didn't manage to get any meaningful engagement from decision makers. (Third why)
4. Why? – Our messaging and content was not resonating with them. (Fourth why)
5. Why? – We didn't do the work - and customer interviews - to understand how to position our product in a way that intrigued them. (Fifth why, a root cause)

When I was playing poker, I used to keep a poker journal.

I would detail interesting hands play-by-play, and try to deconstruct how I could have played better.

There were a couple of rules:

(a) I had to disregard the outcome (e.g. going all-in with A-A preflop is a +EV move no matter what the outcome - even losing to 2-7- which happens 12% of the time! And the right play would be to ship your stack 100 out of 100 times.)

(b) I could not rely on hindsight. I had to use whatever finite information I had available to me - at each street, and make the best decision I can.

Doing these analysis after each game helped me to "close the loop", reflect on my play, and made me a better poker player over time.

P.S. If you found this interesting, and would love to find out more about the "ground state" on what other marketers are doing - we are running a webinar on the 28th May, 10 AM PST

You can register here to join us either as a live attendee, or have the on-demand recording and summarized insights sent to you.