Latest / The Prompt / Ep. 541 | Build Legos, Not Decks: Amber Naslund on Strategic Selling

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Ep. 541 | Build Legos, Not Decks: Amber Naslund on Strategic Selling · The Prompt

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  This is on base your one stop shop for solving your most
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  pressing B2B go to market challenges.
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  Each week, host Chris Moody and Paul Gibson talk to sales and
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  marketing leaders to get you in depth insights and creative
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  strategies to set your revenue teams up for success.
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  Everyone, welcome back to On Base.
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  I'm your host, Chris Moody, and we have a very special episode
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  today. I am joined by Amber Naslund.
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  And to give a little bit of context before Amber introduces
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  herself, we started a podcast together about 12 years ago, so
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  that it was a long time ago. We did a run.
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  We had some amazing guests. It was fun to do it together,
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  but it's lovely to see you back. Amber, please say hello to
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  everyone. Hello.
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  It's like we were joking like before we aired that, you know,
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  Chris and I have known each other a really long time and in
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  some ways we feel really old, but in other ways it feels like
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  yesterday. So it's kind of, it's fun to be
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  back, but it doesn't feel like back.
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  It's just like, is this V2 of our podcast?
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  We should resurrect that. Oh, totally, Yeah.
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  I used to carry a little box around with a blue Yeti
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  microphone and I remember talking into a Tupperware cube.
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  For those who, if we clipped this video, were.
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  Still then? Or was that toast flip camera I
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  don't like? Oh yeah, we had we had those.
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  We had all, all the the funny cameras and and tech.
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  It was a different. Different time.
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  Hey, we, we made it out, we survived and now we have all
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  this amazing technology. But I'd love for you to walk
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  folks through your journey. You have a background that spans
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  marketing, sales and amongst other things.
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  But tell everyone a little bit about what led you to what
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  you're doing today. Yeah, that's like, I'm going to
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  try to be efficient with this story because it's easy to get
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  really long. But the TLDR is that I started
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  my career in nonprofit fundraising, which led me,
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  weirdly, to corporate marketing kind of by accident.
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  Like somebody pulled me into a marketing job and I was like, I
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  don't know anything about marketing.
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  And he's like, yeah, it's like fundraising is close enough kind
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  of thing. So I ended up in marketing by
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  accident, but I spent about 2025 years in that space, stumbled my
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  way into tech and B to B marketing specifically.
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  And along the journey I worked for startups, I worked for mid
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  scales companies. I was part of a startup that was
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  acquired by Salesforce. I started a business, a business
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  that failed pretty spectacularly and then like went back to the
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  marketing world. And then I came to LinkedIn
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  about 6 1/2 years ago. And for a long time I'd been
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  kind of contemplating a move back into more commercial and
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  customer facing roles. And a sales leader job opened up
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  in LinkedIn and I asked the leaders above that organization.
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  I was like, maybe like I could throw my hat in the ring.
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  I know it's kind of a long shot at with 0 expectation honestly
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  that I would get the job that it would just be like a really good
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  learning experience. But somebody saw value in like
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  the background of marketing as it applied to a sales role where
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  my customers are B to B marketers.
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  So that's a very like nice alignment.
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  And yeah, so I've been on the sales side ever since.
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  So I've been on the our LinkedIn marketing Solutions business,
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  which is our media business. So I'm now a director over an
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  enterprise technology sales vertical across North America.
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  So it's a very full circle kind of thing Like I, I, the people
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  I, the clients I work with are like me, you know, or former me.
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  So it's very fun. It's still very close to home,
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  but I've really enjoyed the world of being on both sides of
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  that table. Yeah, I love that.
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  I'm almost wondering too, if you do the marketing to sales code
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  switch with you having been in both where it's like, hey, these
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  leads are terrible when you're talking to the sellers and then
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  two marketers. But yeah, tell us a little more
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  about how important you think it is to have the marketing
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  background going into sales. In my world, I actually am
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  pretty sure it's 90% of what makes me successful at this
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  because I think it's, you know, different depending on what
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  industry you're in. But it because the clients I
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  work with are B to B marketers, it lends instant credibility to
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  be able to walk into a room and speak the language of the people
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  that you are trying to partner with.
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  So it doesn't it, it eliminates some of the skepticism of like
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  this is just a pitch to this is somebody who's actually sitting
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  across the table and wants to collaborate with me to solve
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  business problems. It also means that I can help
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  our company, our teams and our business better understand the
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  people that we are trying to work and partner with because
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  I've sat in that chair. So it's easier for me to help
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  them ask the right questions, dig into the right problems, and
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  even define the problems in the right way.
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  So that when we come to the table, the media program that
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  we're talking about is 1 facet of that conversation.
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  But we can have a much more strategic dialogue about what
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  those marketers are trying to do as a business, what their key
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  and core marketing challenges are.
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  And then the media becomes like the last mile of executing on
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  that strategy. But it's not the thing that has
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  to be front and center. So it's definitely helped me
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  have more meaningful conversations with the customers
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  we work with. And I hope by proxy it has
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  helped my broader team feel like they've picked up a few things
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  along the way about how to collaborate with B to B
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  marketers. Perfect.
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  Yeah. The collaboration with B to B
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  marketers, I want to hit on both sides of this equation because
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  you get to play both, both sides.
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  So it's just pretty incredible, right?
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  I mean, I love that too when we're selling to people like us.
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  So do you think we could just join calls and talk shop?
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  It's not a huge prep study, like try to be your true self.
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  It's just joining and being yourself, which is really
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  incredible. What are the things that you
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  wish all marketers knew about sales or behaviors that they
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  had? If you could impart that
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  knowledge with that background and where you sit now, what are
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  some of the tips you would give to any marketer?
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  This sounds really kind of basic in a lot of ways, but I can
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  speak from personal experience that I don't think we as
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  marketers spent enough time with sales, Like we didn't spend
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  enough time sitting in the room. Because a lot of what we do as
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  marketers is we create archetypes, ideal customer
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  profiles, ideal sales and marketing journeys, content
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  journeys, nurturing journeys, like all these things.
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  But a lot of it is based. It's a little bit more
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  theoretical in nature. Like we're making a certain
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  amount of hypotheses or assumptions and we're grouping
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  people together or ideas together and we have an ideal
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  state in our minds. Like a person learns about our
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  brand and then they do this, and then they do that, and then they
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  become a lead and then miraculously give us money.
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  And so marketers have one vision of that in their head.
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  And then when you get to the sales side of the table, the
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  reality of how that actually works and the conversations
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  we're really having with customers, the challenges
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  they're really facing and the things that are preventing them
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  from making deeper investments in what we're doing are often
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  wildly different than what marketing assumed those things
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  were. So the importance of being able
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  to sit down and have real talk conversations about, I know you
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  guys built this campaign to do XY and Z, but what we're
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  actually hearing from our customers is this and being able
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  to have everybody to have like the humility and spirit of
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  collaboration to come together and be like, we need to align
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  these things more tightly. Because the message that
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  marketing wants to get out there and what our customers need to
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  hear, there's usually some kind of gap between that.
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  And to some degree, I think like the emergence of sales
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  enablement is trying to solve for some of that disconnect.
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  But now we're adding more complexity to that as opposed to
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  stripping complexity out and being more intentional about
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  saying, hey, marketing, are you and I on the same page about
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  what the end goal is here? And again, I know it sounds
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  really simple, but I work with clients everyday who are
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  struggling to do this in their own organizations And LinkedIn
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  sometimes becomes the catalyst for bringing sales and marketing
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  together and be like, can we have a conversation about like
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  how you guys are working together or or not?
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  And it's fascinating. It's not because like I don't
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  think people are ill intended. It's more like in the avalanche
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  of the day-to-day jobs and responsibilities, it's easy to
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  live in our silos. And so I think we have to spend
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  a lot of intentional time to make space for better sales and
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  marketing alignment because when you unlock it, it's huge, but
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  not enough companies spend time on it.
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  I love that so much and I'm smiling too because it resonates
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  with me. I mean, we cater to very similar
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  audiences and polling sales and marketing together.
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  You do always realize most of the time either speaking
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  different languages, not working together to understand the same
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  language or the same metrics if you jump to the other side.
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  So put the the hat you're wearing today, the sell side on.
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  What do you wish all sellers and sales leaders knew about
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  marketing to help pull them closer together?
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  I actually talked with my team about this a lot.
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  There's two things. One, irrespective of whether
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  your customer, your client is in marketing or not, there is art
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  in simplifying what we do. And I just told my team last
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  week that we needed to get more comfortable with casual,
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  especially in a virtual world. It became really easy to depend
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  on the pitch deck or the pitch materials or the e-mail sequence
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  or the thing that we're trying to do that's very architected.
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  And we've lost a little bit of the art of sitting down over
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  coffee or a cocktail with somebody and just having a
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  dialogue about what they're trying to do and making that
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  conversation about them as opposed to what our goals and
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  objectives are. So as sellers, we've get very
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  like, we have to hit a number, we have to close a deal, we have
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  to do all this stuff. And we get blinders to the fact
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  that what we're actually there to do is help our customers
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  solve a problem or a challenge that they have.
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  And I appreciate and understand the sense of urgency that comes
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  from like getting the deal done. But I say all the time that like
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  the revenue or the deal or the contract or whatever we're doing
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  is the net result of all of the good inputs we put in to make
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  sure that we really understand our customers.
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  That we would help them believe that we are in it with them,
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  that we are collaborative, that we are generous with what we
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  know, that we are trying really hard to invest in that
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  relationship long before we're trying to make any withdrawals.
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  It's an exercise in patience, but like you kind of have to
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  believe that the sale palms pretty naturally if you do all
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  the other things well. But we in sales love our sales
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  processes and our like all that stuff and there's merit
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  sometimes in like stepping back and simplifying what we're
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  doing. Yeah, but we need to put get
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  comfortable with casual on a T-shirt.
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  I, I love that it makes me think you mentioned sales enablement
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  and I, I, I, I haven't made like a great LinkedIn thought leader
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  post about this or a video of me walking down the street to be
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  like, you want to know the two hardest functions in revenue
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  teams. So in my head though, I, I do
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  think sales enablement and product marketing are two that I
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  think are the most difficult in revenue teams because it is the
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  job to completely understand the customer and all the pains and
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  then to help have those conversations.
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  But to your point, it does lead to pitch decks and talking
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  points and snippets and what we need to put on the website.
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  So with the get more comfortable with casual, how do you think
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  sales enablement and product marketing teams can get more
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  comfortable with casual? Because this is not a knock
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  against anyone. I think the function of those
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  two teams and those leaders and everyone on those teams is to
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  make it a little more regimented.
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  And here's the process and here's what we need to say.
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  So what would be your nudge to a sales enablement or product
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  marketing leader? I had both of those functions
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  under my purview in previous lives.
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  And if I had, if I could go back and do it again, I would think a
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  little bit more about product marketing and sales enable being
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  about building Legos, not models.
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  Meaning our job is to give to develop pieces that the
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  ultimately that the sales teams can fit together to develop more
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  comprehensive solutions that tackle the challenges our
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  clients have. So I think sometimes what
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  happens in like especially in product marketing is that each
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  PMM owns their product and they are very focused on pushing
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  through adoption of their product, but it's disembodied
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  from like the rest of the other products in the portfolio.
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  So for companies who have multiple products, it becomes
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  like you have all of these linear lanes and each one is
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  grappling and cannibalizing each other to to get adoption for
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  their product. And what the sales teams need is
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  the ability to combine several of those things and fit them
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  together in a semi bespoke way for each customer.
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  So it's like I need a little bit of this, a little more of that.
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  And if PMM and, and enablement teams can think a little bit
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  more about building the system that people can draw from and
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  fit things together, I think it makes it so much easier for
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  sales teams to develop more strategic solutions for the
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  clients they're working with. As opposed to feeling like they
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  have a bunch of disembodied like pitch decks for 15 different
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  products and they don't know how to Frankenstein them together in
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  any way that actually gets at the problem our clients are
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  trying to solve. So I'm actively like always
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  trying to do that with our teams is like, how do we fit these
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  things together to tell the story we need to tell?
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  But a lot of times in these days it falls to the sales teams to
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  do that. Yeah.
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  It's almost like you've been in rooms with 15 different sellers
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  from 15 different products based on acquisitions.
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  We we don't have to talk about that, but it sounded, it sounded
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  like you may know. Something today, Chris.
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  That's a. Therapeutic conversation.
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  We have to have another time. But yeah, I've been there, Been
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  there. Yeah, I think people, brand
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  storytelling is fluffy, right? When we talk about storytelling,
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  there's always some perceived fluff.
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  But to your point of having the conversations, understanding the
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  pain, I've always found that there's usually a direct
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  correlation between the best storytellers who are in sales
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  and higher performance. But it's not necessarily that
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  they're telling this amazing story that they've built.
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  It's the listening and the understanding and, you know,
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  really knowing the pain and then gradually building towards the
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  conversation of here's how we solve the pain.
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  I'd love to get your stance on how you think storytelling fits
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  into this entire process. Oh boy.
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  Storytelling is one of those words that like has hype cycles
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  and marketing, it kind of comes and goes, is like the flavor of
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  the week that we love to talk about.
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  So I think it's important to breakdown what we mean when we
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  say storytelling. And I think everybody probably
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  has a little bit of a different definition.
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  But when I think about it, what it means to me is being able to
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  be more effective at connecting dots.
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  Meaning my client or my customer has a certain set of dots that
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  they care about. I have certain sets of dots that
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  I care about. And so can I draw a picture of
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  connecting those dots in a meaningful way that helps us see
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  holistically how all of this fits together?
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  So I think one of the mistakes a lot of marketers make is that
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  when they think about storytelling, they think about
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  only the emotional brand storytelling side, which is
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  critically important. Don't get me wrong, we can talk
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  a lot about the importance of that, but there is also the
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  story we need our clients to believe in order to invest in
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  what we're asking them to invest in.
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  And those stories need to look a little bit more like a
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  hypothesis than a story. So we're not telling a fable.
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  We're trying to illustrate an outcome and our beliefs about
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  the steps required to get to that outcome.
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  And like, if we we believe if we do XY and Z that our result
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  could be AB and C, that's a more effective way of thinking about
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  it. Because ultimately, when a
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  marketer is looking at their budget and making very judicious
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  decisions about where to spend their money, they don't need a
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  story about a Princess and a castle.
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  They need a story that says this is a desired outcome.
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  And I have a plan for how we're going to get there.
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  So brand storytelling, different beast.
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  But when you're talking about the sales and marketing side of
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  getting a deal done, the storytelling needs to look a
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  little different. Yep.
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  Totally. And you mentioned brand.
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  You know where I'm going when you say brand everywhere on
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  LinkedIn, everyone's talking brand versus demand.
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  Still, this has been a topic since the beginning of time
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  that. I've dyed is largely because of
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  that dialogue. That's why I wear hats.
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  That's where I wear hats. Amber.
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  Lots of grey versus when we started doing episodes together.
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  Yeah. But you know, it, it quickly
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  funnels into attribution. And it feels like that's yet
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  another hype cycle or wave that we tend to follow where now I
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  think we're back into what I was seeing 10 years ago where we
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  need to measure every dollar in, every dollar out and only
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  invests in highest dollars in. And I actually think most are
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  undervaluing the importance of brand.
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  But I'd love to get your perspective on brand versus
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  demand and perfect attribution with where you sit today and
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  with your background. Because I think you're seeing
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  both sides, like what's helping the sales team and also the pain
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  that marketers are feeling and trying to invest in things to
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  grow the brand while also making sure that we're running pure ROI
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  programs. The biggest mistake that we made
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  in marketing in the last 20 years as we adopted digital is
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  organizing our mental models around marketing based on an org
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  chart and believing that because we could get click data that now
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  the ability to attribute success in marketing only comes from
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  measurable trackable digital footprints.
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  And that has served against us, I think more than it's helped us
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  as illustrated by how many marketing teams become these
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  little fiefdoms of like we have the performance team, we have
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  the growth team, you have the acquisition teams, you have the
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  field marketing teams, you have the product marketing teams, and
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  you have a brand team that sits in this like mythical corner.
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  Brand is demand. It's all one thing.
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  Like if marketing is a holistic system at its best, meaning an
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  end to end process of like getting people who don't know
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  who we are to know that we exist, which is step one.
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  And then the end result of that journey is eventually hopefully
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  they become a customer, give us money, love us so much that they
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  give us more money and bring other people to give us money.
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  Like that whole virtuous cycle. It is such a disservice to
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  decouple those things because we function differently within our
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  orgs about executing against those things.
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  But brand and demand are like part of the same cycle.
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  You cannot have one without the other.
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  So if you strip out all of the like loaded feelings around the
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  word brand and like let go of the idea that brand means a
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  Super Bowl ad and instead think about the fact that brand is the
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  art of helping people who don't know you exist discover you in
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  the 1st place, then it becomes so much more obvious how that's
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  the beginning of somebody's eventual journey to becoming a
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  customer. But you can't like you can't do
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  this. Oh, we only care about ROI
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  focused stuff. All you're doing is saying that
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  the time horizon is broader, but ultimately that lead you're
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  capturing is still the result of brand marketing.
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  You did somewhere, that person learned about you in the 1st
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  place somehow, came to believe that you were worthy of
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  consideration somehow. And then eventually all the way
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  down, you finally got to like a moment on a pixel that you could
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  track. And we delude ourselves into
• 20:30
  believing that that's super high ROI because like, we spent $15
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  on an ad, we got a click, somebody bought a $20,000
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  contract. So we give that attribution to
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  that click. When in reality, there was so
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  much like ambient influence happening around that process to
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  get people to ever care that you existed in the first place.
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  And there's so much research now that shows that, like everybody
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  who buys, let's talk it software for a second.
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  Like if you're buying a software product, you're making a mental
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  list in your head on day one. You might shop it, you might
• 21:04
  pull together a list of vendors, you might do a little research
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  or set somebody off on your team to do a little bit of research.
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  But ultimately you start with some preconceived notion of who
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  should be on that list. How do you think that got there?
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  It isn't a gated e-book that helped somebody put you on that
• 21:21
  day one list. It was 1000 little micro
• 21:24
  interactions over time. It was word of mouth.
• 21:27
  It was some kind of passing impression on a billboard you
• 21:30
  saw in a bus station. You know, there's a million
• 21:33
  little micro moments that go into helping somebody become
• 21:36
  aware and interested in your brand.
• 21:38
  A lot of those aren't trackable through any attribution model
• 21:41
  that we delude ourselves into believing is the source of
• 21:44
  truth. It's good stuff.
• 21:45
  There's so many clips there that we're going to have to pull out.
• 21:48
  May just put the whole thing and that was really good.
• 21:53
  Good thing I don't care at all about any of this though.
• 21:56
  I know it's so hard to be passionate when you join calls,
• 22:00
  right? Like we don't live this at all.
• 22:01
  No. Well, OK, we have to shift into
• 22:03
  the lightning round because we don't have all day,
• 22:05
  unfortunately. We should do a longer form after
• 22:08
  hours episode. We're testing that content too.
• 22:11
  Like you can bring a drink, we can hang out, whatever you want
• 22:13
  to do. Alcoholic.
• 22:14
  Non alcoholic, your choice. I will bring bourbon or
• 22:17
  whatever. Yeah, that's.
• 22:18
  All right, you're in. You made the guest list US.
• 22:20
  Congrats, we will put you on that one.
• 22:22
  So the first one, what are some of your favorite pieces of
• 22:25
  technology that you're using today AM.
• 22:27
  I going to be such so mid by saying AI and it's also because
• 22:31
  like I'm not good at it. So I'm enjoying the learning
• 22:35
  curve of getting into some of these models and tinkering
• 22:39
  around and seeing what it can do and reconceiving new ways it can
• 22:42
  help me be efficient. I actually like on a personal
• 22:46
  no, I would. I've been working on this novel
• 22:48
  concept for years and I'm like a little stuck on a few things and
• 22:51
  AI actually really helped me like think through some of the
• 22:54
  gaping like plot and idea holes I had.
• 22:56
  So it's been fun to play with. I'm a little scared of it all,
• 23:00
  but I'm learning rapidly. Yeah, no, that's awesome.
• 23:03
  I've done the same, even to explain things to our 13 year
• 23:07
  old who doesn't want to listen to my advice.
• 23:09
  So I will have whichever LLM I'm using be an expert in any given
• 23:15
  topic and then they will give him advice versus his father,
• 23:19
  even though it's usually exactly what I said but yes.
• 23:21
  That is very helpful. You should do this, so you
• 23:23
  should listen. To the That's right.
• 23:26
  That's right. Yeah.
• 23:27
  OK What about Goodreads? So what are your favorite books,
• 23:30
  blogs, newsletters, podcasts? What do you listen to today or
• 23:34
  read? So lately, because I, I like I
• 23:36
  took on a new job at work and it's been like overwhelming in
• 23:41
  all of the best ways. I I pulled this classic out.
• 23:43
  I don't know if you've ever read the first 90 days, but like this
• 23:46
  baby has been a really good Bible for thinking through how I
• 23:50
  want to spend my first three months in that role.
• 23:52
  So I've spent I have that that I've been reminding myself my
• 23:56
  pleasure read. Right now I'm in the middle of
• 23:59
  reading the book battle by Rebecca.
• 24:02
  I'm not sure if I'm going to pronounce her last name right.
• 24:04
  Kang Kwang, forgive me, but she is amazing.
• 24:08
  Like I think one of the best writers of our generation.
• 24:10
  So I love that book. Podcast wise, I've been
• 24:12
  listening to the Hidden Brain. I'm a little bit of a
• 24:14
  neuroscience nerd and I love understanding like why we think
• 24:18
  the way that we think. So it's been a a balmy listen on
• 24:21
  my train rides into the office. I don't know why I find it
• 24:25
  soothing to understand, like neuroscience stuff.
• 24:27
  Maybe it's I need reasons for things.
• 24:31
  No, I, I do think that's important, understanding why we
• 24:33
  do the things, what we think, the way we think.
• 24:35
  Yeah, that I think that's awesome.
• 24:37
  We will add those to our list. What about good people?
• 24:40
  Who inspires you in the B2B space?
• 24:43
  Oh God, this is a hard one. Because they're not, they're,
• 24:46
  they're like not the usual suspects.
• 24:48
  Like I've been around too long to to sort of fall in love with
• 24:52
  the latest influencer. One of my favorite besties
• 24:55
  online is Ashley Faust, who's the head of I'm going to get
• 24:58
  Ashley's title wrong. She's an Atlassian, so I'm not
• 25:01
  even going to try to get her title right.
• 25:02
  But she's an Atlassian. And what I love about her is
• 25:05
  that she is that girl is in the comments like she's not just out
• 25:10
  there pushing her own kind of individual platform.
• 25:13
  She is the embodiment to me of what it means to be a leader
• 25:17
  within and among a community and be generous with her knowledge
• 25:20
  and ideas and thoughts. And she always adds value to the
• 25:24
  conversations that she's in. So I love watching her operate
• 25:27
  because like, I think she balances all of that really
• 25:30
  masterfully. And I love, I love learning from
• 25:33
  that approach because maybe it's because I'm, it really aligns
• 25:36
  with how I want to operate, but I love her.
• 25:39
  I also have deep admiration for my friend Jen Van de Zandt.
• 25:42
  So if you don't know Jen, she is the head of editorial for SA P's
• 25:48
  customer experience blog. And she's built that thing brick
• 25:51
  by brick organically for years. And the work that she's had to
• 25:57
  do to defend that work to protect that turf, to continue
• 26:02
  to illustrate the value to her colleagues and customers about
• 26:06
  having an independent editorial property that's like separate
• 26:10
  but adjacent to the SAP brand. It's just a master class.
• 26:13
  And like how you consistently build authoritative content over
• 26:17
  time. She's in a spectacular human,
• 26:19
  but the work that she does is so unsung.
• 26:22
  So I'm giving her props here because she deserves them, but I
• 26:26
  love watching what she's built over there because it's I wish
• 26:29
  more people would take a page from her book.
• 26:31
  Those are great intros for both of them too, so if you're
• 26:34
  bringing them on to speak 10 out of 10 no notes, that was
• 26:37
  awesome. Well, you should.
• 26:39
  If you haven't had them on the podcast, why you should.
• 26:41
  Yes, I would love those connections.
• 26:44
  And then the most important question of all, how can
• 26:46
  everyone get in touch with you after this episode?
• 26:48
  Oh gosh. Well, of course you can come
• 26:50
  find me on LinkedIn. I think that like somebody would
• 26:52
  fire me if I didn't say that right.
• 26:53
  But no, I actually, that's the place I'm most active these
• 26:56
  days. So if you go, if you just search
• 26:58
  Amber Naslund on LinkedIn, I might be the only Amber Naslund
• 27:01
  on LinkedIn. So I'm not too hard to find, but
• 27:03
  that's usually where you can find me, running my mouth or
• 27:06
  hanging out. Awesome.
• 27:08
  Well, Amber, it was so great to see you.
• 27:10
  Thanks for joining us today. Amazing to see you too.
• 27:14
  Thanks for joining us for On Base.
• 27:16
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• 27:19
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• 27:23
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• 27:25
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• 27:28
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