Latest / Revenue Problem Solvers / Half the Budget. 7X Conversions. This Is What Real GTM Alignment Looks Like | Lisa Cole

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Half the Budget. 7X Conversions. This Is What Real GTM Alignment Looks Like | Lisa Cole · Revenue Problem Solvers

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I run marketing like a professional services business.
0:03
Welcome back everybody to the Revenue Problem Solvers podcast,
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where we try to crack the code and growing your business by
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tackling the challenges to keep revenue leaders up at night.
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I'm Carl Ortrans and on today's episode we're going to dive into
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a topic that is commonly discussed on this podcast and
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it's one that I don't know if it if, if we have a clear
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distinction of getting it right. Sales and marketing alignment
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with A twist. Now today's podcast is sponsored
0:28
by the great team at Virtual Causeway.
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Traditional demand Gen. is breaking for a lot of teams that
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we talked to on the Revenue Problem Solvers podcast.
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So imagine your sales team spending less time chasing and
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more time closing because buyers actually know your name before
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that first call. And that's exactly what Virtual
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Causeway does. They help B2B companies get
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through the right channels and actually influence decisions
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today. What's the result?
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Well, it's fewer cold calls, better conversations and
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pipeline that actually moves faster.
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You can visit them at virtualcauseway.com and don't
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forget to mention the show for a special rate.
1:08
Now my guest today is a four time CMO and two time published
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author Lisa Cole. Now your sales team is likely
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sitting on a pile of marketing leads right now and ignoring
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every single one of them. Now the problem isn't that
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marketing isn't generating enough, it's that sales and
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marketing just don't agree on what a lead even is.
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That's the argument my guest today has been making for over
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25 years and she also has the hardware to back it up.
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So Lisa Cole is the only CMO in history to win Forrester's
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return on Integration award twice, once in 2018 and once in
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2022 at 2 separate companies and two completely different
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transformations. At Ferro Technology she cut the
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marketing budget in half and drove A7X increase in lead to
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sales conversion. And at Huron, her go to market
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alignment work put nearly 50 million to the pipeline in under
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a year. She's also the author of The
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Revenue Ramp and the Limitless CMO.
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She's the current CMO at 2X, where she was also the first
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ever hire in that role. Oh, and she founded a woman's
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football team, so she definitely knows a thing or two about
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building from scratch. Lisa, welcome to the podcast and
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thank you so much for joining us.
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Thank you. I'm excited to be here,
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appreciate the opportunity and anytime we talk about marketing
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and sales alignment for impact, it's it's been a passion of mine
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for 25 years. I love it.
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Sadly, it seems like the conversations are fairly
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consistent with companies. Yeah, I would agree.
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And, and even you talking about the lead, I, I don't know how
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many companies I've I've been with or talked to and they're
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like, well, this is what we think of lead is and this is
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what another one. So that definition is the
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problem is part of the problem, the terminology etcetera.
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So I'm excited for this one. And so as we get kicked off
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today, I like I, I typically ask everybody what industries or
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verticals do you work with today?
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What are your selling motions? What size companies do you work
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with? So one, I'm the CMO of 2X2X
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specifically is a go to market subscription services company.
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It focuses on B to B orgs, mid market to enterprise orgs.
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They all experience a complex sale.
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Basically means that these are the organizations have a very
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highly paid sales force and marketing plays a role in
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maximizing their productivity, right?
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There is some sort of demand that gets created, there's a
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hand off to sales and the sales then navigates large buying
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committees like the buying cycles.
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Me personally over the last 25 years I have been exclusively
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focused on B to B. It is largely been SAS tech then
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some less sexy industries. Manufacturing is an example,
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professional services, a variety of different professional
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services from Global Management consultancies to marketing
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agencies. So there are a mix in there for
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sure, but they all had that one thing in common, complex sale,
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marketing's not closing the deal, sales not closing the deal
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without those people interacting with something that marketing's
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put in the world. Yeah.
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And when you get into the role of, of manufacturing, like I've,
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I spent some time in that world, I think it's actually harder to
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to market to those buyers because I remember talking to I,
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I was working through a project and I'm a little bit off script.
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But either way, I remember talking to this engineer that
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we're working on a project and I called him and he was like, hey
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Carl, what do you need? I'm kind of busy because
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engineers don't like to be disrupted, interrupted,
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especially in that world. And I said, well, OK, I'm
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curious, what are you doing? And he's like, well, I'm trying
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to figure out the math on the 9th axis.
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And in my mind I was like, there's a 9th axis.
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What does that look like? And how do you even figure that
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out? I was like, OK, so I had to get,
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I had to get to it. But they're very skeptical by
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nature. And I find that they're
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challenging. So getting something to them
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where they're actually engaging, that's hard.
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So anybody in SAS you go into, into manufacturing or into world
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of, you know, outside of SAS and you go, oh, this is different
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and it's harder. Yeah.
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Two of the companies I worked with, they were in one
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environment that effectively targeting quality control R&D
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functions for companies that build cars and airplanes.
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So that conversation is exactly like the one you just described.
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And then the other was effectively selling technology
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to digital forensics. And so they were effectively
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helping law enforcement agencies around the world extract data,
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connect the dots in that data to really figure out what actually
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happened through the course of a crime and, and the why.
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Again, highly technical, right? It's all about the data and that
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it's definitely a. There's a precision there for
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sure. So if you can't tell just even
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by this little preamble of us and we're running into the
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topic, but why I'm so excited about the conversation with Lisa
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is for all of these things. So how we got to today's topic
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is I asked Lisa, like I asked everybody, what's the successful
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revenue initiative you've LED or an existing challenge you've
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either solved or have solved or are solving today?
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And with a really fun back and forth chat, it became clear as
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like, all right, here's here's the topic.
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It's aligning sales and marketing during a restructure.
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So the restructure is an interesting point because as
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you're going through and changing things, I got to think
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that there's a lot here. So you've walked into brokening.
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Let's I'll say it this way. You've walked into a broken
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marketing function multiple times in your career, it seems,
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and you did it on purpose. What does day one actually look
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like when you arrive and you look at that maybe misconception
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or the misalignment or I don't want to say, I don't want to say
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that they're at each other, but you arrive in sales and
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marketing are not on the same page with each other.
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What does day one actually look like for you to try to bring
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them together? I think it's important for the
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audience to know that the reason I've run into these situations
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intentionally is I believe, I really do believe that marketing
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could be more than an order taking function that makes
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things look pretty. If done right.
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It should be an enabler, an accelerator of growth for the
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company to do so in a sustainable way, meaning it
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should help companies sell more faster.
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And so by design, the very first thing I do is look at the
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relationship between marketing and sales.
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And but I don't wing it. I have a very structured
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approach. The way I think about it, how
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are the, you know, the leadership and the teams?
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How do they communicate and collaborate with each other?
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What goals and objectives do these two functions have?
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Are they aligned? What terminology are they using?
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You know, we talked a little bit about the lead a little bit ago,
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but that's just one of the many words that these two functions
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might use that could be defined totally different, but it sounds
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like they're aligned and they're not.
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When you look under the under the hood, so to speak, when you
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look at how demand gets managed all the way through revenue, who
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does what in the zoo across that entire end to end buying
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journey? Because news flash, marketing
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does play a role. Even after they've handed
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something off to sales, there's continued interaction with your
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brand and a number of channels, and that can't be messed up.
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So who does what along that buying journey?
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How you know, how are results measured, tracked, reported?
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And you know, as you surface actionable insights, whether
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that's sales reps being in the market or marketing doing market
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research and talking to customers, how are those
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insights informing how marketing and sales approaches customers
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and prospects in the market? I go down that whole checklist
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and I get it. You know, I, I basically survey
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both marketing and sales, actually have a written survey.
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Everyone gets a version of the survey, a link, it's an
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anonymous link to the survey. They answer the same set of 20
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questions. I, I capture that across those
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dimensions I just talked about and, and then I compare them in
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a very scientific way. All the members of the sales
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organization answered these questions this way.
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This is how marketing answered these questions.
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Here's where we're maniacally aligned.
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Here's where we are wildly off. And oh, by the way, the things
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that were aligned on, the things that we both think need to be
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fixed and the things that we're off on, one of us thinks it
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needs to be fixed. The other one thinks it's, you
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know, a wild success story. So how do we bridge that gap?
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I always start with the data. That survey usually immediately
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opens everybody's eyes. You know, that's, that's kind of
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where I start. I mean, I could go on from
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there, but that survey is my favorite.
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That's great. And I, there's a question that
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is underneath of this. I, I think, and hopefully I can
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ask it and if you're OK with it is once you get that, especially
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when you're restructuring and a restructure in my mind is
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change. Like we have to change things.
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We have to change the way we do things.
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So when you put that out and you say, OK, well, actually, you
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know what these two teams forsake of converse, forsake of
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simple conversation of the 20, we have 5 that they're, they're
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100% aligned on what the terminology is.
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Great. I'll, I'll live with that.
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I'll carry on. But then there's those other 15
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that maybe they're not. How do you actually then
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approach bridging that gap between, look, this is where
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we're here, we need to get to here and how do you start that
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journey just to start to transform the terminology?
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I first actually take the things that were not aligned on and and
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plotted against a simple quadrant, you know, high impact,
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low impact, high effort, low effort, and the things that
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would be very impactful to the business and require low effort
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quick wins. Let's actually roll up our
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sleeves and tackle that. Let's get aligned on that piece.
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There's likely a body of work associated with each one of
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these that that you'd actually have to plan and execute to do
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that. For example, let's say that we
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are not aligned on the definition of a lead, right?
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And and with that, we need to tackle that.
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OK. The body of work there is a,
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it's a workshop where I'm going to take you through a list of
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questions and we're really going to clarify the definition of
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lead that nobody can deny. I'm going to ask sales and then
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we're going to crystallize that, document a service level
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agreement, and then under that we'll go fix the infrastructure
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that would enable us to manage demand in a way that feels
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consistent with the definition as established by sales.
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One thing you notice here, I don't ask marketing the
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definition of a lead ever because if sales doesn't agree
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with it, they're not going to follow up with it anyways.
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What's the point of producing or delivering anything that's just
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going to get ignored and oh by the way, upset the recipient?
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You know, marketing is going to have a point of view of the
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market that we should be focused on, how we should be thinking
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about positioning and messaging. They'll even, you know, think
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they can come up with a strategy in terms of when somebody
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engages with this topic or these assets, it feels like a
12:32
meaningful engagement that indicative of somebody that's
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kind of an active buying cycle. But at the end of the day, if we
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can't get sales aligned on what is worthy of their pursuit,
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whether it's the framework around, you know, the right
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company, right person, right activity, right level of
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engagement, or even just the right information that would
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warrant, you know, set them up for success, they're going to
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ignore it. And that's the thing that's not
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changed for 20 years. Now, there might be things if
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they say don't meet the requirements and the marketing
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is going to have to come up with a plan for how to handle those
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so that those don't get wasted. But I don't ask marketing.
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I'll let them observe so that they can hear all the dialogue
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through the questions, but I do not let them talk.
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That's an interesting way of going about it.
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I had, I've had through Pavilion, I've gone through CMO
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school and CRO school and some others.
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But Andrea Kale, who's now acro, but she was Acmo when she made
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the presentation. But she she always talked about
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this of or not always, but in the course she talked about when
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she looked at her marketing team, they're all celebrating
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and she's like, oh, great, we generate this many MQ LS.
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And then she looked at the sales floor and they all missed their
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number. And she was like, OK, like, why
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is marketing celebrating and sales is not?
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What's the gap here? And you know, as she, I think
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she said like I could turn up the dials and just push through
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more MQLS because we determine them to be ready.
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Yeah. So there's there is the in the
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the question there is how do you start to build that that
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workshop? Like what levels do you bring in
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to try to generate that consistent messaging?
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Because it's a problem you and I like even before we even got on
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the on to start a recording, we had a really good conversation
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about what a lead actually is and who's involved in it and how
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do you, how do you reinforce it? So if you take us back into all
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right, we're going for a restructure.
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We need to, we need to have these definitions and we're just
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picking on lead for this, for this situation.
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But now we have a workshop. Who's involved in that workshop?
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And then how do you either than take it to roll it out?
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And then after that is like how do you monitor and measure it?
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I'm going to take a percentage representatives from the sales
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organization in particular and I will go and make sure I have
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representatives from every functional level, from every org
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level. So I, you know, the head of
14:59
sales, one or two VPS, if they're directors that lead
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smaller teams, sales reps. And then if they're in the SDRS,
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I'll go through and I'll get like a collection, the
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collection I want, I want those that are the most credible to
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their peers in the org basically.
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And the reason I manage it this way is I think people at
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different levels of a sales organization or go to market
15:28
organization, they have a different lens.
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And so you want the different lens in terms of you want that
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to influence what is qualified and sales ready.
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The reason I pick the credible voices is you want whatever is
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rolled out, you want those most credible voices in the
15:44
organization saying I was consulted on this, I agree with
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this. This is what, you know, the
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source of truth in terms of what's worthy of your time.
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And they're often times also because they're credible,
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they're usually credible because they were successful.
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So if I can get that and it's, it can be anywhere from 12 to 24
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people in that workshop, again, like 2 from each layer and you
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kind of do the math. And then if you need to add any
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other, you know, important influencers that maybe aren't
16:16
two across those layers, you can kind of do it that way.
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I will then invite observers and so I will include critical
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stakeholders from marketing and IT and customer success to
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observe. So they're, if it's virtual,
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they're online and listening. If it's in person, I'll invite
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one or two from each one of those functions to join in
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person. They're in the back of the room.
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And their job is to observe the dynamics and the different
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feedback you get from the different stakeholders.
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And it's so that they can actually hear candidly what
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leads to success and what, what are the things that drag down on
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sales productivity. And sometimes it's surprising to
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them. For example, sometimes sales
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actually completely agrees with marketing's definition of a
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lead, but they're not getting enough information to act on it.
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In terms of like the record that's showing up?
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Or the record, the background information in terms of what the
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person might have engaged with, consumed something that would
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support a quality sales conversation.
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They're not getting enough background on what's happening
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or it requires 12 clicks for them to get all that
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information. And, and, and you know, as if
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you're a marketer and you hear that think, OK, we're actually
17:36
aligned. I just need to actually improve
17:38
the experience to streamline it and package it a different way
17:41
so that they'll actually do something with it.
17:44
Yeah, so. What role does like enablement
17:47
to Rev OPS have as part of this? They're involved as well.
17:51
Now there's a translation of this into the enabling
17:56
infrastructure. That's where Rev OPS plays a
17:58
critical role for sure. And do you, do they have a seat
18:02
at the table to say, hey, you know, say your conversation,
18:05
hey, Lisa, actually what you're asking for, it goes through this
18:07
workflow and it has this and it has this and it has this.
18:09
And this is where it breaks. Like is that the input that they
18:12
get? That's usually #1 When I went
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through that list, they're usually if there is a Rev OPS
18:18
function, they have a seat at the table.
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If there isn't the IT, there's usually a team that kind of
18:25
manages the infrastructure for let's say Salesforce is an
18:29
example. That team will be in that, in
18:32
that room. They're consulted not during the
18:35
definition of the lead, but once you get aligned on what is
18:40
qualified and sales ready for sales Rep to pursue.
18:44
The second-half of that conversation is saying, OK, now
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who's going to do what in the zoo along this entire end to end
18:49
journey? So marketing is going to do
18:52
this. These are the information
18:53
requirements. This is how it gets passed over
18:55
to you. If we give you something that
18:58
looks like what you think is great, it's super great.
19:02
This is you already told us what great looks like.
19:05
What can we expect from you in return?
19:07
And that leads to it could be new fields that are created in
19:13
Salesforce. It could be a different
19:14
notification process. It could be a different
19:17
assignment routing process, could be different dashboards to
19:21
provide visibility to records that may be of aged by a couple
19:25
days. Like that's where that part of
19:27
the conversation becomes super important because it bridges the
19:30
gap between business requirements for any of the
19:33
changes that we uncover through this conversation with current
19:37
state. So they're key in that, yeah.
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When you, so I'm sort of jumping ahead.
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So I mean we have that conversation, everybody's
19:46
aligned in the room. OK, Rev OPS, you got your
19:48
marching orders enablement, you got your marching orders.
19:51
What does that translation layer, so you defined it, but
19:55
now you have to translate it and reinforce how did how did those
19:59
two components come back to you and the sales leader to showcase
20:03
that, hey, we are aligned now. Yeah.
20:05
Well the very first thing is in the very the book that I
20:09
mentioned, well you mentioned early revenue ramp, there's a
20:12
section RAMP, they all stand for certain sections. 1 is review
20:18
and that's that survey. The second is a line, and this
20:22
is kind of that the workshop, the documenting of new
20:26
requirements, kind of translating that into who needs
20:30
to do what to be able to kind of execute against the promise that
20:34
comes out of that conversation. Then there's both measure.
20:38
Yeah, no, but of course, measure, that's part of it,
20:41
right? So when you come out of that
20:43
workshop, what you effectively have is all the definitions that
20:46
you need a clear understanding of how records get handled, who
20:52
gets notified, how they get assigned.
20:55
You'll also get a line done. Well, how do we measure the
20:59
whether or not this these new definitions are working?
21:05
And so it includes a set of conversion velocity except for
21:12
jacked, it includes a set of metrics to monitor whether or
21:16
not this this updated requirements actually is moving
21:21
things in the right direction. Now the Mobilize piece, this is
21:26
effectively where everyone's actually putting this stuff into
21:29
practice, right? So making necessary changes in
21:34
all of the systems, be able to identify these records and then
21:37
manage them appropriately. It could be investing in some
21:41
data enrichment to kind of round out what is going to be handed
21:45
to sales. It could be building the reports
21:47
and dashboards so that you can kind of monitor the flow kind of
21:51
from marketing through sales and even through customer success.
21:55
Once that's live, the way it actually works from there is
21:59
that you agree that that same group now becomes your your
22:03
league council and you meet every quarter and you review a
22:07
sample set of those leads. Again, whatever you call them.
22:12
You take a few of the those that did convert and effectively
22:16
manage. You take those that maybe were
22:18
ignored, dropped, mishandled, closed, lost, whatever that
22:22
might be. And you, you test it and say,
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OK, was this the right thing for us to do?
22:27
Do we need to make adjustments? And that's what keeps it living
22:32
and breathing. The second thing you do is on a
22:35
quarterly basis, you also rerun that survey survey.
22:40
So you come back and say, OK, now we were all misaligned on
22:44
these three topics. How do you, how are you all
22:47
feeling now that we've gotten alignment on these pieces?
22:52
We've put it into practice. We're checking in with it.
22:55
Are you feeling better about whether or not we're on the same
22:58
page and you just keep measuring and monitoring that?
23:01
It's, it's like a 3 minute survey.
23:03
It's a super simple SurveyMonkey 20 question thing, but it's not
23:09
a one and done. Both of those things are not one
23:11
and done. So if I heard, I heard it review
23:15
a line, mobilize, is it mobilize and then what's the P is it?
23:20
Propels Propel. Propel, so you kind of scale it
23:24
from there for marketing. What that looks like is that now
23:28
you can actually there's a an underlying piece here that you
23:32
kind of slow down investments while you're getting the engine
23:36
fixed and then you actually move the money back into the programs
23:41
to scale it. So you propel it forward.
23:44
The other part of Propel includes marketing, investing
23:46
and sales enablement. Awesome.
23:50
The the thing you just said there, the Propel side makes me
23:52
think of, there's a gentleman who I got the chance to work
23:56
with and he was in Rev OPS and he said, you know, you want to
23:58
know if something's working, turn it off.
24:00
See if anybody raised their hand or freaks out.
24:02
And if they do tell me why, tell me what's going on.
24:04
And then I know. Yeah, yeah, 100%.
24:08
Well, that's what I do with marketing programs when I first
24:10
arrive. If it's clear that there's
24:12
misalignment, I'll scale it down or turn it off and and see if it
24:17
actually mattered to anyone. So going, which is great.
24:21
So let's maybe dig in there a little bit.
24:24
So does it actually matter? We've got some.
24:27
So now you've got the information around the alignment
24:30
or misalignment. You run that, you run that
24:33
workshop to try to get clarity for the future.
24:36
Yeah. Then how do you know where those
24:40
quick wins are, especially during a restructure?
24:43
Because if it's a restructure, you know, I, I'll say it this
24:46
way, maybe it's a good way to say it.
24:47
When it's a restructure, there's people have their backs up of
24:50
like what's happening? Do you know something?
24:52
Do you know something? What don't I know what?
24:53
Like there's a little bit of unsettled water.
24:56
So how do you settle the waters? Show some quick wins to try to
24:59
bridge those two teams together. Well, a couple things to know.
25:03
What we didn't talk about was the marketing transformation
25:07
piece of this, right. We talked about marketing and
25:10
sales alignment, but those scenarios where I have
25:14
intentionally run into these fundamentally broken marketing
25:19
functions as part of a broader business restructuring.
25:23
Normally this, the business restructuring is stated, there's
25:26
a stated purpose behind it. It could be cost cutting, cost
25:30
savings, The company's not demonstrating that it can
25:35
accelerate growth sustainably. Or it could be, hey, we want to
25:40
build the next best version of us, the next growth engine.
25:43
And so we have to shore up our legacy business to be able to
25:48
invest some in what we think will be a growth engine, new
25:51
product offerings, new capabilities.
25:54
And with that, we need to reposition the org from being
25:57
perceived as one thing to being perceived as something else.
26:01
In those scenarios when there's a stated strategic initiative,
26:05
whatever that is, whatever that it turns into a mandate for the
26:09
marketing team, I am usually brought in.
26:12
In those moments where the mandate is marketing is
26:15
currently a bloated, disjointed order taking make things look
26:19
pretty function. And it #1 need to get the cost
26:24
under control. And we need to shift
26:28
marketing's, you know, enable marketing to execute on this new
26:31
mandate. It could be repositioning a new
26:34
brand. It could be scaling up pipeline
26:37
impact, right, could be a number of things.
26:40
But through that, they're usually as part of that broader
26:44
business transformation. There's a shift in priorities.
26:47
And so I actually have to come into the marketing function and
26:50
say this is the mandate underneath those mandates.
26:53
These are the capabilities we need.
26:56
With those capabilities, what work do we have today and we
26:59
evaluate it, What should we stop?
27:02
What should we continue and what what do we need to start doing?
27:07
And of those, I then look at the organization to see whether or
27:11
not we have those capabilities and whether or not they should
27:14
be in house, outsourced or even fully automated.
27:19
That is usually the moment that freaks people out because now
27:23
we're having a conversation about the work that marketing
27:26
does and marketing's role in the business, the work that
27:29
marketing does and how it gets it done outside of marketing.
27:34
It's funny to hear that many non marketers have a perspective on
27:39
what marketing should be doing and how they should be doing it.
27:43
And so there's a lot of stakeholder management to kind
27:46
of reset and say marketing's role in the business.
27:50
And part of this broader business restructuring is this.
27:53
To do that, I've got to free up capacity.
27:57
That could be free up budget dollars, that could be free up
28:00
capacity within my team. It could be free up, you know,
28:04
focus and energy. It could be a number of things,
28:07
but I actually have to stop doing some stuff to be able to
28:10
invest in other stuff that will be higher impact.
28:13
And so there is that stakeholdering, stakeholder
28:15
management within marketing. What that looks like is who's
28:19
doing what in the zoo related to that work that we need to go and
28:24
do, who's capable of doing what, what changes need to happen
28:27
through that. And then it usually, for me,
28:32
will lead to a redefined operating model.
28:37
This is marketing's role in the business.
28:38
These are our mandates. This is what we're going to
28:41
continue doing. This is what we're going to stop
28:44
doing. These are the things that we
28:45
need to start doing, and here's how we're going to get it done.
28:49
This stuff's going to be in house.
28:52
This stuff we're going to leverage, outsource, and here
28:54
are the reasons for that. And it could be a variety of
28:57
things like specialist expertise or lower cost offshore model,
29:01
whatever that could be. And here's some stuff that
29:04
should have been automated a long time ago that we're going
29:06
to now go and apply AI to get the stuff done at scale to free
29:11
up my in house resources to do higher impact work.
29:15
That piece usually creates tension amongst the team because
29:20
they're wondering, do I have a role in the future?
29:23
What does my work look like? It also freaks out the
29:27
stakeholders in other functions because they're so used to their
29:32
people being their people, the doers of their things.
29:37
And so you almost even have to kind of educate them on, hey,
29:43
this person's still here, but their body of work is going to
29:45
be this, not this. And when you have a request,
29:48
it's going to come in this way and we're going to manage it
29:50
this way versus you just call Anne and she's going to just
29:55
turn and drop everything and do your thing today.
29:58
So it's, it's definitely you have to go through the
30:01
redefining that operating model and communicating it.
30:04
And as long as you're anchored to the business strategy and
30:07
what the business is trying to do, senior leaders will always
30:11
be team one, don't care about the business, and they'll
30:15
respect and understand changes that need to happen in the
30:19
operating model. So that's where people tend to
30:24
freak out. Is the way things get done
30:26
changes in a meaningful way. And through that, they're
30:30
wondering, you know, is my ability to be successful going
30:34
to be impacted If you're outside marketing, inside marketing, am
30:38
I still going to have a seat on the bus?
30:40
If so, what work am I going to do?
30:42
Who am I going to be working with more closely?
30:45
They'll see that that the whole engine kind of gets reimagined.
30:51
Now where it gets really complicated is if it is a true
30:55
business restructuring, that basically means all functional
30:58
groups are changing at the same time.
31:02
So everyone's individual buses, the seats are moving around and
31:06
everyone's bus. And the one of the
31:09
transformations you and I talked about that was in my opinion the
31:13
most impactful and where marketing really did change its
31:17
role in the business and was able to demonstrate a meaningful
31:19
impact. We, I partnered with the head of
31:24
product and the head of sales and we were comparing notes on
31:29
how we were reimagining our functions together.
31:33
There's a global organization. We were changing which regions
31:37
we were going to operate in, which states or countries, what
31:42
level of resources were going to be in each one of the countries,
31:46
which industries we were going to focus on versus those that we
31:49
were not. And, and we had to bring our
31:52
pieces together because if sales went and said Japan was no
31:56
longer a priority or product basically said there isn't
32:00
growth to be had in Germany, sales should not be hiring more
32:04
people in Germany and scaling down Japan if Japan's a growth
32:08
market and marketing shouldn't have a million field marketers
32:12
in Germany, if that's not where the growth is going to come
32:14
from. So we product marketing and
32:16
sales kind of have to at least compare notes along the way as
32:19
they're shaping their picture. So that's a critical piece, I
32:23
think. I really like that you called
32:26
that out because it putting the focus in the right places is
32:29
important. There is a little bit of what
32:32
I've seen in in, in my experiences, there is a
32:35
relevancy versus recency conversation that happens with
32:38
that. Well, why are we going to
32:41
Germany, Lisa? Well, I just lost a deal.
32:44
OK. But did you realize that Germany
32:46
represents 28% of our, our, our, our entire ACV plus we have the
32:53
biggest growth there plus our average?
32:55
Like you almost have to break some of those mindset rules of
33:00
like, oh, it's never going to work.
33:02
And then you go, well, actually let me show you the data behind
33:04
it. And I think you led with the
33:05
data, but that that relevancy versus recency conversation is
33:09
one of the important things as you're putting the I got to
33:11
think. Yeah, at 100%.
33:13
By the way, marketing and sales, this is where some misalignment
33:17
shows up in different ways than Elite, right?
33:20
Sales has 1 to 1 interactions with customers and prospects,
33:26
but they may not have the collective understanding of of
33:30
how the markets are shifting. They don't have market data.
33:33
They have data points of 1. And so there, that recency thing
33:38
is likely heavily influencing their picture of where we should
33:42
be, where we should play, how we win versus when you take a look
33:46
at the market, you know, product marketing, really good product
33:49
marketing is going to have an understanding of what's
33:51
happening in the market, how needs are shifting and where
33:55
that that revenue will need to come from, where we need to play
33:58
and where we can win. If you start with that picture
34:03
and product is then going to go ahead and make changes to the,
34:06
you know, capabilities that they've developed to bring the
34:09
market based on that data. And sales has sales coverage
34:14
where the market demand will be, then marketing can then in
34:20
within that aligned product sales picture can then say, OK,
34:24
this is I'm going to treat marketing dollars like
34:27
investments. I'm going to focus it on these
34:29
markets, these companies, these buyers buying influencers within
34:35
these this footprint at this level of intensity.
34:38
And I only have so much peanut butter and it can't be spread
34:40
too thin on and go for me one of those scenarios I basically said
34:45
I have this much in marketing budget.
34:48
There are 19 countries and in those nineteen countries, 7
34:52
different languages are spoken. And so when you think about that
34:56
as peanut butter, every campaign, every asset,
34:58
everything then need to get localized and translated, the
35:02
peanut butter starts spreading really thin.
35:04
Well, I established a basically a, a formula that basically
35:08
said, where does 80% of our revenue need to come from?
35:12
And what does that concentration look like recognizing how much,
35:17
you know, I, I, the cost associated with really
35:20
activating in the market given the, you know, the complexities
35:24
of the X number of languages and customer base.
35:27
So then I gave that kind of point of view of 80% of the
35:32
revenues going to come from these 19 countries with these 7
35:35
languages. And these are the 2 industry
35:38
sectors I can cover effectively give it to product and sales.
35:42
If they disagree, then it's a matter of saying, OK, I only
35:45
have it. So either marketing needs more
35:48
peanut butter or we're going to have to figure out how to, you
35:54
know, get aligned on where we should play together.
35:58
Like, because it's only so thin, you can go with before you have
36:02
no impact. So yeah.
36:05
Oh, that's so I remember. I'll go.
36:09
What you made me think of is one of the one of the people that I
36:13
thought was incredible was her name is Linda Crawford.
36:18
And so when I was at Salesforce, she was the I think at the time
36:22
she was the SVP of sales and sales strategy and productivity.
36:26
And she gave a presentation to us and she was talking and she,
36:29
I thought it was one of the most impactful conversations that I
36:33
can remember because I remember her going, well, you know, the
36:35
places we're going to go, Like when you start to look at the
36:38
currency, well, Germany's currency has done this and
36:40
they've done this and blah, blah, blah.
36:41
And so there's an an involvement there.
36:43
And then you look at, and So what I took from that is like,
36:46
OK, you're not just looking at like, what is the total
36:48
addressable market you're looking at?
36:50
What are the financial implications of going here?
36:52
And what does this look like? You're looking at it much more
36:55
deeply than anything I've ever heard.
36:57
And that was, I was a little earlier in my career, but that
37:00
really stuck out to me. And everything you're just
37:01
saying right now is it takes me back to that moment to say, OK,
37:06
in order for us to go here, this is what it's going to take.
37:09
Oh, by the way, if we're going to hire in the German market in
37:12
Germany, we got to go through the German consulate and we've
37:14
got different rules. And by the way, it the
37:16
reporting, this is one of the things that was interesting is
37:18
you can't show the like the reporting levels of what is
37:21
visible and what isn't visible. And how do we handle that
37:23
because we're a transparent companies.
37:25
All of these things coming together as you start to produce
37:27
into a new market and not everybody knows those things.
37:30
Yeah. By the way, when marketers
37:33
aspire to be ACMO there that all of those complexities are not
37:39
the things that were provided. As we grow up into becoming
37:42
ACMO, we find ourselves in environments like, oh, I'm going
37:47
to have to pitch 7 times some organizational changes I need to
37:53
make to the Germans Work Council like 7 times just for changes of
37:59
title or, or scope changes. But to go back to it, what the
38:05
book I'm about to release, it gets released next week is
38:09
called the Limitless CMO. And it's really predicated on
38:12
three different levers that marketing leaders can pull.
38:15
The first of which is what you're describing running
38:19
marketing like a business. So I think it you said it was
38:22
Linda, right. Linda almost seemed like she was
38:25
talking about she has an investment portfolio and she's
38:30
got to make decisions on where to invest her resources, whether
38:33
it's budget dollars, people program it, whatever that might
38:37
be. She's going to make some
38:39
investment decisions in the best interest of the business.
38:44
And so for me the way that has always translated is marketing.
38:49
I run marketing like a professional services business.
38:52
If you ever talk to someone that's LED a professional
38:54
services business, you'll recognize that they look at all
38:58
of their resources, people, budget, technology and they
39:02
focus it on high impact work. And if or billable work is
39:07
probably the best way to kind of call that out.
39:10
I impact billable work. Anything that is low value, low
39:13
impact or non billable work, they continuously manage that
39:18
out of the portfolio to ensure that the business is profitable.
39:23
If you run marketing like a business, you have a very
39:26
similar lens. There's a strategy, you know,
39:29
the business has its strategic initiatives.
39:31
Marketing's got its mandates based on, you know, what you're
39:35
trying to accomplish and the complexity of the business in
39:39
the market that you're focused on.
39:41
You have to then invest your dollars, you have to allocate
39:44
your budget dollars in such a way that's in service of that
39:47
business strategy. Some companies super easy, right
39:50
2X you know, we focus on B to B organizations, mid market
39:56
enterprise headquarters in the US And so for us I don't need to
40:01
think about. Marketing, the implication of
40:04
marketing in nine different languages in 19 countries,
40:08
right? I don't, I don't have that
40:09
complexity. My couple companies or
40:14
adventures ago, I absolutely had that complexity.
40:17
And looking at the investment that the company is willing to
40:20
make in marketing, it couldn't do all things marketing couldn't
40:25
be all things to all people. And so we had to, we had to
40:28
figure out the highest impact investments there.
40:31
That, that also, I mean, there goes the, you know, as you're,
40:35
as you're brought into the role and you you scale your career in
40:39
marketing anyways, in leadership, there's certain
40:41
things that you aren't taught, you are learned on the job.
40:46
Some of those things is, hey, we want to go into a new market.
40:48
Great. How does this translate?
40:51
Does our brand translate to that company, like to that country?
40:55
Are we said something, you know the word that we have, does it
40:59
translate well? Oh, maybe not.
41:01
OK, we got to think, rethink that.
41:03
Hey, what does the market actually look like?
41:05
How are we going to get paid if they are in a different currency
41:08
and then they, let's say it's you are billing in USD.
41:10
Well, how do they respond to that?
41:13
Well, oh, you know what, we didn't think about that.
41:15
Hey, if we considered there's all these things that are
41:18
considered of like do you have the right payment process or are
41:21
the right processes there? Hey, you know, if you're ISO
41:24
27,000 and one is all the documentation in that language,
41:27
there's all these things that are learned on the job.
41:30
Yeah, yeah, 100%. And normally you learn as you
41:35
step on the landmines, right. So, you know, one of the cases I
41:41
mentioned earlier, we found out that the company name in that
41:45
language was Lighthouse, like Lighthouse, OK.
41:50
So now we have to get pretty creative about how we would tie
41:53
anything like that, that imagery, that positioning, how
41:57
we would tie the meaning somehow into, you know, the, the
42:00
company's narrative like Lighthouse, Where did that come
42:02
from? Secondly, another scenario, I
42:05
distinctly remember 1 country we're operating in, we could not
42:10
do business as the company because it was already someone
42:14
that had trademarked that in language version of that name in
42:19
that country. And so we're like, all right, so
42:20
now we have to do business as there's a lot of complexity.
42:26
Even something as simple as in AIPAC region, you know, you
42:32
might as a marketer think, well, I need to localize and translate
42:36
content for these countries in these two languages.
42:39
Well, one of those languages has 19 dialects.
42:44
Go ahead and try to figure out QA of anything that goes to
42:47
market. When you realize you've got 19
42:50
dialects within that one language, it's there's, there's
42:54
a, it's a big yarn ball you have to unwind.
42:57
And again, the peanut butter is only going to go so thin.
43:00
If a company is spending 5% or 3% or 7% on marketing and the
43:06
company is global in its footprint, the complexities,
43:10
it's that bloat that actually is what's going to diminish
43:13
marketing's ability to be impactful.
43:16
And to throw a totally other wrench into the whole thing is
43:20
you have the way that people communicate high context
43:22
societies versus low context societies and how they translate
43:26
and what the information is and how they interact with each
43:30
other. Are you more direct?
43:31
Are you more casual? What does that look like?
43:33
You have to think about the marketing and the language
43:36
you're using to them. There's, there's a lot of
43:38
complexity and especially in a restructure of trying to, I'll
43:42
say get it right is maybe I'm oversimplifying, but getting it
43:46
right to try to get all these in together, drive the boat in the
43:49
right direction. Everybody's got the oar.
43:51
We're all pulling in the same direction.
43:53
This is what we're doing. It's not simple.
43:56
No regulations. And you know, when you think
43:59
about GDPR as an example or you think about social media was a
44:04
weird one. There are certain countries that
44:07
have their own set of social media platforms that in order
44:10
for you to have access to it, you have to have a person in
44:14
seat in that country. So it's again, all these, all
44:19
these little landmines you step on and you learn from experience
44:22
that you know, you, you do your best to try to share it with
44:26
others so that they, they make smarter decisions.
44:31
And I, I'd like to say simple is very hard.
44:33
And when you, when something just looks so simple, there's so
44:37
much work that goes into the background to try to make it
44:40
operate or look just so simple. Because anything that you see,
44:45
well, I don't want to say anything, but, you know, you
44:47
take the Olympics as a really good example and you say, Oh,
44:50
well, that person's just doing, you know, long track speed
44:53
skating, isn't it? Well, doesn't look that hard.
44:56
Yeah, OK. Look at the number of hours and
44:58
things that goes into it just to make it look like that and make
45:01
it look so effortless. That's the challenge.
45:04
So. Years ago I had a mentor that
45:07
told me if you can explain it simply, you know it well enough.
45:11
If you cannot like, explain it simply to someone for the first
45:15
time, then you don't know it well enough.
45:17
And I got to think that that's important when especially in the
45:19
restructure and aligning everything together of the
45:22
language being so simple, there was like, yeah, makes sense,
45:24
let's just do that. 100%. I've just looked at the time and
45:29
I said I'd get you out of here and this has been a lot of fun.
45:31
I'm sure we could talk for hours, Lisa, but as we go to
45:35
towards the wrap up, I, I like to say everybody likes new and
45:38
everybody likes different. And when you do both at the same
45:40
time, it can either cause friction or uncertainty.
45:42
And especially in a restructure, this couldn't maybe be more more
45:47
factual. If somebody's thinking, if
45:49
somebody's going into a restructure and they're trying
45:51
to align sales and marketing, what are two or what are two or
45:54
three actionable things that you say, hey, do these two or three
45:58
things on Monday morning and it'll put you on the right path.
46:01
Well, if you've sense that you're not aligned or if you're
46:04
worrying about it, ask. So that goes back to that
46:07
survey. You know, you don't necessarily
46:10
need my survey, but you ask some questions and better understand
46:14
exactly where, where there might be misalignment.
46:17
So get to it. Don't you know?
46:19
Don't, don't just wing it or make any assumptions.
46:22
You might be surprised #2 dig in and kind of reach across the
46:28
aisle recognizing that I don't believe I'd never lead with
46:32
negative intention. So when it comes to marketing
46:35
and sales, I believe everyone's doing what they think is the
46:38
right thing for the business and for our customers.
46:41
And so if if sales isn't or marketing is not reaching across
46:45
the aisle to partner with you, be the one that reaches or
46:48
extended. You know, it's almost like that
46:50
saying about good marriages. Sometimes someone's doing 10%,
46:54
the other person might be doing 90%, do the 90% and attempt to
46:59
bring them together. Like, like go out of your way to
47:03
be a great partner even when it appears that they may not be
47:08
doing the same. And if you need help with
47:12
motivation and doing that, just think your job is to represent
47:16
the customer, which I think brings me to the third piece.
47:22
If marketing and sales are misaligned, the easiest way to
47:25
get an organization to get aligned is to anchor to a clear
47:31
picture of how the the customers buy.
47:34
So if you can kind of map out the reality for customers buying
47:38
journey and say, I want to do whatever is right for the
47:42
organization to make that buying journey as frictionless and
47:46
painless as possible. What does that look like and who
47:49
does what? Like how can marketing support
47:52
that? What should what should sales be
47:53
doing? How do we align around that
47:57
which is always in service of selling more faster.
47:59
So that's. Why I like that?
48:02
I can't remember who said it and I I don't want to, I don't want
48:05
to misrepresent, but somebody said attach yourself to APO and
48:09
follow the bouncing ball and see where the friction is and an
48:12
amazing what you learn. You'll see it.
48:14
And by the way, once I call that the wall of shame, you know, you
48:18
shine the line on, you bring the word possible case example of
48:21
where somebody clearly the organization appeared to go out
48:25
of its way to make it hard for that customer.
48:27
Shine the light on it. Put all the details of that
48:30
snare on the wall and say no finger pointing, let's just do
48:34
better. Nobody ever wants that to
48:37
continue. No one ever wants that to
48:39
continue because I mean, the easiest thing, we know what it
48:42
feels like. So yeah, I agree.
48:45
This has been so much fun, Lisa. I could, I didn't feel like we
48:49
could talk for hours. If somebody listening is like,
48:51
you know what I want to, I want to talk to Lisa some more or
48:54
learn. Where would you suggest they
48:55
find you? There's two ways, LinkedIn, so
48:59
Lisa Cole 01 and LinkedIn, and that's, you know, conceptually,
49:04
if you wanted to ask any questions about anything that we
49:06
talked about here or any of the concepts in the books that we
49:10
reference. If you need help actually
49:13
getting marketing and sales aligned and scaling up for
49:17
greater impact, meaning scale up growth in a predictable,
49:21
sustainable way, you can also go to 2x.com, so www.2x.com and
49:29
happy to help anyway. Awesome.
49:32
We, if Lisa and I haven't, we didn't know each other going
49:35
into this and, and I've got to have 130 minute conversation,
49:40
which I think we probably could have gotten a lot longer.
49:42
And I think even today we probably could have got a lot
49:44
longer. And maybe there's a second
49:46
episode in here. Lisa, this has been a lot of fun
49:49
to learn from you. And you know, a lot of the
49:52
things that we, you were talking about is alignment in the
49:54
language and, and how do you look at things?
49:56
And I really like you said, is like treat, treat your role like
49:59
the business and and carry on. So thank you for doing this.
50:02
It's it's been a lot of fun and, and, and I appreciate you
50:05
spending time with me today it. Was great spending time.
50:08
Thank you for the opportunity and have a have a great day.
50:11
Thank you. That's going to wrap up another
50:12
episode of Revenue Problem Solvers Podcast.
50:14
Obviously want to thank Lisa for sharing these incredibly
50:17
invaluable insights. There's some strategies you
50:18
clearly hear that you can put into action tomorrow.
50:21
Remember, successive clues in every revenue problem has a
50:24
solution. Sometimes you just need the
50:27
right conversation to find it. Till next time, it's Carl with
50:29
the Revenue Roblem Solvers helping you turn your obstacles
50:32
into your opportunities. Thank you for investing your
50:34
time with us today. We'll see you in the next
50:36
episode.