Latest / GTM Made Simple / You're Great at Marketing the Business. Terrible at the Business of Marketing.
Transcript
- Creating ICP is not a marketing job. Now, our research shows that the reason 70% of the goto market leaders say they can't hid their numbers is because they don't have a team clarity and alignment and trust on why they're working what they're working on. And here's why. When marketing creates ICP, sales create deals and and products are creating more features independently, they're out of sync. This is what happens in every organization, which is why they're trying to constantly hire new people and drive new data points and see what's working, what not. But what they need is alignment. What they need is clarity. What they need is trust. So here's the big idea. Transformation in business only happens in teams and not in individual departments. Let me say that again. If you are trying to transform your business, you cannot say to the marketing team, give me more leads and say go do how whatever it takes and then sales, give me deals and do whatever it happens to go into that particular deal cycle or sales or customer success to keep the customers alive. You can't do that anymore because business transformation business transformation happens in teams. All right? And the team is not made up of departments. team is made up of people from all the go to market functions coming together. So if your ICP is a marketing [music] job or sales deal velocity is a sales job or keeping customer is a customer success job. Well, as a CEO, you're failing because a CEO has to own go to market. That's the number one research we got in our book when we wrote and became a Wall Street Journal bestseller is is that the re the big aha the big idea was that the CEO is the owner of go to market and it is his or her job to bring that team together. [music] So if you are worried about it and you're wondering like well why is my team not moving fast enough? Well that's the problem and I know 30,000 of you are on this right now 30,000. So I know this is not a conversation in vacuum all the conversations are happening. So, let's say Dimmitry, um I I'm I'm just reading comments and I'm just going to try to respond because I can't get everybody on the video to do this. So, Dimmitry, you're you're talking about that uh the misalignment is like cooking with different recipes of different dish. Every department is trying to do something else from carbonaro to sales to product and man god that's the worst dish ever. You are right Ditri. The problem is everybody thinks they can solve the problem and the reality is if marketing can solve the problem then why would you need sales? If sales can solve marketing problem then why [music] would we need marketing or sal like so the problem is everybody thinks they know how to solve the problem but the the solution always lies when all the people interested parties are together and trying to solve a problem [music] as a team and and otherwise you get a bad cooking dish so dimitry thank you for that visual as well all right Mark um I have discovered uh even more fundamental issue many companies have their ICP defined that's true and uh but too Many do not have their ideal profit profile nailed down. All right. If you're a winning deal but missing revenue, it might be because you've added a profit potential. Oh, I see what you're saying. So Mark is talking about this idea that and I had this this client before. All right. There was a sales rep who so here's what happened in [music] that company. The client there was they were focused on supply chain all day long. All right. Supply chain was the greatest [music] um the greatest vertical that they were able to focus on. All of a sudden, one of the reps actually went and sold it to healthcare and that was a really really big deal for that company. So he came in the next day and said, "Hey, we got to go after healthcare." So now the marketing program, the website copy, [music] um the collateral, the webinars they were running, all of that started around healthcare. And guess what? For 3 months, they stopped everything in supply chain and started focusing on healthcare. And they didn't close a single deal. And their supply chain deal started to slow down. And they were wondering what happened. Well, when we looked at the data, they had never closed a healthcare deal ever before. And in order for them to go and just stop everything that was working to start focusing on something that may may or may not be working was going after the wrong type of market. So to Mark's point, sometimes the ICP is defined, but when people are in departments and and and one rep just closes the big deal and we all [music] get excited to go and help that person, we lose the whole point of what we're trying to do and how to build that business together. So you you're right, we need to think about where can we grow the most. That's the first question of GTMos. That's the first question of that whole pillar, eight pillars that we have. uh if you go to run on gtmos.com [music] you will see that where can we grow the most is the fundamentally the most important question which is why it cannot be a marketing [music] job to figure out where can we grow the most it's a business question all right uh we'll take a few more Simon the um Simon is saying the net takeaway is teams can't operate in silos product marketing sales must all go together and ICP should be informed by all three to ensure that there are no misses but here's the problem I'm facing My CEO thinks that marketing should own ICP. So, what should I do? All right, [music] Simon, that's a great challenge. Your CEO most likely does not know what go to market means. So, send them the book move. That might help. Number two, you need to figure out in yourself if you seems like you're in marketing, you're leading global uh [music] since like growth uh for this big company. What you need to be doing is going back to this year and saying, "All right, well, here's the data. Here's our top segments. segment one, segment two, segment three, which segment is more profitable? Again, going back to the very first question, where can we grow the most? If the answer is that if segment one is more profitable than segment two, um, and then segment three, you would say, well, I need to spend where do you want me to, Mr. Mio? Where do you want me to spend more money on segment one, segment two, or segment three? Most likely, the CEO is going to say segment one. Boom, you got your answer, and you didn't even have to fight with the CEO. And because most people what they do is they try to go and say I think this is good and I think this they're all opinions. They're found in the book of second opinions. What you need to do is go and look at segments and have data to show what works what doesn't and say if you want me to invest here I just want a lower quota a lower result and a lower pipeline and a lower revenue goal. If you want me to invest the same amount of $100 in this [music] then I will have a higher quota and higher pipeline and higher revenue. I bet you have that conversation with your CEO, Simon. You're going to [music] have the CEO saying, "You know what? Simon needs a race." I really believe that the alignment and clarity is is not just top down, it's also bottoms up. So instead of complaining, we we actually owe to ourselves like, why? Why? Because the CEO is it's it's not like they don't want to make a profit. It's it's like they want to make a profit, but they want to do it the right way. So you got to figure that [music] part out. All right. Um a few more. Okay. Uh Anastasia, I love this. This is a hot topic based on number of comments. Yeah, I see the comments are just coming in. My take is that the marketing should drive ICP conversations and conversations with input from sales products CS and GTM function. Ops needs to own data. Yep, that's that's true. And helps marketing operationalize it. Ultimately, marketing is accountable for ICP. Okay. So, I've been a CMO at part, [music] right? And um went to the acquisition was at Salesforce. I was a CMO and co-founder at Terminus. So I I I'm a marketer. All right. So [music] you know you if when you think about marketing I understand the ownership idea that marketers have around around um ICP. The same thing is with sales. Sales have ownership around like hey I want to own I want to own um a pipeline all the time. Makes sense because that's your job. That's that that we inherently we inherently feel like that's the way we should be doing it. [music] But here here's the issue with that Anastasia. If you focus on that as opposed to the business, you will lose forest from the trees. Here's what I mean. Most people and and write this down because this is super important. Most people are good at marketing the business, but they're horrible at the business of marketing. [music] Let me say that again. Most people are really, really good at marketing the business. Meaning that [music] you might be good at creating graphics, content, videos, editing, [music] campaign, launch, strategy, product positioning, pricing, all of those things. All right? But you don't understand the business of marketing. The business of marketing is this. Business of marketing is to drive the business forward to make more revenue. That is the business of marketing. So today maybe events work for you and you have maybe 10 years of great experiences running events. But if events does not work for your business, that marketing uh tactic is not the right tactic to work on. The same way owning ICP forces you to become a a [music] marketer. What I'm trying to get everybody to think about is like a you need to level up to become a business leader trying to solve go to market problems, business [music] problems. When you become a business leader, which is why you're an executive function, then you solve business problems. Then you have the respect of the CEO and all the team. A lot of people say, "Well, the CEO doesn't respect marketing. The CEO doesn't do this, that, and the other." But the challenge is the CEO doesn't know anything more than what you tell them. So, if they don't respect you or don't know, that means you haven't done your job of helping them figure that part out. So, understand the business of marketing. If you can, it will [music] drive your business forward. All right, that got me on the soap box. Um, let's see. Okay. All right. All right. This is great. All right. Ricardo. Ricardo is talking about like, hey, is this for founder or is this for salesled? Is this uh, you know, I I see where you're going. Is it for startup companies or big [music] companies? All right. The idea So, so I've worked at again Salesforce. I've seen big company, a $10 billion company. I've seen uh folks focusing on small startup companies as well. So, when you think about a big company, a small company across the board, you really have to understand that the problems are the same, the the magnitude of that those problems are greater. So, let me give you an example. I was always wondering about like, well, how does a $10 billion company make decisions? How do [music] they figure out their ICP? Because I was running marketing at a $10 million company. Like, what do I know? And it's the same question somebody maybe at a million dollar might be asking. [music] Well, how does a $10 million company CMO run certain things or CEO run certain things? I'm just at a million dollar. So what I'll tell you having been part of a million-doll business, $10 million business, $100 million business and $10 billion business like across the board and having different [music] job roles, functions in it, I'll say the process is exactly the same. The process exactly the same [music] and the magnitude of those outcomes is really where the money is. So for example, when when Ricardo, you're asking about like, hey, [music] what happens in a startup? Is it different than what happens in a in a big company? Not not necessarily. I've been at Salesforce where we'll have debate like literal debate around what should we focus on which segment should we go after we had industry specific product marketing teams focused on every single industry and their whole job every single day was to create content webinar process for supply chain content webinar events [music] for construction content webinar events for a manufacturing different industries they have different profit margins they have different goals around it and they focused on it That's no different than you as a $10 million business who's saying, "Yeah, okay. Here's what I need to focus on, fintech. I need to go all in to build." So, you do not have the luxury of having 10 teams, [music] but you could have a one team just like a Salesforce does for that particular industry. And until you get a clear product market fit, which means you own 85% of that market share, it's it's crazy to go in anywhere else. Stop going after everything else. ICP, where can you grow the most? the first question of the GTM OS pillar [music] operating system is the most important thing that you could focus on to drive your business forward. So, so I I I just love that this topic is so hot for so many different [music] people. All right. Uh Shikica, she she's talking about like this explains why some companies with great individual talent still struggle [music] with growth. When ICP definition is siloed in marketing, you get misaligned between what promised and what's sold and what's delivered. Real transformation needs to be unified. Shika, you're preaching to the choir. You're absolutely right. This literally is the explanation of why companies with great talent, [music] great talent. Have you ever been in a place or where I'm sure it has happened to many of you, but have you ever felt like, man, I'm doing all the right things, but it's still not clicking [music] and I get fired. As a matter of fact, this was this was Friday afternoon. I [music] got a text from a a CMO friend of mine. Uh, I won't name this person, but he he texted me and said, "Hey, man. Do you have a minute?" And and and normally I'm I'm good with text and responses. And I could tell in the way he asked me, he never does. Something happened. So, I had 15 minutes before my next call. So, I just called him up. I'm like, "Hey, [music] I'm just going to call him John. Hey, John. What's up?" And John was like, "Dude, I worked at this company and it, you know, we we crushed the revenue goals and [music] I'm I'm let go." And I'm like, "Wait, what? What? you you let I'm sorry you let go, but you all just said that you pushed the revenue goals. What does that mean? He said, well well what what what [music] I really mean is that we had a pipeline goal. So he went from revenue to pipeline immediately in that conversation. I'm like, okay, so you had a pipeline goal. So what happened? Well, but the sales team didn't close. Okay. So it's so you're saying it's a sales problem. You're like, yeah. I'm like, well, [music] is that the ICP that you guys focused on? He said, "Well, what we then figured out was also that the ICP that we were working on did not [music] did not have the highest gross margin, so it wasn't profitable ICP, but that's what I was told by the CEO to work on." So again, he started defending and I'm like, "John, you're an executive, [music] I'm sorry, this sucks, but this is your job to figure out and ask [music] the question, where can we grow the most? What segment is the most profitable for our business? What segment is number two, number three?" So you can prioritize all of your limited resources in it. Figure out which segment drives the most value [music] for the business and then say no to everything else because if you create pipeline in segment two and segment three and if it takes more time and it's not profitable [music] then segment one is going to suffer and you're not going to have a job. You should have known this. You have 20 years of experience [music] as a goto market leader. But the problem is John is no different than most people who understand how to market the business but do not understand the business of marketing. The business of marketing is to create business. Your job is to create more sales. Your job is to create more revenue. That is it. So if you take your eye off that ball, nothing else is going to work. So with that, I know there are like hundreds of people. We might do another session on this one. I see Daniel thinking why this is the problem. This is this is this is a terrible idea to have the whole team um own go to market. No, this I'm not saying the whole team owns go to market. By [music] the way, what I'm trying to say is that if you have a go to market issue in your business and if your ICP is still not clear, then what you need to focus on is your ICP. And if you do ICP work in silo, which means you're just going to go and work on um you know, with your marketing team and come up with their ICP and then your sales is not going to follow up. the the CS team is not going to like it. You're going to lose business and you're going to lose your job. So ICP, sales focus t all these all these topics are so important to be done as a [music] team. CEO owns go to market business transformation happens in teams and you have to own the business of marketing. [music] If you are in a marketing role, you cannot blame it on the CEO. And if you're a CEO listening to this, you got to figure out how you going to help your team to have clarity and alignment and trust that we're going to work on these big goto market challenges. Stop making [music] a marketing meeting. And I'll leave you with one final thing. If your business today has a meeting that is a called a sales pipeline meeting or a marketing attribution meeting or a ICP meeting, you have already lost. Forget making it about teams and and like distributed teams. Make [music] it about a team. So call your meetings as business transformation meetings. Right? So for example, instead of calling it very specific to a function, call it a go to market meeting. So call it a um we're going to solve our our churn issue and don't make it a [music] customer success person leading that thing. Actually make it an executive conversation. Everybody in your team should come to the conversation in that meeting trying to solve a business [music] problem not trying to solve their departmental problem and that's a big big ask. So again ICP is not a marketing job and so is sales is not sales pipeline velocity [music] is not just a sales job and so is retention not a pure play customer success job. What it is is co has to own go to market and business transformation happens in teams. Well, if you're ready, let's keep moving.