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How to Win More Budget by Talking Like a CFO · Sales Pipeline Radio

• 0:16
  Matt Heinz: All right, back here.
• 0:17
  Day two, Forrester B2B Summit on the marketplace floor.
• 0:20
  Thanks again to Forrester for making this possible.
• 0:22
  I think this is our 12th recording, Jim so far here the last couple days.
• 0:25
  Just got an amazing amount of content.
• 0:27
  So we've got some analysts, got some ROI award winners.
• 0:29
  Lots of CMOs, including you.
• 0:31
  Jim Williams, CMO at Uptempo.
• 0:33
  Thanks for stopping by.
• 0:34
  Jim Williams: Thanks for having me, Matt.
• 0:35
  Matt Heinz: Excited to see you here.
• 0:36
  As always, you guys have an activation across the street doing a bunch of
• 0:40
  panels and sessions on your own.
• 0:42
  Wanna talk about today, this relationship between the go-to market teams and finance
• 0:47
  because that is not always a, let's say, productive, positive conversation.
• 0:51
  Yeah.
• 0:51
  Maybe start with why is there so much friction between those teams?
• 0:55
  And why does that persist?
• 0:56
  Jim Williams: Yeah.
• 0:56
  It's really a really good question and it's a topic that
• 0:59
  I'm pretty passionate about.
• 1:01
  Why am I passionate about that?
• 1:02
  First, I'm with Uptempo and we provide marketing planning and spend management
• 1:06
  software, budget management software.
• 1:07
  Yep.
• 1:08
  It's funny, one of the, uh, sessions that we had here focused squarely on this
• 1:13
  disconnect between marketing and finance.
• 1:15
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:16
  And we were talking earlier about like, hey, it used to be about a
• 1:18
  disconnect between marketing and sales.
• 1:20
  You spent the last 15 years trying to patch that up.
• 1:22
  Yep.
• 1:22
  With agreements, frameworks, and SLAs and everything else.
• 1:25
  But that investment has not been made in the relationship
• 1:28
  between marketing and finance.
• 1:29
  So what you end up with is marketers and certainly sales and other folks
• 1:34
  that really don't understand the basics of financial management.
• 1:38
  Right.
• 1:38
  Much less the specifics of what your FP&A team, your controller,
• 1:42
  actually has to deal with.
• 1:44
  And lot of wasted time, poor forecast accuracy.
• 1:48
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:48
  Wasted spend.
• 1:49
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:49
  Lack of trust, disconnects, et cetera.
• 1:52
  You know, the finance team views marketing.
• 1:55
  I'll be specific to marketing.
• 1:56
  You're talking about go to market team?
• 1:57
  Yeah.
• 1:57
  So kind of views marketing as like, you know, the children Yeah.
• 2:03
  That can't get their shit together.
• 2:05
  Yeah.
• 2:05
  Once a month to close the books.
• 2:08
  So they come with a stack of spreadsheets that have errors in them, or the wrong
• 2:13
  versions, or whatever the case may be.
• 2:14
  And don't even have basic visibility into the state of their spend.
• 2:19
  Matt Heinz: And when we don't solve for that, what happens is you've got marketers
• 2:22
  that don't have trust from finance.
• 2:24
  You've got marketers that to finance look like you're just spending money
• 2:27
  willy nilly and not having fiscal responsibility for the business.
• 2:31
  So when you come back and want more money, of course the answer's no.
• 2:35
  Like even if you come back say, oh, I need to focus on demand gen, or, oh, we need to
• 2:38
  go after this new market, like that sounds great, but that is a nebulous objective.
• 2:42
  And I'm sitting here saying we only have X amount of money.
• 2:45
  Yeah.
• 2:45
  What is it really gonna take to do that?
• 2:46
  And so I feel like the planning process between marketing and
• 2:50
  finance is completely disconnected without better tools, processes,
• 2:53
  systems to make that happen.
• 2:55
  Jim Williams: Yeah, totally.
• 2:56
  That is definitely a challenge.
• 2:57
  And it causes all types of downstream implications, right.
• 3:01
  So.
• 3:01
  Marketers in B2B, 'cause we're here talking about B2B, like are myopically
• 3:05
  focused on creating pipeline?
• 3:06
  Mm-hmm.
• 3:06
  Pipeline that converts into sales, obviously.
• 3:09
  Yeah.
• 3:09
  There is a lot of talk of ROI, like if you talk to a marketer, they'll be like, oh
• 3:14
  my God, we got great ROI on that campaign.
• 3:16
  Right?
• 3:16
  But they actually don't calculate return on investment.
• 3:20
  And if they did, they don't actually calculate it against their actual
• 3:24
  spend because a lot of times they don't know their actual spend so.
• 3:28
  There's the whole ROI in return you're getting, but then that cascades and
• 3:31
  a whole bunch of things, you know, like finance leaders want people to
• 3:34
  think about their customer acquisition costs and marketers are far from
• 3:37
  understanding the implications there.
• 3:39
  Or salespeople just wanna know first, what are you doing to support me?
• 3:44
  Mm-hmm.
• 3:44
  Like what campaigns are you running to support me, my
• 3:46
  territory, my products, et cetera.
• 3:48
  Matt Heinz: Right.
• 3:48
  Jim Williams: And marketers first of all have a hard time answering that.
• 3:52
  Yeah.
• 3:52
  'cause they don't have a calendar.
• 3:53
  But even deeper, like they should be able to say, actually we're
• 3:56
  investing this amount of money to drive growth in your particular area.
• 4:00
  Yeah.
• 4:01
  And this is how we've allocated to do that.
• 4:04
  Matt Heinz: That planning gap seems like something that should be solvable.
• 4:07
  And I know Uptempo obviously has solutions around that, but it gets
• 4:10
  even harder when you get out of sort of the hard ROI quote unquote areas.
• 4:14
  Like if I'm focusing on building pipeline, even if I'm not just counting on like
• 4:18
  one channel versus another, even if I say it's gonna take a body of work.
• 4:21
  I need to invest in these field activations, this conference, these
• 4:25
  lists, these digital plays on this market.
• 4:27
  Okay, that's still, you can add those numbers together and say like,
• 4:29
  does that give us enough pipeline?
• 4:31
  Was it worth it?
• 4:31
  Did it pan out?
• 4:32
  Should we do it again?
• 4:34
  Now you've got marketers starting to talk this year about
• 4:36
  reinvesting in brand and content.
• 4:38
  Yeah.
• 4:38
  And sort of the longer term plays, right?
• 4:40
  So now we're saying, I've got money allocated in 2024 that I expect to
• 4:45
  give back to the business over the next two to three plus years, not
• 4:48
  just in the next selling period.
• 4:50
  Like how does that change the dynamic of planning and accountability
• 4:54
  between marketing and finance?
• 4:55
  Jim Williams: It has a huge impact on us.
• 4:57
  So like, it's funny what.
• 4:58
  Brand is not only suddenly the new demand.
• 5:00
  Mm-hmm.
• 5:01
  I love that.
• 5:02
  But again, put yourself on the seat of a CFO.
• 5:05
  They don't get into nuances of brand versus demand, versus reputation,
• 5:09
  versus engagement, and much less have a way to manage their expectations
• 5:15
  on the ROI for each of those classes of marketing programs.
• 5:18
  Mm-hmm.
• 5:19
  And so, marketing needs to do that.
• 5:22
  And it's really difficult to do that if they don't understand
• 5:26
  the basics of spend management.
• 5:28
  Like, think about it, we have a customer, we just did a webinar with a company
• 5:32
  named Reckitt, which by the way, I didn't know who Reckitt was, but they're Lysol.
• 5:36
  They manage Lysol brands.
• 5:37
  Matt Heinz: Wow, okay.
• 5:38
  Jim Williams: Right.
• 5:38
  And Durex Brands and other things like that.
• 5:40
  They literally sell 30 million products a day.
• 5:42
  Yeah.
• 5:42
  Pretty crazy.
• 5:43
  Yeah.
• 5:43
  Yeah.
• 5:44
  And this guy is basically running a $700 million budget for North
• 5:49
  America and trying to get to like 0.005% forecast accuracy against it.
• 5:55
  Wow.
• 5:56
  You know, because 1% accuracy is $7 million of waste Yeah.
• 6:00
  In that budget.
• 6:01
  Yeah.
• 6:01
  That's what finance is expecting.
• 6:03
  Yeah.
• 6:03
  Yeah.
• 6:04
  And take those dollars and redirect 'em to the highest performing channels.
• 6:08
  And the way you figure that out obviously is connection between
• 6:12
  financial allocation, marketing budgets, marketing planning, marketing results.
• 6:16
  Mm-hmm.
• 6:17
  To get to ROI.
• 6:18
  Matt Heinz: Got Jim Williams with us today, he's the CMO at Uptempo, and
• 6:22
  talking about really planning and accountability and following through
• 6:26
  on what you said you're gonna do.
• 6:27
  I mean, simple concepts that sort of are, I mean, again, without the
• 6:30
  right systems, without the right discipline, and without the right
• 6:32
  tools, it becomes incredibly difficult.
• 6:34
  I imagine you've seen some before and after interesting stories.
• 6:38
  Of companies that have good intention but fail in the execution of that.
• 6:43
  Can you talk about the before and after?
• 6:44
  What that means in terms of the finance, marketing relationship
• 6:48
  and what it unlocks in terms of marketing, being able to really
• 6:51
  accelerate its impact on the business?
• 6:54
  Jim Williams: Yeah, sure.
• 6:55
  It's funny, we were doing these panel discussions and we have a customer
• 6:58
  that we've been working with that you may be familiar with, Indeed.
• 7:01
  Matt Heinz: Oh, of course.
• 7:02
  Yeah.
• 7:02
  Jim Williams: Yeah.
• 7:03
  It's funny, I was talking with their chief of staff to the CMO
• 7:07
  and she talked about the trigger event, like the watershed moment.
• 7:11
  Mm-hmm.
• 7:11
  When the CMO was asked pretty straightforward question about
• 7:14
  like, is the plan working?
• 7:16
  Yeah.
• 7:16
  Those are the hardest questions to answer.
• 7:18
  Like so high, so nebulous.
• 7:20
  Yeah.
• 7:20
  It's like where do I start looking for data to answer if the plan is working?
• 7:24
  And when she went looking for the data, she realized that the plan is locked up
• 7:30
  and dozens of spreadsheets, many versions of PowerPoint, Slack messages, et cetera.
• 7:34
  Yep.
• 7:35
  There is no system of record today in the modern business.
• 7:40
  For, you might say marketing.
• 7:42
  If you think about marketing as a business, there is not a system of
• 7:45
  record for that much less a system of record for where your official plans are.
• 7:49
  Mm-hmm.
• 7:50
  And if you don't have a system of record, then how can this
• 7:52
  large team be on the same page?
• 7:54
  Yeah.
• 7:54
  Be collaborating, et cetera.
• 7:55
  Yeah.
• 7:56
  And what do you do when you need to change the plan?
• 7:57
  Right.
• 7:57
  Which plan are you changing?
• 7:59
  Right.
• 7:59
  Which is nonstop, right?
• 8:01
  We're living the world, like the era of nonstop pivots.
• 8:04
  Yep.
• 8:05
  So they went through a whole process to redefine their planning.
• 8:08
  Mm-hmm.
• 8:08
  Not just through Uptempo.
• 8:10
  They worked with all types of mm-hmm.
• 8:11
  Experts around this.
• 8:13
  And they did something like reduce the amount of documentation involved in
• 8:17
  planning by, I think they said 60%.
• 8:20
  Wow.
• 8:20
  You know, like all of these spreadsheets and PowerPoints at different groups
• 8:24
  and field marketing teams are using, et cetera, they did that.
• 8:27
  They have a very rigid structure, a taxonomy and a hierarchy that describes
• 8:32
  what their intent is, like where do they intend to spend the money?
• 8:35
  Well, that's a plan.
• 8:36
  And a plan is bounded by timelines and targets and personas and everything else.
• 8:40
  Yep.
• 8:40
  They created a rigid structure around that and their planning process, they
• 8:44
  shrunk from seven months to four months.
• 8:48
  So think about that too.
• 8:48
  Like you're a larger enterprise.
• 8:50
  You literally plan for seven months, then launch the plan, and at the
• 8:55
  end of the first quarter, you start planning for the next year.
• 8:58
  Yeah.
• 8:58
  Right.
• 8:59
  So they're trying to compress that as much as possible so they can be agile.
• 9:02
  Matt Heinz: So you cut almost 50% of the time and you cut the majority
• 9:07
  of the paperwork to get there.
• 9:09
  Jim Williams: Yeah.
• 9:09
  Silo sprawl.
• 9:10
  Matt Heinz: Yeah.
• 9:11
  What's exciting about that to me is like we have a lot of clients,
• 9:15
  we do a lot of work in what we call marketing orchestration, right?
• 9:17
  Yep.
• 9:17
  So just like the act of getting marketing work done and as the
• 9:20
  complexity and the agility required to do go to market, motions grows,
• 9:24
  it just means more meetings, more work, more getting things done.
• 9:27
  And if you don't have a system, if you don't have a workflow, a taxonomy,
• 9:30
  it gets kind of boring quickly.
• 9:31
  Yeah.
• 9:31
  But if you don't have that stuff nailed down.
• 9:33
  This is what happens.
• 9:34
  You're gonna have paperwork up to wazoo, you're gonna have everyone
• 9:36
  with different planning processes.
• 9:37
  You're gonna speak a different language than what the rest
• 9:39
  of the business wants to hear.
• 9:40
  And then, I mean, we see this in big companies all the time where
• 9:43
  they're constantly in planning mode.
• 9:44
  And guess what's happens then?
• 9:45
  They're not doing work.
• 9:46
  Yeah.
• 9:47
  They're not getting the stuff done.
• 9:49
  So to me, like this feels like a huge missing part for organizations as they
• 9:54
  grow that to unlock the agility, the speed to market, the professionalism,
• 9:59
  and the accountability of the marketing work that they're doing.
• 10:02
  And if all you wanna do is decrease the time and the paperwork, and if
• 10:06
  you decrease the paperwork, that means fewer meetings, fewer Slack
• 10:09
  messages, fewer email threads.
• 10:11
  I'm hoping I'm speaking a lot of people's language now.
• 10:12
  Yeah, totally.
• 10:13
  It doesn't make this good.
• 10:13
  And the icing on the cake is now like finance trusts you.
• 10:17
  Finance understands what you're trying to do, and they're
• 10:19
  not looking for perfection.
• 10:21
  They're not looking for everything to work, but they just want everybody to
• 10:24
  understand what is and isn't working so you can make adjustments and
• 10:27
  create more predictable outcomes next.
• 10:29
  Jim Williams: Right, and share a common language.
• 10:31
  Yeah.
• 10:31
  Again, like you focus on pipeline, go to market.
• 10:34
  Like, think about that, 15 years ago there was this revolution in just
• 10:38
  establishing an accepted language to describe the things you're doing.
• 10:42
  Right.
• 10:42
  Is this an MQL or SAL or SQO and now it's a six QA or whatever
• 10:48
  you want to call it, right?
• 10:49
  Yeah.
• 10:49
  There's a language that forges alignment between these groups, and that hasn't
• 10:54
  really existed between marketing, finance.
• 10:56
  Just getting to that is really important 'cause that boring stuff, taxonomy and
• 11:00
  hierarchy and nomenclature, whatever, is actually really, really important to
• 11:04
  become more agile and more effective.
• 11:06
  Matt Heinz: So we're talking about all this as if it's kind
• 11:08
  of a foregone conclusion, right?
• 11:09
  I mean like, hey, less paperwork, less time, better accountability.
• 11:13
  Finance loves you.
• 11:14
  I'm assuming that means like a hundred percent of your pipeline
• 11:16
  converts right at Uptempo.
• 11:17
  So assuming that isn't the case, what are the obstacles that you find for
• 11:21
  companies that, like if they hear all this and say, that's amazing.
• 11:24
  Is it status quo?
• 11:25
  Is it just institutional inertia?
• 11:26
  And I'm asking this because I want companies that are listening to this, to
• 11:29
  self-identify with things that they might recognize in their own organizations might
• 11:34
  be hidden barriers to making this kind of leap in accountability and performance.
• 11:38
  Jim Williams: Yeah.
• 11:39
  No, a hundred percent of our pipeline does not convert.
• 11:43
  Matt Heinz: Breaking news.
• 11:43
  Jim Williams: Yeah, breaking news.
• 11:44
  I'm not converting all my pipeline.
• 11:46
  Sure.
• 11:47
  We run into all those obstacles.
• 11:48
  So number one is, at a very, very large enterprise.
• 11:53
  Yeah, right.
• 11:54
  Ikea as a customer, right?
• 11:56
  You're talking about 500 stores and 60,000 employees and X number of marketers,
• 12:02
  whatever, it is incredibly complex.
• 12:04
  Yeah.
• 12:04
  And just trying to wrangle the process stuff so you can get onto planning better.
• 12:08
  Matt Heinz: Yeah.
• 12:09
  Jim Williams: It requires some digital transformation.
• 12:11
  Yeah.
• 12:11
  That affects a whole bunch of people we just talked about.
• 12:13
  Well, certainly affects marketing.
• 12:14
  Yeah.
• 12:14
  It affects finance.
• 12:15
  Yeah.
• 12:16
  It affects your go-to market teams, your production, how
• 12:18
  you work with agencies, right.
• 12:19
  How you work with resell.
• 12:20
  Like there's a lot involved.
• 12:22
  So it can get pretty complex.
• 12:24
  That creates some friction for sure.
• 12:26
  Yeah.
• 12:27
  Another issue is that you're A CMO, here's all the list of things that
• 12:31
  frankly are a pain in the ass and always planning is up there on the list, but
• 12:36
  then you start to think, all right, where am I gonna invest my dollars?
• 12:38
  What am I gonna fix right now?
• 12:39
  Mm-hmm.
• 12:40
  And you're pressured by sales and margin and pipeline, and it's always like,
• 12:45
  oh, let's throw the dollar more into the execution side of the business.
• 12:48
  Yeah.
• 12:48
  And we'll get by with this headless series of programs and
• 12:52
  campaigns that are happening.
• 12:53
  That's definitely a problem too.
• 12:55
  Matt Heinz: Why is this coming outta the marketing budget?
• 12:57
  Is finance paying for this in some cases?
• 12:59
  Jim Williams: Almost never does finance pay for it.
• 13:01
  But in large companies finance sends an ambassador of sorts and attaches them to
• 13:08
  marketing what's called literally Yeah.
• 13:10
  Marketing finance.
• 13:11
  You pluck someone on a FPA.
• 13:12
  Yeah.
• 13:12
  And then they go sit with marketing to try and make sure that they're
• 13:16
  being a very good steward Yeah.
• 13:18
  Of the company's resources.
• 13:20
  And so that role, marketing finance, is almost always involved.
• 13:24
  Yeah.
• 13:25
  In our deals.
• 13:25
  Yeah.
• 13:25
  Does finance pay for it?
• 13:27
  No.
• 13:27
  It comes outta marketing because, the real driver is when the CMO gets asked
• 13:34
  a question like, how's the plan going?
• 13:37
  Yeah.
• 13:38
  Is the plan working?
• 13:39
  Should we consider changing the plan?
• 13:41
  Those types of questions, or even when a new CMO comes in and has so much
• 13:45
  more specific questions like, what are we spending on what initiatives?
• 13:49
  And suddenly everyone goes silent.
• 13:51
  Yeah.
• 13:52
  Matt Heinz: Yeah here at Forrester, there's been a lot of talk about this
• 13:55
  broader like buying groups, right?
• 13:56
  Yeah.
• 13:56
  The internally and externally, the ecosystems.
• 13:58
  And so when we think about buying committees, I think 9 times outta 10,
• 14:01
  we think about the people internally that are making those decisions.
• 14:04
  Mm-hmm.
• 14:04
  So you think about the people in marketing specifically, they're gonna
• 14:06
  buy this 'cause if they're paying for it, what about that controller
• 14:09
  that's pulling their hair out?
• 14:10
  Right.
• 14:10
  That may not have the budget, but it certainly has the pain and
• 14:13
  might be able to still go rattle some chains within marketing.
• 14:15
  What about the governance committee on the board right.
• 14:18
  That is frustrated with this, that might actually, from the top down have
• 14:21
  at least say like, go look at this stuff because it's important to us.
• 14:24
  Jim Williams: Yeah, no, I mean, absolutely.
• 14:26
  Those are factors.
• 14:27
  They're involved.
• 14:27
  They're part of the new buying network, if you call it that.
• 14:30
  Yeah.
• 14:30
  It was buying groups.
• 14:31
  No, it was buying network.
• 14:32
  Yeah.
• 14:33
  They're definitely a factor, but the impetus to make change
• 14:36
  has to come from the top.
• 14:38
  Mm-hmm.
• 14:39
  Because it does require change management.
• 14:42
  Yeah.
• 14:42
  Yeah.
• 14:42
  There is some digital transformation, there's some integration that needs
• 14:46
  to done so IT gets involved, right?
• 14:48
  At a minimum, you have to integrate with your financial infrastructure
• 14:50
  and you have to integrate with your performance infrastructure.
• 14:53
  And often we integrate with work management infrastructure, right?
• 14:58
  So it often comes from the top.
• 15:00
  Typically a champion for us is someone that's very strategic in marketing
• 15:05
  operations or also, often it's the role that I mentioned earlier, like a chief
• 15:09
  of staff to the CMO is very influential in bringing in infrastructure so people
• 15:14
  can plan better and spend smarter.
• 15:17
  Matt Heinz: Well, I know you guys have a busy schedule across the
• 15:19
  street, so I wanna let you get back to that Jim Williams CMO at Uptempo.
• 15:22
  Thanks so much for joining us.
• 15:23
  Jim Williams: I appreciate it, Matt.
• 15:24
  Thank you.