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Balancing Brand and Demand in a Scale-Up Business · Sales Pipeline Radio

• 0:16
  Matt: All right.
• 0:17
  Welcome everybody to another episode of Sales Pipeline Radio.
• 0:20
  I'm your host, Matt Heinz.
• 0:21
  So excited to have you here for another conversation about what's working today
• 0:25
  in B2B sales and marketing, especially in those complex sales motions that could
• 0:29
  really use a little more predictability.
• 0:31
  Thank you very much for, for being here.
• 0:32
  If you're watching or listening on demand, thank you for downloading and subscribing
• 0:36
  every episode of Sales Pipeline Radio, always available at salespipelineradio.
• 0:40
  com.
• 0:41
  And today we're going to do a little bit of a marketing therapy session
• 0:44
  with my friend, Chris Bauserman.
• 0:46
  He's the CMO at Conexiumo and we've had a couple of conversations recently, Chris,
• 0:51
  just about just marketing best practices.
• 0:53
  And whenever we talk about marketing best practices today, we tend to get
• 0:56
  into sort of dumpster fire territory as well, because this is not easy.
• 1:01
  Talk about what I've sometimes heard described as complexity creep
• 1:05
  and how marketing gets done today.
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  I wish it wasn't so, but to do marketing well requires a lot of layers
• 1:12
  of complexity that can be managed.
• 1:15
  So we'd love to have you share-- you're in the seat, man.
• 1:17
  So what are you seeing at Conexiom?
• 1:20
  What are some of the challenges that you hear from some of
• 1:22
  your other CMO peers as well?
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  Chris: Yeah.
• 1:25
  Hey, Matt, thanks for having me on.
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  Always great to chat and to chat with fellow good market leaders
• 1:30
  out there about what's, happening.
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  It's no surprise today, still seeing headwinds and just in terms
• 1:34
  of customers really wanting to spend, and really start off new initiatives
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  beyond the top two or three.
• 1:39
  Right.
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  The biggest challenge we have is finding a great customer or prospects who,
• 1:43
  everything looks like it could be a great but I can only do three things
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  this year and the plate's already full.
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  So let's talk later.
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  So that's the biggest challenge I think right now is creating
• 1:51
  that urgency in the market.
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  Matt: When I think about urgency, I think about the difference between
• 1:59
  manufacturing it and discovering it.
• 2:00
  Can you talk a little bit about that because
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  Chris: I think that manufacturer versus discover is spot on.
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  And what we've talked about in the team this year is really tied
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  to big goals and go to market.
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  I'm not a big fisher, but the fishing analogy happened to work.
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  One is where you're going to do much better at spearfishing and that's really
• 2:15
  swarming and spending disproportionate amount of effort in marketing and
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  sales on a customer showing any signals that might be buying, right.
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  And it could be buying an alternative approach, but just In the market,
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  this is one of those top priorities.
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  Let's not treat them as equal opportunity.
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  Let's go at them hard.
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  And the second one is that creation, right?
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  Is that building it and that's, called fatten the fish, right?
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  And that's kind of getting into your account based marketing, your thought
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  leadership, but again, really trying to dial in and say, Hey, we know these
• 2:44
  are the things that matter to you.
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  Let's educate you on why the things that matter to you are important actually
• 2:51
  are helped by doing something that looks like, we can help with and let's
• 2:54
  start those conversations early, meet them where they are in terms of their
• 2:58
  buying process, which is nothing right.
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  They're problem aware though.
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  Let's meet them at that problem aware state and then really nurture
• 3:04
  them and work on those relationships to to find out the opportunity.
• 3:08
  Matt: You start early, you educate, you build a relationship.
• 3:11
  These things take time, Chris, especially in a B2B sales,
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  especially in a complex B2B sale.
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  We haven't even talked about buying committees and multi threading yet.
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  We all have a number to hit.
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  We're all in a hurry to get those deals closed., you risk reward in terms of
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  pushing them too quickly, where, you know, We know where they need to be, but they
• 3:29
  need to be committed to change first.
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  That creates tension in the organization as well, right?
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  We need to take these steps to get someone ready to be successful.
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  So we want to apply some polite persistence perhaps.
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  But where do you find that balance?
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  And what do you listen for with prospects that indicates some might
• 3:49
  be ready to move a little faster.
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  Chris: The listening is really important and it's also really
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  important to think about matching the conversation topic and the offer
• 4:02
  with the right level of organization.
• 4:04
  Right.
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  And I think more so than ever with tight budgets, it's important to find
• 4:08
  topics of conversation that get in the agenda of more senior leadership.
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  When you think about budget makers versus budget spenders.
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  And so in those tight environments, having those conversations with VPs,
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  C level prospects, which can be really hard enterprises, but you've got to
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  put that investment in, if that's your target market, but getting in
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  their conversations and finding out what's on their agenda and how you can
• 4:29
  hook into that is important, right?
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  And then, you know, I'd much rather have a conversation with the CEO who says,
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  Yes, this would help in this part of the business and this part of the business.
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  And I can see this has even more value than you're talking about...
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  challenges, the money might be a problem.
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  My CIO is overburdened, let me talk to him.
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  Let's get back to you.
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  That's a conversation.
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  Now you can say, Hey, the momentum is there.
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  Then, then it's like, how can we handle that objection?
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  Right.
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  Let's, let's talk about how we can do this without taking a ton of your
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  CIO's time, if that's the bottleneck.
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  So that's probably the biggest thing.
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  We are in a situation now where because of XYZ acquisition we just did, there's
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  no way we can cut this till October.
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  Then, that's still a win, right?
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  Cause you've kind of created that, nurture them and then make
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  sure you re engage in September.
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  Matt: Talking today on Sales Pipeline Radio with Chris Bauserman.
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  He's the CMO at Conexiom.
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  We're talking about so far the buying journey and helping managing modern
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  buyers through that, the need to educate, the need to help people discover
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  urgency and a commitment to change.
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  And so the complexity creep that we talked about the beginning
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  comes both from the buying process as well as the selling process.
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  Because it is also complicated, right?
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  We used to think it was successful when you do like marketing's the top of the
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  funnel sales, the bottom marketing, just generate leads, give them the sales.
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  Everybody's good.
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  It doesn't, that doesn't work.
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  It's not sustainable.
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  It's not any way to create any kind of predictable outcomes from your pipeline.
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  Talk a little bit about the need to create that same level of orchestration
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  using some of the same discipline to manage how you sell in a more
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  predictable successful manner.
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  Chris: Yes, and that's equally as important, right?
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  Because you've got to have that right outreach in it.
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  And also making sure everyone knows their role, right?
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  ABM, right?
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  One to a few, you've got some top, 50 or 100 accounts you're really going after.
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  Those, you want to really coordinate with the AEs, right?
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  They're going to own a certain number of those accounts.
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  What messages are you providing?
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  What messages are BDRs providing?
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  How are you nurturing them?
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  And then, they're in there, and it's one of the things that we do truly
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  all the time is regularly meet across sales and marketing and BDRs and say,
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  let's look at all the pipe, per rep or per territory and say, which of
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  these are stuck and need help, right?
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  Because that's one of the things you look at going from a transactional buying
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  experience to this creating demand and nurture and really trying to drive that
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  urgency is that you're gonna have to look at this and say, who do we have here?
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  Do we get a customer reference in front of them earlier than we would?
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  Do we have another executive meeting, right?
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  What is it that we need to show?
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  Or do we need the BDRs to go find a couple of other people who are influencers
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  and just directly connect with them?
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  So I think that's a key part of that team sport and that collaboration
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  is once you're, once it's in the pipeline, making sure that you
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  keep focusing on one step forward.
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  Matt: So really good advice at an operational level.
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  Let's take a step back and think about that from a foundational
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  perspective, like doing that coordinated dance in the midst of the
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  funnel is like critically important.
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  But if we don't agree on who we should be selling to in the first place, then we
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  might be doing a dance with someone who's not, that's never going to go anywhere.
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  How do you build the foundational alignment?
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  Well, it started with just across sales and marketing, because I want to be
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  able to talk about CS and the customer journey as well, but specifically for
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  net new, what are some of your best practices and positive experience
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  shares from creating that foundation?
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  Chris: That's a big thing.
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  That's a big exercise we went through last year was to really rethink our ICP.
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  And, and so one thing is, that combination of data and anecdotes is huge, right?
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  Because certain people look at this and say, okay, We ran this analysis
• 7:54
  on lifetime value and win rates.
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  And this is what good looks like.
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  And I'm a numbers junkie so I dug into that, but also, you got to
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  go through and listen and talk to customers, ask questions and then
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  find out why did they use you?
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  Why they not?
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  What's the commonality here?
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  What does really good look like?
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  And you can't predict it, right.
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  You can't say we know that customers who look like this, who need these things are
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  great customers and great fits, then, you know, no out of correlation of data or
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  other things are going to matter, right?
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  So having those two things together, start the foundation of the buy in.
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  You talked about customer success is a great one, because it's easy to look
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  and say who our ideal customer should be by what's the highest win rate,
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  the fastest deal velocity, right?
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  But those arent' necessarily your best customers One of the things I
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  did when I looked at doing the ICP definition last year, and then we put
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  in our first account grading model of kind of A through E accounts.
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  And we went in there and said, Hey, let's look at optimizing,
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  not just on win rate or velocity.
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  Right.
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  But let's look at lifetime value.
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  Let's look and see those customers who, and factoring in the deal size
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  and the profit margin and the NRR, the upsell potential, all of a sudden,
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  moving more to larger enterprise customers, an upper mid market, which
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  we have a number of, but we didn't focus on as much for the new logo side.
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  Well, so you look at all that and you say, Hey, these customers are much
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  more valuable to us than it looks like if you just look at win rate.
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  Right.
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  Because they're harder to get, but they're super valuable once you get them.
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  And then having and socializing that across the whole ELT with finance,
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  and looking at, can we deliver that?
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  How do we do that?
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  Right.
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  That becomes really important.
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  That takes a lot of resistance, right.
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  Cause people are sort of set, well, this is what a product could look like.
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  And then, you got to bake that in the systems too.
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  Right.
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  And that's why I mentioned the account scoring model.
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  So we've taken some time and shown, both the historical data, but now the
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  go forward data that says, Hey, you know, if it's an A through a C, right.
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  So for example, we're going to invest money going after them, outbounding them.
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  When we see an intent signal, we're really going to swarm them.
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  We're going to invite them to bespoke events.
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  But if it's a D, which is a big portion of our possible market,
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  they self select, they come to us.
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  We're going to absolutely follow up on them, but we're not going to chase them.
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  And if they're an E, we're not going to invest because we know
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  it's not going to be a good fit.
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  Matt: Yeah, you're, you're bringing up this idea of really understanding
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  your total acquisition cost and then understanding lifetime value and
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  breaking that down into segments and really making a business decision then
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  to say what are we willing to spend to achieve a certain lifetime value?
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  And there's not a right and a bunch of wrong answers.
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  There's a bunch of possible right answers for you.
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  Depending on the stage, your, company's maturity, you might be willing to spend
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  a high, high percentage of lifetime value on acquisition costs because you're
• 10:36
  trying to prove your model, trying to get product market fit, trying to get
• 10:38
  your next round of funding, then at some point you get bought by private equity.
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  And now the opposite is true.
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  Now I care about profitability.
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  But profitability is a category, like what's the number you're trying to hit?
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  And depending on what that number is, those ratios start to really matter.
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  And finding out that information might be counterintuitive.
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  I'll never forget doing this work for a company that was selling a
• 11:00
  CRM to small businesses and they had all different kinds of industries
• 11:03
  that would come and buy the product.
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  But when we looked into the data, we found that home services companies,
• 11:09
  like roofers, contractors, painters, they, for some reason, just love
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  the product, thought the features would fit perfectly for them.
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  They had like three, four X lifetime value.
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  So not only does that mean I'm willing to go and double down on to getting market
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  share in that category, I'm potentially willing to spend more money to do it.
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  Potentially.
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  Right.
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  So now you've got a business decision to make.
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  How far and how deep do I want to go?
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  How much of that margin am I willing to spend just to get more revenue?
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  Again, depending on what are your exit strategies, what are
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  your objectives in the business?
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  What's the corporate strategy that is driving your go to market strategy, which
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  leads to the last question as we wrap up Marketers I think too often get the
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  reputation of at worse being the arts and crafts department and maybe, in the middle
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  somewhere is the, well, they're trying to drive revenue, but they're focused on
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  the wrong metrics and they're not really speaking the language of the business.
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  Talk about what it takes for a marketing leader to really be seen and prove
• 12:00
  themselves as a business leader.
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  Is it conversations?
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  Is it level of engagement?
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  What are some of the keys to doing that?
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  Well,
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  Chris: The first and foremost thing is to not view yourself as an operator, right?
• 12:11
  Don't think of yourself as twisting the dials of demand gen or operations,
• 12:14
  but look at yourself as that person who's steeped in the market, right?
• 12:19
  There's a discussion about Chief Market Officer versus Chief Marketing Officer as
• 12:23
  a great, slight turn of reference, right?
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  So I think one of the first things is being able to bring feedback to
• 12:29
  leadership team into the board about what's happening in the market and
• 12:32
  whether that's through, a lot of work with deals and deal analysis, whether
• 12:36
  it's looking and listening to customer conversations, whether it is with loss
• 12:40
  and dependent analysis, doing market studies, analyst conversations, being
• 12:44
  that market expert and pulling all together is probably the most important
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  things cause then you can start driving corporate strategy, product strategy,
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  having real, real insights drive that.
• 12:55
  And of course the second thing is just don't lead with vanity metrics, right?
• 12:58
  That's the, probably the biggest thing that, marketers get smacked with is,
• 13:01
  talking about Website Traffic, Impressions and MQLs-- what does that do with revenue?
• 13:06
  Matt: It's all building blocks, right?
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  You're not going to get pipeline unless you do activities.
• 13:09
  You're not going to get leads unless you go to market in certain channels.
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  But I think there's a difference between saying these are the building blocks,
• 13:15
  the means, and going to the board and saying, well, here's the trade shows we
• 13:18
  went to, and here's the traffic we got, and this up and to the rider was just the
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  marketing of more, that doesn't, matter.
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  Well, how is that driving impact?
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  How is that leading somewhere?
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  How do we use what you have learned and done to create more
• 13:30
  predictable outcomes moving forward?
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  The other point I make is you start talking about understanding
• 13:35
  the market maturity, right?
• 13:36
  Understanding the maturity of your market, of your customer base, of
• 13:39
  your competitors, and comparing that to then your corporate strategy.
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  Who are our owners?
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  What are their objectives?
• 13:44
  What do we think our exit strategy needs to be, should be?
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  Those all have a direct impact on what the go to market and
• 13:50
  marketing strategy should be.
• 13:53
  It's a huge opportunity, I think, in companies where if those things
• 13:56
  aren't being compared, if you're not asking those questions, if you aren't
• 13:58
  on a regular basis ensuring that everyone understands it is aligned
• 14:02
  around what is our corporate strategy?
• 14:05
  Do we have a point of view that everyone at least generally agrees on in terms
• 14:08
  of the level of maturity and then how that translates into business outcomes?
• 14:13
  I don't hear those conversations happening in C suites often enough, And
• 14:16
  why not the CMO to step in and do that?
• 14:19
  Chris: Absolutely.
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  I think that's the thing.
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  When you have those conversations, as marketers, our whole job is
• 14:24
  to be audience aware, right?
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  Understand the audience, listen to the audience, target the
• 14:29
  audience with the right message.
• 14:30
  And, I think marketers are generally wired to be great at that outside the company
• 14:35
  and then face plant inside the company when they start talking in marketing
• 14:39
  speak to the board, to finance, et cetera.
• 14:42
  Talking about brand or trade shows is a great example.
• 14:45
  There's so much art and science, sausage making in there.
• 14:48
  And some parts of marketing are very measurable, but the more you start
• 14:51
  trying to get into all the specifics the more you create confusion.
• 14:54
  And the brand is a great No CMO should be going in and
• 14:57
  pitching a big brand investment.
• 14:59
  But what they want to do is, Hey, given that we're trying to enter this
• 15:02
  market, this segment, move the needle on this level of efficiency, I'm doing
• 15:06
  things that are going to unlock that.
• 15:07
  And rolling those numbers together and showing the total outcome, as opposed
• 15:11
  to here's how the sausage is made, because most people don't understand
• 15:14
  how marketing makes the sausage.
• 15:16
  And it just confuses people trying to get into those details.
• 15:20
  Matt: So just to round this out, we were talking about helping prospects
• 15:24
  understand the need and helping prospects ask the right questions.
• 15:28
  Can you apply that to your C-suite peers?
• 15:30
  Can you apply that to the board?
• 15:32
  I read a Google study, it said only 3 or 4 percent of corporate B2B board
• 15:35
  members have significant marketing experience in their background.
• 15:40
  So they may be trying to ask the question, but you are the expert, like you're the
• 15:43
  marketing expert coming in the room.
• 15:45
  So say that's a great question but when I think about the outcome,
• 15:47
  I think about it this way.
• 15:49
  And you can do this in a respectful way.
• 15:50
  You can do it sometimes in one on one conversations outside of the broader
• 15:53
  board, full board meeting but sometimes I see marketers that maybe a little
• 15:57
  too reactive about where they are, as opposed to saying here's my point of view.
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  I know a lot of chief market officers, when they do a board presentation, they
• 16:04
  start with perspective on the market.
• 16:06
  They don't start results.
• 16:07
  They don't even start with pipeline and revenue impact.
• 16:09
  They start with, here's what the market is right now.
• 16:12
  Chris: Yes.
• 16:12
  Matt: Right.
• 16:12
  Let's have that discussion first.
• 16:14
  And when you can do that with your sales peers, with your CS peers, now
• 16:18
  you've got a united front, right?
• 16:19
  And it's not about us versus them or creating alliances, just saying here's
• 16:22
  how we think about the business.
• 16:23
  Here's how we think about the market and this is why we've done what we're
• 16:26
  doing and planning on doing what next.
• 16:29
  Chris: Yes, absolutely.
• 16:31
  And then everything you say, then you're going to take action on,
• 16:33
  Talk about the actions going to achieve, but you know, whether it's.
• 16:36
  CAC, driving bookings, new markets, win rate, velocity, whatever the case
• 16:42
  is, that's what you're doing As opposed to you're launching this campaign.
• 16:46
  Matt: Love it.
• 16:47
  Chris Bauserman, CMO at Conexiom.
• 16:49
  Thanks for joining us today.
• 16:50
  Sales Pipeline Radio.
• 16:52
  Chris: Thanks, Matt.
• 16:53
  Matt: Thanks everyone for watching and listening.
• 16:55
  Excited to have y'all here.
• 16:56
  We'll be here next week with another episode.
• 16:58
  In the meantime, have a great rest of your week, rest of your month,
• 17:01
  your quarter, wherever you're at.
• 17:02
  We'll see you next week.