More Sales Starts with Better Marketing w/ Chris Walker

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{\b\fs36 018_TSL_Chris_mixdown\b0}

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{\b\cf1 Tyler: \b0}

{[00:00:00]}

{ All right. Awesome guys. Hey, how's it going? This is Tyler Linley with the sales lift podcast here today. We have on Chris Walker from refine labs based up in Boston, Massachusetts, today, wanted to bring you on Chris cause, I know you've been doing a lot of really exciting things with refine labs and have a lot of really great thoughts about sales and marketing.}

{\pard\par}

{So if you can just start off and give the audience a little bit of an overview of who you are and what refined labs does, and then we'll kick it off here. }

{\pard\par}

{ }

{\b\cf2 Chris: \b0}

{[00:00:28] }

{Yeah. So, so I'm Chris Walker. I started a company called green pine labs about nine months ago after working in several different B2B tech companies and recognizing over time in the eight or nine years that I spent there.}

{\pard\par}

{And in the last four and venture backed companies, that there was just fundamental flaws about how they were going to market. mainly that. It didn't align with how buyers wanted to buy. It was very product centric. It was very sales focused. It was very me. And so after implementing my strategy at a couple of companies, I decided to build this company, which is built around being really focused on the customer and aligning your organization around what the customer needs, which then in turn creates a lot of efficiency in your revenue engine.}

{\pard\par}

{Which is slightly counterintuitive because you spend less time selling and more time giving, which leads to a lot more people coming to you and want to do business with you rather than you having to convince them to do business with you. }

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{\b\cf1 Tyler: \b0}

{[00:01:33] }

{Gotcha. And you mentioned revenue engine there. what do you mean by that, Chris?}

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{What is a revenue engine to you? }

{\pard\par}

{\b\cf2 Chris: \b0}

{[00:01:39] }

{A revenue engine to me is the stack of team people process that creates revenue for a business. So in a typical company that would look like marketing sales success. And potentially a layer of revenue operations.}

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{\b\cf1 Tyler: \b0}

{[00:02:03] }

{And you mentioned revenue ops. Do you think that's something and I know that's popular in VC backed companies and SaaS companies, becoming more and more popular. Do you think rev ops is a requirement and how would you define revenue operations for someone that doesn't know what that means?}

{\pard\par}

{\b\cf2 Chris: \b0}

{[00:02:19] }

{I don't think that it's a requirement. I think, companies can do, can approach it. However, they'd like, some companies don't have any of these functions and still are able to operate. but, the idea of revenue operations as a function is to align the revenue team, to create a seamless buying and customer experience by covering four core groups, which is.}

{\pard\par}

{Enablement technology and tools, insights, and analytics, and then overall operations. So a lot of the tech VC back companies are just looking at it from the operations standpoint. How do we combine marketing ops and sales ops? And then we get revenue ops and that's not how I see it. I see it as combining all the functions like sometimes analytics would sit in a finance role.}

{\pard\par}

{So, how do you bring in analytics across the entire revenue engine? Instead of looking at it in silos from finance and marketing and sales and have one group looking at analytics across the entire revenue engine. And when you do that, you get some really interesting insights that you can use and then act on for your business.}

{\pard\par}

{Same thing goes with enablement and companies are super focused on how to enable their sales team, but don't spend nearly as much time thinking about how to enable their success team or their marketing team. and then technology and tools is a big topic in that type of world too, which is that for some reason, there's no central ownership over the stack and the data and the management.}

{\pard\par}

{So you have marketing, managing their stuff and sales, managing their stuff. And people adding technology that doesn't integrate and you'd be, you start to create redundancies and technology or technology doesn't work together. So why don't we take one group? That can look at all of those different pieces of technology and understand the data and map it out and make decisions that are in the best interest of the business.}

{\pard\par}

{Not just their siloed pieces of the organization.}

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{\b\cf1 Tyler: \b0}

{[00:04:19]}

{ Interesting. So do you think, it sounds like this, you consider rev revenue ops as a, who would they report to separate of marketing sales, customer success, they would report directly to executive leadership, or what do you think is best practice in terms of how you structure that in terms of reporting and who that group might report to?}

{\pard\par}

{\b\cf2 Chris: \b0}

{[00:04:39] }

{I don't think that there's a right or wrong way to do it. I think it really depends on the internal capabilities of the leadership team. And so in a lot of companies, the simple, straightforward way to look at it as let's just put them under the CRO, if they have a CRO. So that would be one way to look at it.}

{\pard\par}

{I've heard of some companies having success, putting them under the finance department, mainly because then they become more objective across the other functions that they serve. and then there's another way to look at it, which is this function is so important. Why don't they get a seat at the table too?}

{\pard\par}

{And they become an executive leadership position that serves the head of sales and the head of marketing and the head of success. Okay. And I think any of those three options can work depending on the capabilities of your company. }

{\pard\par}

{\b\cf1 Tyler: \b0}

{[00:05:33] }

{Right. What about for, do you think this role could be blended? I mean, could you have somebody, if an organization maybe didn't have leaders in all these different areas, could this be a blended role where somebody that was doing running a sales org or running a marketing, or could they also do this, or do you really feel like it needs to be separate from those key disciplines?}

{\pard\par}

{\b\cf2 Chris: \b0}

{[00:05:52] }

{So what's really interesting as I look back is that. I was doing revenue operations in 2016 before I even knew what it was like. I was, a marketing manager at a tech startup that was, or scale up that was growing quickly. And just by looking at what is the most important thing that I could do for the business and looking at how the organization sat in silos and didn't understand their data that well, and didn't understand the tools didn't have the right pieces of content to enable their sales team.}

{\pard\par}

{Like I started to serve that function without even having a written job description or me consciously knowing what I was doing. And so. Yeah, I totally believe that it could be a shared role or that somebody, that's hungry in a company and looking to grow and make more impact could start to take that on and show the importance of it inside of a small company that doesn't have a lot of resources.}

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{\b\cf1 Tyler: \b0}

{[00:06:46] }

{Right. So you were in the marketing, you were leading the marketing org, a part of the marketing org. And you saw some of these gaps yourself, and then that's when you took it upon yourself. And how did you go about, like once you identified that, did you just start bringing those up in meetings?}

{\pard\par}

{Or how did you go about starting to introduce these ideas, which may not be, which may not have been commonplace coming from a guy in marketing. }

{\pard\par}

{\b\cf2 Chris: \b0}

{[00:07:07] }

{So. That's going to be tough to answer that question directly, because I think there's just so many moving parts. And this was over a two year period of time working with this company.}

{\pard\par}

{And so, one of the first things that I was starting with was just the data. They were lucky to have a well implemented Salesforce instance. So integrating other tools across, it was relatively straightforward. For companies that don't take care of their Salesforce instance, your other first party integrations are not going to work very well.}

{\pard\par}

{So I was lucky to have that. And then from there, it's just trying to connect all the pieces, right? So marketing, sales, success, look at that entire journey from a data standpoint and see what's going on. And so the first thing is you've got to actually have the data put together and in the right places to know what's going on.}

{\pard\par}

{And then once you start looking at now that you can act on it. And so what, when you start looking at the data, you can start to see holes for instance, and those holes are either based on what you're seeing in the data or on intuition for what the buyer needs cause right? The entire goal of the function is solely to create a better customer experience.}

{\pard\par}

{Through an aligned revenue team, because right now companies have been, Mary created very much silos in their company. So for instance, we see that a lot of marketing leads coming from this specific channel have much higher LTVs. Or have much higher lifetimes and lower churn rates. So how do, what do we do as a business to think about that, analyze it and bring it to the executive team and then act on it.}

{\pard\par}

{That's just one example. Or we know that if we don't follow up with a lead within the first 24 hours than they are not going, we're going to win those at 0% looking at the data trailing three months. So, if you start to put those pieces together, then you can create data that then is used in the sales process to figure out how to address it.}

{\pard\par}

{And so those are some examples of like straightforward examples. I think people can hold onto. And then obviously it gets deeper over time into like really serious sales ops or other stuff like that. but that's in general. How, like I wouldn't, or I have approached it. }

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{\b\cf1 Tyler: \b0}

{[00:09:25] }

{Right. Yeah. One thing you mentioned there, this is interesting.}

{\pard\par}

{I mean, this podcast, so we like to talk a lot about sales enablement. So, and I know before we started, you and I were talking about sales enablement and how there's lots of different definitions. You mentioned you were on another podcast and you weren't really aligned on what sales enablement meant, so that didn't up being.}

{\pard\par}

{It didn't end up being a great conversation for you. So, I guess I'd love to hear how do you define sales enablement and where do you think, as you think about this revenue operations and this revenue engine that you're trying to build, how does enabling the sales team come into play?}

{\pard\par}

{Like what is sales enablement, and how can you do that in the vein of revenue ops and building a revenue engine?}

{\pard\par}

{\b\cf2 Chris: \b0}

{[00:10:08]}

{ Yeah. So this is a little bit off the cuff here, but for sales enablement, I think it's the objective is to create a better buying experience to the customer by empowering your sales team with the tools, processes, content, resources, training, onboarding, and things like that.}

{\pard\par}

{To deliver that experience to a customer, which in turn leads to a better buying experience and more sales. Is my, how I would define it off the cuff. }

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{\b\cf1 Tyler: \b0}

{[00:10:40] }

{And do you think businesses are doing a good job at sales enablement? Isaac, is that a gap you're seeing in the market right now? Like where businesses have a big need for sales enablement or, or do you feel like most businesses are at least starting to think about that and have a handle on that?}

{\pard\par}

{\b\cf2 Chris: \b0}

{[00:10:56] }

{Yeah, I think it really, I think it really depends. And I think this is a multifaceted issue. There are surely companies that are doing it very well. There are surely companies that are doing too much of it at the expense of something else that would be more beneficial. And there's some companies that are doing none of it.}

{\pard\par}

{Right? And so in that spectrum, the companies that are doing none of it are really missing out because they have their, probably their largest line item expense in their entire business, which is sales headcount. And they are hiring these people. Putting them in a classroom for one week and then letting them out in the wild with no, and then maybe like a coaching session or a pipeline review here and there, or a ride along with their manager and not giving them the tools they need to be successful, which has been waiting to inefficient sales channel, which then takes away from other things that you could do in the business.}

{\pard\par}

{And so those people obviously need to act on it. The question is who owns it because some companies don't have that as a function. Marketing typically takes that. And this is where I learned all of my sales enablement because I worked in companies where we had full life cycle, product management.}

{\pard\par}

{You're working with engineering, you're working to launch the product with comms. You're working to put the tools, the sales tools and the training in place for the sales team can go back on it as full life cycle PM. And, and most SaaS tech companies don't operate in a model like that anymore, but I'm really grateful that I did because now I can see.}

{\pard\par}

{The full spectrum of marketing that a lot of people don't want to people will think marketing is running ads or writing a blog post for SEO. there's so much more to that. }

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{\b\cf1 Tyler: \b0}

{[00:12:29]}

{ Definitely. And who do you think should own sales enablement? I mean, a lot of times it can fall under sales. It could fall under marketing, it could fall, it could be a separate ops or training, R and D piece, who do you think, sales enablement should report to who should own that?}

{\pard\par}

{\b\cf2 Chris: \b0}

{[00:12:47] }

{I don't think there's a right or wrong answer to who should own it. I think the key is the owner has to be good at what they do, and they have to be in a place in the organization where they are free from biases or being pulled into things that may not be in the best interest of what they're trying to do.}

{\pard\par}

{And so. I actually like a lot of these type of who's should they report to questions? There's some things that I feel strongly about. And this one I don't, because it's really about, are you set up in the organization to deliver on the role or the objective that you're supposed to do, and you can do that in a lot of different places.}

{\pard\par}

{In some companies that's owned by marketing, sometimes product management, depending on how that's set up. And some companies that they have a full sales enablement function that reports to somewhere in the sales org. in some companies it's split in a bunch of different directions, right? So HR owns training and onboarding and then, marketing owns sales content and then sales ongoing training is owned by their manager.}

{\pard\par}

{And so I think that. I think that the function would be better served owned by one single person instead of split across different functions in the organization. And that can be done at any of the ones that I just listed. I would prefer it not to be an HR to be direct and then, or it could be put into a revenue ops type of structure as well.}

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{\b\cf1 Tyler: \b0}

{[00:14:13] }

{Gotcha. Okay. Yeah, that definitely makes sense. and, one of the things, I mean, we also were talking about is not all companies have a say, a sales enablement, kind of operation right now. They don't either don't have someone doing it or they have a very poor kind of sales enablement structure.}

{\pard\par}

{they may just do a little bit of training or onboarding training, and then Let's re let reps loose and let their managers dictate things from there. if I was a company that didn't really have sales enablement or didn't really even understand what it meant, how, what would you think would be the first couple of steps you would take if you were going to start doing some sales enablement within, within a sales org, how would you go about starting doing that?}

{\pard\par}

{What do you think would be best practice there? }

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{\b\cf2 Chris: \b0}

{[00:14:51] }

{So I think the first step would be to get. The leadership team aligned on why it's important because the leadership team's not bought in, then you're not going to get the resources, behavior, activity, talent, all those things that you need in order for that to even be successful in the first place.}

{\pard\par}

{So the leadership team needs to be online. The why it's important and why it should be its own separate function. Not however it's being done today. The way to get that done is to. Directly show in a P&L to the executive leadership team that in most cases, unless you're a very tech driven startup company that your sales headcount expense is the largest line item on your entire P and L.}

{\pard\par}

{And so once you realize that it might make more sense to you that you need to spend more energy to, in order to empower those people, to do their jobs in the best way possible. Now that I think so. I think the big issue fear is that a lot of companies feel like they're doing that well already, and they're not.}

{\pard\par}

{they bring in, they have the Sandler trainer come in five times a year and pay a quarter million dollars on that. It's not about how much money you spend. It's about how effective it is. The Sandler training or the ride alongs with the manager or the online learning platform that no one logs into, or the marketing content that nobody uses.}

{\pard\par}

{It's not about the activity. It's not about the amount of money you spend. It's about how effective it is. Is it driving the result that you want? And so, so I think that the next step would be to align on what are the KPIs that we're trying to move forward? And you got to pick just a couple, like you can't try and boil the ocean.}

{\pard\par}

{You can't have 50 KPIs. Pick the ones that are most important. Do an analysis. Understand is it grant time? Is it sales rep retention, sales cycle length? Is it win rate the time to loss, whatever they are. Pick those metrics. I think you probably want to hone in on somewhere between two and five. Depending on the sophistication of your sales and the size of your sales org and how much money and time and resources you're gonna invest in sales enablement.}

{\pard\par}

{So pick those KPIs and then put a capable leader in charge of that space and give them the space to go and do their job well. And that, so that's where we move back into the buy-in, right? if you don't have executive buy in, you put this person. In a point where they're trying to do their job well, but you can't get the sales team to act on things because the head of sales is not bought in.}

{\pard\par}

{So it all comes back to is the company aligned on what we're trying to get done in order for that person to do their job most effectively? }

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{\b\cf1 Tyler: \b0}

{[00:17:36] }

{And do you think in that kind of getting that buy in, do you think this is an individual that could live outside the organization? Could this be someone that, something that's outsourced to an agency, to an individual, to someone on more of a contract basis to get things set up, or do you think this needs to be someone that is an employee of that company and does, and owns this over an extended period of time versus something that's just contracted out.}

{\pard\par}

{\b\cf2 Chris: \b0}

{[00:18:01] }

{I think that we'll see more companies adopt the model that I'm about to talk about. So typically companies see it as two ways, right? So we can either build it in house or we can outsource it. And I actually think that most companies will move over time to this blended model where you use an expert, whether it's a consultant or agency or whatever you want to call it to set a foundation.}

{\pard\par}

{And then build the team in house later on. And whatever that time period takes somewhere, I would guess between three and 24 months, depending on what you're trying to do, whether it's marketing or sales enablement or whatever you use an expert. And the most important part is picking the right expert.}

{\pard\par}

{Right? Cause a lot of people are going to actually drive you in the wrong direction, not the right direction. And so that you use them to build the framework and then you hire the people to then go and execute on a best practice framework down the road, because no one wants that. I believe this function is important enough, especially when you get to a sales team over 15 or 20 heads that you should have that in house, whether it's sales enablement or wrapped up into revenue ops or another function like that.}

{\pard\par}

{\b\cf1 Tyler: \b0}

{[00:19:14] }

{So. And one of the things that you, when you're thinking about sales enablement, you also want to think about sales and marketing alignment as well. You want to think about what are the ways in which marketing is supporting sales? how is sales getting some of the insights from marketing? do you feel like, what are your thoughts on sales and marketing alignment in terms of, is this something companies are focusing on right now?}

{\pard\par}

{And if so, if they're missing anything like where, what is being missed right now, between with sales and marketing alignment, }

{\pard\par}

{\b\cf2 Chris: \b0}

{[00:19:43] }

{Yeah. So I've heard people before say that sales enablement is the bridge that connects sales and marketing. I'm not sure I see it that way. I think it, I think in some cases that could be a bandaid.}

{\pard\par}

{and the idea of sales and marketing alignment is not a topic that gets me super excited and interested to talk about. but my thoughts, I just think that it's such a multifaceted issue and the things that people are using to all of them are not yeah. Fixing the real issue, the real issues.}

{\pard\par}

{And so what I believe are the, are, is the core reason that there's misalignment people say it's like data or process or blah, blah, blah. It's culture. Is my stance on it. And a lot of people don't talk about it this way. And so I'm happy to speak, happy to have people disagree it's culture. And so what happens is when you go into a company, whether they're small or big or startup or venture backed or whatever, Sales runs the company.}

{\pard\par}

{let's just be honest. and there's some companies that are not this way, but typically the order of importance goes to CEO and then the CEO might come from a sales background and then it goes the head of sales. And so an over time, companies start to show that they prioritize their own revenue and their own sales.}

{\pard\par}

{Over everything. And then they moved budget that way. And then they allow the best sales rep to get away with really poor, unacceptable behavior because they're delivering the revenue and they create a culture where sales is superior to the rest of the people in the organization, not just marketing. And so, and then there's a couple other pieces that come into this.}

{\pard\par}

{So one, you start with that, which is a big issue in general because w and. The reason that it's happening that way is because in 1998, all you needed was a good product and a sales team to win. You didn't really need marketing, especially in a B2B environment. You needed in a brochure, you didn't need the, you might've had to go to the trade shows, which was basically like, a marketing coordinator could have pulled that off.}

{\pard\par}

{Like you just needed to put feet on the street, have a good product, and then they go and sell it. It's not how it works anymore, but that mindset continues to be inside of B2B companies. And so the idea that marketing does finger painting or marketing is sending us a bunch of bad leads or whatever that is, it's always that.}

{\pard\par}

{And then, so there's culture. The second thing that creates this misalignment is that the company sets unrealistic goals, predicated on how many sales reps they have. So they pick a revenue target. They figure out what the quota are. They figure out how many reps they are going to have, and then they figure out how much quota those people need to put in which creates unrealistic goal setting based on how buyers buy today.}

{\pard\par}

{That was how you set quotas in 1998. And so then the sales leaders can't hit the revenue goals cause they can't build their pipeline with enough qualified leads. They can't win at a consistent enough rate. Their reps are missing quota and sometimes it's less than 50% of reps are hitting quota.}

{\pard\par}

{And so what do you do from there? You blame marketing. Marketing's not doing the generating enough MQL or whatever. And then what happens is if you don't have the right marketing leader and the right executives and the, in the seats, you actually then by doing it that create a lot of short term, bad marketing behavior and this cycle continues.}

{\pard\par}

{And so those that's my 2 cents on it. I don't think that there's a. I don't think that there's a real, tangible way to fix it. Certainly not by putting someone in the middle and calling it done, this is a very much higher level issue and people are not willing to accept it, which is that there's a sense in a lot of companies of sales superiority, and unrealistic goal setting that then creates all the other downstream issues.}

{\pard\par}

{And until you fix the core issue, those symptoms are going to continue to be there. }

{\pard\par}

{\b\cf1 Tyler: \b0}

{[00:24:02] }

{Yeah. Yeah, totally agree. I've seen that in a few organizations I've worked with definitely that sales is superior and that they tend to dictate things. And, and then, especially the ones that are hitting their numbers.}

{\pard\par}

{I mean, that's usually, seen as we're going to follow the leader there. So, regardless of behaviors, regardless of best practice, regardless of whether it's even profitable to do that. So it seems to echo another point you made, I think. A lot of companies tend to throw more sales reps at the problem.}

{\pard\par}

{Thinking more sales reps means more quota means more revenue, but if the reps are missing their quota, then then you know, it becomes an even bigger issue. So, I totally agree, with a few of the points that you made. I do think it comes down to culture. so when I think, do you think marketing, is there more that marketing leaders, or I guess it's just executives in charge of everything need to be doing to maybe understand that balance or do you, I think it's the fact that a lot of executives are sales.}

{\pard\par}

{Former sales leaders. so that's the language and what they speak, what they're used to. So they're obviously gonna side with sales, because that's the team that they're used to. is there anything more that marketing or other leaders should be doing to so maybe combat some of this or at least make those in charge of where that there might be a problem and it might come from sales?}

{\pard\par}

{\b\cf2 Chris: \b0}

{[00:25:18] }

{I think there's a lot of different factors that play into this. Right. And so, If you can't correct the sales superiority. I don't think that there's much else that will be able to fix it. I think that's really something that you need to fix and that's a culture thing, but then when you start to get more downstream, let's say let's pretend that has been solved and everything like that.}

{\pard\par}

{The next thing that you need to solve is do you have the right executive team with the right mindset and the right marketing leader to actually deliver on what marketing is supposed to do? And so the couple of things that. That I talk about and think about a lot is that we talked about sales basically saying we need more leads or we need this, or things, which then, and if the marketing leader follows that or gets forced to follow that it creates the wrong, the actually the wrong behavior, you feel like it's the right thing to do, but it's not it's short term.}

{\pard\par}

{Well, yeah, we'll send you a lot of leads, but basically all we're going to do is the leads. Aren't going to be quick, good quality. We're going to waste your reps time and your reps are going to think that my team, my marketing team is more of a joke than what it was before, because you just forced me to do this thing.}

{\pard\par}

{That's not in the best interest of our customers. Therefore, not enough. That's interesting. And so you gotta have the right. Leaders, one, the ones that drive the marketing behavior, but also the leader in the marketing see that, and that they sit in a bunch of different camps. There's marketing leaders, one, one camp operating like it's 1998 spending 60% of their budget on events, building brochures for their sales team, running print and, stuff like that.}

{\pard\par}

{Sending direct mail. There's one marketing leader and this basically can't measure what they're doing and is doing the wrong thing. So that's one camp. Another camp is a marketing leader. That's doing some of the right things, but can't measure it. So can't justify their activities and their value. They're also vulnerable because you need to be able to show your results, which then gives you more space to do the right marketing behaviors.}

{\pard\par}

{There's a third camp. Which is the marketing leader that is doing a lot of the right things and can measure them. But as being driven to do some of the things that aren't that right. And, but it's still showing some results is starting to get buy in from the sales team, but can't get it to the next level.}

{\pard\par}

{I think there's a lot of people in that group that I'm trying to figure out how to be able to, from an organization standpoint, give them the space where their executive team let's them go and do their thing more because eventually if you're doing the right marketing things, you're going to get held up because the company wants best.}

{\pard\par}

{The company continues to have their 10 to one sales, to marketing expense ratio. And you can't scale faster if you continue to have that ratio. And so a lot of executives get stuck in, I've been in a company stuck in that piece where it's like marketing is bringing in 35% of the revenue and 30% of the pipeline.}

{\pard\par}

{But. We can't go any harder because we have $30 million tied up in our sales team. We're spending two on marketing, 2 million on marketing. There's a lot of people stuck in that one. And then there's the last bucket that has the right culture inside of the company that is doing the right things that is getting the appropriate investment and is going to go off and lead really strong companies.}

{\pard\par}

{And I think that's the minority. And so if we look at those four buckets, The first two buckets are incredibly vulnerable. We talk about CMOs getting, like getting fired or being vulnerable. Like those people probably should be fired to be direct. Right. and then the other two that are doing the right things, it just depends on, are you in the right as a marketing leader, are you in the right vehicle to be ultra successful?}

{\pard\par}

{And so if I was looking for head of marketing or whatever type of job, the first thing is, am I in my gut, am I going to be in the right vehicle? Is there a good product? Do they have the right organization structure? Do I have the right executives on that team that are going to give me the space to do the things that are going to work?}

{\pard\par}

{And then when it starts working, am I going to have the buy in and the resources to scale it? So this company can be ultra successful. If you're not in the right vehicle and I've been in the wrong vehicle before, you're going to get stuck in one of those other four buckets. }

{\pard\par}

{\b\cf1 Tyler: \b0}

{[00:29:47] }

{Right. It sounds to me like that last bucket, the most successful bucket, that you mentioned in terms of what a marketing leader has that I also hear, are they implementing like an account based marketing strategy where it's something that prioritizes, I mean, the old way is.}

{\pard\par}

{Prioritizing more leads, just that the sales team need more leads, whether they're a good fit or not, who cares? I delivered more leads. So I did my job versus an account based strategy where it's more targeted. We're going after specific companies, specific accounts, we're flipping the funnel, if you will.}

{\pard\par}

{and starting with the target in mind first, and then, then judging success of that marketing based on how well we do to infiltrate these specific accounts, these 500 accounts versus just, the thousands and thousands of new leads that we can create. Is that a part of that fourth successful bucket is an account based marketing strategy?}

{\pard\par}

{\b\cf2 Chris: \b0}

{[00:30:36] }

{I don't think that it's exclusive. I think that there's a lot of people doing an ABM strategy. That's in bucket two. That are doing that. Aren't doing the things and can't demonstrate the success. That tactic does not dictate how well you're actually doing that is just implementing the strategy. I don't think gives you, puts you exclusively in a successful bucket and to be direct, I don't}

{\pard\par}

{necessarily drink the ABM Koolaid. And I'll try and I'll try and get down into this. And there's a lot of different topics I want to cover here. so let's break this down. The first thing is that most of the things that are considered ABM account based marketing is actually account based sales}

{\pard\par}

{disguised as marketing. }

{\pard\par}

{\b\cf1 Tyler: \b0}

{[00:31:31] }

{How's so? }

{\pard\par}

{\b\cf2 Chris: \b0}

{[00:31:33] }

{Everything that's being done is marketing with the intent to sell, not with the intent to create brand, deliver value to customers, and then create sales based on that activity. It's I'm going to run direct mail so that they can have a meeting with my rep. I'm going to, once I see some intent signal, I'm going to give it to an SDR so they can call it 20 times and annoyed this account until we get a meeting, I'm going to send this person a gift in hopes that they'll meet with my account executive for 10 minutes, or I'm going to run banner ads so that I follow this person around the internet all the time.}

{\pard\par}

{And then, because they eventually come in down, I'm going to take the credit for that sale because they saw 16 of my banner ads, lots off them around. I don't think that it's,}

{\pard\par}

{I think that it's very sales focused and I think that some of the stuff that's been one it's held back by the tech. Right? So like the tech right now only allows you to deliver ads in things that are offline or programmatic banner ads, and LinkedIn sponsored content. Two advertising channels that are not that effective.}

{\pard\par}

{And it's all predicated on what you do inside the ad. The way you deliver the ad is only so much. It's actually what you deliver. And so a lot of people are using it to just run either black and white. I'm just going to put my brand here with no objective, which is. that impression is not that valuable or they're going to run a LinkedIn lead gen ad so that, every $500 they spend, somebody fills out this form talks to their rep, never goes anywhere.}

{\pard\par}

{We know that those close at an incredibly low rate. And so, yes, I get that. If you're selling the seven figure deals that you might want to look at those things. But the reality is that a lot of companies are implementing a strategy that have no business doing it. And you have average contract value is less than a hundred K I think you have no business implementing that type of targeted strategy.}

{\pard\par}

{That's just my 2 cents on it, somewhere between 50 and a hundred is the breaking point where maybe it makes sense, but in my view, what companies should be doing is one. I think ABM is a bandaid for not having a focused ideal customer profile. Who's implementing these types of strategies, tech companies that sell a utility to a million different verticals and can't pick one.}

{\pard\par}

{Right? And so there's no, if I sell this hospital equipment to anesthesiologists. It doesn't matter if the anesthesiologist works at Boston children's hospital or the 300 bed hospital down the road. Both those accounts are valuable to me and there's only so many in the country. And so I think that companies fail to segment, target and message appropriately, which then they use ABM as.}

{\pard\par}

{A bandaid to fix that fundamental issue. so yeah, some of those are some of my thoughts. I'm not sure if it was comprehensive, but to get back to your original question, I don't think the implementation of ABM makes you a leader at anything. It's the outcomes of an ABM strategy that would make put you in the fourth bucket, meaning that you're successful and you can get to be in the fourth bucket and super successful and a lot of different ways.}

{\pard\par}

{That doesn't include that tactic. }

{\pard\par}

{\b\cf1 Tyler: \b0}

{[00:35:00] }

{Right? I definitely think it's a buzz word right now that you're hearing a lot though. you hear about an ABM strategy and it's something that, Oh, you've gotta be doing this. If you're not doing this, you're not doing sales and marketing correctly. Why are you even trying if you're not doing it, but I do agree to the point that may be it to disguise some of the issues of not having an ideal customer profile, not having a segment or a niche that you have targeted and that you bring value to because.}

{\pard\par}

{Maybe you're trying to be all things to all people. So, and having a strategy of one size fits all of course we can help you. Of course, we, of course we can add value to you, whether you can or not. I think is leading a lot of companies down a dangerous road. and it leaves. }

{\pard\par}

{\b\cf2 Chris: \b0}

{[00:35:40] }

{I want to get the, yeah, I want to get this in here.}

{\pard\par}

{Cause I just had a thought that the last point about why a company should move from traditional demand generation to ABM is because traditional demand generation doesn't work. And for the most part they're right, traditional demand generation, putting an ebook on your website, waiting to be able to download it and then have your sales team call them. }

{\pard\par}

{Getting buying the event list from a trade show, waiting for someone to walk by your booth, scan their badge, and then have someone harass them after the show or not follow up at all. One of the two. Having a webinar, having 400 people sign up and then calling all of them is a complete waste of time.}

{\pard\par}

{It's not biased. It's sales centric, it's not marketing and it's not customer centric. And so if you do all of those different activities, deliver an ebook or have a webinar with the intent of bringing value to the audience, not collecting leads that your sales team can follow up with. The outcome would be different.}

{\pard\par}

{And so I do believe that the way that most companies do demand generation is broken, but I don't think that exclusively ABM is the answer. I believe that if you have a focused ideal customer profile, build a marketing team that can produce content at a high volume and actually knows how to distribute.}

{\pard\par}

{It actually knows how to distribute it because most companies don't. I walk into companies once a week that are producing great content on their website. And in the past 60 days, 20 people have gone to that webpage that is not distribution. And so how you get everyone in the relevant audience to see every piece of great content you put out not to generate leads.}

{\pard\par}

{But to educate them, create awareness and consideration of your products, which then leads to them coming in mound and closing super fast, because you've done all the heavy lifting upfront instead of trying to sell them when they're not ready to buy, which then creates strong friction between the buyer and the seller.}

{\pard\par}

{And that's what's happening in a lot of companies. }

{\pard\par}

{\b\cf1 Tyler: \b0}

{[00:37:55] }

{Yeah. where do you think that the individual sales rep falls in all of this? We've been talking a lot. Well, you know what marketing leaders should do, what sales leaders should do. CEOs, executives, rev, ops leaders, people in charge. but what if I'm just a sales rep?}

{\pard\par}

{What if I'm, what if I'm at a company and obviously things are what they are of being given leads from marketing and content is driving in a certain type of lead to me. I've got to then take these through a pipeline. I've got a quota to hit, what do you think, what should these sales reps do this day and age?}

{\pard\par}

{given, stuff is out of their hands. They can obviously communicate a lot of things to their sales leader or to marketing, but. How should sales reps go about, should they be responsible for doing some of this on their own, if they're not getting it from their leaders or where do you feel like sales reps, what should they be doing in response to some of these big problems that then they're having to handle and they're trying to figure out.}

{\pard\par}

{And sometimes they're not, sometimes they're only half of them are hitting quota and they're getting put on a chopping block. so what can they do proactively to combat some of this, you think. }

{\pard\par}

{\b\cf2 Chris: \b0}

{[00:38:58] }

{Yeah. So, the first thing I think is to get in the right vehicle. I say that a lot, because if you're at the wrong company, that's not giving you the right things, like a viable option is to go somewhere else.}

{\pard\par}

{And I think people don't really consider that. And, but you have to use, you have to look at that. I think you need. The second thing is once it's whether or not you're in the right vehicle, the next step is to become 100% buyer centric, understanding and your buyers at such a level where you can have a conversation with them for 30 minutes and never say anything about your products, don't drop any pain grenades.}

{\pard\par}

{Don't talk about the competitors. How can you get to a level where you understand them so well that you can talk about all the other important things which are 99% of their job that have nothing to do with your product? So I think that's one thing that sales reps fall down on. And when you get to that level, you'd be amazed how many more people want to talk to you than when you're just talking about your product and when you create that value and then you create relationships before you try and sell something magically by having those more conversations and by building those relationships and by knowing people and caring about what they care about.}

{\pard\par}

{Then you sell more stuff. Yep. One thing, go ahead. I think that reps, no matter what company they work in can do that. The question is, do they want to, and are they in an environment that they can survive long enough to get that stuff done? So then they can be more successful in the future. And so you can}

{\pard\par}

{message a hundred people in your target audience on LinkedIn and say, Hey, I'm, I just started three months ago. I don't really know much about this. I'll give you a $50 Amazon gift card. If you can just answer some of my questions for 30 minutes and you've got to make sure that you don't mess that up because that time is for you to understand them.}

{\pard\par}

{Not for one second, to try and sell them, or you just completely destroyed your credibility. But if you take the time to understand them, you're not trying to actually sell them anything ever. You're trying to learn so that you can take that information collect it, put together your strategy and then go sell to other people.}

{\pard\par}

{And so, I think reps could do that a lot, but they are driven to do short term seller focused things that are often not aligned with what the buyers need. }

{\pard\par}

{\b\cf1 Tyler: \b0}

{[00:41:37] }

{You mentioned LinkedIn, and I know LinkedIn is something that you personally are very involved in, and it seems like a big part of your growth strategy, LinkedIn and video, for Refine Labs.}

{\pard\par}

{So, I'm curious, what do you think. What should a sales rep be doing on LinkedIn? if I'm a brand new sales rep, just starting off at, XYZ company, what should I, how should I be leveraging LinkedIn? What do you think? Obviously, I know that you, you have probably strong opinions on what you think would be the right thing to do with LinkedIn as a sales rep and probably the wrong thing to do.}

{\pard\par}

{so what would you think would be some of the better practices and also some things that sales reps should probably not do on LinkedIn that you're seeing too often. }

{\pard\par}

{\b\cf2 Chris: \b0}

{[00:42:18] }

{Yeah. So first off present day, LinkedIn is the best place for content marketing to create sales in B2B ever. But it wasn't like that.}

{\pard\par}

{It's like it was ads it's just recently hit scale. It wasn't like that forever. I built. A lot of my early career on B2B Facebook ads. When people told me it was stupid, we would sell it millions of dollars worth of stuff by running job title, targeted Facebook ads to the right people, with the right content over time to want to talk to our sales reps and then buy things really quickly.}

{\pard\par}

{And so the platforms or whatever the mediums are, the stuff changes right now. It's LinkedIn. And so. If you're a sales rep and you want to have success on LinkedIn I'll we can start with the things not to do the things not to do are not to build a filter in sales, NAB, connect with everyone in that list.}

{\pard\par}

{With a note that talks about what you're trying to do, or to set up a meeting or to do the exact same thing. And then once they accept your connection, which is going to be at a variable rate because. Your job title says sales rep and they know what you're trying to do, but the, for the 5% that accepts the next thing not to do is not to write after they accept to have a bot or to send it yourself.}

{\pard\par}

{A canned message about setting up a meeting, talking about your product stuff, doesn't work. And it really just doesn't reflect well on both you personally or your company. Another thing not to do would be to take whatever content that marketing gives you and to share it. On LinkedIn, because the only three likes that you're getting on that content are the three or three coworkers }

{\pard\par}

{\b\cf1 Tyler: \b0}

{[00:44:09] }

{or maybe the marketing person that created the content.}

{\pard\par}

{\b\cf2 Chris: \b0}

{[00:44:12] }

{Yeah. Yeah. And so, so how do you create your own unique, original content that brings value to the people that you're trying to sell to? And this is a big distinction of sales reps need to decide because unless you're a sales rep selling to other sales reps, Producing content about sales is not going to work for you.}

{\pard\par}

{Right. And so sales reps need to make a choice. Are you using LinkedIn to build a personal brand about you and sales, or are you using it to build a brand in your industry to sell the products that you're selling today? You can't do both. I don't believe that you can do both because when you post about sales, all the people that you're trying to sell to are going to see that, and it's going to turn them off.}

{\pard\par}

{Yeah, I think you actually need to be in one of those two camps. I think most sales reps, they're going to pick that on building a personal brand in sales, which is going to work amazing if you sell to sales reps or to sales leaders, but most people don't. And so let's pretend that you're in the second camp, because I think that's the more interesting for this conversation, which is that I'm trying to, let's just pretend that I'm trying to sell to.}

{\pard\par}

{Directors of operations at manufacturing facilities, whatever you pick a niche, we'll just go with it. Okay. So how am I going to connect with engage and bring value? And then eventually have conversations that lead to sales with that group. When I'm a sales rep have never worked in a manufacturing facility, have no idea what these people care about could never speak at a level}

{\pard\par}

{where I would be considered a thought leader in this space. So what am I going to do? The number one thing to do would be to figure out ways where you can interview or otherwise use other people's thought leadership to have the content that you be the caterer and deliver of it. Okay. And I'm empathetic because I don't think that practice would be accepted in a lot of companies.}

{\pard\par}

{Right. I'm an individual rep, right. I'm going to go interview director operations, Jonathan, down the road. and I'm going to do a podcast about that every week. I think most companies would shut that down almost immediately. and so, it comes back to being in the right vehicle. I mean, there are not many companies out there fortune 500 startup, whatever.}

{\pard\par}

{that are in the bucket that they're selling to buyers that are not like them that are doing what I just talked about at any point well. Their reps are only allowed to share the content that marketing created, which is completely predicated on whether or not marketing can create good content, which in a lot of cases is not there.}

{\pard\par}

{And then you're just sharing stuff to your organic piece and three people in your target market. See it, and they don't care about it. And it's just wasted effort. If you don't put a really good cohesive strategy together. and I don't have a prescription to fix it other than changing the mindset of the leadership team, because I've been in this before.}

{\pard\par}

{I'm not just like you're sharing my point of views. I worked in B2B companies for eight years. The whole time I was there. I had the knowledge in my brain that I'm talking to you about today and that I post on LinkedIn every day and I never felt comfortable about sharing any of those thoughts while I worked inside of someone else's organization.}

{\pard\par}

{And so companies don't create an environment where that's accepted and that's the reason why the reps go to the social selling tactics inside of dark DMs or connection requests, because that's the only thing that they can do because they can count it as an activity metric and put it in Salesforce and use it as a social touch and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.}

{\pard\par}

{So again, I do think that most of the things that we're talking about today are fundamental culture issues where me telling them what to do or what might be a good idea to try, probably won't get implemented at 99.9% of the people listening to this. What we're trying to do is reach that 0.1% of leaders than hear this.}

{\pard\par}

{I think that it could help and then have one or two reps run an experiment or something, right? }

{\pard\par}

{\b\cf1 Tyler: \b0}

{[00:48:38] }

{Yeah. I do think that's important. I mean, I think it's a missed opportunity. I think companies are leaving a lot on the table cause they have, like you said, it's their most expensive resource is their sales team.}

{\pard\par}

{And just to be putting repurposing content from marketing out there is not going to drive any engagement. if anything, it'll probably detract your target audience, your ideal customer profile from wanting to follow you or gain any insight, because you're just, }

{\pard\par}

{\b\cf2 Chris: \b0}

{[00:49:02] }

{The content is never designed to bring value to the audience.}

{\pard\par}

{It's always designed to sell the product and that's not the sales reps fault, right? That is. That is the person that's building the content is then under the scrutiny of whoever's leading the marketing organization. Who's under the scrutiny of whoever's telling them what to do. And somewhere in that chain, there's a breakdown of, I forgot that we were supposed to be doing this for our audience, not for us.}

{\pard\par}

{And that's actually, as I said that, I was like, that's probably not a, anything that goes through most people's heads, most people. And I've been in this camp, Half decade ago where that's what I thought we were supposed to do. I thought we were supposed to build brochures and give the sales team the right messages and playbooks and sales decks and create ads.}

{\pard\par}

{Say 20% off, buy my stuff. And that's just not how to get it done. Thank you so much for listening to today's show. You can find all the links discussed and the show notes@thesaleslift.com. That's the T H E sales, S a L E S. Lift L I F t.com. Have questions for me, email me@tyleratthesaleslift.com.}

{\pard\par}

{We look forward to seeing you back. Back here next week and we hope today's show brings you sales lift. Your business needs. Remember ideas plus action equals results. You've got new ideas. Now it's time to take action. }

}