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An Operating System for Growth Marketing · Sales Pipeline Radio

• 0:05
  All right.
• 0:05
  Welcome everybody.
• 0:06
  Happy new year and welcome to the very first episode for
• 0:10
  2025 of Sales Pipeline Radio.
• 0:11
  I'm your host, Matt Heinz.
• 0:12
  Excited to have you here for another year of great content, great guests.
• 0:16
  Super excited to get this ball rolling.
• 0:17
  If you are joining us live on the middle of your workday, in
• 0:21
  the middle of your work week thank you so much for joining us.
• 0:23
  If you are listening or watching on demand, thank you so much for
• 0:27
  downloading and subscribing every episode of Sales Pipeline Radio is
• 0:32
  always available past, present, and future at salespipelineradio.com.
• 0:35
  Today, very excited to kick off 2025 with my friend, Jim Huffman.
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  He is the CEO and founder of GrowthHit and one of the smartest marketers I know.
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  Jim, thank you so much for joining us.
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  Matt, pumped to be here, man.
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  That's a great first week of the year to be here.
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  I've known you for a while.
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  You did a workshop on digital marketing and helping to drive demand and pipeline
• 0:58
  in Seattle in front of the Entrepreneur Network we're both a part of that, I
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  think had one of the highest ratings of any workshop in recent memory, which
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  is a very high bar to set, but I think also as indicative, not only of your
• 1:09
  expertise, but also the importance and
• 1:12
  and just how popular and on demand that content is.
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  It seems like we've been talking about digital marketing for a long time.
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  The playbook continues to change, right?
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  And so I'm curious, maybe for those that don't know who you are, talk a little
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  bit about your background and then we can get into sort of the changing landscape
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  of what the digital channels look like.
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  Yeah, for sure.
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  And yeah, your talk was pretty awesome.
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  Adam Weiler and I were comparing notes on it.
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  It's fun to have some light bulb moments go off.
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  I've GrowthHit, marketing agency.
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  I started my career in finance looking at spreadsheets and then
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  that didn't take me too far.
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  So I got into marketing and we started this agency about eight
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  years ago, just accidental.
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  And I was obsessed with a couple things.
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  One is, This idea of growth hacking at the time and growth marketing, which is
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  essentially just full funnel marketing.
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  And the second thing was conversion rate optimization,
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  which I actually hate the phrase.
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  It's just doing experiments, doing A B testing.
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  And so when you're doing A B testing, when you're looking at full funnel
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  marketing, you're able to have a bigger impact on the business on a
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  sales pipeline, on driving revenue.
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  And so that's been an obsession over the years for seeing like how you can
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  come into a company and add those two mindsets to try and help them one,
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  unblock growth because people want to grow, but it's are you even ready?
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  And then second, something you talk about is how do you get to this
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  Holy Grail of predictable revenue or predictable sales as opposed to you're
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  like, Holy smokes, something worked.
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  What happened?
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  Let me look at the Google analytics and how do I replicate that?
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  So that's something I've been really into.
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  This concept of both growth hacking and CRO has been around for a
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  while and I think in B2B, it's a mixed bag historically, right?
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  We know that a lot of our buyers are online.
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  We know that there are journeys we can manage there.
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  But oftentimes it's complicated.
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  It's a long sales cycle.
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  There's multiple people in the buying committee.
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  So it's not like a click conversion from search is going
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  to close the seven figure deal.
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  So how do you help clients put in context?
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  The importance of continuing to leverage digital and conversion
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  rate optimization and continuing to improve performance there with
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  the complexity of that B2B journey?
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  Yeah, that's a good question.
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  So the first thing I do is I have people ask themselves a question: Do you know
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  what's actually stopping you from growing?
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  And it's like a scalability assessment if we want to give
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  it a fancy marketing headline.
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  And I usually say it's one of three things.
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  So if you're thinking of like your Q1 goals, why might you not be getting there?
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  Is it 1).
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  Positioning?
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  Are you in a sea of sameness and you're not standing out?
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  So before you start doing ads, before you start optimizing the funnel,
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  it's let's get that dialed in.
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  And so there's a whole path we could go down there.
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  The second is I like to start bottom of the funnel is conversion.
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  Do you know how to activate people?
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  Is your sales funnel about booking a call?
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  Is it a demo?
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  Is it product led growth?
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  Do we need to drip them content authority before we go for the jugular
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  or is it about speed and being able to take a call today because it's a
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  cybersecurity breach and it's go time?
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  Or the third thing is maybe you have a traffic problem.
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  And when I say traffic problem, do you have a lever you can pull to
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  double traffic and double sales?
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  Or are you a one trick pony and you can only get it one
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  way and we can't diversify?
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  And so that's like the first thing I'm doing is okay.
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  Where is their high impact of those three things?
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  And then from there I'm starting to assess okay, where can we have an impact?
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  And I'll pause there cause there's different ways we could go.
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  But the first thing is like assessing where are we at?
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  Like where do we need to have our lasers focus right now?
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  Focus is the key to that, right?
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  I see a lot of companies that are spending a lot of money on digital
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  marketing, and they're really just focused on volume and there isn't enough
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  precision around the right people.
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  And even in a B2B space, I find it's sometimes a culture change, Jim, to be
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  able to help people get away from the most clicks for the lowest possible
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  cost and say, I'm okay with fewer clicks if they're the right clicks.
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  Yeah.
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  So how do you help clients balance quantity and quality in a healthier,
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  predictable, repeatable way?
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  Oh my gosh.
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  That's such a good question.
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  And you said this in one of your talks, you said a stat that has been living
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  rent free in my head since we spoke, where it was like, 70 percent of the time
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  someone makes a B2B purchase, they're going with the first person they spoke,
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  to the first person they heard of.
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  So what does that mean in relation to your question?
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  And it's, as we look at 2025 planning, we need to have a kumbaya as far as here's
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  our shekels to put towards marketing.
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  How much is going to direct response, I can see ROI today,
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  versus how much is going to stuff where we don't know attribution.
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  And by the way, If we do, it's not going to happen for 6
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  months, 12 months, 18 months.
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  And that's a huge culture shift.
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  So that's one thing is having that Kumbaya and by the way, reminding people.
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  The second thing that I think marketers and salespeople, it can
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  be really tough to create a culture of messing up, failing and testing.
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  So the other thing I like to do is Hey, of our growth calendar that
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  we're going to do, what are the things where it's okay to mess up?
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  It's okay to learn?
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  And maybe it's 5% of our budget or time, or maybe it's 25%.
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  But knowing that we're planting seeds, because right now we're doing
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  a lot of stuff with AI that could be viewed as tinkering and failing,
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  but we're planting seeds for that.
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  So those are two things I like to try and get on the same page
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  with the client or with the team.
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  Cause if you do, you're setting the foundation to really build a rockstar
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  growth team that can test and learn.
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  But if you don't, oh man, you're going to have some tough conversation in 90
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  days where it's like, where's the ROI?
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  Why didn't that campaign work?
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  And that's a tough environment to work in.
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  I wrote down culture of messing up.
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  I actually think that is really important when you move from saying, I want the
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  most MQLs, the most leads possible to saying, I want the right leads.
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  You are retraining the board.
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  You're returning the leadership team on what the marketing
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  scorecard might look like.
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  And if you look at your marketing team, you might find someone on the team that
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  knows how to do the most leads at the lowest possible cost that is focused
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  on CRO purely to get higher yield.
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  And now you're asking them to focus on quality as well.
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  That's a different thing.
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  Now-- if you don't address the elephant in the room, which is we don't expect you to
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  know how to do this right out of the gate.
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  Even though there are a bunch of companies you can learn from this company,
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  this industry, this moment in time in our growth curve is unique, right?
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  Back to the hard thing about hard things is no one has
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  done what you're doing before.
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  So as a leader, how important is it to balance-- we need to generate results
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  with providing some grace and patience around the process to get there?
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  I'm a big fan of a blog post turned to a book, Amp It Up by Frank Slootman,
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  on how you can turn up the temperature to go faster, but also do it in a
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  way where it's a safe place to fail.
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  So what I like to do is the reverse dashboard, like an action tracker where
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  it's Hey guys, it is okay to mess up.
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  We're going to be tinkering.
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  We're testing AI and that is fine.
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  However, where I'm going to hold the feet to the fire is the reverse dashboard.
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  And for us, an example of that is how many experiments do we run in a quarter?
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  Whether that's landing page experiments, email experiments, whatever that is.
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  And that's where I track.
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  So for us, we say 12.
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  I want to do one per week because I believe if I have the team that's
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  testing and learning, the input will result in the output that we want.
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  And so that's one way of trying to be like, okay, I'm giving grace.
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  I'm making it okay to mess up, but I'm going to be pretty hard
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  on- we need to have that input.
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  But candidly, with GrowthHit, our agency right now, we put a lot into stuff
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  where it is immediate ROI results.
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  And I'm even having to like drink my own Kool Aid as we invest more in
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  content marketing and things where I'm basically like, I don't care to
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  see any ROI on that in the short term, but it's something that we had to get
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  buy in and it starts with the top.
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  Talking today on Sales Pipeline Radio with Jim Huffman.
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  He is the founder, CEO of GrowthHit talking about conversion rate
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  optimization, talking about improving digital performance, but doing it in a way
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  that drives the right traffic, the right pipeline and repeatable, sustainable way.
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  You mentioned earlier the stat and I'm going to get the numbers slightly wrong.
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  I'm going to ballpark it.
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  Shout out, Kerry Cunningham, who did this research in the early Fall.
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  But your buyers don't want to talk to you until well into the buying
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  process, like 70, 73 percent of the buying process is done when
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  they're willing to talk to sellers.
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  They don't want to talk to you before then, but like you said,
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  Jim, they will work with the first company they hear from,
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  they're more likely to buy from the first company they know.
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  Those are counter to each other.
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  They don't want a demo early on.
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  They don't want a sales call early on, but they will learn from you early on.
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  You're the ability for you to educate, to teach, to challenge the
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  status quo, to be a trusted advisor is enormous, but here's the rub.
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  If we're following that data and believe that data, those early
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  engagements are not going to immediately convert into pipeline.
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  They're not going to immediately convert into form fills.
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  They're not going to immediately convert even into leads.
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  And so now I have a problem justifying this behavior inside
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  an organization that is measuring me based on leads and pipeline.
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  How do we balance that?
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  How do we try to have a better conversation internally that
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  respects the buying journey, but also respects the work that has to go
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  into the eventual pipeline building?
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  It's so much around expectation management with the voices in the room, right?
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  Because if they just think you have this big green growth button that you
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  smash, and then you're drowning in leads, that's super dangerous, right?
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  And so it's getting alignment there.
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  And one thing that I like to do with these experiments is,
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  what persona are we going after?
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  Because we were so good at going after bottom of the funnel searches.
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  I need a CRO agency today.
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  We crushed that, but guess what?
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  That's quite easy.
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  And so it's okay, this is X amount of resources are going to that, but we're
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  down with looking at a more top of funnel metrics, page views, email signups,
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  and knowing that will pay dividends.
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  But two kind of tips to think through there is what's your
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  seasonality of your business?
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  When is it demand capture time versus demand creation time?
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  So what that means is we see a lot of demand going into Q4, so
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  it's not about doing a white paper to talk about growth strategy.
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  It is time to close, but then there's other seasons where it's
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  a little bit slower, where I absolutely want to lean into that.
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  But you also want to be oversharing these insights and data with your board,
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  with your team to get their buy in.
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  So they really see the big picture.
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  Cause if all of a sudden it's February and leads drop and they don't understand
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  that, those are some awkward and hard conversations to talk about as
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  you're looking in the rearview mirror.
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  Expectation management showing the big picture.
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  We call it The 12 Month Growth Calendar so people really understand
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  that the recipe you're putting forth.
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  Increasingly, thankfully, we're seeing companies that have been
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  the early adopters of this effort and are seeing the manifestation of
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  the metrics we talked about, right?
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  Where they have greater advantage.
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  If someone's going to buy something and there's three vendors, you
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  don't have a 33 percent chance.
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  You have a 65 percent chance of getting the business because
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  you were there up front.
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  And so that investment earlier increases conversion rates and that's
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  how they then justify that early work.
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  There's math there that CFOs increasingly are saying, yeah, I buy into that.
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  I want to see more of that.
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  But, that takes a leap of faith and courage and discipline to lean into.
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  We're 14 minutes into this conversation, Jim.
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  We haven't talked about AI at all.
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  And I think, obviously search is one of multiple components of a demand strategy
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  and leveraging the digital landscape.
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  What are you seeing now?
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  And what do you expect over the next 12 ish months?
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  I realized how fast things are going and how hard that is to predict, but as so
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  many marketers are trying to figure out how to manage their digital marketing
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  in 2025, what's your perspective?
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  Yeah, it's so fun.
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  There was a talk, I went to-- the book, AI First-- Andy Sack was a part of it and
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  talks about being this AI-first company and what is the foundation of that?
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  What's your tech stack?
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  What are your guardrails building an AI council to start playing with it?
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  So we've started doing that and here's some of the things we're seeing.
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  It's we're basically looking on a client by client basis and
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  understanding from a scale perspective, where's the biggest impact, right?
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  Obviously it's great with copywriting-- from ads to landing pages to email.
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  That's quite simple, right?
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  The other thing, some clients with imagery using Midjourney, it's been
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  really interesting to accelerate the work there and with some of the video
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  work that's still been a little spotty.
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  But honestly, where I'm getting really intrigued is starting to
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  build databases and get, really smart with how we can approach those.
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  So for example we are looking at location based services where we
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  create a scraper through Google Maps, where we can scrape all the locations.
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  We can then use a screen grab tool where we pull every webpage.
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  Then we bring in AI to basically do an assessment of those pages.
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  We're then funneling in Google reviews to then do a AI based voice
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  of customer search component of that.
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  The next question is, what do we do with that?
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  I don't know.
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  We're trying to figure that out.
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  But it's like we're tinkering and we're playing with looking at what we're doing
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  and how AI can make us like 10 X better.
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  And the last thing that I'll say on this is for me, I found it be
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  a really good thought partner.
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  Whenever I can be in a conversation, we use read AI.
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  to take notes from it.
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  We import all of our notes to like a custom GPT, but then
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  I'll basically take the role of this amazing growth hacker that
• 15:13
  understands product led growth or ABM.
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  And before you come with the strategy, ask me five questions to give you more context
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  before you give the recommendations.
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  I think Jeff Wolf's book AI Driven Leader inspired that.
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  So those are things that have been really helpful.
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  But again, I'm dancing around this question a little bit.
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  I would say we're still in tinkering mode.
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  We're building custom GPTs for clients and it's interesting, but
• 15:39
  I'm not sitting here Nailed it.
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  Here we go.
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  I sense a frustration amongst some marketers and go to market leaders that
• 15:46
  say we've been tinkering for a while.
• 15:48
  Why don't we have something that's scalable?
• 15:50
  I'm like this is all moving really fast.
• 15:51
  The rules change on a regular basis.
• 15:54
  Some people have figured some things out and quite frankly, aren't willing
• 15:56
  to share it because it becomes their like special sauce to do things that
• 16:00
  no one else knows how to do and they don't want their competitors doing it.
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  But as frustrating as it is, I think.
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  It is still tinker time, right?
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  And I think that, even as you identify things that can be done relative to
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  the copy world, the editing world, data analysis, or even product marketing
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  analysis, every new release unlocks something new that can be done.
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  And there's going to be tinkering happening for quite a long time.
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  Totally.
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  And sometimes I worry we have a solution looking for a problem.
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  And I've been guilty of that.
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  And I'm trying to think of the end goal of Okay.
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  What's the problem I want to solve and how can this do it faster or better?
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  Cause like we would do these demos Oh, look at this cool thing.
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  It can do.
• 16:36
  Okay, awesome.
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  But what are we doing with it again?
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  What's the application?
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  So that's something we're trying to stay honest on.
• 16:43
  Yeah.
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  I know some folks that spend a lot of time doing that tinkering
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  and saying, here's what I can do.
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  Here's what we can do.
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  And they will admit I don't always have the application, but what I
• 16:52
  want to do is surface the capability.
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  And the more people do that, the more we watch and listen to them.
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  Some of us are going to be able to say, Oh, that solves a problem
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  over here that is the last puzzle piece to be able to do X, Y, Z.
• 17:04
  So I think It's mud season, right?
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  We're all tinkering and it's not perfect, but we need that innovation.
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  We need people that are tinkering without outcomes, right?
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  I think that the problem without a solution is a good thing,
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  because if we talk to each other about it, we're going to figure
• 17:20
  a lot of things out more quickly.
• 17:22
  Jim, for people that like what they're hearing and want to
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  learn more from you, about you.
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  Where should they go?
• 17:26
  Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn, Jim Huffman.
• 17:29
  Website is, just GrowthHit.Com.
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  And I'm jim@growthhit.Com.
• 17:33
  I respond to email way too fast.
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  It's unhealthy.
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  So I'm around.
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  Email Jim.
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  He'll get back to you within 15 seconds is what I heard 24/7, any
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  time of the day, Jim you're the best.
• 17:44
  Thank you so much for joining us today.
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  Awesome.
• 17:46
  Thanks, Matt.
• 17:46
  Great to see you, man.
• 17:47
  Thanks everyone for listening and watching today.
• 17:50
  Happy New year again.
• 17:52
  We got a great lineup of topics and speakers and featured guests over the
• 17:55
  next couple of weeks, so stick with us.
• 17:57
  We'll see you next week, next Thursday on another episode of Sales Pipeline Radio.
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  Until then, take care.
• 18:02
  We'll see you then.