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From CMO to CRO: Best Practices and Cautionary Tales From a B2B Legend · Sales Pipeline Radio

• 0:16
  Matt Heinz: All right, back again here on the marketplace
• 0:18
  floor of Forrester B2B Summit.
• 0:21
  Having a great day.
• 0:21
  This has been so much fun to be able to record these.
• 0:23
  Thanks again to the Forrester team for making this happen.
• 0:25
  Very excited to have with us for this episode, Latane Conant.
• 0:29
  She is the CRO Chief Revenue Officer at 6sense.
• 0:32
  We did not plan this.
• 0:33
  Your booth is right there.
• 0:34
  Your booth is right across there.
• 0:35
  My right there,
• 0:35
  Latane Conant: Matt.
• 0:35
  It's perfect.
• 0:36
  Matt Heinz: It's right across.
• 0:37
  I've been waving at them, they've been making faces at me.
• 0:39
  Latane Conant: It's perfect.
• 0:40
  Matt Heinz: Yeah.
• 0:40
  No, it's been really great.
• 0:41
  This has been a fun day.
• 0:42
  Latane Conant: What else am I, Matt?
• 0:43
  What do we do together?
• 0:44
  We're co-founders of what
• 0:46
  Matt Heinz: we bond over neuro neurodiverse children.
• 0:48
  We complain about pipeline and, we co-founded the CMO Coffee Talk community.
• 0:53
  Latane Conant: We did, yeah,
• 0:54
  we did.
• 0:54
  One of our best accomplishments, I do believe it
• 0:57
  Matt Heinz: is, I'll tell you what,
• 0:58
  Latane Conant: if I may, say, so.
• 0:59
  Matt Heinz: You know, this our stated purposes of business, Heinz Marketing
• 1:02
  is to positively impact careers and lives by enabling work that matters.
• 1:06
  And that whole statement is important to me, but the positively
• 1:09
  impact careers and lives.
• 1:10
  Like what we have done,
• 1:12
  Latane Conant: we're doing that
• 1:13
  Matt Heinz: And I think you mentioned this, like you and I both put posts
• 1:15
  up for the five year anniversary.
• 1:16
  It was like March 18th or something, was five years from the first one we did.
• 1:20
  I know, and we won't do the whole backstory here, but you,
• 1:22
  can get it online, but like it wasn't just the post to comments.
• 1:25
  Latane Conant: I know.
• 1:25
  It's so awesome.
• 1:26
  Matt Heinz: The comments from people that have been impacted
• 1:29
  personally, professionally.
• 1:31
  I mean, you think about a community, right?
• 1:33
  Some communities really are glorified mailing list.
• 1:36
  But I think a community is about,
• 1:38
  Latane Conant: or transactional.
• 1:39
  Matt Heinz: Yeah.
• 1:39
  Or you just make it all about the product and that's fine.
• 1:42
  There's places for some of those, but a community that sustains is a
• 1:45
  community that cares about each other.
• 1:46
  It's community members for each other.
• 1:48
  Like you are part of the product and you benefit from that.
• 1:51
  But to see and hear the stories of people that have benefited from each
• 1:55
  other, that we have had a small part in bringing them together to make
• 1:58
  that possible, it's pretty awesome.
• 1:59
  Latane Conant: It's awesome.
• 2:00
  It's awesome.
• 2:01
  Yeah.
• 2:01
  It's one of our proudest accomplishments, I
• 2:04
  Matt Heinz: believe.
• 2:04
  I mean, honestly, I think like it's legacy stuff.
• 2:07
  It's pretty incredible.
• 2:08
  And I continue to be, just be thankful that you and I got to meet the
• 2:10
  summer before Covid at a conference.
• 2:12
  I know.
• 2:12
  Latane Conant: That's what's so great about these conferences.
• 2:14
  Matt Heinz: To be honest.
• 2:15
  I brought that up in a lot of these sessions that you don't
• 2:17
  have to be here for the keynote.
• 2:19
  You can watch YouTube.
• 2:19
  Right.
• 2:20
  There's a lot of things here that you could technically do, not in person,
• 2:23
  but like our lizard brains want to be in person with other people.
• 2:26
  Latane Conant: Totally.
• 2:26
  Matt Heinz: And meeting someone on LinkedIn or getting an email intro
• 2:29
  or like follow you on LinkedIn is nothing, again, it's transactional.
• 2:32
  Exactly.
• 2:32
  Versus the real deep relationships you get by seeing people in person.
• 2:37
  Latane Conant: Well, I think it's awesome to be here on the show
• 2:40
  floor for it should be awesome.
• 2:41
  Sales Pipeline Radio Sales.
• 2:43
  Matt Heinz: Pipeline radio.
• 2:44
  Okay.
• 2:44
  I have some serious questions for you.
• 2:46
  We can go all kinds of different categories as well.
• 2:48
  We can talk about Club6.
• 2:50
  We talk about, I've come totally around on Club6.
• 2:52
  The first time I went to a Club6, like it is a Latane special 'cause it's like.
• 2:56
  Latane Conant: Very, very bougie
• 2:58
  Matt Heinz: interior decorators have been here.
• 3:00
  Latane Conant: Yes.
• 3:00
  Interior decorators have been, and someone's
• 3:02
  Matt Heinz: like, why are they going over the top?
• 3:03
  I'm like, well, think about it like you could meet a 6sense rep
• 3:06
  at a Starbucks and that'd be fine.
• 3:08
  Or you could meet them somewhere that feels this special,
• 3:11
  Latane Conant: but it's always packed.
• 3:12
  Matt Heinz: It is.
• 3:13
  That's why it's a correlation.
• 3:15
  And I've been to some other activations here in the past
• 3:17
  years and they are not packed.
• 3:18
  Latane Conant: But you know what, it's not actually about the spend.
• 3:21
  Or the money.
• 3:22
  Mm-hmm.
• 3:23
  And I would say this is something I do in my personal life, is just the environment.
• 3:28
  I always wanna create the right environment for people to
• 3:33
  make meaningful relationships.
• 3:35
  Mm-hmm.
• 3:35
  And so I think about even our patio and like the way I've arranged
• 3:38
  the patio so that when people come over and we barbecue mm-hmm.
• 3:40
  It's set up the right way.
• 3:42
  Or how we do holidays or birthdays or having kids up at the lake.
• 3:47
  I just think that.
• 3:48
  I naturally want people to connect and the environment, and I think
• 3:54
  through, I think about the colors, I think about the space layout.
• 3:59
  I think about the fabrics and the textiles.
• 4:02
  I think about the smell.
• 4:03
  I think about the music, the food.
• 4:05
  I mean, it's all these little details.
• 4:08
  That actually no one would notice one thing, but when they all
• 4:11
  come together, you just know it's something really special.
• 4:15
  So I always say that it's okay for other people not to sweat the small stuff,
• 4:19
  but we're gonna sweat the small stuff.
• 4:20
  Matt Heinz: And when you add those things together, it creates
• 4:23
  a really magical environment.
• 4:24
  Like I will compare it to a Disneyland where you've got people there
• 4:28
  that will think about every little thing, every little part of the
• 4:31
  experience, every part of the day.
• 4:33
  And because you know that not everything's gonna be perfect,
• 4:35
  you know that it might rain.
• 4:36
  If you're going to Orlando, it's probably gonna rain today at some point, right?
• 4:39
  Yeah, yeah.
• 4:39
  Or like your kids are gonna yell and the parents are gonna get upset
• 4:42
  and the line's gonna be too long.
• 4:43
  And so you almost have to, in those kinda environments, like
• 4:45
  over-engineer these moments.
• 4:47
  Latane Conant: That's why we have chargers.
• 4:49
  Matt Heinz: That's why you have charges, why you have caffeine is Yeah.
• 4:51
  But I think to create a place like that and
• 4:53
  Latane Conant: band-aids,
• 4:55
  Matt Heinz: because it's not just what you do for people,
• 4:57
  it's how you make them feel.
• 4:58
  And I think you guys have been really, really smart at owning
• 5:00
  that and investing in that.
• 5:02
  And it's why you have the reputation that you do as a business and why you
• 5:05
  have the reputation you do as a leader.
• 5:07
  So yeah, kudos to you guys for doing it.
• 5:08
  It's been amazing.
• 5:09
  Thank you.
• 5:09
  Speaking of moments we've had on the Coffee Talk, we've had
• 5:13
  the Play Bigger team come and talk about category creation.
• 5:16
  And one of the things they talk about category creation is this
• 5:19
  concept of the lightning strike.
• 5:20
  Latane Conant: Yes.
• 5:20
  Matt Heinz: And I think you guys have been great at this lightning strike.
• 5:23
  You had a big launch last week.
• 5:24
  It was tons of things all tightly coordinated together.
• 5:26
  So A: talk about what you guys did last week, but then I really want to
• 5:30
  hear more about why is the lightning strike such an important component
• 5:33
  of your go-to-market strategy?
• 5:35
  Latane Conant: So I have a saying, never waste a deadline.
• 5:39
  And what I find is that especially in marketing where there's no, it's not
• 5:45
  the same thing as a sales team where you gotta close out the month and
• 5:48
  close out the quarter and it restarts every time in marketing, you know,
• 5:52
  maybe we didn't get it this week, but we'll get it next week and then
• 5:55
  we'll do, uh, the website's coming.
• 5:57
  We updated a couple pages and then we'll do some more and blah.
• 6:00
  And quickly a month can turn into a year, can turn into a lot of half done stuff.
• 6:05
  Mm-hmm.
• 6:06
  And so part of the lightning strike concept for me is
• 6:10
  there's two windows of our year.
• 6:13
  That like it's all gotta come together people.
• 6:16
  Yeah.
• 6:16
  Yeah.
• 6:16
  It's gotta be the website, it's gotta be our ads, it's gotta be our look and feel.
• 6:20
  It's gotta be some sort of physical event typically.
• 6:24
  Mm-hmm.
• 6:24
  It's analyst briefings.
• 6:26
  It's ideally a product launch.
• 6:28
  I think if you're a product company.
• 6:29
  Mm-hmm.
• 6:30
  Ideally you want a product launch because otherwise it's like
• 6:33
  little drips and drabs and no one really pays very much attention.
• 6:38
  And so for us, we've got typically a spring lightning strike and we
• 6:42
  wanna do it before Forrester Summit.
• 6:44
  Mm-hmm.
• 6:45
  And then a fall lightning strike, which is always around our customer conference.
• 6:50
  And it is, again, what's gonna be our new message, how are we gonna keep it fresh?
• 6:55
  How's the website gonna be updated?
• 6:57
  We updated our brand look and feel as part of this one.
• 7:01
  Mm-hmm.
• 7:02
  There's a lot of internal enablement that people don't see.
• 7:05
  So Matt, you see like the big event, which we'll talk about.
• 7:08
  But what you don't see is multiple weeks of field kickoff
• 7:14
  certifications, AE certifications, new pitch decks, new demo assets.
• 7:20
  Yeah.
• 7:20
  So that it is ready to roll from top to bottom across the revenue team,
• 7:26
  and for this one in particular.
• 7:29
  And so for those tuning in, we essentially launched a workflow engine.
• 7:34
  And you might be like, wah, wah, wah, but wait a second.
• 7:40
  Here's what's so cool about it.
• 7:42
  If you think about a typical A BM platform, it's built for accounts.
• 7:46
  It's built to advertise typically at an account level or maybe personalize
• 7:51
  a website at an account level.
• 7:54
  So you do all this stuff in there at the account level.
• 7:56
  Then you turn around in your chair and you gotta manage all of your contacts and
• 8:02
  put those in nurtures and send direct mail because people have a whole nother system.
• 8:09
  But the reality is you market to an account, you market to a persona,
• 8:13
  but ultimately you engage with a person and you don't wanna do it.
• 8:18
  Just on display ads or on your website or there's sales involved too.
• 8:23
  And so what we've done is we have built one place where you can manage
• 8:28
  account audiences, people audiences, persona audiences, and segment based
• 8:35
  on anything your hearts desires.
• 8:38
  And you can push to any channel.
• 8:42
  And it all runs with our AI at the core because as companies are moving in and
• 8:49
  out of different buying stages, I'm sure we're here, we've talked about buying
• 8:52
  groups and buying group moves in and out.
• 8:55
  And it's not a linear journey.
• 8:56
  So if someone is in this stage today, and then tomorrow the buying
• 9:00
  group moves to a different stage.
• 9:02
  In real time.
• 9:03
  Their campaign, their play is gonna change.
• 9:06
  And so this is just stitching together so many things to make it
• 9:11
  so much more efficient and effective for marketers to build pipeline.
• 9:15
  And I think what you're gonna love, Matt, is something you're passionate about
• 9:18
  is the drain on marketing execution.
• 9:21
  Mm-hmm.
• 9:22
  And I know there's a stat, not Forrester, but someone else similar
• 9:27
  about just how hard orchestration is.
• 9:30
  Right.
• 9:31
  Like we're bringing this all together in one place.
• 9:34
  And what has been so interesting is when we demo it and we show it,
• 9:41
  and the beta customers, they're like, this is life changing.
• 9:45
  This is amazing.
• 9:46
  And then one of the beta customers said, for the first time, I can
• 9:50
  show a picture of what I do.
• 9:52
  Because it's an integrated campaign, right.
• 9:54
  And it's on this workflow Right.
• 9:56
  And that's a byproduct.
• 9:57
  We didn't obviously design it so that you could build PowerPoint slides
• 10:00
  of your campaigns, but I was like, wow that's how difficult it's been.
• 10:05
  Think about running it much less explaining it.
• 10:08
  Yeah.
• 10:09
  And so this is now live and what's really cool about it is
• 10:13
  every 6sense customer gets this.
• 10:15
  So it's not another product, it's not an add-on.
• 10:19
  It's gonna be rolling out in everyone's instances over the next couple months.
• 10:23
  Matt Heinz: I don't think people realize how rare that is.
• 10:24
  Usually when you do a lightning strike, you have a new product, you're like,
• 10:26
  oh, and you're gonna pay another $8,000 a month for this, as opposed to saying
• 10:30
  this is now just what everyone gets.
• 10:32
  Latane Conant: It is.
• 10:32
  And it's important for us because we're a platform.
• 10:38
  And what I'm noticing now is there's this new theme around Unbundled A
• 10:42
  BM and I'm gonna take this data and pay all this for this credits and
• 10:48
  those credits and put it in here and do it in there, and pay consultants
• 10:51
  to do this, that and the other.
• 10:53
  And I'm like.
• 10:54
  Oh my God, we're going so far backwards.
• 10:56
  Yep.
• 10:56
  This is a nightmare.
• 10:58
  This is expensive.
• 10:59
  And it's not like I want us out of our own way.
• 11:03
  And so for me, the direction that we're taking is to make it easy.
• 11:08
  And I think for a long time, 6sense was like, oh my gosh, the AI and
• 11:16
  very technically forward and mm-hmm.
• 11:19
  And.
• 11:20
  Now A, that stuff is just white noise.
• 11:23
  Yeah.
• 11:23
  But B, I wanna be the easy company.
• 11:25
  Mm-hmm.
• 11:26
  You know?
• 11:26
  Mm-hmm.
• 11:27
  I think that we used to appeal to like the early adopters.
• 11:30
  Yeah.
• 11:31
  And now I'm like, if you wanna go tinker in 72 tools, yeah.
• 11:35
  Do that.
• 11:36
  But when you're ready for it to just be easy.
• 11:39
  Come to us.
• 11:40
  Well, and that's part of our new pricing and packaging strategy too.
• 11:43
  Matt Heinz: You mentioned sort of the visuals of the
• 11:46
  workflow and how it all works.
• 11:47
  And I think the visuals are really important because I think you still see
• 11:49
  a lot of companies saying like, well, how much did we get from our digital campaign?
• 11:53
  Or We did this event, what pipeline came from?
• 11:54
  Latane Conant: And then it's like, no, here's the event and here's
• 11:57
  it's a Body Work's ads that ran.
• 11:58
  Yeah.
• 11:58
  And here's the pre-webinar that we ran and the post blog we sent and you're
• 12:03
  right, it, it will help with that too.
• 12:04
  Matt Heinz: For some companies, that's the inconvenient truth of how
• 12:07
  modern B2B works is that you have to do a lot of these things together.
• 12:10
  And I wish it was easier, but it's not if you want to drive predictable outcomes
• 12:15
  from a large, complex deal cycles.
• 12:17
  The other thing you mentioned is part of that that I think is really important
• 12:19
  around the lightning strike is the forcing function to get things done.
• 12:24
  On time, like you mentioned sort of collaboration drag and the fact that
• 12:27
  like it's so much harder now with these complex motions to get things done.
• 12:31
  Speed to market is becoming increasingly difficult.
• 12:34
  When you could say on March 25th, we are launching.
• 12:37
  Latane Conant: We are launching, right?
• 12:39
  Yeah, we are launching.
• 12:40
  And what was so fun about this one is, uh, obviously we're customer
• 12:44
  zero of our own product, but we used the workflow product mm-hmm.
• 12:49
  To run.
• 12:49
  The workflow product launch, right?
• 12:51
  So the lightning strike is in there, in our instance and all the
• 12:55
  different little activations that we did around this to make it possible.
• 12:59
  And of course in 6sense fashion, we made it.
• 13:02
  I think entertaining and
• 13:03
  Matt Heinz: Oh yeah.
• 13:04
  If you haven't seen it, I know we have a no pitch rule in CMO coffee talk.
• 13:06
  We don't have one here, but definitely go to 6sense.
• 13:09
  Check out the launch video.
• 13:11
  Latane Conant: It's not long too.
• 13:12
  We made it short on purpose,
• 13:13
  Matt Heinz: but it is entertaining.
• 13:15
  Yes.
• 13:15
  It literally is entertaining.
• 13:16
  It's fun to watch.
• 13:17
  I think.
• 13:17
  Hopefully it'll give you some ideas for what you might want to do for
• 13:20
  some of your own launches as well.
• 13:21
  We don't have to make B2B boring.
• 13:22
  We can make it something that has some entertainment value that people
• 13:25
  actually wanna spend time with.
• 13:27
  I think it's important we are live here on the floor.
• 13:29
  I think sessions must have gotten over Latane.
• 13:31
  It's getting a lot busier noisier here, which is awesome.
• 13:33
  We're live on the Forrester B2B Summit marketplace floor with Latane Conant.
• 13:37
  When we first met you were the CMO at 6sense.
• 13:40
  You are now the CRO.
• 13:41
  You've been the CRO now for I think a little over a year.
• 13:45
  Not every CMO wants that job, but I'm talking to more and more that say, listen,
• 13:48
  the next step for me is now that you have shown the path, now that others have shown
• 13:51
  the path, like a year in give a summary of the experience and you know, what
• 13:56
  would be advice you'd give to CMOs that are interested in making a similar jump?
• 14:00
  Latane Conant: So I think first of all, understand.
• 14:02
  The scope of what CRO role you are stepping into because they vary vastly.
• 14:10
  The one that I happen to step into has all of post-sale mm-hmm.
• 14:14
  As well as sales.
• 14:15
  Mm-hmm.
• 14:16
  And as well as partnerships.
• 14:18
  And then of course marketing.
• 14:19
  So I think the first thing is you gotta prioritize.
• 14:22
  My scope is so broad.
• 14:24
  That I was like, I need to prioritize the stuff I give an F about and the
• 14:28
  stuff I don't give an F about right now.
• 14:30
  You know?
• 14:31
  And I would be very open with the exec team, like, why aren't we doing this?
• 14:33
  And I'm like, yeah, we're not doing that right now.
• 14:35
  I'm sorry.
• 14:36
  It's a great idea.
• 14:37
  I'd love to do it.
• 14:38
  That's two quarters out.
• 14:40
  But I knew in my head the priority of what I wanted to do and where I
• 14:44
  wanted to make the most progress.
• 14:47
  I would say I've learned a lot and the number one thing that I have
• 14:52
  learned is you have to have a rev ops partner and I didn't have that.
• 14:59
  Mm-hmm.
• 15:00
  For the bulk of it.
• 15:02
  And I just now have that and it has changed my life.
• 15:06
  So if you were thinking about doing this, you need to be two in a box.
• 15:10
  Don't do it without knowing that you are gonna have a kick
• 15:13
  ass revenue operations partner.
• 15:16
  Yeah.
• 15:16
  Because.
• 15:18
  Otherwise you were always like grasping for the data and the information.
• 15:22
  My CS team runs on Gainsight, my sales team is in Gong, most of our reporting
• 15:28
  and marketing is in Salesforce, and then there's Contato, which is where
• 15:31
  all the onboarding data is and then, oh, and we have an EDW, which is
• 15:35
  where all the product usage data is.
• 15:38
  And so you can really quickly not know what's up.
• 15:42
  Yep.
• 15:43
  And so having that, that's kind of part one.
• 15:45
  And then part two is I've really embraced something that I call winning the week.
• 15:52
  Mm-hmm.
• 15:53
  And I think that if you have a team of any scale, you have to
• 15:59
  show people how to win the week.
• 16:01
  Yeah.
• 16:01
  And this is not being, big Brother or micromanaging if
• 16:06
  you've got 200 salespeople.
• 16:10
  And many of them are first time salespeople or they just got promoted
• 16:13
  to enterprise from commercial.
• 16:16
  They need to know, I need to make this many calls today.
• 16:19
  I need this many meetings on my calendar.
• 16:21
  I need this many stage zeros every week.
• 16:23
  I need to be having this kind of progression call.
• 16:26
  And if they don't have that structure, then it's really easy to just.
• 16:30
  Pop up and not be successful.
• 16:32
  Mm-hmm.
• 16:32
  And so I rolled out winning the week, but I started it with me.
• 16:36
  Mm-hmm.
• 16:36
  And I started it with my week, and my week has so much more
• 16:40
  structure, Matt, I hate habits.
• 16:42
  I get bored really easily.
• 16:44
  So it's been a big.
• 16:46
  Big change for me.
• 16:47
  But every Monday, all day Monday is forecast.
• 16:51
  Wow.
• 16:51
  And there's a million different forecasts now that I have to be on top of.
• 16:54
  Right.
• 16:55
  Our obviously pipeline, obviously sales.
• 16:58
  Then there's renewals.
• 16:59
  We forecast onboardings and the health of onboardings.
• 17:03
  We forecast product adoption, so that's part of it.
• 17:05
  We forecast hiring.
• 17:07
  'cause if you get behind on hiring in sales, that's a problem.
• 17:10
  Yep.
• 17:10
  So literally it's 10 hours of forecast.
• 17:13
  Wow.
• 17:13
  But I know then coming into the week, if my CEO calls me or I get asked something.
• 17:23
  I'm data ready.
• 17:23
  Mm-hmm.
• 17:24
  And so that's the point of that.
• 17:25
  And then trying to organize so that I have chunks of time where
• 17:28
  I can be in market and be out with customers and be with the team.
• 17:33
  And then Friday is all about inspection.
• 17:35
  Hmm.
• 17:36
  And that's looking at scorecards and saying who's falling behind?
• 17:41
  Team by team who's falling behind.
• 17:43
  And what do we need to do to course correct?
• 17:45
  Because, if you have a process and you don't inspect it, you
• 17:48
  may as well not have the process.
• 17:50
  People are not gonna follow the process unless they know you're inspecting it.
• 17:53
  So that's been a big change for me.
• 17:55
  And I would say those are the two most important things to think about.
• 18:00
  If you're gonna step into this.
• 18:01
  Matt Heinz: Yeah.
• 18:02
  Thank you for sharing that.
• 18:03
  You've always been very open and honest about the experience, the good and
• 18:06
  the bad, and the things that you're learning and things you're adjusting to.
• 18:09
  I wanted to ask you about the community though, because I think some people
• 18:12
  listening have heard the origin story of the breakfast and getting shut down
• 18:15
  with COVID and then moving it to online.
• 18:18
  We had a lot of sponsors of those breakfasts over the
• 18:20
  years and a lot of them, were looking for short term pipeline.
• 18:24
  Latane Conant: I know.
• 18:24
  I remember they would pay you.
• 18:26
  They'd be like, we just want whoever comes as a lead.
• 18:28
  Yeah.
• 18:28
  And we pay you like a certain amount per lead.
• 18:30
  Matt Heinz: Yeah.
• 18:30
  Or they would say like, Hey, let's start with two breakfasts, and if we get enough
• 18:33
  pipeline out of those, then we'll do more.
• 18:35
  I'm like, you're not thinking about this.
• 18:36
  Right?
• 18:36
  And so when we converted to doing online, it was just really
• 18:41
  serendipitous to have it with you because you got the same vision.
• 18:44
  In fact, you got it better than I did.
• 18:45
  You said.
• 18:47
  We're not recording Fridays, you said, we're only letting CMOs and heads of
• 18:50
  marketing be part of this, and those are foundational elements that have
• 18:53
  helped us grow five years later.
• 18:55
  You guys are still investing, not just in this community,
• 18:58
  but the BDR coffee talk mm-hmm.
• 19:00
  Your customer community.
• 19:01
  Mm-hmm.
• 19:01
  The empowered community continues to go strong.
• 19:04
  So I guess, how do you see communities fitting into the broader 6sense strategy.
• 19:08
  'Cause you would imagine I get a lot of people asking me, how does this work?
• 19:11
  How do we replicate it?
• 19:12
  And I'll be honest, most of them I can tell, aren't willing to invest.
• 19:16
  Yeah.
• 19:16
  They aren't willing to do the resources and the time Yeah.
• 19:19
  To do it well.
• 19:21
  Latane Conant: So I think you need to understand the kind of product
• 19:28
  that you're selling and the kind of brand that you wanna create.
• 19:31
  Right.
• 19:32
  And so for us.
• 19:33
  We are a platform.
• 19:35
  Mm-hmm.
• 19:35
  Which means multiple personas use us, multiple personas need to adopt.
• 19:41
  We also are transformational, right?
• 19:43
  So you're gonna bring 6sense in and you're gonna have to change.
• 19:47
  You're gonna have to change your process.
• 19:48
  You might have to change the type of people that you hire.
• 19:50
  You're gonna have to change potentially how you talk about success.
• 19:53
  This is not an app mm-hmm.
• 19:55
  That you're putting on your website to chat with people.
• 19:57
  Right.
• 19:57
  And so, it's very different.
• 19:58
  And so we knew that early on that for people to be successful on our platform,
• 20:04
  they had to be successful in their roles.
• 20:07
  They had to be successful with themselves, they had to be strong leaders.
• 20:11
  And we wanted to be able to invest in the full function, knowing that as
• 20:16
  marketers, again, became more confident, had other people to bounce ideas off
• 20:21
  of, were more respected in the C-Suite, they would be able to then go and
• 20:26
  drive the kind of transformation that we knew was necessary with 6sense.
• 20:30
  And so that's the underlying hypothesis.
• 20:34
  What's interesting is it's a long game for a while.
• 20:39
  And then it becomes not, it becomes so obvious.
• 20:43
  Yeah.
• 20:43
  And I also just think that you have to have the right personality types
• 20:47
  of people that actually wanna help.
• 20:49
  Mm-hmm.
• 20:50
  And wanna share and wanna see other people do better and
• 20:54
  are willing to be vulnerable.
• 20:57
  Otherwise, it's just not gonna work.
• 20:59
  Right, right, right.
• 20:59
  And with our other community, to get that one off the ground,
• 21:02
  'cause that's a user community.
• 21:03
  Mm-hmm.
• 21:04
  And the whole thing with the user community is they don't want
• 21:06
  me answering their questions.
• 21:08
  They want another customer answering their questions.
• 21:10
  Right.
• 21:10
  Right.
• 21:11
  And so for a long time we'd have to go and email a customer and say,
• 21:14
  will you please go into Rev City and answer this person's question?
• 21:17
  You know?
• 21:17
  Yeah.
• 21:17
  And we'd have to tell our CSMs do not answer the question.
• 21:21
  Wait for another customer to ask it or do not answer customer's questions.
• 21:26
  Have them post it in Rev City.
• 21:27
  So it's a big behavioral change, but then you all of a sudden reach this
• 21:31
  tipping point and now questions get answered in less than 10 minutes.
• 21:35
  Mm-hmm.
• 21:36
  So, I don't know.
• 21:37
  I feel like it has created.
• 21:39
  A competitive mode mm-hmm.
• 21:41
  Of sorts.
• 21:42
  Mm-hmm.
• 21:42
  Mm-hmm.
• 21:42
  For us and I'm also very conscious, Matt, that it can get destroyed in minutes too.
• 21:48
  Yeah.
• 21:48
  Like success takes the stairs and failure takes the elevator.
• 21:52
  So it's like a few bad actors, a few I think failure's
• 21:57
  Matt Heinz: one of those like poles in the fire department.
• 21:59
  Yeah.
• 21:59
  Where it's just immediately on the floor.
• 22:01
  It happens very quickly.
• 22:02
  It
• 22:02
  Latane Conant: happens quickly.
• 22:03
  And so that's also not lost on me.
• 22:05
  Like how do we keep it.
• 22:06
  Fresh and interesting.
• 22:08
  Yeah.
• 22:08
  Matt Heinz: And,
• 22:08
  Latane Conant: And we went through that where we had a lot of, like
• 22:10
  consultants and stuff like that.
• 22:12
  Mm-hmm.
• 22:12
  We had to do a little bit of a purge.
• 22:15
  Mm-hmm.
• 22:15
  Mm-hmm.
• 22:15
  So, it's not set and forget.
• 22:17
  Matt Heinz: It's definitely not.
• 22:18
  And I think, as long as you continue to put the audience needs in front.
• 22:22
  It's almost that three steps is faster than one mentality, right?
• 22:25
  Like you could get pitchy in a community like this and get
• 22:27
  some immediate conversions.
• 22:28
  It will kill the long-term sustainability of the community.
• 22:31
  But if you provide value on a regular basis, something they
• 22:33
  want to keep coming back to.
• 22:34
  I mean, we've talked about this.
• 22:35
  I don't care as much about number of people in the CMO coffee talk community
• 22:39
  as much as I care about engagements.
• 22:40
  Latane Conant: No, I'd rather have less.
• 22:41
  I want
• 22:41
  Matt Heinz: the right people engaging more.
• 22:43
  And so I'm constantly thinking about how do I get more
• 22:45
  people showing up more often?
• 22:46
  How do I get more people on more Fridays?
• 22:48
  How do I get more people to engage in Slack?
• 22:50
  And it's not about having more, it's about having the right experience.
• 22:53
  Something that is truly unique and for this audience that is let's
• 22:57
  face it, like very busy, lots of other things they could go do.
• 23:00
  Yeah, there's countless other CMO groups, let alone other
• 23:02
  things pulling for their time.
• 23:04
  Why do we remain a part of their week?.
• 23:08
  We've done it for five years, but I think it's not something you can rest on.
• 23:11
  You gotta keep thinking about it.
• 23:12
  Latane Conant: Yeah.
• 23:12
  Yeah.
• 23:13
  And I think we are, I also somewhat think the ritual is really good.
• 23:18
  Mm-hmm.
• 23:19
  Because I've noticed.
• 23:20
  There's other communities where it's dinners and they're in the city.
• 23:24
  And then if that night doesn't work, that night doesn't work.
• 23:26
  This is nice 'cause you plug in any Friday and we're there, we're doing our thing.
• 23:31
  And guess what, if you're busy a bunch of Fridays, that's cool too.
• 23:35
  Come and go as we'll be here next Friday.
• 23:37
  Yeah.
• 23:37
  We'll be here.
• 23:38
  Same shenanigans.
• 23:39
  Yeah.
• 23:39
  So.
• 23:40
  Matt Heinz: Yeah.
• 23:40
  Consistency Yes.
• 23:42
  Is important.
• 23:42
  You and I talked about this I think like a year, year and a half in started thinking,
• 23:45
  oh, we could do all these other things.
• 23:47
  And I think we both kinda looked at it and said, what we are
• 23:49
  good at is Friday mornings.
• 23:51
  Latane Conant: Yeah.
• 23:51
  And then I don't wanna be tired for Friday.
• 23:54
  You know what I mean?
• 23:55
  But you are so high energy.
• 23:56
  I don't know.
• 23:57
  You do that, then you do the thing with Brent.
• 23:59
  It's amazing.
• 24:00
  I will say Friday after I do too.
• 24:02
  Mm-hmm.
• 24:03
  I'm toast.
• 24:04
  Matt Heinz: It's a lot.
• 24:04
  So you're in Chicago, so your start at seven?
• 24:06
  Mine start at five.
• 24:08
  My day ends at noon on Fridays and I've got the afternoon blocked
• 24:11
  either to catch up or for naps.
• 24:14
  Latane Conant: Yeah, I know, because even though it's on Zoom.
• 24:16
  Yeah.
• 24:17
  I literally try to put so much positive energy Oh, yeah.
• 24:22
  Into that Zoom.
• 24:24
  Matt Heinz: Yeah.
• 24:24
  Latane Conant: And I think we all are sitting there doing that.
• 24:26
  Can we just make things a little more positive for, an hour for everyone?
• 24:30
  Matt Heinz: But it matters.
• 24:30
  And again, like it's actually really intense.
• 24:32
  And I don't know if we've talked about this before, but there's the
• 24:34
  conversation happening and then there's coordinating people on the backend and
• 24:37
  then there's trying to keep the chat going and then there's referencing
• 24:39
  sort of non-sequitur to keep it fun.
• 24:41
  It is very much a systematic way.
• 24:44
  You do have to be quick, but I think that's why people like
• 24:46
  it is 'cause it's topical.
• 24:47
  It's valuable.
• 24:48
  Yeah.
• 24:48
  But it's also not too serious.
• 24:50
  Mm-hmm.
• 24:50
  You know, it's a group of friends getting together and talking about something
• 24:53
  of interest and I think it's useful.
• 24:55
  So Latane Conant, CRO of 6sense.
• 24:57
  Thank you so much for be on the show.
• 24:59
  Okay.
• 24:59
  Latane Conant: Love you, Matt.
• 24:59
  Matt Heinz: I love you too.
• 25:00
  We'll see you guys soon.
• 25:01
  Latane Conant: Bye.