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"If done right, AI will actually make us more human. It handles the busy work and surfaces real-time insights—so GTM teams can focus on what really drives revenue: building relationships, solving real problems, and creating long-term customer value." That's a quote from Roderick Jefferson and a sneak peek at today's episode.Hi there, I'm Kerry Curran—Revenue Growth Consultant, Industry Analyst, and host of Revenue Boost, A Marketing Podcast. In every episode, I sit down with top experts to bring you actionable strategies that deliver real results. So if you're serious about business growth, find us in your favorite podcast directory, hit subscribe, and start outpacing your competition today.In this episode, titled AI + EQ + GTM: The New Growth Equation for B2B Leaders, I sit down with keynote speaker, author, and enablement powerhouse Roderick Jefferson to unpack the modern formula for revenue growth: AI + EQ + GTM.We explore why traditional sales enablement isn't enough in today's landscape—and how real go-to-market success requires alignment across marketing, sales, and customer success, powered by emotional intelligence and smart technology integration.Whether you're a CRO, CMO, or GTM leader looking to scale smarter, this episode is packed with real-world insights and actionable strategies to align your teams and drive sustainable growth.Stick around until the end, where Roderick shares expert tips for building your own AI-powered revenue engine.If you're serious about long-term growth, it's time to get serious about AI, EQ, and GTM. Let's go.Kerry Curran, RBMA (00:01)Welcome, Roderick. Please introduce yourself and share your background and expertise.Roderick Jefferson (00:06)Hey, Kerry. First of all, thanks so much for having me on. I'm really excited—I've been looking forward to this one all day. So thanks again. I'm Roderick Jefferson, CEO of Roderick Jefferson & Associates. We're a fractional enablement company, and we focus on helping small to mid-sized businesses—typically in the $10M to $100M range—that need help with onboarding, ongoing education, and coaching.I'm also a keynote speaker and an author. I actually started my career in sales at AT&T years ago. I was a BDR, did well, got promoted to AE, made President's Club a couple of times. Then I was offered a sales leadership role—and I turned it down. I know they thought I was crazy, but there were two reasons: first, I realized I loved the process of selling more than just closing big deals. And second, oddly enough, I wasn't coin-operated. I did it because I loved it—it gave me a chance to interact with people and have conversations like this one.Kerry Curran, RBMA (01:16)I love that—and I love your background. As Roderick mentioned, he does a lot of keynote speaking, and that's actually where I met him. He was a keynote speaker at B2BMX West in Scottsdale last month. I also have one of your books here that I've been diving into. I can't believe how fast this year is flying—it's already the first day of spring!Roderick Jefferson (01:33)Thank you so much. Wow, that was just last month? It feels like last week. Where is the time going?Kerry Curran, RBMA (01:45)I appreciate your experience for so many reasons. One is that—like we talked about before the show—my dad was in sales at AT&T for over 20 years. It paid for my entire education. So we were comparing notes on that era of innovation and what we learned back then.Roderick Jefferson (02:02)Thank you, AT&T!Kerry Curran, RBMA (02:13)So much of what you talked about on stage and wrote about in your book is near and dear to my heart. My background is in building integrated marketing-to-sales infrastructure and strengthening it to drive revenue growth. I'm excited to hear more about what you're seeing and hearing. You talk to so many brands and marketers—what's hot right now? What's the buzz? What do we need to know?Roderick Jefferson (02:44)A couple of things. The obvious one is AI—but I'll add something: it's not just AI, it's AI plus EQ plus IQ. Without that combination, you won't be successful.The other big theme is the same old problem we've always had: Why is there such a disconnect between sales and marketing? As an enablement guy, it pains me. I spent 30 years in corporate trying to figure that out. I think we're getting closer to alignment—thank you, AI, for finally stepping in and being smarter than all of us! But we've still got a long way to go.Part of the issue is we're still making decisions in silos. That's why I've become a champion of moving away from just "sales enablement."Yes, I know I wrote the book on sales enablement—but I don't think that's the focus anymore. In hindsight, “sales enablement” is too myopic. It's really about go-to-market. How do we bring HR, marketing, product marketing, engineering, sales, and enablement all to the same table to talk about the entire buyer's journey?Instead of focusing on our internal sales process and trying to shoehorn prospects into it, we should be asking: How do they buy? Who buys? Are there buying committees? How many people are involved? And yes, ICP matters—but that's just the tip of the iceberg. It goes much deeper.Kerry Curran, RBMA (04:44)Yes, absolutely. And going back to why you loved your early sales roles—it was about helping people. That's how I've always approached marketing too: what are their business challenges, and what can I offer to solve them? In your keynote, you said, “I want sales to stop selling and start helping.” But that's not possible without partnering with marketing to learn and message around the outcomes we drive and the pain points we solve.Roderick Jefferson (05:22)Exactly. Let's unpack that. First, about helping vs. selling—that's why we have spam filters now. Nobody wants to be sold to. That's also why people avoid car lots—because you know what's coming: they'll talk at you, try to upsell you, and push you into something you don't need or want. Then you have buyer's remorse.Now apply that to corporate and entrepreneurship. If you're doing all the talking in sales, something's wrong. Too many people ask questions just to move the deal forward instead of being genuinely inquisitive.Let's take it further. If marketing is working in a silo—building messaging and positioning—and they don't bring in sales, then guess what? Sales won't use it. Newsflash, right? And second, it's only going to reflect marketing's perspective. But if you bring both teams together and say, “Hey, what are the top three to five things you're hearing from prospects over and over?”—then you can work collaboratively and cohesively to solve those.The third piece is: let's stop trying to manufacture pain. Not every prospect is in pain. Sometimes the goal is to increase efficiency or productivity. If there is pain, you get to play doctor for a moment. And by that, I mean: do they need an Advil, a Vicodin, a Percocet, or an extraction? Do you need to stop the bleeding right now? You only figure that out by getting sales, marketing, product, and even HR at the same table.Kerry Curran, RBMA (07:34)Yes, absolutely. I love the analogy of different levels of pain solutions because you're right—sometimes it's not pain, it's about helping the customer be more efficient, reduce costs, or drive revenue. I've used the doctor analogy before too: you assess the situation and then customize the solution based on where it “hurts” the most. One of the ongoing challenges, though, is that sales and marketing still aren't fully aligned. Why do you think that's been such a persistent issue, and where do you see it heading?Roderick Jefferson (08:14)Because sales speaks French and marketing speaks German. They're close enough that they can kind of understand each other—like ordering a beer or finding a bathroom—but not enough for a meaningful conversation.The core issue is that they're not talking—they're presenting to each other. They're pitching ideas instead of having a dialogue. Marketing says, “Here's what the pitch should look like,” and sales replies, “When's the last time you actually talked to a customer?”They also get stuck in “I think” and “I feel,” and I always tell both groups—those are the two things you cannot say in a joint meeting. No one cares what you think or feel. Instead, say: “Here's what I've seen work,” or “Here's what I've heard from prospects and customers.” That way, the conversation is rooted in data and real-world insight, not opinion or emotion.You might say, “Hey, when we get to slide six in the deck, things get fuzzy and deals stall.” That's something marketing can fix. Or you go to product and say, “I've talked to 10 prospects, and eight of them asked for this feature. Can we move it up in the roadmap?”Or go back to sales and say, “Only 28% of the team is hitting quota because they're struggling with discovery and objection handling.” So enablement and marketing can partner to create role plays, messaging guides, or accreditations. It sounds utopian, but I've actually done this six times over 30 years—it is possible.It's not because I'm the smartest guy in the room—it's because when sales and marketing align around shared definitions and shared goals, real change happens. Go back to MQLs and SQLs. One team says, “We gave you all these leads,” and the other says, “Yeah, but they all sucked.” Then you realize: you haven't even agreed on what a lead is.As a fractional enablement leader, that's the first question I ask: “Can you both define what an MQL and SQL mean to you?” Nine times out of ten, they realize they aren't aligned at all. That's where real progress starts.Once you fix communication, the next phase is collaboration. And what comes out of collaboration is the big one: accountability. That's the word nobody likes—but it's what gets results. You're holding each other to timelines, deliverables, and follow-through.The final phase is orchestration. That's what enablement really does—we connect communication, collaboration, and accountability across the entire go-to-market team so everyone has a voice and a vote.Kerry Curran, RBMA (13:16)You're so smart, and you bring up so many great points—especially around MQLs, SQLs, and the lack of collaboration. There's no unified North Star. Marketing may be focused on MQLs, but those criteria don't always match what moves an MQL to an SQL.There's also no feedback loop. I've seen teams where sales and marketing didn't even talk to each other—but they still complained about each other! I was brought in to help, and I said, “You're adults. It's time to talk to one another.” And you'd think that would be obvious.What I love is that we're starting to see the outdated framework of MQLs as a KPI begin to fade. As you said, it's about identifying a shared goal that everyone can be accountable to. We need to all be paddling in the same direction.Roderick Jefferson (14:16)Exactly. I wouldn't say we're all rowing yet, but we've definitely got our hands in the water, and we're starting to go in the same direction. You can see that North Star flickering out there.And I give big kudos to AI for helping with that. In some ways, it reminds me of social media. Would you agree that social media initially made us less social?Kerry Curran, RBMA (14:27)Yes, totally agree. We can see the North Star.Roderick Jefferson (14:57)Now I'm going to flip that idea on its head: if done right, I believe AI will actually make us more human—and drive more meaningful conversations. I know that sounds crazy, but I have six ways AI can help us do that.First, let's go back to streamlining lead scoring. If we use AI to prioritize leads based on their likelihood to convert, sales can focus efforts on the most promising opportunities. Once we align on those criteria, volume and quality both improve. With confidence comes competence—and vice versa.Second is automating task management. Whether it's data entry, appointment scheduling, or follow-up emails, those repetitive tasks eat up sales time. Less than 30% of a rep's time is spent actually selling. If we offload that admin work, reps can focus on high-value activities—like building relationships, doing discovery, and closing deals.Kerry Curran, RBMA (15:59)Yes! And pre-call planning. Having the time to prepare properly makes a huge difference.Roderick Jefferson (16:19)Exactly. Third is real-time analytics. If marketing and ops can provide sales reps with real-time insights—like funnel data, deal velocity, or content performance—we can start making decisions based on data, not assumptions or feelings.The fourth area is personalized sales coaching. I talk to a lot of leaders, and I'll make a bold statement: most sales leaders don't know how to coach. They either use outdated methods or try to “peanut butter” their advice across the team.But what if we could use AI to analyze calls, emails, and meetings—then provide coaching based on each rep's strengths and weaknesses? Sales leaders could shift from managing to leading.Kerry Curran, RBMA (17:55)Yes, I love that. It would completely elevate team performance.Roderick Jefferson (18:11)Exactly. Fifth is increasing efficiency in the sales process. AI can create proposals, contracts, and other documents, which frees up time for reps to focus on helping—not chasing paperwork. And by streamlining the process, we can qualify faster and avoid wasting time on poor-fit deals.Kerry Curran, RBMA (18:58)Right, and they can focus on the deals that are actually likely to move forward.Roderick Jefferson (19:09)Exactly. And sixth—and most overlooked—is customer success. That's often left out of GTM conversations, but it's critical. We can use AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants to handle basic inquiries. That frees up CSMs to focus on more strategic tasks like renewals, cross-sell, and upsell.Let's be honest—most CSMs were trained for renewals, not selling. But cross-sell and upsell aren't really selling—they're reselling to warm, happy customers. The better trained and equipped CSMs are, the better your customer retention and growth.Because let's face it—we've all seen it: 90 days before renewal, suddenly a CSM becomes your best friend. Where were they for the last two years? If we get ahead of that and connect all the dots—sales, marketing, CS, and product—guess who wins?The prospect.The customer.The company—because revenue goes up.The employee—because bonuses happen, spiffs get paid, and KPIs are hit.But most importantly, we build customers for life. And that has to start from the very beginning, not just when the CSM steps in at the end.Kerry Curran, RBMA (20:47)Yes, this is so smart. I love that you brought customer success into the conversation. One of the things I love about go-to-market strategy is that it includes lifetime value—upsell and renewal are a critical part of the revenue journey.In my past roles, I've seen teams say, “Well, that's just client services—they don't know how to sell.” But to your point, if we coach them, equip them, and make them comfortable, it can go a long way.Roderick Jefferson (21:34)Absolutely. They become the lifeblood of your business. Yes, you need net-new revenue, but if sales builds this big, beautiful house on the front end and then customers just walk out the back door—what's the point?And I won't even get into the stats—you know them—about how much more expensive it is to acquire a new customer versus retaining one. The key is being human and actually helping.Kerry Curran, RBMA (21:46)Exactly. I love that. It leads perfectly into my next question—because one of the core components of your strategy and presentation was the importance of EQ, or emotional intelligence. Can you talk about why that's so critical?Roderick Jefferson (22:19)Yeah. It really comes down to this: AI can provide content—tons of it, endlessly. It can give you all the data and information in the world. But it still requires a human to provide context. For now, at least. I'm not saying it'll be that way forever, but for now, context is everything.I love analogies, so I'll give you one: it's like making gumbo. You sprinkle in some seasoning here, some spice there. In this case, AI provides the content. Then the human provides the interpretation—context. That's understanding how to use that generated content to reach the right person or company, at the right time, with the right message, in the right tone.What you get is a balanced, powerful approach: IQ + EQ + AI. That's what leads to truly optimal outcomes—if you do it right.Kerry Curran, RBMA (23:19)Yes! I love that. And I love every stage of your process, Roderick—it's so valuable. I know your clients are lucky to work with you.For people listening and thinking, “Yes, I need this,” how do they get started? What's the baseline readiness? How do they begin integrating sales and marketing more effectively—and leveraging AI?Roderick Jefferson (23:34)Thank you so much for that. It really starts with a conversation. Reach out—LinkedIn, social media, my website. And from there, we talk. We get to the core questions: Where are you today? Where have you been? Where are you trying to go? And most importantly: What does success look like?And not just, “What does success look like?” but, “Who is success for?”Then we move into an assessment. I want to talk to every part of the go-to-market team. Because not only do we have French and German—we've also got Dutch, Spanish, and every other language. My job is to become the translator—not just of language, but of dialects and context.“This is what they said, but here's what they meant. And this is what they meant, but here's what they actually need.”Then we dig into what's really going on. Most clients have a sense of what's “broken.” I'm not just looking for the broken parts—I'm looking at what you've already tried. What worked? What didn't? Why or why not?I basically become a persistent four-year-old asking, “Why? But why? But why?” And yes, it gets frustrating—but it's the only way to build a unified GTM team with a shared North Star.Kerry Curran, RBMA (25:32)Yes, I love that. And just to add—sometimes something didn't work not because it was a bad strategy, but because it was evaluated with the wrong KPI or misunderstood entirely.Like a top-of-funnel strategy did work—but the team expected it to generate leads that same month. It takes time. So much of this comes down to digging into the root of the issue, and I love your approach.Roderick Jefferson (26:10)Exactly. And it's also about understanding that every GTM function has different KPIs.If I'm talking to sales, I'm asking about average deal size, quota attainment, deal velocity, win rate, pipeline generation. If I'm talking to sales engineering, they care about number of demos per deal, wins and losses, and number of POCs. Customer success? They care about adoption, churn, CSAT, NPS, lifetime value.My job is to set the North Star and speak in their language—not in “enablement-ese.” Sometimes that means speaking in sales terms, sometimes marketing terms. And I always say, “Assume I know nothing about your job. Spell out your acronyms. Define your terms.”Because over 30 years, I've learned: the same acronym can mean 12 different things at 12 different companies.The goal is to get away from confusion and start finding commonality. When you break down the silos and the masks, you realize we're all working toward the same thing: new, long-term, happy customers for life.Kerry Curran, RBMA (27:55)Yes—thank you, Roderick. I love this. So, how can people find you?Roderick Jefferson (28:00)Funny—I always say if you can't find me on social media, you're not trying to find me.You can reach me at roderickjefferson.com, and you can find my book, Sales Enablement 3.0: The Blueprint to Sales Enablement Excellence and the upcoming Sales 3.0 companion workbook there as well.I'm on LinkedIn as Roderick Jefferson, Instagram and Threads at @roderick_j_associates, YouTube at Roderick Jefferson, and on BlueSky as @voiceofrod.Kerry Curran, RBMA (28:33)Excellent. I'll make sure to include all of that in the show notes—I'm sure this episode will have your phone ringing!Thank you so much, Roderick. I really appreciate you taking the time to join us. This was valuable for me, and I'm sure for the audience as well.Roderick Jefferson (28:40)Ring-a-ling—bring it on! Let's dance. Thank you again. This was an absolute honor, and I'm glad we got the chance to reconnect, Kerry.Kerry Curran, RBMA (28:59)For sure. Thank you—you too.Roderick Jefferson (29:01)Take care, all.Thanks for tuning in. If you're struggling with flat or slowing revenue growth, you're not alone. That's why Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast brings you expert insights, actionable strategies, and real-world success stories to help you scale faster.If you're serious about growth, search for us in your favorite podcast directory. Hit follow or subscribe, and leave a five-star rating—it helps us keep the game-changing content coming.New episodes drop regularly. Don't let your revenue growth strategy fall behind. We'll see you soon!

This episode features an interview with Jen Rapp, CMO at Superside, an AI-powered creative service, trusted by 500+ top brands. Jen has over 20 years of experience developing and executing marketing strategies for high-growth companies, with a particular focus on working alongside entrepreneurial leaders to scale.She discusses selling the vision and how doing good impacts marketing, sharing her lessons from her time at Patagonia and DoorDash. She also discusses winning on meta through quality creative and driving qualified leads through virtual summits. Key Takeaways:Don't sleep on meta ads. If your ICP is on Instagram, those ads can be some of the cleanest and most effective ads to drive pipeline, especially if you have quality creative. Virtual Summits, or essentially a stack of webinars, are a great way to get emails and drive pipeline if you are truly offering great content. Sell the vision, not the product. A focus on features, instead of stories, is rarely the way to go. Quote:“  I would not have said this a year ago, when I first joined the company - number one is our meta, paid meta spend. I came to this company and I saw how much we were spending on Meta, and I was like, whoa, what the hell are these people doing? They're making mistakes left and right. Nope. We drive a majority, or a lot, I shouldn't say a majority, a lot of our qualified pipeline through our Meta spend. Our Meta spend also acts as our top of funnel awareness driver.  When we turn off meta, we basically turn off the ability of our SDRs and our BDRs to convert people to SQLs. It is invaluable. So number one, my marketing team is like rallied around creating incredible creative for Meta.”Episode Timestamps: *(03:51) The Trust Tree: Making sure customers have confidence in you*(12:12) The Playbook: The power of Meta ads*(33:10) The Dust Up: Standing up to brilliant founders*(41:01) Quick Hits: Jen's Quick HitsSponsor:Pipeline Visionaries is brought to you by Qualified.com. Qualified helps you turn your website into a pipeline generation machine with PipelineAI. Engage and convert your most valuable website visitors with live chat, chatbots, meeting scheduling, intent data, and Piper, your AI SDR. Visit Qualified.com to learn more.Links:Connect with Ian on LinkedInConnect with Jen on LinkedInLearn more about SupersideLearn more about Caspian Studios

Vladyslav Podoliako is the founder and CEO of Belkins.io, a leading B2B appointment setting agency, and Folderly, an email deliverability system. With a strong entrepreneurial spirit and a focus on performance-based results, Vlad has successfully navigated the complexities of pricing in the B2B space. He is passionate about helping companies scale their businesses through effective client acquisition strategies. In this episode, Vlad shares his journey from launching Belkins to evolving his pricing strategies as the company grew. Together, they explore the critical role of pricing in business growth, the importance of aligning pricing with customer value, and the unique challenges of pricing in the B2B landscape.   Why you have to check out today's podcast: Understand the significance of aligning pricing with customer value and performance. Discover the importance of testing pricing strategies and gathering client feedback. Explore the psychological aspects of pricing and how they influence customer decisions.   “Pricing is like blood in the veins for a growing company. You should have a great pricing model that is scalable and profitable.” – Vlad Podoliako   Topics Covered: 01:10 – Vlad introduces himself and discusses the common misinterpretation of his company names. 02:15 – The importance of pricing in Vlad's entrepreneurial journey and how it evolved over time. 04:36 – Overview of Belkins and its approach to client acquisition. 06:51 – Discussion on the pricing model based on sales qualified leads (SQLs) and its correlation with client ROI. 09:32 – Insights into product packaging and the pricing strategy for Folderly. 13:15 – The impact of high pricing on customer expectations and delivery pressure. 15:42 – The psychological aspects of pricing and how they relate to perceived value. 19:41 – Discussion on the entrepreneurial spirit in Ukraine and its impact on business success. 24:21 – In scaling your company, how often should you revisit your pricing? 26:50 – Vlad's advice on being courageous with pricing and testing strategies. 28:01 – Thoughts on ChatGPT pricing for pro. 30:01 – Connect with Vlad.   Key Takeaways: “Be courageous about your pricing. Test it out more than you strategize theoretically.” – Vlad Podoliako “(on pricing) It's about how much tries you do before you succeed and how resilient you do that. All of these events, historically, we kind of have this in our blood, adaptability, resilience, and hard work.” – Vlad Podoliako   People/Resources Mentioned: Belkins: https://belkins.io/ Folderly: https://folderly.com/ OpenAI: https://openai.com/ Sam Altman: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Altman NVIDIA: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/ Google: https://www.google.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/   Connect with Vlad Podoliako: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladPodoliako/  Email: vlad@belkins.io   Connect with Mark Stiving: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/  Email: mark@impactpricing.com  

Mark Herring is a passionate marketing leader with strong technical roots and deep knowledge of how to market cloud and enterprise software to open-source developers and DevOps audiences. He is the Chief Marketing Officer at HiveMQ. In this episode, Mark shares his approach to cold outreach, explaining why leading with recognizable brands before introducing value creates engagement. He explores effective email strategies, emphasizing the power of short, curiosity-driven messages over long, detailed pitches. He also discusses pricing from the buyer's perspective, highlighting how perceived value—rather than just function—drives purchasing decisions.   Why you have to check out today's podcast: Learn proven strategies for grabbing attention in cold calls and emails, using brand credibility and psychological triggers like FOMO. Discover how to price based on what buyers truly value, rather than just cost or features, using real-life analogies. Get practical tips on structuring sales conversations to keep prospects engaged without sounding like a typical salesperson.   “Try and understand the value in the eyes of your buyer. I think far too many times as vendors, we think there's intrinsic value because it costs us much to produce or we think it looks like that. It's trying to understand from a buying perspective, what is the value you're providing.” - Mark Herring   Topics Covered: 01:29 - How his journey from development to product marketing led him to pricing 03:41 - How his early pricing research focused on how customers would use a product rather than explicitly asking about the problem it solved 04:59 -  To what is the short tenure of CMOs in B2B and consumer goods attributed to 06:25 - Explaining what a pipeline is and how pipeline generation involves value demonstration 10:38 - Comparing pipeline to running a marathon, emphasizing that while MQLs and SQLs are useful stepping stones, the ultimate goal is generating real sales opportunities 12:02 - Differentiating a pipeline from a SQL 14:18 - Demonstrating how a successful cold outreach combines multiple touchpoints 18:57 - How to make prospects more receptive in a cold call  21:13 - Why he uses big brand names as conversation openers in cold calls rather than starting with a value statement 22:27 - What an effective cold email should be 24:42 - Highlighting  the importance of A/B testing cold emails and continuously refining outreach strategies to improve open rates 25:55 - Mark's best pricing advice   Key Takeaways: “It's cold because you've never had the interaction, but usually they've interacted somewhere with you. It's like they might have seen you at an event, or they might have seen some of your outreach to you already and going, ‘Okay, I'll give this guy a bone.'” - Mark Herring “One of the sales guys was talking about this [cold calls] at the conference we were at together, and I just loved it. And he is like, ‘Don't over research, because there's never a good time to know everything.' Because you got to keep on dialing.” - Mark Herring “You can't stop doing it [cold outreach] because it's like getting dice and trying to get the six, the more you throw it, the better chance you're going to get to the six.” - Mark Herring “I lead [cold call] with brands, not with value. And when you do that type of thing, they're then shocked going, ‘Oh, he didn't do a sales pitch on me. He's asking me about these companies. Well, maybe it is something interesting.'” - Mark Herring   People/Resources Mentioned: FedX: https://www.fedex.com/en-us/home.html UPS: https://www.ups.com/us/en/home   Connect with Mark Herring: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/herringmark/ Email: mark.herring@hivemq.com   Connect with Mark Stiving: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Email: mark@impactpricing.com  

Not all leads are created equal. In this episode, Spencer Powell breaks down the key differences between Leads, Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs), and Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) for remodelers. With over 6,000 leads generated for our clients in the last 12 months, it's time to clarify what truly counts as a lead. Listen now!

Ralph and Lauren tackle the challenges marketers and business owners face when managing lead generation and sales processes. They break down the critical differences between Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) and Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) and share actionable strategies for optimizing ad algorithms and leveraging CRM data effectively. The conversation highlights the power of transparency and alignment within teams and with agency partners to maximize ROI. With a focus on practical insights, they also explore how to use standard events in digital advertising to improve lead quality and drive better business outcomes.Chapters:00:00:00 - Kickoff: Welcome to an Unfiltered Dive Into Marketing Strategies00:01:00 - Listener Reviews: What You're Saying About the Show00:03:50 - Constructive Criticism: Turning Feedback Into Actionable Insights00:08:40 - MQL vs. SQL: Why Knowing the Difference Changes Everything00:18:05 - MPI Checklist Unpacked: The Simple Tool to Qualify Your Leads00:19:30 - Lead Qualification Secrets: How to Spot the Real Prospects00:20:45 - Custom Thank You Pages: The Game-Changer You're Overlooking00:22:08 - Campaign Optimization: Attracting the Customers You Actually Want00:28:43 - Standard Events Masterclass: Supercharging Your Ad Performance00:33:39 - Final Thoughts: Quick Wins and Next Steps to Level UpLINKS AND RESOURCES:Tier 11 on YouTubeGet Your Marketing Performance Indicators™ Checklist Now!Tier 11 JobsPerpetual Traffic on YouTubeTiereleven.comMongoose MediaPerpetual Traffic SurveyPerpetual Traffic WebsiteFollow Perpetual Traffic on TwitterConnect with Lauren on Instagram and Connect with Ralph on LinkedInThanks so much for joining us this week. Want to subscribe to Perpetual Traffic? Have some feedback you'd like to share? Connect with us on iTunes and leave us a review!Mentioned in this episode:AdCritter for Agencies

Understanding the difference between leads, MQLs, and SQLs is the key to better marketing and sales alignment. Today, we'll break down what each term means, how to define them for your business, and why clarity in these definitions can transform your lead generation efforts. Whether you're looking for more inquiries or ready-to-buy clients, this episode will help you create a framework for identifying and tracking qualified opportunities. Listen now to gain actionable insights and refine your sales funnel!

The B2B SaaS buying journey isn't linear – it is much more complicated than that.At any one time, only 5% of your addressable market is actively in-market and seeking a solution. These prospects are ready to click that “schedule a demo” button after seeing your paid search ad or visiting your website's pricing page. But what about the 95% who aren't ready to buy? This is where demand creation comes into play. Allocating resources and time to create demand will help you be in the top 3 when those prospects become ready to buy. If you don't feed this side, your pipeline will suffer down the road.On Episode 70 of the B2B SaaS Marketing Snacks Podcast, Brian and Stijn interview a special guest: Silvia Parra, an Associate CMO at Kalungi, who is an expert in balancing out these two sides of the buyer journey for B2B SaaS companies.Topics discussed include:Insider tips for correctly attributing traffic beyond simplistic “last touch" into a more nuanced understandingStrategies for nurturing subscribers, MQLs and SQLs as they move gradually through the funnelExamples of paid media and content strategies that workHow founders can correctly monitor and establish data goals that show progress in both demand creation and captureHow to build a pipeline that is filled with both prospects that are ready for immediate conversion and future growthB2B SaaS Marketing Snacks is one of the most respected voices in the SaaS industry. It is hosted by two leading marketing and revenue growth experts for software:Stijn Hendrikse: Author of T2D3 CMO Masterclass & Book, Founder of KalungiBrian Graf: CEO of KalungiB2B SaaS companies move through predictable stages of marketing focus, cost and size (as described in the popular T2D3 book). With people cost being a majority of the cost involved, every hire needs to be well worth the investment!The best founders, CFOs and COOs in B2B SaaS rely on a balance of marketing leadership, strategy and execution to produce the customer and revenue growth they require. Staying flexible and nimble is a key marketing asset in a hard-charging B2B world.Resources shared in this episode:Understanding Demand Creation vs. Demand Capture in B2B SaaSDemand generation is dead5 Key Steps To Improve Demand GenerationT2D3 CMO MasterclassSubmit and vote on our podcast topicsABOUT B2B SAAS MARKETING SNACKSSince 2020, The B2B SaaS Marketing Snacks Podcast has offered software company founders, investors and leadership a fresh source of insights into building a complete and efficient engine for growth.Meet our Marketing Snacks Podcast Hosts: Stijn Hendrikse: Author of T2D3 Masterclass & Book, Founder of KalungiAs a serial entrepreneur and marketing leader, Stijn has contributed to the success of 20+ startups as a C-level executive, including Chief Revenue Officer of Acumatica, CEO of MightyCall, a SaaS contact center solution, and leading the initial global Go-to-Market for Atera, a B2B SaaS Unicorn. Before focusing on startups, Stijn led global SMB Marketing and B2B Product Marketing for Microsoft's Office platform.Brian Graf: CEO of KalungiAs CEO of Kalungi, Brian provides high-level strategy, tactical execution, and business leadership expertise to drive long-term growth for B2B SaaS. Brian has successfully led clients in all aspects of marketing growth, from positioning and messaging to event support, product announcements, and channel-spend optimizations, generating qualified leads and brand awareness for clients while prioritizing ROI. Before Kalungi, Brian worked in television advertising, specializing in business intelligence and campaign optimization, and earned his MBA at the University of Washington's Foster School of Business with a focus in finance and marketing.Visit Kalungi.com to learn more about growing your B2B SaaS company.

Jesse Navarro is the founder of Cultivate Inbox, where he manages the delivery of 20 to 30 million emails each month. Specializing in client email automation and lead generation, Jesse has worked with industry leaders like Tai Lopez, Sam Ovens, Consulting.com, Pace Morby, Jamil Damji, NewReach Education, Sean Vosler, and Joshua Earp. He's even written video sales scripts for Kevin Harrington, the original Shark from Shark Tank. Jesse helps businesses book more appointments, assists marketing teams in converting MQLs to SQLs, and uses cutting-edge technology to ensure top-notch email deliverability, driving measurable results for his clients.00:00 - 00:16 "If you have an email service provider like ActiveCampaign or HubSpot, you're paying for those active accounts. And if half of them aren't even open up your emails over 120 days, you're paying for literally nothing. So you might as well just remove them and do something else with them.” — Jesse Navarro00:17 - 00:35 Welcome to Peppershock Media's Marketing Expedition Podcast00:36 - 02:24 Jesse's Background02:25 - 08:35 Marketing Essentials Moment: Drone Photography and Videography08:36 - 12:26 Welcome to the show, Jesse!12:27 - 16:01 Fun Fact: Jesse's Pokemon Championship16:02 - 20:37 Involving Kids in Business20:38 – 25:10 Hiring and Managing People25:11 - 33:04 Building a Legacy33:05 - 40:05 Business Journey and Failures40:06 - 46:17 Finding Trends and Opportunities46:18 - 49:45 Segmenting Email List49:46 - 53:55 Personalization53:56 - 54:46 Kitcaster is your secret weapon in podcasting for business. Your audience is waiting to hear from you! Go to kitcaster.com/expedition to apply for a special offer for friends of this podcast.54:47 - 57:54 Strategy for Email Deliverability 57:55 – 1:03:23 Tactics in Growing Email List 1:03:24 – 1:05:44 Reach out to Jesse at cultivateinbox.com1:05:45 – 1:05:15 Launching “The Boise Hustle Podcast”1:05:16 – 1:08:42 Thank you so much, Jesse! Share this podcast, give us a review, and enjoy your marketing journey! 1:08:43 – 1:09:29 Join the Marketing Expedition Community today!

What's up everyone, today we have the pleasure of sitting down with Rutger Katz, GTM Operations Consultant. Summary: Rutger helps us cut through the fluff of Lean methodology in marketing and how to spot when process gets in the way of efficiency. His advice is to cut out the waste—whether in your process, your tech stack, or how you measure success. Focus on what drives conversions, keep your systems lean, and use simple structures to maintain speed without sacrificing alignment. We also tackle tech debt and how a top-layer AI interface could simplify the case for a composable martech stack.About RutgerRutger started his career in Neuroscience as a virtual reality developer at two different public research universities to study bodily illusions in VRAs the VR industry was quite immature at the time he pivoted to martech consulting, where he would spend 12 years working with different technology consulting firms getting a breadth of experience across marketing operations, martech, customer data and go-to-market across a variety of clients including Unilever where he focused on social analyticsAnd last year Rutger decided to go out on his own as a GTM Operations Consultant and recently launched NEON Triforce, a boutique consultancy focused on optimizing GTM for B2B scale-upsHe also recently joined The Martech Weekly as Content Lead for EU & UK organizing their first event in London.Lean Marketing in PracticeLean marketing is all about eliminating waste and doubling down on what truly matters. Rutger emphasizes that no matter the size of the company, from a startup to an enterprise, inefficiencies always creep in. These processes—whether learned from someone else or ingrained as “the way things are done”—often aren't optimal. Lean seeks to strip down these ingrained habits, perfecting the path to deliver value to customers.Rutger highlights that lean marketing goes beyond just being "efficient." It is about understanding how every action connects back to the entire organization. The real challenge is aligning marketing efforts with revenue-driving KPIs, rather than fixating on vanity metrics like page views or social media follows. For Rutger, Lean is about cutting through those superficial measures to ensure that marketing impacts the business holistically.What makes lean particularly valuable is that it doesn't stop at marketing. Rutger explains that Lean should apply to your entire go-to-market strategy. This means assessing not just how marketing operates but how it interlocks with sales, customer success, and even product development. It's about delivering maximum value to the customer while ensuring that the organization operates as efficiently as possible in providing that value.Lean marketing is not a standalone function—it's a way to optimize the whole organization. When done right, it leads to higher customer satisfaction, longer-term retention, and ultimately, a more streamlined business. For Rutger, this is where the real impact of Lean lies—not just in marketing efficiencies but in enhancing the customer experience across every touchpoint.Key takeaway: Lean marketing is about focusing on what truly drives value. It's not just about marketing—it's about creating efficiency across your entire go-to-market approach, from sales to customer success, all while tying back to key business metrics.Solving Inefficiencies in Sales and Marketing AlignmentWhen asked about real-world applications of lean methodologies, Rutger didn't hesitate to dig into a common yet overlooked issue: the disconnect between sales and marketing. In his experience, CMOs often claim that everything is running smoothly. But when the conversation shifts towards collaboration with sales, the cracks begin to show. One CMO even mentioned that their sales team requested fewer leads, as they were overwhelmed by the volume. Others spoke of back-and-forth frustrations trying to sync efforts between both departments.For Rutger, the root of inefficiency often comes at the handoff between marketing and sales. He explained that marketing teams frequently misinterpret sales-qualified leads (SQLs), sending what they define as SQLs but which sales deems unqualified. This misalignment creates friction, wasting time and resources on both sides. To fix this, Rutger advocates stepping back from just marketing processes and focusing on sales first. Understanding sales capacity and needs becomes essential to deliver the right leads at the right time.A critical step in this process is optimizing for sales' actual conversion capacity. Rutger highlights that if sales needs to convert 100 leads per month, with a 5% conversion rate, marketing needs to deliver 20 times that amount—2,000 SQLs. He stressed the importance of timely response, pointing out that conversion rates jump by 40% when sales follows up with a lead within 10 minutes. Aligning on this kind of data helps both teams work more effectively toward shared goals.Rutger also urged teams to reevaluate the quality and cost-effectiveness of their campaigns. While campaigns may generate leads, some are far too costly or inefficient, with payback times stretching out to three or four years. Google paid accounts, for example, are notoriously expensive, yet still widely used, particularly in larger organizations. For Rutger, focusing on the most effective campaigns, while pruning inefficient ones, is key to driving sustainable growth.Key takeaway: Marketing and sales alignment is critical for driving efficiency. Understanding sales capacity, optimizing lead delivery, and focusing on high-converting campaigns can reduce friction, improve collaboration, and significantly increase conversion rates.Tackling Tech Debt and Building a Lean Martech StackWhen asked about navigating the complexities of consolidating a tech stack, Rutger didn't mince words: aligning stakeholders across IT, marketing, and sales is often more political than it is technical. Large enterprises, in particular, face daunting hurdles when trying to scale back on overlapping tools. Rutger noted that the desire to build a “Frankenstack”—a collection of fragmented technologies—comes from every department wanting its own ideal solution. As a result, the journey to a leaner tech stack can seem like a never-ending project.Rutger's approach starts with identifying the biggest redundancies. While some overlap is by design, like when one product offers a superior feature, the challenge is to minimize overlap where it's unnecessary. In some cases, up to 60% of a company's tools perform redundant functions. His advice: focus first on those areas where feature overlap is significant, perhaps 90% or more, and tackle these redundancies gradually. Start small, prioritize high-cost inefficiencies, and avoid a complete tech overhaul in one go.Another common issue Rutger raised is "shadow IT"—the tools that departments purchase without full organizational knowledge or alignment. Marketing might opt for a quick-fix solution, or sales might buy something that works for them but doesn't integrate with other systems. These rogue tools further complicate efforts to streamline technology, making the case for better communication across departments.One of Rutger's key strategies is calculating the cost of maintaining outdated systems against the cost of migration. In legacy-heavy sectors like insurance and banking, this is critical. His pragmatic approach weighs the resources, time, and potential revenue impact of migrations. With the rise of AI, Rutger suggests that migration tools could become faster and cheaper, potentially offsetting the costs of restructuring a tech stack. His advice? Keep your options open and l...

Join Lois Houston and Nikita Abraham, along with Senior Principal Database & Security Instructor Ron Soltani, as they discuss how the new Automatic SQL Plan Management feature in Oracle Database 23ai improves performance consistency and simplifies management. Then, Senior Principal Database & MySQL Instructor Bill Millar shares insights into two new features: one that enhances SecureFiles LOB Write Performance, improving read and write speeds, and another that increases the column limit in a table to 4,096, making it easier to handle complex data.   Oracle MyLearn: https://mylearn.oracle.com/ou/course/oracle-database-23ai-new-features-for-administrators/137192/207062   Oracle University Learning Community: https://education.oracle.com/ou-community   LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/oracle-university/   X: https://twitter.com/Oracle_Edu   Special thanks to Arijit Ghosh, David Wright, and the OU Studio Team for helping us create this episode.   --------------------------------------------------------   Episode Transcript:   00:00 Welcome to the Oracle University Podcast, the first stop on your cloud journey. During this series of informative podcasts, we'll bring you foundational training on the most popular Oracle technologies. Let's get started! 00:26 Nikita: Welcome to the Oracle University Podcast! I'm Nikita Abraham, Principal Technical Editor with Oracle University, and joining me is Lois Houston, Director of Innovation Programs. Lois: Hi there! Last week, we looked at the Oracle Database 23ai enhancements that have been made to Hybrid Columnar Compression and Fast Ingest. In today's episode, we'll talk about the 23ai new feature for Automatic SQL Plan Management with Ron Soltani, a Senior Principal Database & Security Instructor with Oracle University.  01:01 Nikita: And later on, we'll be joined by Bill Millar, another Senior Principal Database & MySQL Instructor, who will tell us about the 23ai automatic feature that enhances SecureFiles LOB Write Performance. We'll also get him to talk about the Wide Columns update. So, let's get started. Hi Ron! What have been the common challenges with SQL plans and database performance? Ron: One of the problems that we have always had, if you remember, was when data changes, database setting configuration, parameter changes, SQL that were operating very well could now behave badly using the SQL plan that were associated to them. And remember, the same SQL plan generally Oracle likes to continuously reuse.  So the SQL plans were put in the baseline in the past, and we could have those SQL plan baseline, which are a set of approved plans to be used for a SQL from the SQL history stored in AWR, then could be used for the optimizer to choose from. However, which plan to choose and which one would be the best one to use, this is what the problem has been in managing the SQL plan baselines, and a lot of the operation would have been done manually.  02:22 Lois: And what have we done to overcome this?  Ron: So now this new system will going to perform all of those operations automatically for us. Now it can search the Automatic Workload Repository. It can find SQL plans for a particular SQL statement, then look for any alternative plans that may available in alternate sources like SQL tuning sets. And then validate those plans and see if those plans are going to be good and to be used as SQL plan baseline for executing SQL statement by the optimizer. 03:00 Nikita: So we now have the Automatic SQL Plan Management Evolve Advisor to help manage operations automatically, right? Can you tell us a little more about it? How does it ensure optimal performance? Ron: This is an automatic advisor that is created that can go look for different plans and validate the plans by examining them, making sure that they are not causing any regression compared to the previous operation, and then evolve that plan into a good baseline.  This simplifies management of the baseline repository for a SQL statement. So as data changes, as parameters changes, optimizer could come up with different type of plans that are set within this baseline that has been validated to be good baseline for each situational operation. So this way you reduce a lot of hard parsing operations.  04:00 Lois: And how does the SQL Evolve Advisor work, Ron? Ron: First, it will check the AWR to find what are the top SQLs that has been found. Then it will look to see if these top SQLs who did not perform well with the plan that they have, that's why they're top SQL, have other alternative plans that are stored in the SQL plan history, in AWR, or available in any other sources.  Then if it finds any additional plans, it will go ahead and add all of those plans into the plan history. So in the plan history, now you have accumulation of all the plans available in AWR and anything that has been brought from other sources. Then it will test every one of those plans and validate that by use of the plan, the SQL statement will not deprivate and get slower. The performance is either similar or actually better. So normally, there is a percentage that the SQL should improve. So we will then validate these baselines.  And finally, once the baselines or those plans have been validated, they will be accepted, and then they will be added as SQL plan baselines. They will remain in the statement history, in the AWR, and will be available for optimizer for the future use.  05:28 Nikita: What are the benefits of this? Ron: Number one is Autonomous Database. As you know, they want to automate all management, including management of the SQL execution due to changes that are happening for the application, for the data, or the database and its environment.  It totally eliminates any manual intervention for management of the statement, and it can transparently repair any statement that had been affected by a major change.  06:00 Lois: What sort of problems does this feature solve for us? Ron: Of course, this is a performance consistency. We want to make sure that every statement performed to its best performance and any specific changes that may impact those SQL statements would be taken into an account, and a better plan, if available, would then be available for use.  It also improves the application performance level, therefore database service level will get much improvement. And the SQL execution plans will be automatically managed behind the scene by expanding these baselines, by managing all of these baseline history and all of that that is managed by this automatic SQL plan management environment automatically.  06:50 Nikita: And when do we use this?  Ron: If there is a change in a database environment, like you add SGA, the change into the shared pool, change in the size of the buffer cache or any type of storage effects. So all of those can actually affect the SQL execution.  Now all of those changes, including data changes, can cause a SQL plan to not behave very well or behave as well as it was doing before. Therefore, if particular plans do not perform as well as they did before, that affects the performance of the application. This also affects the performance of the database and the instance.  07:35 Lois: So, how do we use this environment?  Ron: Well, best news that I have for you in that is that there is nothing manual needs to be done. All we need to do is, number one, make sure that we enable foreground automatic SQL plan management that we done through the package for the DBMS SPM for SQL plan management.  You will use the package with the configure option, and you enable the auto SPM evolve task, and you set it to auto. Once this is done, now the SQL evolve plan management and advisor are enabled, and they will then monitor your statements, review all of the top SQLs as they are found with all of the ADDM operation, and then do their work in looking for better plans and being able to maintain the SQL plan baselines we talked about.  Now for you to be able to view, monitor, and see how these operations are going, if it is enabled, you can take a look at the DBA SQL plan baseline's view. There are many, many columns in that particular baseline, and there are also columns that has been added that tell you where is the plan generated from, if a plan is approved, and any other user interaction with the plan or settings can then be verified using that DBA SQL plan baseline view.  09:13 Are you looking for practical use cases to help you plan and apply configurations that solve real-world challenges? With the new Applied Learning courses for Cloud Applications, you'll be able to practically apply the concepts learned in our implementation courses and work through case studies featuring key decisions and configurations encountered during a typical Oracle Cloud Applications implementation. Applied learning scenarios are currently available for General Ledger, Payables, Receivables, Accounting Hub, Global Human Resources, Talent Management, Inventory, and Procurement, with many more to come! Visit mylearn.oracle.com to get started. 09:54 Nikita: Welcome back! Let's bring Bill into the conversation. Hi  Bill! Can you tell us about the 23ai automatic feature that enhances SecureFiles LOB Write Performance?  Bill: The key here is that it is automatic and transparent. There's no parameters set. Nothing to configure in table, no hints, and nothing that you have to do with these improvements. It is tightly integrated with SecureFiles LOB infrastructure.  So now, multiple LOBs can be handled in a single transaction and can be buffered simultaneously. This will help with mixed workloads, switching between the LOBs that are writing in a single transaction. The PGA will adaptively resize based off the size for these large writes for the LOBs if you're using the No Cache option. Remember, no cache is going to bypass the buffer cache and does direct reads and writes from the PGA.  JSON type will be transformed into the OSON Oracle data type. It is an optimized native binary storage format for JSON data.  11:15 Lois: Ok. So, going forward, there will be better read and write performance for LOBs. Bill: Multiple LOBs in a single transaction can be buffered simultaneously, improving mixed workloads. We just talked about the PGA. Automatically, the buffer is automatically resized.  And the improved JSON support. The reason it will recognize, hey, this is a JSON data type. But traditionally, JSON data types were small.  So they were small to medium size. So the range from 32k to 32 meg was considered small to medium whereas LOBs were designed for data types larger than 100 meg. So by recognizing this a JSON data type, it can take advantage of the LOB architecture.  Other enhancements will also include the acceleration of compressed LOBs, the pen and compression caching, and improves the poor performance of your reads and writes to compressed LOBs. It's faster than previously.  12:24 Nikita: Bill, what do you think about the recent increase in the column limit? Previously, the limit was 1000 columns per table, which sometimes posed issues when migrating from other systems that allowed more than 1,000 columns, right?  Bill: Maybe because of workload requirements, the whole machine learning, the internet of things workloads, IOTs can have hundreds of thousands of attributes, dimensional attribute columns for that. And even our very own blockchain tables reserves up to 40 hidden virtual columns, so that takes away from the total amount.  Virtual columns count towards the column limits and some applications as they drop columns, what it does, it just converts them to unused, and it still applies towards the limit the number of columns that you can have to that limit. There were workarounds. However, they were most likely not the best way to do it, like column switching, table splitting for that. But big data really use cases, really saw where files have or required more than 1,000 columns.  13:42 Lois: So, now that we can have 4,096 columns in a table, I'm sure it's made handling complex data a lot easier.  Bill: So by increasing this, since other systems do support higher column limits, it can-- the increase can make migration from other systems easier and possibly even a little bit more attractive while it can make applications a little bit simpler because the 1,000 column limit was not always optimal for analytics. Where 1,000 might have been plenty for OLTP type environments, but not for the analytics, especially when it comes to machine learning and those internet of things that we talked about, where the previous workarounds, like splitting the tables, really caused more performance issue than anything else.  So we want to avoid those suboptimal workarounds. And the nice thing is there's no change to the SQL. So once you have that-- well, if we were doing SQL, if we had tables that were split and we're trying to do things that is actually going to help improve that SQL, now, we don't have multiple objects that we're dealing with.  14:57 Nikita: How do we actually go about increasing the column limit to 4,096? Bill: You do have to have the compatibility set to 23c. Why? Because it's a new feature. There is a new initialization parameter called Max columns, and you do set that. There's two different ways, two different values. We can set it to standard or we can set it to extended.  It is dynamic. When it's set to standard, it's only 1,000. When we set it to extended, it's going to allow the 4,096. It is modifiable at the PDB level. However, it will inherit what's at the root level, if it's not explicitly set at a PDB. It can't alter it in a session for that. And multiple instances of the RAC environment must use the same value.  Now one thing, notice that it cannot be set to standard if I created a table that had more than 1,000 columns. One thing that might get you, when you drop a table that has more 1,000 columns and you try to set it back to standard, it might tell you, hey, you have tables that have more than 1,000 columns. Don't forget your recycle bin unless you did a drop table purge.  16:09 Lois: Are there any performance considerations to keep in mind, Bill? Bill: There's really no DML or query performance degradation for the tables. However, it might require, as you would expect, the increase in memory when we have the new column limits. It might require additional shared pool, additional SGA with the additional columns, more buffer cache as we're bringing blocks in.  So that's shared pool along with the PGA. And also we can add in buffer cache in there, because that increased column count is going to be increase in the total PGA memory usage. And those are kind of expected for that. But the big advantage is it gives us the ability to eliminate some of these suboptimal workarounds that we had in the past.  17:02 Nikita: Ok! We covered a lot today so thank you Bill and Ron.  Lois: To learn more about what we discussed today, visit mylearn.oracle.com and search for the Oracle Database 23ai New Features for Administrators course. Join us next week for a discussion on some more Oracle Database 23ai new features. Until then, this is Lois Houston… Nikita: And Nikita Abraham signing off! 17:27 That's all for this episode of the Oracle University Podcast. If you enjoyed listening, please click Subscribe to get all the latest episodes. We'd also love it if you would take a moment to rate and review us on your podcast app. See you again on the next episode of the Oracle University Podcast.

On this episode of the Sales Gravy podcast, Jeb Blount engages Denim CRO, Will Yarbrough, in a fascinating discussion on how to sell more and grow faster by linking the customer journey through a One Funnel Strategy. Sales and marketing strategies come and go, but one approach has been gaining traction for its simplicity and effectiveness: The One Funnel Mindset. This powerful concept challenges the traditional notion that more is better, instead focusing on perfecting a single, highly optimized sales funnel. At its core, the one funnel mindset is about streamlining your sales process. Instead of creating multiple funnels for different products or customer segments, you concentrate on building and refining one comprehensive funnel that guides potential customers from initial awareness to final purchase. Key Takeaways: - Unified Revenue Goals: Aligning marketing and sales under a single One Funnel Customer Journey and revenue goal eliminates internal competition and focuses on overall business growth. - Avoiding Complacency: Maintaining a focus on growth and continuous improvement is crucial to avoid stagnation in sales. - Customer Experience: Enhancing customer experience by providing a more unified customer journey. - Human Connection: Despite advancements in AI, human-to-human interaction remains vital in sales, especially for high-value deals. - Preparation and Investment: Sales success often depends on thorough preparation and continuous investment in personal development and training. - Shorter Sales Cycles: Buyers are increasingly making quicker decisions due to more readily available information, making each sales interaction critical. - Manager's Role: Effective frontline managers are essential in motivating sales teams by understanding and aligning individual goals with One Funnel goals and providing tailored support. - Big Pull Concept: Identifying and leveraging what drives each salesperson is key to maintaining their motivation and focus. The One Funnel Mindset: Unifying Marketing and Sales Yarborough introduced the concept of the "One Funnel Mindset," a unified approach where marketing and sales teams work together seamlessly towards common revenue goals. Traditional models often create a divide between marketing-qualified leads (MQLs) and sales-qualified leads (SQLs), leading to misalignment and inefficiencies. The One Funnel Mindset eliminates these silos, ensuring that both teams are aligned and focused on the same objectives. In this approach, leads are simply "qualified leads," with no distinction between marketing and sales. This unified perspective fosters collaboration, reduces friction, and ensures a smoother customer journey from awareness to purchase. By sharing goals, metrics, and strategies, marketing and sales teams can create a more cohesive and effective revenue engine. Enhancing Customer Experience: The Human Touch Despite the rise of artificial intelligence and automation, Yarborough emphasized the irreplaceable value of human interaction in sales. High-value deals, in particular, require a personal touch to build trust and rapport with customers. While AI can enhance the sales process by automating routine tasks and providing data-driven insights, it cannot replicate the nuances of human connection. Sales professionals must prioritize building strong relationships with their customers. This involves active listening, understanding their pain points, and offering tailored solutions. By focusing on the human element, salespeople can create lasting impressions and foster long-term customer loyalty. Shortening Sales Cycles: The Impact of Preparedness Another significant trend discussed in the podcast is the shortening of sales cycles. With buyers conducting extensive research before engaging with sales representatives, decisions are being made faster than ever. This shift places a premium on preparedness.

We often get asked by prospects interested in working with us, "how long does it take to start seeing results from SEO and content marketing? It's not an easy question to answer because there are multiple factors that go into it:1. What is the definition of results?2. What is the conversion goal? Trials, demos, MQLs, SQLs, etc.3. How many conversions are you already driving through other channels?And more...In this episode, we share a ton of different data to help answer this question. We share our own client data to show how long it takes to start seeing rankings and conversions. We share how we do expectation setting around rankings, traffic and conversions. Then we answer some common questions around does domain rating play into speed and how does keyword difficulty affect rankings?Articles featured in the episode:Disruption stories: https://www.growandconvert.com/content-marketing/disruption-stories/How long does it take for content marketing to work: https://www.growandconvert.com/content-marketing/how-long-does-it-take-for-content-marketing-to-work/

In this episode, Sally delves into the stages of the sales pipeline, drawing insights from the Sparkle Class Academy (SCA) approach. From "New Lead" to "Lost," Sally explains each stage's significance, emphasizing the distinction between marketing qualified leads (MQLs) and sales qualified leads (SQLs). Through practical examples, Sally underscores the importance of strategic follow-ups, effective negotiation, and decisive decision-making processes. Whether you're a seasoned sales professional or an aspiring entrepreneur, grasping these stages is vital for optimizing your sales journey  We just got featured on Feedspot's list of Australian women's lifestyle podcasts. Check it out at https://blog.feedspot.com/australian_women_lifestyle_podcasts/ Register here and take the first step towards your course creation success: https://www.sparkleclassacademy.com/infographic Connect with Sally and the Sparkle World:  Website: https://sparkleclassacademy.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sallysparkscousins/ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@SallySparksCousins Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SallySparksCousin

► The importance of measurement in B2B marketing!Sam talks to Vikash Koushik, Head of Marketing @ RevenueHeroThey cover:

What's up everyone, today we have the pleasure of sitting down with Abby Gailey, Director of Marketing Operations at Vibrent Health. Summary: Abby walks us through the complicated marketing ops world of B2B2C healthcare SaaS, emphasizing a move from sales-centric to engagement-focused martech. We dive into curiosity and continuous learning, using tools like webhooks to blend digital and physical marketing effectively. Quality assurance through negative checklists and professional growth through mentorship and communities are key themes for future proofing your martech career. Abby simplifies success in martech: blend innovation with teamwork, and balance your professional and personal life.About AbbyAbby started her career in arts administration in regional, non-profit theaters She moved over to academic conference production, where she later pivoted to a marketing and comms role and got her first taste of martechShe later worked as a Marketing Manager at Human Kinetics where she wore a variety of hatsShe moved over to Wolfram an enterprise tech company where she started as a product marketing analyst but later pivoted to marketing ops where she took ownership of Iterable and other martechToday she's Director of Marketing Operations at Vibrent Health – the leading platform for precision medicine research – where she leads a team that works in email, SMS, push and direct mailNavigating Martech in a B2B2C SaaS ModelAbby sheds light on the unique challenges and opportunities of managing martech operations within a B2B2C business model, particularly in a sector as sensitive and regulated as healthcare research. At Vibrant Health, Abby's role straddles the line between serving business clients and engaging end users in medical studies. Her experience is notably distinct from the traditional B2B or B2C marketing roles, often dominated by discussions around lead generation, MQLs, and SQLs. Abby's work involves partnering with prestigious institutions like the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and the National Institutes of Health, utilizing their platform to facilitate crucial medical research.The essence of her work emphasizes engagement and enablement over direct revenue generation, a departure from the revenue-centric focus seen in many marketing operations roles. This divergence stems from the regulatory landscape of healthcare, demanding precision and adherence to stringent guidelines in communications. Abby's toolkit is unique, relying less on mainstream martech solutions like Marketo or Salesforce, and more on specialized tools that cater to direct engagement through emails, SMS, and direct mail.Abby's perspective underscores a broader theme in martech: the necessity of tailoring marketing operations to the specific needs and regulations of the industry and business model. While mainstream conversations in martech often gravitate towards lead generation and sales enablement, Abby's experience highlights the importance of engagement and enablement in scenarios where direct revenue generation is not the primary focus.Key Takeaway: Abby's experience at Vibrant Health highlights the significance of customizing martech strategies to fit the unique requirements of a B2B2C business model in a regulated industry. The focus shifts from revenue generation to precise engagement and adherence to regulations, underscoring the need for specialized tools and approaches beyond the conventional sales-centric martech solutions.Driving Engagement in Highly Regulated IndustriesUnlike many marketers whose performance metrics revolve around revenue generation, Abby's focus is on engagement — a critical component in the context of medical research. This pivot away from revenue-centric metrics allows her team to concentrate on the effectiveness of communication strategies that encourage participation in health studies, which is paramount for the success of their projects.Her work involves navigating a complex landscape of HIPAA and governmental regulations, making her tasks not just about engagement, but also about compliance. Abby points out the similarities between challenges faced in healthcare marketing and those in other tightly regulated sectors like FinTech, highlighting the creative and nuanced approaches required to provide value within these constraints. Despite these challenges, Abby sees significant opportunities to impact user engagement and support the overarching goals of research and funding.Abby's work underscores the importance of engagement in the success of healthcare research, where the actions of participants directly contribute to the progress and outcomes of studies. Her approach offers insights into the broader potential for marketing operations to support and enable core business functions beyond direct revenue generation, especially in sectors where regulatory compliance plays a significant role.Key takeaway: Marketers in regulated industries can leverage creative engagement strategies to drive participation and compliance, highlighting the value of focusing on outcomes beyond direct revenue. Abby's approach underscores the importance of tailoring marketing efforts to meet the unique challenges and opportunities of highly regulated fields.Cultivating Curiosity in Martech ProfessionalsCuriosity isn't just a trait; it's a fundamental skill for anyone navigating martech. Abby champions the idea of curiosity as the driving force behind learning and innovation in martech. She equates curiosity to the eagerness to press a button just to see what happens, a simple yet profound analogy for the exploratory mindset required in this field.This approach to technology and problem-solving isn't about reckless experimentation but embodies a deeper, more meaningful engagement with the tools and strategies at one's disposal. Abby highlights the importance of continuous learning, whether through webinars about new features or strategies to enhance user engagement. The martech landscape is perpetually evolving, with an endless array of tools emerging. Staying ahead, or at least keeping pace, demands a proactive attitude toward learning and experimentation.Abby's method underscores an essential truth about martech: its dynamism is not a challenge but an opportunity for those willing to explore and learn. This mindset transforms potential obstacles into puzzles to be solved, making the work engaging and rewarding. Her favorite activities for skill acquisition—such as attending webinars and exploring new features—illustrate practical ways professionals can cultivate their curiosity.Key takeaway: Regularly engage with webinars and hands-on experimentation with new martech tools to sharpen your problem-solving skills and keep pace with industry innovations.The Value of Hands-On Learning in Marketing OperationsThere's a unique value placed on hands-on, experiential learning in MOPs. Abby emphasizes how on-the-job training surpasses traditional education for practical skill acquisition in the martech field. Abby's journey, like many in our field, showcases the immense benefits of diving directly into the tools and systems that define the industry and learning through direct interaction and problem-solving.This method of learning isn't just about understanding how a particular platform operates; it extends to grasping the soup of data flows, system integrations, and the art of engaging end-users in meaningful ways. Abby highlights the importance of facing real-world challenges—those specific to a company's vertical and the common hurdles encountered with tech systems. This hands-on approach cultivates a problem-solving mindset, essenti...

If you're measuring everything, you're measuring nothing. It's so important for you to pick a handful of key performance indicators (KPIs) for your team to focus on — or they won't end up moving the needle on anything. But how do you pick KPIs that matter, so you can motivate and incentivize your team to drive customer value (and ultimately, growth)? Instead of transactional measures of success, focus on customer-focused KPIs that let you measure moments of value. You need to know which parts of your product drive customer value and measure your ability to move them from one milestone to the next. In this episode of the Forget the Funnel Podcast — the first of two episodes on customer-led KPIs — Claire and Georgiana define customer-led KPIs and share why metrics that focus on helping customers solve problems are more actionable and motivating for your team.Discussed:The definition of KPIs and why each team needs them.Why focusing on transactional measures is a problem — and why measuring experiential moments in the customer relationship is the way to go.The prerequisites for setting customer-led KPIs and the importance of knowing which parts of your product drive value for the customer.Key Moments:2:30 - Georgiana defines KPIs and shares why they're a critical metric. She explains that when you measure everything, you're measuring nothing, so your team needs to focus on a few KPIs. 3:47 - Claire and Georgiana differentiate transactional measures of success — like trial-to-paid conversions or entering a credit card — from customer-focused KPIs, which measure experiential moments in the customer relationship. 6:40 - Georgiana explains why transactional measures of success can be problematic KPIs (even though lagging indicators like MRR and churn do matter).10:37 - Claire shares why it's a mistake to measure your growth team by lead numbers rather than focusing on lead quality or the value they can get down the line. Gia also speaks to success indicators that can be misleading, like daily, weekly, and monthly users, and breaks down MQLs, SQLs, and PQLs.16:10 - Claire asks Georgiana to share about the prerequisites for defining customer-led KPIs that tie your team's success to customer value.19:29 - Georgiana talks about how common it is for product teams to get so excited about their offering that they throw the kitchen sink at new customers because they're not sure about what parts of their product they should introduce to customers in which order.21:30 - The pair ends the episode by talking about converting customers in a low-touch way: You need to know the parts of the product that drive value and measure your ability to help customers get from one milestone to the next. Follow Georgiana on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgianalaudi/ Follow Claire on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairesuellentrop/Check out Forget the Funnel's website: https://forgetthefunnel.com/Get the free Forget the Funnel workbook to help you implement Customer-Led Growth: https://forgetthefunnel.com/workbook

In this insightful episode of the LGHQ podcast, Alex dives deep into the crucial world of lead nurturing. Discover the optimal frequency and methods for following up with leads, a challenge many small businesses face due to limited staff and systems. Starting with a thought-provoking question about your follow-up practices, this episode unpacks statistics on what separates successful companies from those struggling to convert leads. Learn how to tailor a lead nurture strategy to your business model, target the right audience, and understand the differences between MQLs, SQLs, and the ABM approach. Finally, get a walkthrough of a typical follow-up process, empowering you to transform your lead nurturing into a powerful tool for business growth.

Garrett Mehrguth, President & CEO of Directive. This speakers from the Demand Gen Summit discusses how customer generation drives growth. To stay current on our latest events, follow us on Linkedin. Useful Timestamps: 2:03 - Move beyond leads, utilize multichannel marketing.8:23 - The need for a clear North Star metric in software companies and different types of metrics for various types of companies.9:59 - Set goals based on qualified pipeline, efficiency metrics. 11:10 - Strategies for investing in brand, mitigating waste, and understanding the impact of campaigns on other marketing efforts.15:23 - Leverage different parts of distribution in brand video investment and building broader campaigns for brand articulation. 16:01 - Integrated performance marketing, direct response strategies, and generating SQLs and customers.20:48 - Focus on brand building at the top of the funnel, and driving immediate meetings booked from review sites and ads.23:12 -Build out Google campaigns and target specific software types for more relevant clicks.30:19 - Closing Remarks. 

Lidia Infante joins Jack Chambers-Ward for the most innuendo-filled episode of Search With Candour ever. Lidia takes Jack through her dating life and how it helped her understand customer journeys and optimisation. Understanding the Sales Pipeline: From leads (MQLs, SQLs) to opportunities and closed deals. Choosing a North Star: The guiding metric that shapes your strategy. Iterative Goal-Driven Optimisation: Experimenting with your strategy to impact your north star. Lead Qualification: Identifying and pursuing the right opportunities, be it in love or business. Red/Blue Ocean Strategy: Standing out in a crowded market (or dating pool). How to use these concepts to grow in your career.

► Wanna turn website traffic into inbound leads and revenue? Sam has an in-depth discussion with Leah Tharin, host of "Productea with Leah". They cover:

Boost revenue and satisfaction with CSQLs. Insights from Monica Trivedi, SVP at JLL Technologies, emphasize the importance of metrics, collaboration, and a customer-centric culture. Plan and involve leadership for successful CSQL implementation.

Today Jeremy and Jack are discussing sales metrics! The two outreach campaign experts are taking a step back and reviewing important metrics that you NEED to know!   HERE'S WHAT WE COVER IN THIS EPISODE:   -Do you have enough prospects and numbers? -What is a good number to aim for? -When should you think about reply rate? -What to ask for when a campaign is made on your behalf -When consistency matters -CEOs vs the campaign managers -Email deliverability stats -Positive replies to calls -When does cold outreach stop? -SQLs and MQLs -Send in your questions for a rapid-fire episode!  Ready to use these important stats to build your own campaign? Craft an industry-level cold outreach campaign in just 8 weeks with our Cold Email Masterclass at https://course.quickmail.io/! Try it for 30 days risk-free!   Have an email you want us to teardown? Send us your emails, cold emailing questions, and campaign examples at podcast@quickmail.io and it could be featured on the air!   Happy Cold Emailing! Jeremy and Jack  

Today Andy is joined by Vince Beese, Founder and CEO of Sales@Scale, Anthony Iannorino, Keynote speaker, bestselling author and renowned sales leader, and Mike Bosworth, bestselling author, speaker, and sales philosopher as they discuss the importance of sales leaders thinking critically about how to make their teams more effective. They begin with the headshaking statistic of a 17% win rate and agree that any action is better than leaving your team in such a horrible situation.They emphasize the significance of considering all stakeholders involved in the sales process, including the reps, their families, the clients, and the company itself. They urge leaders to assess whether they are truly helping these individuals and if not, to act before the situation gets worse.The group discusses the effectiveness of different types of sales leads and dig into the data about self-sourced vs. generating inbound leads with lower win rates, and how each of those play out over time.They share stories about the importance of sales effectiveness and learning early on, the need for a solid strategy and theory to guide sales efforts so you don't waste time and resources. They also discuss the value of recognizing changes in buyer behavior, why certain approaches are more effective than others, and that transparency and truthfulness are vital. Not just to clients, but most importantly to ourselves, as they note that salespeople often credit their wins to superior salesmanship and attribute losses to external factors.They also reflect on the common mistakes of rushing deals for quick wins, but losing out on larger long-term gains.Follow Anthony, Vince, and Mike on LinkedInHost Andy Paul is the expert on modern B2B selling and author of three best-selling, award-winning sales books, including his latest Sell Without Selling Out. Visit andypaul.com to subscribe to his newsletter for even more strategies and tips to accelerate your win rate!Thank you to our sponsors:AllegoClozdCognism

Why do LinkedIn ads crush Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram for return on advertising spend?When it comes to B2B social ads, my guest Ryan Draving believes that LinkedIn is the most effective platform—and in this episode he'll share why.As the co-founder and head of strategy at The Moving Company, Ryan collaborates with B2B marketing teams to drive MQLs, SQLs, and revenue.He'll cover: Why LinkedIn is a great place for early and mid stage content How to gain quality leads on LinkedIn Using LinkedIn for partnerships AB…Z Testing And more

Book A Live Sales Coaching Session with Me: https://selar.co/qhqw?currency=GBPJoin my whatsapp group $32/Quarter : https://buy.stripe.com/eVa8yN6KF27D9SUbIWJoin my whatsapp group N15,000/Quarter: https://app.groupify.co/g/yb8Tqi7iiavV

Why are we talking about MQLs and SQLs?Funnel Marketing has dominated the last two episodes. First, it was the interview with Gia Laudi, author of "Forget the Funnel." Then I shared my thoughts on how the Funnel can be used effectively for start-ups and growth companies.Marketing Qualified Leads are a layer on top of the Funnel that bridges the gap between Marketing and Sales teams. So if you've just set up a stand-alone marketing team, or your Sales and Marketing folks just don't talk to each other, MQLs and SQLs can be a great way to improve communication and reduce friction.I explain how MQLs/SQLs work, and emphasize the importance of agreeing on definitions of each, between the teams; and I talk about the metrics to look at around the process.I also highlight some of the time-sinks that exist around the funnel - namely, Lead Scoring and Attribution. They may make sense for Enterprise organizations with well established marketing teams. But for most companies, they just suck up precious resources.I also mention a Generative AI session I participated in, run by Frederick Werhle and the San Francisco AMA. More info here.Some additional reading:Salesken.ai "Marketing Qualified Lead vs. Sales Qualified Lead vs. Sales Accepted Lead"Salesdorado: "Why Your Lead Scoring System is Probably Useless"

As a marketing leader, a large part of your ability to get the job done is in proving that you're delivering value already  But it's also an area of marketing leadership that many get wrong  Are these 3 communication errors killing your ability to prove the value of your work?1. Stating an observation without impact, importance, or insight2. Using passive vs active voice3. Giving inputs more airtime than outputs

The key is to find a balance between the two methods. Paid marketing can be used to quickly drive traffic, and organic marketing can be used to create relationships and build trust. It is also important to measure the success of each method and adjust your strategy accordingly. In the end, the best strategy is to combine both paid and organic marketing to maximize your results.Duane emphasizes three key points when it comes to marketing: it is never just one lever that creates growth; high tides raise all ships; and you need good quality data. Duane then talks about understanding what works in your marketing channels, looking at the big picture, and establishing clear outcomes. To help with this, he recommends paying attention to metrics such as MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead) and SQL (Sales Qualified Lead), as well as conversions. With these metrics, marketers can better understand the success of their campaigns and initiatives.Exploring the Argument of Paid vs Organic Marketing StrategiesUnderstanding the Three Factors of Successful MarketingExploring MQLs, SQLs, and Conversion Rates in Paid and Organic MarketingThe Impact of Paid vs. Organic Marketing on Lead Generation and ConversionUnderstanding the Benefits of Combining Paid and Organic Strategies for GrowthIf you get value from this episode, be sure to subscribe and share the episode with your friends, as we all can benefit from more positivity and leadership in today's society.Be sure to follow Duane Dufault on all the social platforms to get daily hits of tactical advice that you can take action on right awayLinkedin | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Youtube | TikTok

In this week's show, we have a return guest, Andrew Vidler, Andrew is a very successful sales leader who loves all things sales. Especially, the theory behind sales and sales leadership. Andrew often posts really cool tactical advice and ideas on Linkedin and it was one of those posts that caught my eye and made me ask him to come back on the podcast to share what he has been doing with his APAC outbound team.Andrew has been kind enough to fold back the curtain on his and his team's journey from doing 100's of pieces of outreach per week to as few just 15 Including what they were doing, the channels they are using and how they are doing that.Here's the interesting thing.When he scaled back the volume. As a spoiler, they, doing way less outreach, having longer conversations, converting more SQLs to Opps and they have a fuller pipeline whilst burning through fewer leads.Andrew shares how his APAC team did this What they found along the way and what some of the challenges were.If you're interested in building an outbound process for APAC - then this is well worth your time.Stats:

https://youtu.be/xukbZGbHols Marie Hale is the CEO of @revenue, an innovative sales and marketing company that empowers small and medium-sized business owners to create and lead successful sales teams as well as execute full scale marketing strategies. We talk about the benefits of having a solid management blueprint, Professional Love in sales, and the key features in a custom-crafted CRM system.   --- Work Yourself Out of Business with Marie Hale Our guest is Marie Hale, the CEO for @Revenue. @Revenue is an innovative marketing and sales collaborative that empowers small and medium sized business owners to create and lead successful sales teams and create and execute full-scale marketing strategies. Mary, welcome to the show. Thank you, Steve. I've been looking forward to this for weeks. Yes, it's been some time that we talked. I think it's even, it was in the old year, last year. So it's great to be back together again. So let's start with your entrepreneurial journey. So how did you end up creating this company called @Revenue and what's been your journey? So, I learned at a very young age that I was highly unemployable. My brain went a lot faster than everybody else's. I always had a bigger vision than everybody else had. And so when I had an opportunity, after trying to admittedly explain unionization to belly dancers, which was not an effective conversation, to start a business, I just kind of jumped in and I was about 22. From there, I had just, you know, when you get in there and you get in with good people, opportunities present themselves. I became the executive director of eWomen Network, which was a national PR, marketing and media company. And really what I started seeing was that there were a lot of random acts of marketing happening. And I saw frustrated business owners everywhere. I saw people that were trying to scale businesses that simply couldn't even get movement, let alone growth. And then I found a CRM and I said, oh, this is my love language, this I understand. And so at that point I started my first agency, which was Lipstick Logic. And in 2016, I partnered with my husband, my life partner, Jim, who was my sales coach. And we put sales and marketing under the same roof, which really revolutionized what was happening in small business. Because typically people point at one another across the hall and say, you don't get good enough leads and you can't close. But when we thread those things together and do it from a place of authenticity and professional love, you create a culture of sales within the organization that everybody can embrace, even the folks that don't want to be thought of as a salesperson. Authenticity in communication is the cornerstone of the modern sales process—listening, understanding emotional needs, and offering solutions that genuinely address personal and professional challenges.Share on X Okay, there's a lot to unpack there. So, so how, so first of all, how do you match marketing and sales? I mean, I often hear marketing salespeople bickering that, you know, the marketing person says that I'm delivering you the MQLs, the marketing qualified leads, and the Salesforce is gonna give me SQLs, sales qualified leads. So there's a disconnect sometimes, and people don't know, okay, what is the turf of marketing? What is the turf of sales? So, tell me a little bit about how that work together. So, I think the worst thing we've ever done is put marketing and sales in two different offices, or even two different campuses within organizations. Because the market changes, especially since the pandemic, the way that people make decisions change. We're all in executive fatigue, right? Like our executive function is not as fast as it used to be. Our limbic system is absolutely wiped out because of all of the change and uncertainty all the time. And when you separate your sales and marketing, those pieces may be felt by sales, where because people are doing things like having a hard time m...

In this episode of the Facility Management Marketing Podcast, we dive into the importance of lead segmentation and how it can take your IFM marketing strategy to the next level. Not every lead is the same, and not every lead source is equal. However, many facility management and property management companies don't take the time to figure out which lead sources are delivering the most high-quality leads that eventually convert into closed-won business.This episode will teach you how to take a data-driven approach to lead segmentation by breaking down leads into different channels, and then analyzing which marketing qualified leads (MQLs) turn into sales qualified leads (SQLs) and eventually customers. By doing this, you'll be able to predict your most successful lead generation and demand generation channels, allowing you to make informed decisions about how to allocate your marketing resources.With a CRM like Hubspot, lead segmentation is easily implemented and can provide valuable insights into the performance of your marketing channels. Don't miss out on this opportunity to take your IFM marketing strategy to the next level and maximize your marketing ROI. Tune in to the Facility Management Marketing Podcast now and learn how to make the most of your marketing efforts.

Olivia Fuller: Hi and welcome to Book Club, a Sales Enablement PRO podcast. I'm Olivia Fuller. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space and we're here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so they can be more effective in their jobs. Creating predictable and scalable revenue is any business leader’s dream, but how can that dream actually become reality? Well, as it turns out, there’s a formula for building and sustaining a winning sales team and I’m so excited to have Mark Roberge, who is the author of the Sales Acceleration Formula here to walk us through what that looks like. With that, Mark, I’d love it if you could take a second and introduce yourself to our audience and tell us a little bit more about your background and your book. Mark Roberge: Thanks for having me. I am an engineer by training, I started my career coding and I did an MBA at MIT. I have close to a decade to start my career in more of a data science-like quant background. At MIT I was classmates with the two co-founders at Hubspot and was recruited to be the fourth employee and first salesperson with the aspiration to build a unicorn. This is in the early part of the century, like 15 years ago, and looking back I’m pretty lucky that I had the background that I had and ended up in that company at that time because little did I know that sales were going through a pretty substantial revolution. We were moving out of this sort of pre-internet age where everything was sold via an outside team and no one used their CRM, sales enablement barely existed and we were moving into an era where CRM adoption was necessary for salespeople to do their job. These tech stacks were becoming pretty advanced, we had a lot of data, and we had internet-empowered buyers who just changed the way that sales had to interact with them. It was sort of like the perfect time for a quant with no sales background to build a sales team from scratch. I was blessed to fall into that role and blessed to be surrounded by the right executive sponsorship and mentorship and investor advice to be successful in it. That’s my background and I did that for like 10 years. We took an IPO In 2015 or 16. I then rested and joined the faculty at Harvard Business School where I still teach. I joined full-time and helped build out the sales curriculum. I do teach a couple of classes in sales and growth. More recently, after a couple of years of investing and advising and sitting on boards and that kind of stuff, I was approached by a former Bessemer investor to start a venture capital firm called Stage 2 Capital, which I’m happy to speak about at the end. It’s the first VC firm that’s run and backed exclusively by CRO, CMO, and CCOs from a lot of the software unicorns that are out there. We’re back about 400 CROs and CMOs from Snowflake, Salesforce, Zoom, and those types of companies. OF: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here today. I’m really excited to have a chance to learn a little bit more about your book. You mentioned that your background is really unique in the sense that you do have such a quantitative lens that you take and your book really walks through that framework of driving predictable and scalable revenue growth from that lens of being really data-driven. You also talked about how sales have evolved a lot since you started that journey of creating that framework and even since you did write the book. I’d love to hear a little bit more about what are some of the challenges that you’ve seen emerge in the last few years that can make that mission of achieving predictable and scalable revenue a little bit more difficult to achieve in today’s landscape. MR: When I wrote the book at the end of my Hubspot journey, it was really triggered by the fact that I started to get pretty well known and I would get calls from different sales leaders and entrepreneurs starting out with the same questions like ‘What do you look for in your first sales hire? How do you set up your first sales com plan? How do you enable your sales team?' I just told them how we’re doing a Hubspot and they wrote back like a month later, saying wow, we did that and it worked really well, thank you so much. I just thought this is working, let me just put it down on paper for people. I give all the proceeds to a nonprofit, so I was just helping out the ecosystem and even to this day it sells almost just as much every year as it did the first year. I’m very humbled that people still pick it up and still find amazing implementation from it. My own models of it have not changed but evolved a bit because at that time I was like 80 hours a week deep on just Hubspot and wrote about that. Now I’ve applied it to 1000 different data points between my teaching, investing, and consulting. A lot of the principles still apply. As far as the challenges of implementing, I guess I’ll answer it this way and this is something that the book itself didn’t address, but you can read the book, and then you can read some of my more recent work. The book just talks about the model as it was at that point. It doesn’t talk about the order in which you should implement things. That’s been my most recent work. While the book gives you an aspiration of where you want to go, how you hire, how you enable, and how you coach your sales team, there’s a pretty precise order in which you build that system and in fact the optimal answers for each of the system components. Let’s take hiring for example. That changes as you progress from a five-person company that is mostly a product team, to a 20-person company that is really in sales mode, to a 2000-person company that is a very complex organization with alignment requirements. Your hires obviously change even on just the same frontline account executive role. That’s probably the difficulty in understanding the order in which you build the components of the system and how the individual component’s optimal design changes as you evolve. OF: That’s very interesting and I think definitely something that goes beyond the scope of the book too, which is fantastic. I would love to dig into the data component of the framework. Tell me a little bit about just the role that you see data really playing today in helping business leaders be able to gather the insights that they need to overcome some of these challenges that they’re facing today. MR: It’s kind of funny and this is right in the heart of things like sales enablement, rev ops, and just sales leaders in general, which is hopefully a lot of the folks that are out there listening. I always kind of joke and observe that sales are a function, something extraordinarily unique relative to things like product engineering, HR, finance, and marketing, is that success and failure in the role are so quantifiable. It’s really hard to walk into a company and here are our engineers and this is Olivia our number one engineer by 7%. Like it’s really hard to claim that right? But I can definitely walk into a sales floor and say here are our salespeople and this is Olivia and she’s our number one salesperson by 7%. That’s like a feasible statement. You’ve got this function where success and mediocrity and failure are quantifiable and that opens up tremendous opportunities in the way we run the team. It opens up tremendous opportunities to draw correlations between hiring attributes that we’re looking for and how strongly they correlate to success in the role. It presents opportunities for us to use data in our sales playbooks to understand which approaches to the market lead to the most successful and best outcomes. It presents opportunities for us to measure the effectiveness of our frontline managers and how effective they are in coaching and developing our people. To be able to literally say like Olivia is a rock star, but I really think that she can develop in the area of a sense of urgency development with her prospects. In fact, I can quantify it, like I know what she looks like relative to our best-in-class people where her stage 4 demo stage opportunities are converting to customers at a rate of 27% and I know with the right amount of coaching she should be able to get that the 35% and that’s going to translate into an additional $120,000 of quota attainment on her part and a rise in our productivity. That’s the level of discussion we can be at and that’s difficult to enable in other functions. That gives you a little bit of an overview of the application and usage of data in our world. OF: Yeah, absolutely. I want to go back to that first tactic that you talked about and you mentioned it and a couple of examples here around sales hiring and really the importance of standardizing what those characteristics are that you’re looking for in your company and making sure that you have a consistent approach to hiring for those criteria. I’d love to hear a little bit more about some of your best practices for really getting buy-in on those characteristics as being the right characteristics to look at and really reinforcing that consistency in the hiring process in particular how can data really help in that aspect? MR: What I’m going to talk about is not necessarily like the absolute world-class, but I think it's a step up that’s easy to conceptualize and rarely followed. When it is followed, it translates into a dramatic acceleration in the performance of the team. World-class hiring is studying at the psychological level, psycho graphics and there are some great tools out there like predictive index etcetera. I’ve spoken to world experts on it and sometimes some of them will admit that it might not be worth it to like take, take it to that level, but what we see in the industry is not a very good approach and it comes out in the aggregate numbers. Depending on which study you read, a lot of them tend to center around an average turnover rate and sales annually of 40%. That’s really bad. Every year 40% of salespeople change jobs either because they fail, they’re fired or they fail and they quit or they’re just not happy with their company. It’s really hard to build a business when you’re turning over 40% of your team every year. We’ve got tremendous quantifiable ROI. There are some trainers out there that claim that the cost of a miss hiring sales is over a million dollars and it’s not that hard to justify that calculation. What I hope we can do is try to move away from the like I’m busy in my day and I’m running all over the place and I have this interview with Olivia and two minutes before I walk in the room I read your resume, I sit down and I’m like hey Olivia, tell me about your career, and then after thinking I liked Olivia let’s hire or I didn’t really like her, let’s not hire. That’s where we’re at. That’s where most people are hiring and all I work on people with and it changes their game is actually just sitting back and thinking about the attributes that we see in our best people and the attributes that we see in the people that don’t work out. At least, can we translate that into just a quantifiable scorecard, can we identify the 7, 8, 9, or 10 attributes that we’ve seen, correlate with success and failure? Can we take the time to define in two or three sentences what each one means so that we’re very clear about what consultative selling means, what work ethic means, what intelligence means, and what coach ability means? Can we take the time to quantify what a high score of 8 to 10 would be like, what a medium score of 4 to 7 would be like, and what a low score of one of three would be like so that a new sales manager going into their first interview can actually know what the heck they’re doing, like what they’re asking and how they’re scoring this person? Over time we can actually see correlations between our scorecard and success and failure. That’s where we need to get to. It’s not a hard leap. It takes an hour to put together and a little bit of discipline to execute, but that allows you to get closer to a 10-20% annual turnover as opposed to the average of 40%. OF: Yeah, absolutely. I love that approach and I think you’re so right, it’s about just really defining what success and failure do look like in particular companies and I think a lot of that also nurtures that success a little bit longer terms after a salesperson is hired and is in their career with a company. A lot of that comes down to sales training and that’s an area where enablement can really help. I’d love to hear your thoughts on maybe what some of the common pitfalls are that you’ve seen and how programs are designed and delivered, that may actually prevent that scalability and predictability, and then what are some of the ways that enablement can help to overcome some of those pitfalls? MR: Yeah, I would say the number 1 thing is we know today something that we’ve talked about anecdotally through the work of Gong.IO and some of these new ai tools that the salespeople that listen more than they talk in the first call or the top performers in the industry and the sales people that talk more than they listen in the first call are performing in the least way. Part of the driver of why certain salespeople decide to speak more than and then lesson on the first call is due to the approach by enablement to training. Some enablement teams look at a new feature product that’s being released, whatever, and take what I’d call an inside-out approach of like, okay, what does this product do, what are its features and benefits, let’s put together a sales deck and then let’s show the sales deck to the sales team. Sounds pretty logical. That’s teaching the sales team to pitch, that’s teaching the sales team to talk a lot, that’s teaching the sales team just like go find 50 prospects in a month and just show the sales presentation and that’s my job and that’s completely wrong. The job is to start off and build trust and develop open-ended questions with the buyer to understand their perspective, and to see what they perceive as their problems. To see if their problems are something we can help with and if they are to tailor our pitch to those problems so they really resonate with their context. That’s what true selling is and that’s what our job and enablement are. It's like helping a 25-year-old figure out how to do that. It starts not with what is our product and what are the features and benefits, and let’s build a pitch deck, but it’s more like who is the buyer and what’s the narrative going through their head before they even know what our product is. What are the common problems they have? What are the ones that were good at solving? How do I ask the questions to uncover that? Once I understand their perspective, how do I customize and tailor the description of our product so it resonates with that buyer so they understand how we solve those problems? A couple of tactics that I’ll throw out there are number one, how much of your enablement and training for new hires is about your product versus your buyer. Most people I talk to are like shoot, you know what now I think about it 90% of our training is how our product works. You are teaching your salespeople how to be bad salespeople. Can you spend more time in your training getting your salespeople to walk in the day in the life of the people they sell to? At Hubspot, for example, most of our sales training was just having our salespeople write blogs and do social media and create landing pages and create automation sequences. Like we turned them into markers so that when they got on the phone with their first marketer or business owner that was trying to do this new-age way of marketing, they could empathize with what that scariness was like and talk them through as a peer. So like can we do that, whether we’re doing network infrastructure or selling lab equipment there are always ways for us to like get our salespeople to understand our buyers. The second tactic I’ll say is, instead of making the cornerstone of your sales enablement playbook the pitch deck, make the cornerstone of your sales enablement playbook, the buyer’s journey. Like, what’s going through their head at the awareness stage when they’re trying to define the problem. Once they’ve defined their problem, what are the different options they’re looking at to solve it, once they know which option they want to choose, how will they make that decision? Let’s teach our salespeople about that and define it and after every single first call, our managers can ask one question which is like where are they in the buying journey? That will force your salespeople to be top performers be discovery, consultative-oriented sellers that first and foremost, understand the context of the buyer. OF: That’s fantastic. It goes right into what my next question was going to be, which was about creating that culture of coaching. You mentioned a little bit of the role that sales management can play in helping to reinforce some of those behaviors with reps, but I’d love to dig into that aspect a little bit more and really hear how sales managers can leverage data to really have more effective coaching conversations. MR: Like most managers, I think do fall into a pitfall, which is the month or quarter is going along, we’re not quite at our goal, we’ve got a couple of reps that are struggling and they’ll say, here’s what we’re going to do Olivia. Invite me to your next five meetings and I’ll do the demos for you. I’ll run the meetings and they become super reps. A lot of things are wrong with that. Number one, you’re not holding your reps accountable for their job. Number two, they get lazy. Number three, they lose confidence because you can do it better than them. A lot of bad things happen and really that’s not our job as a manager. I understand why they do it because that’s how they got successful as a rep, but as a manager, our job is to hire and coach, that’s what it is and it’s up to the rep to succeed. The thing with coaching is that you can’t coach a rep on like 20 things at the time, it’s just not humanly possible to like absorb that coaching. You can do one, maybe two things at a time, and that’s really what the best coaches do. They get a new rep out of training, and usually, there’s like a pretty sizable list of like improvement areas and a good coach will say, I can’t work on all that at once, but here’s the one thing I’m going to work on and they’ll use the data to diagnose that. Usually, if we have basic data of like how many leads are we creating every month, how many become an opportunity, how many become stage three opportunities, and how many become close, we can get some visibility of what the blueprint is for our top performers in the average and where we’re off and that will help understand where we can at least look to diagnose things and figure out what the issue is. What I like to do as a leader is I like to review on the first day of the month all of my manager’s coaching plans with the reps. When I do that review, it forces the managers to have one on ones before our meeting, like in the morning or the day of the first day of the month to have that one-on-one coaching plan creation and schedule the coaching into the upcoming month. So Olivia, if you and I were talking and after reviewing your data together and talking qualitatively about your past month, we do determine that sense of urgency development is the thing we want to work on. Then I’d say great, like why don’t we get together on Friday at three, next Tuesday at nine, and the following Wednesday at noon and you show up to that meeting with a recorded first meeting, and we’ll listen to it together and look at it through the lens of sense of urgency development. That’s a beautiful start to the month, where I’m like, I have confidence that my managers have had that discussion with their reps and we have an entire set of coaching calls set based on data that are attacking the skills that represent the biggest improvement for our team. OF: Absolutely. That’s a fantastic approach as well. I have just one last question for you and it’s really about the last tactic in the formula, which is demand generation. I think a key piece that stood out to me in the formula here was really around the importance of accountability between sales and marketing teams. I’m curious about this in particular because sales enablement can often really be a function that’s kind of in the middle of those two teams, liaison between them, or helping to kind of bridge that gap. I’d love to hear your advice on how enablement leaders can really be that bridge and help sales and marketing teams develop and have that mutual accountability. MR: There needs to be a service level agreement between the two groups and it’s going take a combination of the CEO plus enablement to create that. We just really need the VP of Marketing and the VP of Sales to agree on their deliverables to each other. We need them to both agree on what is an MQL and how many we need from marketing and we need the sales team to agree to, like if we do get an MQL, how will we act on it, how quickly we call it, how frequently call it, and what kind of conversion rate do we expect out of that. That’s our goal. All of that leads to revenue, so that’s really the role of sales enablement is to work with the CEO and the sales and marketing leader to create that quantitative agreement. One area that you can start with, there’s a lot of different pieces to this, but usually when we’re putting together annual plans, and this is pretty relevant to today here in Q4, we’re pretty good at like saying all right, we want to go from 20 million to 30 million, which means we need to add 10 million top lines and last year our reps averaged half a million in productivity each. So I do the math and I have 10 of them, well that adds up to $5 million. I need to hire another 10 more and that will give me my 10 million. We’re pretty good at that like bottoms-up analysis from the rep capacity standpoint. Rarely do we do the marketing piece. So it’s like, yeah I get that my reps are producing 500,000, but how are they getting there? Well, if you look back on the year you can be like, oh my gosh, well half of our revenue came from marketing, and marketing had a budget of $1 million. They generated 1000 leads and the cost per lead was $1,000. If I had my math right, 20% of those leads became SQLs and 40% became opportunities, and 40% closed, so just using those numbers, I can figure out if we’re going to have another year where half of our new revenue comes from marketing, I can calculate precisely how many MQLs I need. Then, similarly, if half of our leads came from our cold calling team, the SDRs, then on average each one set 210 appointments last year the conversion to opportunity was 30% while the conversion of clothes was 20%, so immediately I can figure out like how many SDRs I need each quarter and what those conversion rates need to be. We don’t do that math, it’s simple math and that’s where sales enablement can play a big role. It’s just like let’s go back to the leadership team, the head of sales, the head of marketing, and just say here’s the plan, this is the blueprint to get there from the demand gen side and that helps both sales and marketing to have a quantitative route in what that service level agreement between the two groups can be. OF: Absolutely. In addition to that, it also helps enablement prove their impact to those executive leaders and be able to get a seat at the table in those conversations as really that strategic liaison between those leaders. So that’s fantastic advice. MR: It’s such an important seat because everybody else naturally has a little bit of political bias in the equation and sales enablement can be that sort of like an unbiased judge and jury that’s just trying to educate everybody on the truth. They just know that these are semi-scientists that are like helping us understand our business and hit our goals for next year. OF: Mark, thank you so much for sharing all of this with us. I certainly learned a lot from this conversation so thanks again and I can’t wait for our listeners to hear this. MR: You bet Olivia. Thanks for having me. OF: To our audience, thanks for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders visit salesenablement.pro and if there's something you'd like to share or a topic that you'd like to learn more about, please let us know. We'd love to hear from you.

Olivia Fuller: Hi and welcome to Book Club, a Sales Enablement PRO podcast. I'm Olivia Fuller. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space and we're here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so they can be more effective in their jobs. Creating predictable and scalable revenue is any business leader’s dream, but how can that dream actually become reality? Well, as it turns out, there’s a formula for building and sustaining a winning sales team and I’m so excited to have Mark Roberge, who is the author of the Sales Acceleration Formula here to walk us through what that looks like. With that, Mark, I’d love it if you could take a second and introduce yourself to our audience and tell us a little bit more about your background and your book. Mark Roberge: Thanks for having me. I am an engineer by training, I started my career coding and I did an MBA at MIT. I have close to a decade to start my career in more of a data science-like quant background. At MIT I was classmates with the two co-founders at Hubspot and was recruited to be the fourth employee and first salesperson with the aspiration to build a unicorn. This is in the early part of the century, like 15 years ago, and looking back I’m pretty lucky that I had the background that I had and ended up in that company at that time because little did I know that sales were going through a pretty substantial revolution. We were moving out of this sort of pre-internet age where everything was sold via an outside team and no one used their CRM, sales enablement barely existed and we were moving into an era where CRM adoption was necessary for salespeople to do their job. These tech stacks were becoming pretty advanced, we had a lot of data, and we had internet-empowered buyers who just changed the way that sales had to interact with them. It was sort of like the perfect time for a quant with no sales background to build a sales team from scratch. I was blessed to fall into that role and blessed to be surrounded by the right executive sponsorship and mentorship and investor advice to be successful in it. That’s my background and I did that for like 10 years. We took an IPO In 2015 or 16. I then rested and joined the faculty at Harvard Business School where I still teach. I joined full-time and helped build out the sales curriculum. I do teach a couple of classes in sales and growth. More recently, after a couple of years of investing and advising and sitting on boards and that kind of stuff, I was approached by a former Bessemer investor to start a venture capital firm called Stage 2 Capital, which I’m happy to speak about at the end. It’s the first VC firm that’s run and backed exclusively by CRO, CMO, and CCOs from a lot of the software unicorns that are out there. We’re back about 400 CROs and CMOs from Snowflake, Salesforce, Zoom, and those types of companies. OF: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here today. I’m really excited to have a chance to learn a little bit more about your book. You mentioned that your background is really unique in the sense that you do have such a quantitative lens that you take and your book really walks through that framework of driving predictable and scalable revenue growth from that lens of being really data-driven. You also talked about how sales have evolved a lot since you started that journey of creating that framework and even since you did write the book. I’d love to hear a little bit more about what are some of the challenges that you’ve seen emerge in the last few years that can make that mission of achieving predictable and scalable revenue a little bit more difficult to achieve in today’s landscape. MR: When I wrote the book at the end of my Hubspot journey, it was really triggered by the fact that I started to get pretty well known and I would get calls from different sales leaders and entrepreneurs starting out with the same questions like ‘What do you look for in your first sales hire? How do you set up your first sales com plan? How do you enable your sales team?' I just told them how we’re doing a Hubspot and they wrote back like a month later, saying wow, we did that and it worked really well, thank you so much. I just thought this is working, let me just put it down on paper for people. I give all the proceeds to a nonprofit, so I was just helping out the ecosystem and even to this day it sells almost just as much every year as it did the first year. I’m very humbled that people still pick it up and still find amazing implementation from it. My own models of it have not changed but evolved a bit because at that time I was like 80 hours a week deep on just Hubspot and wrote about that. Now I’ve applied it to 1000 different data points between my teaching, investing, and consulting. A lot of the principles still apply. As far as the challenges of implementing, I guess I’ll answer it this way and this is something that the book itself didn’t address, but you can read the book, and then you can read some of my more recent work. The book just talks about the model as it was at that point. It doesn’t talk about the order in which you should implement things. That’s been my most recent work. While the book gives you an aspiration of where you want to go, how you hire, how you enable, and how you coach your sales team, there’s a pretty precise order in which you build that system and in fact the optimal answers for each of the system components. Let’s take hiring for example. That changes as you progress from a five-person company that is mostly a product team, to a 20-person company that is really in sales mode, to a 2000-person company that is a very complex organization with alignment requirements. Your hires obviously change even on just the same frontline account executive role. That’s probably the difficulty in understanding the order in which you build the components of the system and how the individual component’s optimal design changes as you evolve. OF: That’s very interesting and I think definitely something that goes beyond the scope of the book too, which is fantastic. I would love to dig into the data component of the framework. Tell me a little bit about just the role that you see data really playing today in helping business leaders be able to gather the insights that they need to overcome some of these challenges that they’re facing today. MR: It’s kind of funny and this is right in the heart of things like sales enablement, rev ops, and just sales leaders in general, which is hopefully a lot of the folks that are out there listening. I always kind of joke and observe that sales are a function, something extraordinarily unique relative to things like product engineering, HR, finance, and marketing, is that success and failure in the role are so quantifiable. It’s really hard to walk into a company and here are our engineers and this is Olivia our number one engineer by 7%. Like it’s really hard to claim that right? But I can definitely walk into a sales floor and say here are our salespeople and this is Olivia and she’s our number one salesperson by 7%. That’s like a feasible statement. You’ve got this function where success and mediocrity and failure are quantifiable and that opens up tremendous opportunities in the way we run the team. It opens up tremendous opportunities to draw correlations between hiring attributes that we’re looking for and how strongly they correlate to success in the role. It presents opportunities for us to use data in our sales playbooks to understand which approaches to the market lead to the most successful and best outcomes. It presents opportunities for us to measure the effectiveness of our frontline managers and how effective they are in coaching and developing our people. To be able to literally say like Olivia is a rock star, but I really think that she can develop in the area of a sense of urgency development with her prospects. In fact, I can quantify it, like I know what she looks like relative to our best-in-class people where her stage 4 demo stage opportunities are converting to customers at a rate of 27% and I know with the right amount of coaching she should be able to get that the 35% and that’s going to translate into an additional $120,000 of quota attainment on her part and a rise in our productivity. That’s the level of discussion we can be at and that’s difficult to enable in other functions. That gives you a little bit of an overview of the application and usage of data in our world. OF: Yeah, absolutely. I want to go back to that first tactic that you talked about and you mentioned it and a couple of examples here around sales hiring and really the importance of standardizing what those characteristics are that you’re looking for in your company and making sure that you have a consistent approach to hiring for those criteria. I’d love to hear a little bit more about some of your best practices for really getting buy-in on those characteristics as being the right characteristics to look at and really reinforcing that consistency in the hiring process in particular how can data really help in that aspect? MR: What I’m going to talk about is not necessarily like the absolute world-class, but I think it's a step up that’s easy to conceptualize and rarely followed. When it is followed, it translates into a dramatic acceleration in the performance of the team. World-class hiring is studying at the psychological level, psycho graphics and there are some great tools out there like predictive index etcetera. I’ve spoken to world experts on it and sometimes some of them will admit that it might not be worth it to like take, take it to that level, but what we see in the industry is not a very good approach and it comes out in the aggregate numbers. Depending on which study you read, a lot of them tend to center around an average turnover rate and sales annually of 40%. That’s really bad. Every year 40% of salespeople change jobs either because they fail, they’re fired or they fail and they quit or they’re just not happy with their company. It’s really hard to build a business when you’re turning over 40% of your team every year. We’ve got tremendous quantifiable ROI. There are some trainers out there that claim that the cost of a miss hiring sales is over a million dollars and it’s not that hard to justify that calculation. What I hope we can do is try to move away from the like I’m busy in my day and I’m running all over the place and I have this interview with Olivia and two minutes before I walk in the room I read your resume, I sit down and I’m like hey Olivia, tell me about your career, and then after thinking I liked Olivia let’s hire or I didn’t really like her, let’s not hire. That’s where we’re at. That’s where most people are hiring and all I work on people with and it changes their game is actually just sitting back and thinking about the attributes that we see in our best people and the attributes that we see in the people that don’t work out. At least, can we translate that into just a quantifiable scorecard, can we identify the 7, 8, 9, or 10 attributes that we’ve seen, correlate with success and failure? Can we take the time to define in two or three sentences what each one means so that we’re very clear about what consultative selling means, what work ethic means, what intelligence means, and what coach ability means? Can we take the time to quantify what a high score of 8 to 10 would be like, what a medium score of 4 to 7 would be like, and what a low score of one of three would be like so that a new sales manager going into their first interview can actually know what the heck they’re doing, like what they’re asking and how they’re scoring this person? Over time we can actually see correlations between our scorecard and success and failure. That’s where we need to get to. It’s not a hard leap. It takes an hour to put together and a little bit of discipline to execute, but that allows you to get closer to a 10-20% annual turnover as opposed to the average of 40%. OF: Yeah, absolutely. I love that approach and I think you’re so right, it’s about just really defining what success and failure do look like in particular companies and I think a lot of that also nurtures that success a little bit longer terms after a salesperson is hired and is in their career with a company. A lot of that comes down to sales training and that’s an area where enablement can really help. I’d love to hear your thoughts on maybe what some of the common pitfalls are that you’ve seen and how programs are designed and delivered, that may actually prevent that scalability and predictability, and then what are some of the ways that enablement can help to overcome some of those pitfalls? MR: Yeah, I would say the number 1 thing is we know today something that we’ve talked about anecdotally through the work of Gong.IO and some of these new ai tools that the salespeople that listen more than they talk in the first call or the top performers in the industry and the sales people that talk more than they listen in the first call are performing in the least way. Part of the driver of why certain salespeople decide to speak more than and then lesson on the first call is due to the approach by enablement to training. Some enablement teams look at a new feature product that’s being released, whatever, and take what I’d call an inside-out approach of like, okay, what does this product do, what are its features and benefits, let’s put together a sales deck and then let’s show the sales deck to the sales team. Sounds pretty logical. That’s teaching the sales team to pitch, that’s teaching the sales team to talk a lot, that’s teaching the sales team just like go find 50 prospects in a month and just show the sales presentation and that’s my job and that’s completely wrong. The job is to start off and build trust and develop open-ended questions with the buyer to understand their perspective, and to see what they perceive as their problems. To see if their problems are something we can help with and if they are to tailor our pitch to those problems so they really resonate with their context. That’s what true selling is and that’s what our job and enablement are. It's like helping a 25-year-old figure out how to do that. It starts not with what is our product and what are the features and benefits, and let’s build a pitch deck, but it’s more like who is the buyer and what’s the narrative going through their head before they even know what our product is. What are the common problems they have? What are the ones that were good at solving? How do I ask the questions to uncover that? Once I understand their perspective, how do I customize and tailor the description of our product so it resonates with that buyer so they understand how we solve those problems? A couple of tactics that I’ll throw out there are number one, how much of your enablement and training for new hires is about your product versus your buyer. Most people I talk to are like shoot, you know what now I think about it 90% of our training is how our product works. You are teaching your salespeople how to be bad salespeople. Can you spend more time in your training getting your salespeople to walk in the day in the life of the people they sell to? At Hubspot, for example, most of our sales training was just having our salespeople write blogs and do social media and create landing pages and create automation sequences. Like we turned them into markers so that when they got on the phone with their first marketer or business owner that was trying to do this new-age way of marketing, they could empathize with what that scariness was like and talk them through as a peer. So like can we do that, whether we’re doing network infrastructure or selling lab equipment there are always ways for us to like get our salespeople to understand our buyers. The second tactic I’ll say is, instead of making the cornerstone of your sales enablement playbook the pitch deck, make the cornerstone of your sales enablement playbook, the buyer’s journey. Like, what’s going through their head at the awareness stage when they’re trying to define the problem. Once they’ve defined their problem, what are the different options they’re looking at to solve it, once they know which option they want to choose, how will they make that decision? Let’s teach our salespeople about that and define it and after every single first call, our managers can ask one question which is like where are they in the buying journey? That will force your salespeople to be top performers be discovery, consultative-oriented sellers that first and foremost, understand the context of the buyer. OF: That’s fantastic. It goes right into what my next question was going to be, which was about creating that culture of coaching. You mentioned a little bit of the role that sales management can play in helping to reinforce some of those behaviors with reps, but I’d love to dig into that aspect a little bit more and really hear how sales managers can leverage data to really have more effective coaching conversations. MR: Like most managers, I think do fall into a pitfall, which is the month or quarter is going along, we’re not quite at our goal, we’ve got a couple of reps that are struggling and they’ll say, here’s what we’re going to do Olivia. Invite me to your next five meetings and I’ll do the demos for you. I’ll run the meetings and they become super reps. A lot of things are wrong with that. Number one, you’re not holding your reps accountable for their job. Number two, they get lazy. Number three, they lose confidence because you can do it better than them. A lot of bad things happen and really that’s not our job as a manager. I understand why they do it because that’s how they got successful as a rep, but as a manager, our job is to hire and coach, that’s what it is and it’s up to the rep to succeed. The thing with coaching is that you can’t coach a rep on like 20 things at the time, it’s just not humanly possible to like absorb that coaching. You can do one, maybe two things at a time, and that’s really what the best coaches do. They get a new rep out of training, and usually, there’s like a pretty sizable list of like improvement areas and a good coach will say, I can’t work on all that at once, but here’s the one thing I’m going to work on and they’ll use the data to diagnose that. Usually, if we have basic data of like how many leads are we creating every month, how many become an opportunity, how many become stage three opportunities, and how many become close, we can get some visibility of what the blueprint is for our top performers in the average and where we’re off and that will help understand where we can at least look to diagnose things and figure out what the issue is. What I like to do as a leader is I like to review on the first day of the month all of my manager’s coaching plans with the reps. When I do that review, it forces the managers to have one on ones before our meeting, like in the morning or the day of the first day of the month to have that one-on-one coaching plan creation and schedule the coaching into the upcoming month. So Olivia, if you and I were talking and after reviewing your data together and talking qualitatively about your past month, we do determine that sense of urgency development is the thing we want to work on. Then I’d say great, like why don’t we get together on Friday at three, next Tuesday at nine, and the following Wednesday at noon and you show up to that meeting with a recorded first meeting, and we’ll listen to it together and look at it through the lens of sense of urgency development. That’s a beautiful start to the month, where I’m like, I have confidence that my managers have had that discussion with their reps and we have an entire set of coaching calls set based on data that are attacking the skills that represent the biggest improvement for our team. OF: Absolutely. That’s a fantastic approach as well. I have just one last question for you and it’s really about the last tactic in the formula, which is demand generation. I think a key piece that stood out to me in the formula here was really around the importance of accountability between sales and marketing teams. I’m curious about this in particular because sales enablement can often really be a function that’s kind of in the middle of those two teams, liaison between them, or helping to kind of bridge that gap. I’d love to hear your advice on how enablement leaders can really be that bridge and help sales and marketing teams develop and have that mutual accountability. MR: There needs to be a service level agreement between the two groups and it’s going take a combination of the CEO plus enablement to create that. We just really need the VP of Marketing and the VP of Sales to agree on their deliverables to each other. We need them to both agree on what is an MQL and how many we need from marketing and we need the sales team to agree to, like if we do get an MQL, how will we act on it, how quickly we call it, how frequently call it, and what kind of conversion rate do we expect out of that. That’s our goal. All of that leads to revenue, so that’s really the role of sales enablement is to work with the CEO and the sales and marketing leader to create that quantitative agreement. One area that you can start with, there’s a lot of different pieces to this, but usually when we’re putting together annual plans, and this is pretty relevant to today here in Q4, we’re pretty good at like saying all right, we want to go from 20 million to 30 million, which means we need to add 10 million top lines and last year our reps averaged half a million in productivity each. So I do the math and I have 10 of them, well that adds up to $5 million. I need to hire another 10 more and that will give me my 10 million. We’re pretty good at that like bottoms-up analysis from the rep capacity standpoint. Rarely do we do the marketing piece. So it’s like, yeah I get that my reps are producing 500,000, but how are they getting there? Well, if you look back on the year you can be like, oh my gosh, well half of our revenue came from marketing, and marketing had a budget of $1 million. They generated 1000 leads and the cost per lead was $1,000. If I had my math right, 20% of those leads became SQLs and 40% became opportunities, and 40% closed, so just using those numbers, I can figure out if we’re going to have another year where half of our new revenue comes from marketing, I can calculate precisely how many MQLs I need. Then, similarly, if half of our leads came from our cold calling team, the SDRs, then on average each one set 210 appointments last year the conversion to opportunity was 30% while the conversion of clothes was 20%, so immediately I can figure out like how many SDRs I need each quarter and what those conversion rates need to be. We don’t do that math, it’s simple math and that’s where sales enablement can play a big role. It’s just like let’s go back to the leadership team, the head of sales, the head of marketing, and just say here’s the plan, this is the blueprint to get there from the demand gen side and that helps both sales and marketing to have a quantitative route in what that service level agreement between the two groups can be. OF: Absolutely. In addition to that, it also helps enablement prove their impact to those executive leaders and be able to get a seat at the table in those conversations as really that strategic liaison between those leaders. So that’s fantastic advice. MR: It’s such an important seat because everybody else naturally has a little bit of political bias in the equation and sales enablement can be that sort of like an unbiased judge and jury that’s just trying to educate everybody on the truth. They just know that these are semi-scientists that are like helping us understand our business and hit our goals for next year. OF: Mark, thank you so much for sharing all of this with us. I certainly learned a lot from this conversation so thanks again and I can’t wait for our listeners to hear this. MR: You bet Olivia. Thanks for having me. OF: To our audience, thanks for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders visit salesenablement.pro and if there's something you'd like to share or a topic that you'd like to learn more about, please let us know. We'd love to hear from you.

ClearPivot agency Founder Chris Strom discusses 5 common mistakes he's seen clients make over and over in his 13 years as a HubSpot partner, and suggests the best ways to combat them. Come on in, and find out if you've been over automating, leaving SQLs on the table, or doing one of these other common marketing mis-steps!

It's Monday, and you know what that means - Q&A time with industry sales and marketing expert Kyle Milan! When it comes to social media for industrial, is TikTok a big deal?It's still up in the air whether TikTok will significantly impact advertising your business, particularly in the future. For now, the demographic on TikTok is nowhere near as prime for closing deals as it is on LinkedIn. TikTok, however, serves a purpose as a testing ground for entertainment-type clips. Instagram Reels, Facebook, YouTube Shorts, and LinkedIn cater to a more mature audience where you will likely connect to prospects and their cohorts. Once you have successfully built out your content creation schedule on LinkedIn and other established platforms (whether through your marketing team or an agency like MFG Tribe), see what other similar companies in your space are doing on TikTok, then take the plunge. Remember, don't neglect daily content on your leading platforms to tread new waters!What's the best way to work a trade show when exhibiting?Get out there and… work it! You may have noticed at trade shows that many sales reps in booths sit there and wait for people to enter. Do the opposite - go out into the aisle, engage with attendees and pull them into your booth. Maybe they're looking for your product or service, most likely not, and perhaps they'll never be in the market! But you'll never know if they'll close several weeks, months, or a year down the line or know someone who may be privy to what your company offers. So get them into your pipeline. Your booth should be your best foot-forward representation of your company, which extends to you as a representative. Drive forward your value proposition, be prepared, and make the most of your time at the trade show to take advantage of the most underrated way to gain new business outside social media.If you want to learn more about dominating at trade shows, check out our course at training.technicalsalesu.comWhat are some ways to convert marketing-qualified leads into sales-qualified leads?Marketing-qualified leads (MQLs) are prime for closing. They have gone through enough of the gamut of marketing, advertising, cold-calling, etc., to be familiar with the product or service you offer and may be interested to learn more. The initial conversation has already been made by marketing. This is where the sales team takes the baton of MQLs into sales-qualified leads (SQLs) and does their best to convert them. The best way for sales to close that gap and bring these prospects into a deal is to continue to follow up with them aggressively. Keep warm calling, connect and message them on LinkedIn, and be omnipresent in any way you can to get them to sign up for a calling session and eventually take the plunge into the product or service you are offering.#industrialmarketing  #tradeshowmarketing  #technicalsales  __________Subscribe For More Video Content :https://www.youtube.com/kylemilan__________Say Hi on Social:LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/kylemilan/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kylejmilanFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/KyleJMilan/__________Connect For Business:MFG Tribe: https://mfgtribe.comMFG Tribe on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/mfgtribe/Technical Sales University: https://training.technicalsalesu.com/enroll

Driving Inbound SAOsWe got to chat with the brilliant MJ Peters (VP of Marketing at CoLab), to hear about the 3 main levers she pulls to drive inbound SAOs. Namely: Eyeballs Messaging First Sales Call We'll go through a summary of each of these levers below, and pull out some insights on how she's using them to grow CoLab's SAOs and revenue.How They Improved ItLever 1: EyeballsMJ works to get as many of the right eyes as possible to look at the brand and messaging. This means creating content for 2 categories: Demand capture (e.g. SEO & paid search) Demand creation (e.g. paid ads on social) For demand capture content, she makes sure Product Marketing and Demand Gen work in sync, so the messaging is consistent. The ad should offer a hook or summary, but the site should expound upon it.When she's running social ads, she's looking at engagement & CTR as a leading metric of how it's performing. As it runs, she'll look at profiles of who comments or likes, and adjust the audience over time to make sure it's reaching only the most relevant job titles. For demand capture content (typically paid search or SEO), there's less flexibility over the messaging, because the prospect is looking for a specific thing.So her goal is to respond from a positioning perspective to meet prospects where they're already at.Lever 2: Messaging on the websiteOnce she gets eyeballs on the website, she makes sure what they're reading resonates with them and leads them to convert. At this point, she's used content on outside platforms to catch prospects with a hook and generate demand to learn more. And now that those prospects are on the website, she has a better opportunity to elaborate on the key value points she shared off-platform.To help her craft the best messaging, MJ has 1:1 calls with customers and listens to sales recordings on Gong. First, she identifies the use case they came to CoLab for. Then she sifts through dozens of pains/talking points and distills the top 3 or 4 that come up the most. These will become the 3-4 talking points on that specific use case page.For example, one use case may be using CoLab to lower costs, by designing costs out of their products. So MJ will identify the top 3-4 pain talking points around that, and use them on that use case page.Ultimately, this allows her to have the best chance at saying things that resonate with customers and drive the highest conversion. And as we mentioned earlier, she carefully maps this messaging in the “get eyeballs” stage, so demand gen is more effective and the prospect experiences more consistency.Lever 3: The first sales callOn the first call, MJ makes sure what the prospect hears, lines up with the marketing messaging they saw.In other words:Find the promised value that drove the prospect. Then give them a taste of that value, right away, in the first call.To help her do this, MJ uses different demo booking forms on each use case page. So when a prospect books a demo, she can dig into the CRM to let the rep know what use case the prospect is interested in, and what pages they visited.Consider the traditional experience:The prospect reads a use case page about how your product will help them reduce time and save money. They come excited to learn how you'll help them do that. But on the first call, they get peppered with 25 discovery questions.This is a poor, unhelpful experience.Instead, marketing can dig into the deal in HubSpot and see that the Contact booked a demo on your Solutions page around “saving time”. They can relay that context to the rep, so the rep highlights exactly how the product saves time.By being involved in the first call, MJ's team is better aligned with sales and delivers a more relevant experience for the customer. She feels many companies invest heavily in the first 2 levers, but ignore this one, which results in a leaking funnel at this stage.ResultsMJ only recently started the role, and has spent most of the time heavily investing in refining their messaging on all these levers. But it's already starting to pay off.In all her time in marketing, she's never seen messaging have as big of an impact as it has at CoLab. She's also seen the quality of SQLs and SAOs in the pipeline become much higher, specifically in terms of firmographic fit and qualitative motivation for reaching out.

Show Resources Here were the resources we covered in the episode: Performance chart Demographics Audience segmentation Make optimizations Bidding/Budgeting AB testing NEW LinkedIn Learning course about LinkedIn Ads by AJ Wilcox Contact us at Podcast@B2Linked.com with ideas for what you'd like AJ to cover.   Show Transcript What if I told you that I was going to lay out all the different ways that I handled LinkedIn Ads reporting and optimizations in one single episode of the LinkedIn Ads Show? interested? Let's go. Welcome to the LinkedIn Ads Show. Here's your host, AJ Wilcox. Hey there LinkedIn Ads fanatics! One of the topics that we get the most questions on is reporting and optimization on LinkedIn. And it's simple enough to jump in and just build some ads build some audiences. But that means at some point, you have to analyze what you're doing, and decide what's working and what to do differently. This is an episode that was requested by one of our subscribers, Mark Bissoni, who's a digital ads pro in Chester, England. And in this episode, we're gonna go through how you can use all the data that LinkedIn provides, both within campaign manager, as well as some of the things that you can do once you get the data out of campaign manager and into Excel. And also, because building reports is such a visual thing, I'm going to do a series of videos on our YouTube channel, where I walk you through how to build each of the different types of reports that I'm talking about. So make sure you click the link in the show notes to our YouTube channel, and follow that so you can get notified when they get released. This week in the news, I just saw that the link to business manager appeared suddenly in the left hand navigation at the bottom of all of our accounts. So it may still be a feature that's rolling out if you don't happen to see it in your account yet, but it is coming and it's probably out for most. For those of you who don't know, what business manager is, it is LinkedIn is answer to Google's MCC, or multiclient center. Early on, it was a big challenge for agencies who advertised on Google, because they would have to go and grant every one of their employees access to the Google Ads account. And what was especially painful is that once a Google Ads account was connected to an email address, that email address, couldn't administrate or have access to any other Google Ads account. So Google came out with the multiclient center or MCC. And it's a group where you can have multiple accounts granted access to a single email address. And that's how agencies manage Google Ads. Facebook lots of years later came out with business manager. LinkedIn is very, very close to that. Obviously, LinkedIn is following in Facebook's footsteps most closely of all the platforms. And it's making it a lot easier for agencies to grant access to their team, just by adding their team member to one business manager account, instead of adding that same team member to every single LinkedIn ads account that you have. So this is something that the community has been asking for for a long time. And it's a great release. I want to highlight a review that came in this week. It was left by Gabe Harris, who runs Facqt Media, and they're a paid social agency out of Oakland, California. And I got to actually meet him when I was out on a trip to the Bay Area years ago, way cool guy. And he said, "Insightful LinkedIn expert. Indeed, this podcast is like having a LinkedIn ad coach for free. I love how generous AJ and his guests are in sharing their knowledge and expertise. I love how he leaves these experts to offer the best of their knowledge and experience to us listeners. Super insightful, we learned so much." Thanks so much gave, I really appreciate the kind sentiments there. That's exactly our goal. We treat this podcast like training for our own employees. And we don't hold back. I'm glad it's been good for you and your team as well. As a reminder, I love to give a shout out to those of you who leave reviews for us. So please take this as a sincere ask for me. If this show has been of any use to you, please do return us the favor by leaving us a review. I'd love to shout you out. Okay, let's hit it. Starting out with a little bit of a disclaimer, we may not touch on every single optimization or reporting case, but we're gonna hit a lot of the most common ones. We've definitely tried. But I'm guessing that we probably have 40 or 50 different reports that we've built for clients over the years. So my hope is we hit the major ones. But definitely if there's a type of report that we didn't hit on here that you'd like to use, please get in touch and let us know. So let's start out with the types of reporting that we can do from right within campaign managers dashboard. One of the things that I like to do is go in and look in the campaign's view. And I will sort the campaigns from high spend to low spend. What this does, it shows me in case I have limited time, let's say I only have five or ten minutes to look at campaigns in between meetings. If I sorta like this, I'm going to be immediately analyzing the five most impactful campaigns in the account because they're driving the most volume they're spending the most. Also big spenders is how you find out your most expensive mistakes that are going on. So this is a great way to analyze. It can also be really nice to sort your campaigns by click through rate from high to low, because then you're looking at the five most active audiences. Or if I'm looking to improve campaigns, I might sort from low to high. And it's that toggle is a little bit janky on LinkedIn. So basically, every time you hit one of those filters, you never know which way it's going to sort. But if you're looking at your click through rates from low to high, you're seeing those audiences that you may have created ads that aren't hitting the mark, that could be a good clue that those are good ones that you need to go in and adjust, launch new ad copy, consider different offers, really anything to get that back up and performing. If you're using LinkedIn lead gen forms, it can be nice to sort by cost per lead, or lead form completion rate from either high to low or low to high. If you're going high to low, you're seeing your top performers that you can maybe pour a little bit more gas on how to get that fire burning brighter, or the ones with the lowest could be a good one to either launch new ad copy, or consider if that might be the right audience for you. Another sort that we like to do is buy cost per click either high to low or low to high, looking at those audiences that are the most competitive. Plus, that can also show you opportunities if you're paying too much for clicks, that could be campaigns that you want to go in and try to launch ad copy that might be more engaging or evocative. Because if you can get click through rates up, your cost per click are likely going to come down. Now you can go in insert in campaign manager by ads the same way. The big challenge was doing this though, is that if your account is anything like the way that we run ours, you may have a lot of ads. And a lot of those ads might be similar to each other, or even exact copies. And so if you're looking at just your top five performing ads, and three of them are the same thing, it's not going to give you very much insight. So in the second half of the show, we're going to talk about exporting to excel, and the type of ad analysis that you can do there. So we'll wait on that one. But if you are running a very small account with few ads, few campaigns, you can still do this from right within campaign manager. The next area that could be helpful to you is clicking on performance chart. Now, Episode 52 goes into a lot of depth about what you can do with the performance chart. But I like to chart my click through rate over time, because that tells me if my ads are losing steam, people are tired of seeing them, they've saturated that audience. And I can actually see that in real time by charting over time. For budgeting purposes, it's also really helpful to chart your spend over time. If your account is really complex. It's a lot better to do this in Excel. But if you just need a quick look of like, oh, how was my account spending? Or how do my weekdays spend compared to my weekends, it's really nice to do that inside of performance chart. I also like to chart my costs per click over time to see are my audiences getting more competitive? Am I paying too much for any sort of audience, it can be a really valuable one to look at. If you're using LinkedIn lead gen form ads, I like to look at cost per lead, or even lead volume over time. If you were using conversions on the website, this doesn't make nearly as much sense, because there's oftentimes a lag in conversion showing up in the account, or sometimes not even showing up at all, as we're starting to understand what third party cookie is going away is is doing for all of our advertising efforts. But anytime someone fills out a form, LinkedIn knows immediately and so those lead counts are always accurate. Another reason why I don't want to use the performance chart to look at anything regarding conversions is that LinkedIn is definition of conversion is not one that I like to use. If you'll remember, LinkedIn is definition for conversions is all click conversions, plus all view through conversions. And I like to omit view through conversions from my calculations. And so this is a lot better to do by exporting to excel. And then you can use exactly the conversion that you want to use for that definition. One thing I wanted to try to chart inside of the performance chart is frequency. And what I was hoping to see is, as I continue advertising to an audience, how fast frequency climbs. Now, I might be dumb here, but I can't make sense of actually what that chart is showing. So if charting frequency over time in performance charts, if it makes sense to you, please do reach out and let us know how you use it. Like I said I've wanted to use it. I just haven't found a good use case for it. Next, go and click into your add demographics. And it's a button right next to performance chart right there in campaign manager. We went into a lot of depth on the demographics in Episode 54. But here's how we use it. So after we get feedback from a sales team, they'll oftentimes tell us which audience segments are making up higher quality leads or lower quality leads. So if we can look at the ad demographics and see how many of them are interacting with our ads, that could give us the ammo to go and add exclusion segments to our campaigns to get those lower quality folks out. We can also see which ones are high quality, and try to boost those campaigns, it is really important that you have a close feedback loop with your sales team, make sure you have a strong relationship there. It's some of the best advice I can give you as an advertiser. Another way that we like to use the demographics is let's say that you have a high click through rate over the course of a campaign. You can go in and look at who is doing the clicking here. And that can give you a good idea of the personas. Maybe it's certain job functions who are doing the majority of the clicking, or maybe it's seniorities, or job titles, but look at who is actually driving up your click through rates. Are they the right people or the wrong people. Because if you have a really high click through rate, but a low conversion rate, this is one way we can analyze and figure out why it could be that the offer isn't attractive enough. Or it could be your targeting that you're not hitting the right people. They might get to your landing page and realize that it's not for them and disqualify themselves. So double check inside your demographics tab. If it looks like you're hitting the right people, then that might be a clue that your offer needs some work, maybe optimize or change or adjust. But if you're not hitting the right people, your offer could be fine and you might not need to adjust anything there. Okay, here's a quick sponsor break. And then we'll dive into analyzing outside of campaign manager my absolute favorite, The LinkedIn Ads Show is proudly brought to you by B2Linked.com, the LinkedIn Ads experts. If you're a B2B company and care about getting more sales opportunities with your ideal prospects, then chances are LinkedIn Ads are for you. But the platform isn't easy to use, and can be painfully expensive. On the front end, at B2Linked, we've cracked the code to maximizing ROI while minimizing costs. Our methodology includes building and executing LinkedIn Ads strategies customized to your unique needs, and tailored to the way a B2B consumers buy today. Over the last 11 years, we've worked with some of the largest LinkedIn advertisers in the world. We've spent over $150 million on the platform and our official LinkedIn partners. If you want to generate more sales opportunities with your ideal prospects, book a discovery call at B2linkedin.com/apply, we'd absolutely love to get to work with you. Alright, let's jump into the awesome analysis of ads and campaigns that you can do within Excel. So this may not be evident to everyone. But inside of campaign manager, you have that button that says Export. And if you're pretty good with Excel, chances are you've already used this button a lot. But we actually prefer exporting data rather than using LinkedIn's dashboard. Just because the data is a lot easier to see a bird's eye view and a lot easier to digest. It's also a lot easier to chart over time, because the performance chart is really limited in lots of ways. So here's how you actually get this data out. You click that export button in the upper right of campaign manager. Once you've selected the date range that you care about, then it's going to ask you what kind of report. There are quite a few options there so the two that I care about are ad performance and campaign performance. If I want to analyze my different ads, I go with ad performance. If I only care about the campaign's, then I'll do campaigns. Then it's going to ask you about your time breakdown. If you want to see trends over time, you need to do a time breakdown either by day or by month. And this will allow you to see your changes over time. But if you only need a snapshot of understanding, like what happened during the month of August, for instance, then you can just do time break down all time. Your best friend in Excel is going to be a pivot table. A pivot table allows you to combine all of a certain type of something and have it automatically do all the calculations of adding all that performance together. So if I have 15 ads running in an account, but it's actually only three ads duplicated five times with one pivot table, I can combine all similar ads into one entity. And then it will show me the performance of that ad all the way across the account, rather than having to add them all together myself. With any sort of report that I build in Excel, I'm likely going to add the columns of spend, impressions, click through rate, and cost per click. Spend is helpful to see what kind of volume something is driving. Impressions can be helpful in troubleshooting. But most of the time I'm going to use impressions in some ratio like click through rate or cost per impression. Now these are all metrics around the first hurdle that we talk about sometimes, where we're trying to understand how effective our ads are at getting attention. That's our first hurdle we need to get prospects over is getting them to actually click on the ads. I like to use the color scale in Excel, and color code each of these columns by low to high. So I can visualize a lot easier, which campaigns tend to have higher costs or higher click through rates, then the columns I start to analyze. The second hurdle is what we need to get prospects over is to get them to take some sort of an action that we want like to convert. So I'm going to add things like conversions. And like I mentioned before, I'm going to use click conversions, not just LinkedIn's combined definition of conversion, with view through conversions included. I also want to see conversion rate, but I'm going to build my own formula for that, which if you watch our YouTube videos here that we're going to release, you'll see why. I also want to look at cost per conversion. Now, if the only data you have is data from LinkedIn's campaign manager, then this is as far as you go, you've got both of those hurdles. The click and engagement metrics, as well as the conversions metrics and you can do some cool analysis here. But if you are a master advertiser, Surely you've connected your LinkedIn ads data with your CRM data to allow you to do things like a calculation of what's my cost per marketing qualified lead, or my cost per sales qualified lead, or cost per proposal given or cost per closed deal, that will tell us my ROI. If I have that data, I also want to look at graduation rate from MQL to SQL, or SQL to proposal or close rate, because that's going to teach me if I have one campaign that looks good on a cost per lead, but only 20% of MQLs are becoming SQL files, but my average is more like 50%, then I know there's something wrong with that audience, either the way that we're presenting to them, or the way we're targeting them, or the way that sales is nurturing them. It's also really nice to get counts of your number of MQLs, or SQLs, or proposals, or close deals from your LinkedIn Ads efforts. And one of the coolest things about a pivot table in Excel is that you can just bring new metrics down into your pivot table, to break out your audiences or break out anything that you care about to look at it separately. So for instance, if I'm looking at a whole bunch of campaigns, it's not going to be very meaningful to me, if a text ad campaign has a really low click through rate, and a sponsored content campaign has a really high one. They're just not even on the same playing field. But if I take ad type, and I move it down into my rows, now it will group all of my campaigns by ad type, along with its own nice little summary. And now I can measure my different ad types differently because they all act very differently, they deserve to be treated separately. I also really like to break out these reports, if I'm doing AB tests. So if I could break my As separately out from my Bs, then you can very quickly tell what's working and what's not working, what sort of messaging you can do, there are some great insights you can get from doing that. You could also do a cohort analysis, where let's say you launched new ads this week. And you want to look at how this cohort compares to your last cohort, maybe you launched ads a month ago or two weeks ago, you can then compare them very easily with a pivot table. If you're running multiple offers, it's really nice to segment by offer, so that you can figure out very quickly which offer is performing like we want, which one is not. And if you've segmented your audiences, like we recommend in your account, you can now pull certain things out of the campaign name, allowing you to do these micro segments where you break them out. So you could break out all performance by seniority, or by the industry that you're targeting, or by company size. You can break things out by geography, assuming that you have different campaigns for each geography, you can compare different job titles or different job functions. So this is one that we really liked to do. But it does require that ahead of time you've micro segmented all of your audiences. And if you want to learn how we do that, that's episode 65 so you can go and do the same thing in your accounts. And just another note on combining data from your CRM. In order to do this, you do need to track all of your ads with UTM parameters or some sort of URL parameter. And that's how you can then marry your performance data from LinkedIn to your CRM data. HubSpot actually does a really good job of doing this naturally. So if you're already using HubSpot, you may already have this done for you without having to do anything else. On our own campaigns. We have UTM tracking and leads coming in. But sometimes we'll get leads that have no source of UTMs. But we do have one extra barrier here. We asked on our form, how did you hear about us, and fairly regularly, we'll see people say that they heard about us from LinkedIn Ads, but they didn't come in with tracking parameters. So what that tells us is likely people are seeing and maybe even clicking on the ads, but they're just navigating to our homepage and contacting us there. So it's nice that we don't have to pay for that click for sure if they're not clicking, but it does muddy our data a little bit, because those leads aren't directly attributable to the exact ad or the exact campaign. But in marketing, we do have to get used to that. We do have some attributable results. So just learn how to take that in stride. When we have this data, I do like to look at the different campaigns or audience segments that brought in closed one deals. If we're at the beginning of a campaign, we might not see closed deals happening super quickly, because we're still pushing people through the funnel. But if we've been working with someone for a year, lots of times, we're going to have plenty of that data that we can share, we can also see the individual ads or ad messaging that's driving either a lot of sales qualified leads, or proposals or close deals, we can see the campaign's or the audiences that tend to drive them the highest quality. And of course, once you've been running long enough to have closed deals, then you can do that amazing ROI calculation. That's done by just taking the closed deal value and dividing it by the spend, your organization might want to do a fully loaded ROI calculation. So it's maybe what you're paying for a sales rep to close the deal, maybe what you're paying for an agency to manage it, maybe even your own salary as an internal employee. So just find out from your boss, what sort of ROI calculation they want to see. So let's talk about some of the actual analysis that you can do. One of the things that we've done with one of our clients is, they came to us with a goal, they wanted us to average a $40 cost per lead. And when we very first started working with them, they might have been up in the 50s, and maybe even 60s. And over time, we've been able to optimize those down within range and even below their goal. But even if you don't know the goal that you want to work with, you can definitely just find your current average, and look at the things that are performing below average, and try to cut those out. And then look at the things that are performing above average, and feed those. And what that's going to do is it's going to incrementally improve your performance, it's going to bring your average cost per lead, or whatever metric that you're optimizing towards, down steadily. So what we might do in this case, we might get a report of all of the different campaigns in the account into a spreadsheet. And then we're gonna sort or color by either the highest performing or the lowest performing of campaigns in all the different metrics. In this case, we were looking at a cost per lead. But you could do the same thing with a click through rate or a total spend. And as we're sorting and color coding, what we're looking for are the weak spots. Eric Jones, who's our Director of Marketing, told me, "The reason why I love this is because it helps you find inefficiencies in your ad account." If you have certain campaigns or ads driving costs up, or volume down, for example, you can improve account efficiency by pausing them, or lowering bids and allocating your budget to those that are performing well. So Eric shared a couple of these levers, but think about what are the different levers in your account that control the weak spots that you found. We did a whole episode on optimization tactics. So if you haven't listened to it already, go listen to episode 50. But likely, what you're going to find is you have a handful of campaigns with really high cost per lead, and a handful with really low cost per lead. And if you want to decrease your cost per lead, you want to increase the spend and volume on those that are performing really well. And then restrict the spend that's happening from the higher costs, and then your whole average cost per lead is going to drop. So what are those levers that you can pull? Well, if it's the high performers that you're looking to feed, can you possibly give them more budget, if they are budget restricted? This might be as simple as just increasing your budget on those high performing campaigns, and you just get more coming out. Can you bid them higher without killing their efficiency? So let's say the cost per lead is 20% below average, if you increase your bids by five or 10%, you're still going to be performing below your average cost per lead, which is great. And you'll just get more volume out of it. Maybe you can narrow down what's the best performing ad copy that you're using, and scale that out. So it's running in more campaigns, or you're doing more like it? How about we look at the poor performers, and we're looking for ways to starve them. Eric mentioned a little bit of this, but one of the biggest levers we have is to lower bids. Of course, you can always shut a campaign off. But a lot of the time, it can be better just to lower bids rather than pause. So let's say that you have a really high conversion rate, but you also have a high cost per lead. What that means is you're paying too much, and it could be that you're bidding too high. Anytime our cost per lead is higher than we like, but not egregious. We can always just incrementally lower bids. And of course, my favorite part about this is, as you lower your bids, your account efficiency increases, while your volume gets cut a little bit. Another option you can do to start lower performers is to lower your budget. So, if their bids are already at the floor, and you're still spending too much, then it could be a good idea to lower your budgets. And this is, especially if you have great click through rates and a small budget, you'll probably run into this. If you're not touching your bids at all, this is kind of a lazy or a short term fix to lower your budget. You usually want to lower your budget, at the same time as you're lowering bids if you can. If you're already bidding at the floor or something, obviously, you can't. I mentioned pausing entirely. Now, I don't like doing this usually, because it's a big move, it's giving up on something entirely, and it's shutting off data that you could be using to learn. Episode 65 is all about micro segmenting campaigns, as we talked more about this, so go listen to that if you haven't already. But if you have a continued track record of poor performance, and you've already done a lot with it, you've already lowered bids, you've already lowered budgets, you've already changed and tested a whole bunch of new things. If you have sufficient data to tell you that it's not working, that's a good clue that you can actually pause a whole campaign or a set of ads entirely. Also, if sales or marketing says that an audience isn't valuable, or isn't high quality down the sales process, then it almost doesn't matter what the data says about how people are interacting with the ads, you're probably free to just pause it. Every once in a while we'll have a client come to us and they'll say, hey, my boss just cut our budget so we have half the budget to work with this month. And in that case, you can go through the worst performers, and just temporarily pause those. And what's cool about that, again, is your overall efficiency for the account increases while your budget got cut. Now, as you're going through and analyzing inside of Excel, you're gonna come across different scenarios, that might be a little confusing, or you might not know what to do with them. So let's go through a couple of those crazy off the wall situations that you'll see. One might be you have a really high cost per click, and a high click through rate. The high click through rate means that you should be able to lower your costs. So you can try bidding down or changing your bidding strategy. But if you lower your bids, and your click through rate goes down as well, it means that you're probably bidding for the right spot in the ad inventory and you're essentially paying a premium for that placement. What about if you have a low click through rate, but a high conversion rate? How would you handle something like that? What that tells me is usually the offer, or the call to action is really good, but the ad messaging might need some help. Maybe we're not properly communicating to people what the value of clicking on that ad is. If you're having a hard time generating clicks at a healthy rate, then it's probably something to do with your ad. Or in the case of not getting any impressions, it could be that your bids are just not competitive enough. What about those high volume campaigns? So let's say that you have a strict volume goal, your department is telling you, we need 200 leads per month out of LinkedIn, for instance. Well, if you look and you have one campaign that's driving half of all of that, even if the cost per lead is higher than your goal, you might be okay just continuing to run that high volume campaign, just to not disrupt your volume. In this case, meeting your goals is probably more important than account efficiency. But if you do need to adjust to get higher efficiency, make small adjustments to this campaign, you don't want to kill the golden goose that's laying all those golden eggs. You can try going into the other campaigns on the account and trying to improve performance there while leaving the big driver alone. What about if you have high performance, but you're not getting good volume from it. One of our most listened to episodes is episode six, about bidding and budgeting. That is gospel that you should go and study if you haven't already, but in this case, one of the strategies you can use is going to increase your bids, because that's going to make you more competitive in the auction and all of a sudden your ads are going to be shown to more of the people in that audience that you might not be reaching. If you are budget constrained, which you definitely shouldn't be budget constrained, if you're really on top of things. But if you are, it could be as simple as just increasing the budget on those high performing campaigns that aren't getting enough volume. If it's due to small audience size, let's say the audience that you're targeting has really good performance. But there's only 3000 people in that audience. One thing you could do is you could go try to increase your audience sizes. Now I'm not recommending that you target people who aren't relevant to your audience. But if you can find people who are still relevant that you can add to the audience, all the better. You could also go and test into new audience segments. So analyze the targeting that you're using and See if there's any type of targeting that you're not using to reach your ideal customer profile. If it's a click through rate issue where you're not getting enough traffic from an audience, you could go and borrow what's working well, in other campaigns, maybe there's different ad copy or different offers there that are getting a higher click through rate, and you can move them over and test them to this audience. Now, most of that analysis that I'm talking about has been around campaigns. But like I mentioned earlier, you can analyze your different ads as well. So pivot tables are definitely going to be your friend here. I like to add either the intro or the headline, whatever is staying the same across all of the different ads you're running. I like to add them into my columns. Now I'm combining the performance of each ad individually to compare against the other ads, then I'm going to be comparing things. Whatever AB test I'm running, but I'm going to be comparing, like motivation against motivation, or call to action versus call to action, image versus image, all kinds of different things. And go back and listen to episode 36. That's all about ABX testing if you want more ideas there. All right, I've got the episode resources for you coming right up, so stick around. Thank you for listening to the LinkedIn Ads Show. Hungry for more? AJ Wilcox, take it away. Like I mentioned at the beginning of the episode, go subscribe to the B2Linked YouTube channel, because we're going to put videos up here over the next coming weeks and months, showing exactly how we do some of these analyses. I wanted to talk you through it here. But obviously, it's a very visual thing to be working inside of Excel. So go subscribe to the YouTube channel and get notified as they come out. We also released a blog post all about navigating the LinkedIn campaign manager dashboard. So if you don't know where to click on some of these things, check out the link for that in the show notes below. Go read that blog post, it'll be a great one. The episodes that I mentioned here in this episode, there's the performance chart, that's episode 52. There's the Add demographics episode, that's episode 54. There's audience segmentation, Episode 65. There's optimization strategies, that's episode 50. There's bidding and budgeting, which is episode six. And of course, the one we just most recently mentioned, is the AB testing episode, Episode 36. Now, if you or anyone you know, is looking to learn more about LinkedIn Ads, go check out the course that I did with LinkedIn Learning. It is by far the highest quality and the lowest cost course out there, you can't go wrong. The link for that is right in the show notes below. Also, if you liked what you heard, it probably goes without saying, but do subscribe on using whatever podcast player you're on. And I'm saying this seriously, if you've gotten any sort of value out of this show listening, your fee is to leave us a review. It would sincerely mean a lot to me and all of us here at B2Linked who work so hard on the show. So please don't just think everyone else is gonna go do it. I want you to go leave us a review. That would be the best way you can say things with any questions, suggestions, corrections, anything, reach out to us at Podcast@B2Linked.com. And with that being said, we'll see you back here next week. Cheering you on in your LinkedIn Ads initiatives.

Having been with Refine Labs, MJ Peters knew how to sniff out the opportunity to work with a company that gets marketing. Now four months into her new gig as the VP of Marketing for CoLab Software, MJ talks about building a demand gen first marketing model where marketing is measuring only Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) and Sales Accepted Opportunities (SAOs) as opposed to anything further up the funnel (like MQLs, content downloads, etc.) that's normally tracked in the lead gen model. That's still hard to do—the industry has problem awareness (engineer tools live on a desktop making it hard to collaborate efficiently) but making the case to do anything about it is still a tough sell. And it takes time. Demand gen happens more slowly than lead gen because you're measuring lagging metrics instead of leading indicators. Leadership has the stomach for it though. They've invested heavily in customer research, and MJ sees the opportunity to create a category for “Design Engagement Systems” where people would eventually search more on that term, leading right to them. Given that most companies aren't working with a blank slate, MJ also has advice for those that want to make the shift but can't turn lead gen off overnight. And as long as they're open minded, the right marketing leader can have a big impact. 

Insights on Driving SQLs via LinkedIn Ads:1. Use benchmarks to identify competitive advantages.Look for instances where SQL rate (lead to meeting ratio) is 2-3x higher than average, and come up with a hypothesis as to what caused that growth.Then, see if you can duplicate it in another campaign.Once Remotion finds meaningful variance, they determine if the higher performance was owing to factors that can be duplicated.If so, they'll increase the budget and spin off a new campaign where they lean into the things that made the former campaign perform so well.2. Get qualitative insights into ad performance.His team uses common sense, and deep familiarity with their clients to create a hypothesis of why a campaign saw meaningful change in performance.By talking with clients, they're able to learn what's happening that might be affecting performance.For example, after talking with the client they learn that John – the company's best SDR – is on vacation.This is the cause of lower results down-funnel.And since they have access to their client's CRMs accounts, they're able to be proactive in looking at any other factors that impact ad results that they might not have seen by staring at performance numbers in the Ad platform.3. Remain “strategy agnostic” until you find what works for you.Gabriel has seen a lot of commonly accepted truisms fall on their face when applied to Clients in different countries or industries.4. Look at performance often enough to derive insights, but avoid knee-jerk decisions.Remotion gives each client gets their own real-time dashboard which shows: CPL Last 7-day CPL Trend over last 30 days Comparison to previous 30 days … and more.They know what a client's current CPL is every day.But for metrics further down the funnel, they evaluate them monthly. This helps them make more informed decisions based on proven trends, and avoid knee-jerk reactions to a bad (or good) week.5. Determine your campaign goals early.Most companies run 2 types of campaigns:Direct response = promote your product, get someone to talk to youContent = promote your POV & provide valueEach generates different outcomes, so choose the one that best serves your goals. If you aren't sure which type of campaign you want to run, Gabriel advises running both, then determining the CPL. Benchmark your performance to know if one is higher than the industry average. If it is, use that one.6. What companies get wrong about LinkedIn ads: Under-investing Being inconsistent Being unclear about their goal Not having messaging honed in Having an inactive audience on LinkedIn Not being ready (too early, no product-market fit) 7. Testing messaging through LinkedIn ads can be costly.You need a lot of data to see how it impacts SQO rate.For example, you want to run 2 tests: so you need 50 leads on each (100 total, to have enough meaningful data) > and your CPL is $100.That means 1 test costs 10k. This can be great if you have a 100k budget. But if your budget is 15k/mo, then it means you spent almost an entire month testing 1 message variant.If that's worth it, that's great. But Remotion finds that often, it's not significant enough to justify the investment.

Most of our clients at Market Vantage offer products or services that are considered 'highly considered purchases'. This creates the need for prospecting and advertising that is different than for companies that thrive on impulse purchases. When marketing a product or service that is carefully thought about, a carefully crafted buyer's journey and detailed buyer personas are necessary for success. The goal is not to just interrupt the flow and get content in front of a potential buyer, but rather to create content for each persona at each part of their buyer's journey. You may notice fewer clicks and impressions, but you will see an increase in MQLs, SQLs, opportunities, and sales as our methods are more effective and focused. In this week's Digital Marketing Mondays, Hans and Devin discuss the right way to market highly considered purchases and dive into the tools and methods you'll need to get the end results you are hoping to achieve.

Sign up to all live workshops and podcasts here: https://lu.ma/fullfunnel

Are you wondering how the B2B process works? Or do you want to know the best practices for generating MQLs and SQLs? Or are you interested to know the recommendations & best strategies for marketers to enable sales with better-qualified leads? If yes, then tune in as we bring to you, Episode 2 of the B2B POD where our host Radwa Hassan with our guest Umesh Malhotra speaks about Why you must create a brand new lead scoring model in 2022 to talk to hidden SQLs? Get all insights from our guest Umesh Malhotra the B2B Expert with an experience of 20 years in the B2B Space as he addresses all the aspects of MQLs and SQLs. In this Episode,●  We introduce you to our guest, Umesh Malhotra●  Give you an overview of the challenges of lead conversion for MQLs and SQLs●  Our guest gives recommendations & best strategies for conversions of MQLs, SQLs, and  SQOs   In closing, we'd like to say thank you for tuning in to The B2B POD this week. We hope to see you for Episode 3.Episode highlights - [00:48] Radwa Hassan introduces the guest Umesh Malhotra[01:10] About Umesh [01:54] Radwa asks about why you must create a brand new lead scoring model in 2022 to talk to hidden SQL's[02:33] Umesh explains the challenges before and after the pandemic for qualifying leads [03:29] Umesh explains the pain points of the prospects after the pandemic[04:45] Umesh explains the B2B industry going digital due to the pandemic [05:16] Radwa asks what are your recommendations for marketers to enable sales with better-qualified leads. [08:13] Radwa asks what type of qualifying questions and filters do you use with your targets to have a better grading[10:38] Radwa asks how do you see buyer intent as a qualifying approach[12:35] Radwa asks would you pay less for a larger number of MQLs or a much higher cost for an SQO?   [16:04] Umesh explains the importance of SQL leads[16:34] Umesh explains the Challenges of converting MQLs[20:12] Radwa asks Umesh for recommendations for conversion of MQLs[21:59] Umesh explains the best digital platforms for engagement [23:36] The endMeanwhile, you can follow us on the following platforms to never miss out on any updates:Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/theb2b_pod/Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/TheB2BPODLinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/78324636/Website - https://www.thepodcast.ae/theb2bpod/Radwa LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/radwa-hassan/Umesh Malhotra - https://www.linkedin.com/in/umesh/Review The B2B POD on your favorite platform to let us know what you think about the show.Thank You!Podcast Description:The B2B POD is the next big source of information about what's happening in the B2B industry. The podcast is a one-stop shop for everyone interested in updating themselves with the latest news, trends, and technologies of the B2B industry. Tune in and listen to the intriguing conversations with our season host Radwa Hassan as she covers a profuse number of topics with a diverse set of guests.

This episode of Quotaless features Raj Singh, Founder and CEO of Go Moment, which was acquired by Revinate where Raj stays on as their Chief Marketing Officer. Innovation in the hospitality industry couldn't come at a better time when the world was ground to a halt by COVID.Raj shares how Ivy Offer became a game-changer for them and how their strategic partnerships ensured a profitable business model even with the crisis. He talks about the positive impact of their biohacks like the 4-and-a-half day work week and their focus on customer experience and success. HIGHLIGHTSThe shift from Founder to CMOInnovating Go Moment's Ivy Offer to thrive during COVIDAlign sales and marketing and focus on SQLsOn-ramp and create value for customer success  Bio-hacks: 4-and-a-half day work week and breathing exercisesQUOTESRaj: "Similar to Go Moment, we didn't just bring a product into the market where four, five alternatives already existed. We created an entire new category of products and that's exactly what Revinate is doing as well, which is bringing in a new category of products into market."Raj: "We created Ivy Offer. We made it very easy for guests to order food and beverage, limos instead of Ubers, all that kind of good stuff, when they're celebrating and, of course, with the pent-up travel demand. And what we saw is in the first 12 months, which was one of our clients, we drove $15 million of revenue for them with this brand-new product we created during the pandemic. In 12 months of the beta period."Raj: "Maybe the most important metric in your entire business, assuming your retention and all that stuff is all taken care of, is sales qualified leads because that's where marketing needs sales. If your SQLs are doing well, your business is probably doing pretty well."Raj: "It's all about the quality of the delivery that ultimately is the best sales tool." Raj: "We're only a couple of months in at this point. We're about a month in at this point, so it's going great and we've actually seen productivity stay very much steady, maybe even going up in certain cases, and I'd say the other thing that's also been very helpful is just having the kind of team." Find more about Raj by checking out the links below:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajsinghla/Website: https://www.revinate.com/

In this episode of B2B Nation, Nathan Burke, CMO of cybersecurity vendor Axonius, shares with us the five ways he thinks B2B lead generation has changed in the past decade, what his company is doing to keep pace with the changes, his marketing challenges, and more. Episode Guide 1:54: What does Nathan see as the goal of marketing in B2B? 3:00: The 5 things that have changed dramatically about lead gen in the past decade. 3:49: “The hamster wheel of doom.” 4:34: “Being broad isn't working anymore.” 5:56: “Know where [prospects] are and lead them where they want to go.” 8:22: Hello, pipeline. Goodbye, MQLs and SQLs. 9:18: “Be clear, be unique, and stand out.” 10:05: What are Nathan's biggest marketing challenges? 13:16: How is Axonius like a platypus? 17:04: How has the B2B tech-buying process changed since Nathan started his career? 20:00: Will we ever really have a return to in-person events? 26:33: What is Nathan's favorite tool? Learn more about TechnologyAdvice: solutions.technologyadvice.com/solutions-overview/ Sign up for our newsletter: solutions.technologyadvice.com/subscribe/ Follow us: www.linkedin.com/showcase/technol…and-gen-insights

Meet Mandy Thompson, co-founder and CEO of Digital Reach Online Solutions, a full-service digital agency offering holistic solutions focusing on integrations and automations.In this episode, you'll hear about a SaaS case study where they combined ABM with intent data and a HubSpot integration to boost demo bookings by 1,800% and SQLs by 500%. Lots of gems about demand generation await. Enjoy!Notes- 01:40 Helping Clients Succeed at Scale With Holistic Integrations- 02:35 Building Demand With Three Wildly Different Use Cases- 05:45 Shifting the Audiences and the Intent- 07:00 Building Three Funnels- 12:35 Bombora's Surge Audiences- 14:45 Companies' Intent and Buying Committees- 16:35 Deconstructing the Funnel- 19:20 Lightning Questions 

Christian Weisbrodt is one of the most knowledgeable marketing leaders in Europe. He has been working for Microsoft, headed Marketing at Personio, and is now CRO at Finway. He knows what is needed to perfectly align the goals of marketing and sales and also what KPIs to use. We talk about how to define MQLs, SQLs and other variables that will help you get things right early in your go-to-market strategy

Which type of lead is the winner? Sam shares what MQLs and SQLs mean when it comes to sales leads and which you should focus on.

In this episode of SaaS Connect by Cloud Software Association, Rajiv Ramanan, Director of Startup Program and Technology Alliances at Freshworks, shares how the company concentrated on partnerships to grow the business, implementing a marketplace that resulted in 400 more integrations within two years. At the time of the presentation, the company boasted 200,000 customers across seven offices, with nine SaaS products and more than 600 integrations. Revamping their growth strategy meant setting up a marketplace, and the vision for this was twofold: Grow their customer base, and complete retention of customers. Work with companies that are innovators. Within two years after setting up the marketplace, they had an extra 400 integrations. Rajiv provides valuable strategic information: After getting rejected by approaching big brands, they rethought their strategy to find the right partners, and what that meant in terms of growth. For example, people started taking them more seriously, the company grew along with the amount of partnerships — so much so that they became almost the third biggest marketplace in the B2B space at that particular time. Why their focus is on building strong partner relationships, and the benefits of this. The impact of the marketplace on the company, starting out with just a lean team of three that generated close to 3,000 plus SQLs for partners across the marketplace. The future of tech partnerships at Freshworks, and how their plans were to progress from the marketplace to a market network, because in a market network, people bring their identity in and interact with partner networks to generate more value for each other. How they split their marketplace team into hunting (get more valuable partners into the marketplace) and farming (make marketplace partners into a revenue generation engine). Reorganising to scale. Here are the key takeaways of the presentation: Go after strong value propositions, not brands First demonstrate value to partners Consider a marketplace; it may be a good idea for growth Create a strong partnership team to implement all your ideas Resources Mentioned: Dreamforce Thank you to our amazing podcast team at Content Allies! Want to launch your own B2B revenue-generating podcasts? Contact them at https://ContentAllies.com

Becc Holland, CEO of Flip The Script explains why best practice isn't working. Banging her head against fixed mindset leadership she discovered 76% SDR not hitting quota 85% AE not hitting 75% of quota Seriously folks. How the hell is this even remotely acceptable. It is unsustainable and creates dreadful conditions EVERY KPI is wrong! KPI correlation does not point to causation. We are misdefining MQLs, SQLs and making the conflict between marketing and sales. Open your eyes, your ears and your mind. Ask better questions. Start with "Why are we doing things this way?", "Does it serve us today?", "How are we creating completely preventable problems?" "This is how it's done!" is a completely unacceptable and toxic response. Becc and I discuss what is objectively true. You probably won't enjoy this episode because you'll learn how you are double paying to slow down your buyer's journey. Contact Becc via linkedin.com/in/beccholland-flipthescript Website: https://www.flipthescript.co/ -- Contact me on marcus@laughs-last.com -- Tag a founder, CRO, CMO, VP of Sales, VP of Marketing who is screwing the pooch with their metrics, how they compensate to drive away customers, churn salespeople and burn through managers

Chris Walker and Megan Bowen hosted Demand Gen Live again last night and covered the following agenda: -What happens when Marketing aligns to REVENUE instead of "leads" or SQLs, -How "ABM" breaks down at execution, and -The blurring line between marketing & sales as well as how Chris distinguishes the two. They also answered questions about where SDRs should sit in an org chart, the best sources for marketing education, why many marketers end up doing sales not marketing, the issues that come with scaling too quickly, and when you align to revenue what should happen vs. what you'll notice initially happening. Register here for tomorrow's live event with Tom Wentworth, CMO at Recorded Future. We'll be discussing The Catch 22 of Attribution & How B2B Marketers Should Respond. Thanks to our friends at Hatch for producing this episode. Get unlimited podcast editing at usehatch.fm.

Chris Walker and Megan Bowen hosted an hour-long installment of Demand Gen Live last night. They covered: Why optimizing for SQLs instead of MQLs, even though they're further down the funnel, is often counterproductive and causes misalignment, Manual attribution and our findings from implementing this on our site, and how this differs from multi-touch attribution, Demo conversion by source as a means of troubleshooting declining demo requests, YouTube SEO, and How website changes can negatively affect your demand system Register here for Chris's keynote on "The State of LinkedIn Organic in 2021," taking place Thursday July 15th at 9am PDT. Thanks to our friends at Hatch for producing this episode. Get unlimited podcast editing at usehatch.fm.

In our second episode, Lead Generation, Lead Scoring & Qualification, we will be discussing inbound lead generation, outbound lead generation and the internal processes you need to consider. From creatives through to how your team can identify the hot SQLs - we'll cover it all!

What would happen if marketers forgot about leads and demo requests, and focused solely on pipeline and revenue? This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Refine Labs founder and CEO Chris Walker breaks down his unorthodox approach to B2B marketing and explains why he believes most marketers are doing it wrong. Refine Labs hasn't been around long (it was founded in early 2019), but in the few short years since Chris launched the company, it has experienced what most would term hypergrowth and now boasts more than 30 high growth SaaS brands as clients. At the same time, Chris has become somewhat of a household name in marketing circles due to his consistent content creation on LinkedIn and his often contrarian, but always thought provoking, takes on B2B marketing best practices. In this episode, Chris breaks down his approach to marketing and shares insights on why B2B companies should rethink how they approach lead gen. Check out the full episode to get the details.  Resources from this episode: Check out the Refine Labs website Connect with Chris on LinkedIn Transcript Kathleen (00:00): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Booth and my guest today is Chris Walker who's the CEO of Refine Labs. Welcome to the podcast, Chris. Chris (00:32)Great to be on here. It feels like just recently you were on our podcast and looking forward to diving into some topics today. Kathleen (00:39)I love, I love the podcast guest swap. No, I'm, I'm really excited to talk to you because your name comes up a lot. LinkedIn is my favorite platform these days. It's the one I'm the most active on. I really enjoy it. And I hear your name all the time and I'm so glad we're finally getting a chance to get to know each other. So before we jump into deeply to our topic, for those who may be, haven't heard of you, or don't know you, can you just give a brief synopsis of who you are, what you do and how you came to be doing what you're doing today, Chris (01:19)For sure. Yeah. Hey everyone. My name is Chris Walker. I've been in B2B marketing for almost decade now and have done almost all types of marketing for product marketing, field marketing, demand gen and brand. And I use them all together in a lot of different venture funded companies, both as an employee and now as a, a consultant or business owner. At the moment I run a company called Refine Labs. We've been growing rather quickly and we currently work with about 30 enterprise SaaS organizations throughout the US, EMEA and APAC to transform their demand generation programs with the core understanding or belief that the marketing game has changed dramatically, or the go to market game has changed dramatically from lead gen, high volume lead generation to feed sales with people that don't want to buy right now to marketing, executing demand generation, to generate high intent leads that want to buy for sales at a lower volume. Chris (02:12)And that is the core thesis about how we operate, which requires a lot of different changes inside of companies, changing your metrics, changing tactically what you're doing, changing what success looks like at a campaign level, from leads or conversions to something that matters a little bit more deeply like qualified pipeline or revenue. And so that is what we do. I've been operating in this sort of like demand gen framework for the past five years, both as an employee and now as a business owner with a lot of different companies and just find that, objectively, the way we work works way better. Kathleen (02:46)Love it. And what I think is really interesting about your journey is, so my background is I used to own a marketing agency for 11 years, and marketing marketing agencies is challenging, right? Because you're, you're trying to stand out in a very crowded field of all people who are good at marketing. Right. And it is, it's an interesting challenge. And that is why I think when we talk about the inbound success podcast and my profiling people who are doing inbound really well, you really stand out to me because, you know, you're, when did you start Refine Labs? Chris (03:24)April of 2019. Kathleen (03:26)Oh, okay. So this is not, you know, a company that's been around for 10 years. This is a relatively new company that came out of nowhere. And in just a very few short years, it has a ton of buzz. As you said, you've got 30 clients. Kathleen (03:39)Your name is getting talked about a lot throughout the industry. So I feel like if you can, in two years managed to do what you've done and stand out in arguably one of the most competitive industries in which to try and stand out against, you know, a playing field of people who know by and large, what they're doing. If you can do this, then there are massive lessons to be learned for anybody. So I want to talk about how you've done it. And then at some point dive into what you do with your clients, which I suspect is... Chris (04:13)Sorry to interrupt you, but I actually don't find it to be competitive, which I think is the challenge. Like, I don't think that marketing agencies are very good at marketing themselves. And a lot of one's not very good in operating for their clients because they execute a service that is, gets measured on top of funnel metrics that don't matter to a business, which is why the agency doesn't do it for themselves to grow their company. And so I think it's pretty easy when you start scoring on pipeline and revenue and looking at it that way and then reversing back to the activities that are required. One, it creates a massive product development pipeline for our company. And two, we know very clearly it's driving the business because we can measure it in our own revenue. And so it's weird. Like a lot of people say that it's competitive, but I think that from, for the most part, marketing agencies are actually quite poor at marketing themselves. Kathleen (05:04)So let's break this down. You say that the problem has been a focus on top of funnel metrics. And so I'm assuming you're referring to, you know, website, visitor traffic, and then just leads like in a broad category. Is that accurate? Chris (05:19)Yeah. Marketers tend to not spend time in the CRM where actual business data gets generated and tracked. And so anything pre CRM is what I'm talking about. Kathleen (05:30)So, so what does that look like? You're, you're focused on the CRM. You're focused on pipeline opportunities, revenue. What does that look like in terms of how you then market differently? Chris (05:42)So by focusing on pipeline and revenue in the CRM, it actually frees marketers from optimizing for top of funnel metrics. You can get scored later funnel, which gives you a lot more flexibility on what to do. If you're a marketer and you come into a company and they say, we need 3000 MQLs. So this month, and here's your budget and it we're projecting, it's going to cost $30 per lead. Then you actually have no money to do anything else, no money, no time, no mindshare to actually go and figure out how to do a podcast or figure out how to do LinkedIn by scoring on a metric that actually matters to a business. You give your marketers a lot more flexibility to do things that could actually work better from an experimentation standpoint. I think you also free marketers from channel attribution performance marketing, which is really I think hurt marketers over the past decade to a level where it's highly transactional and easy to track. Chris (06:32)And therefore they love doing it because they can track it. But if they actually looked at the stuff that they're tracking, they would realize that they shouldn't be doing it that way. I do that with enough companies and analyze the data of performance marketing lead gen campaigns and how bad it is at a customer acquisition cost payback standpoint period. And like, like, I, I don't, people love to do those things because they can say we got a bunch of leads from LinkedIn, but they never look at how much that customer costs that we got from LinkedIn with all those leads. And that's what I'm suggesting that people do. And so once you get over that that path and you're measuring on qualified pipeline, for instance, one, the numbers get smaller, right? So I don't need to go out and generate 3000 leads. I actually just need to generate 10 leads that convert to a two qualified pipeline. And so it changed once you change the volume metric, you can actually change the tactical level things to having a high intent buyers that convert to qualified opposite 80% versus low intent leads that convert at 1%. And that's what I'm suggesting people do. Kathleen (07:33)So when you come in and I'm assuming you've done this with your own business as well, but like when you look at at a company and you take this approach, you I'm, I'm guessing you start by looking at the deals. They have one to try to look at what has driven those, is that, is that where it starts? Chris (07:54)Yeah. So most of the companies that are operating today from a SaaS standpoint because they get measured on top of funnel and they are obsessed with attribution, everything is tracked. And so it's very, very simple to go into the CRM and track all the different lead sources, all the way to revenue and then calculate things like sales cycle length, lead to win rate, average deal, size, different things like that. That gives you a sense about what is the efficiency of that lead source. Should we even start, keep doing that? You could, if you're doing advertising, you could do direct customer acquisition costs on those things. And what we find is that almost everything that a company is doing from a paid standpoint or a lead gen standpoint is not generating a customer acquisition cost that's anywhere near acceptable. And so once we present that data, it allows executives to help change away from this lead gen mindset. Chris (08:41)And when you look at where the actual revenue came from, which from a marketing source revenue, or however you want to say it, inbound revenue, it's very clear the way that people come in to you to buy stuff, it's they come there on their own to your website. And they ask for a demo or ask to talk to a sales rep, or they have to get pricing. If you don't publish your pricing. And I would say almost any company could do that analysis and at least 70% of their revenue comes through that way. And so it's, how do you use all of the wasted money in advertising? That's happening over here to collect leads and change how that's being used to influence more people to come through your website and ask for a demo or to talk to a sales rep and is ready to qualify and ready to buy. And that's what we're focused on. Kathleen (09:22)And I believe if I'm not mistaken that you call this the revenue growth optimization framework. Chris (09:28)We call that part of the process, split the funnel. So what I find is that companies build their you know, demand waterfall from serious decisions in 2009 and put together one spreadsheet and say, we have to get 30,000 leeds and have blanket conversion rates across the whole funnel. Not respecting that different conversion sources have dramatically different intent levels from buyers and therefore converted significantly different rates. And so by splitting it out by lead source, it helps you identify what are the actual winners here. Kathleen (09:55)So what has worked really well for, for your, how you market your business because you're drinking your own champagne. I don't like to say Kool-Aid, it's sort of a dark metaphor. What's working for you guys? Chris (10:11)Podcasts, LinkedIn events, influencers, organic social. Kathleen (10:16)So dig into that a little bit for me. Let's start with podcast. Chris (10:20)There's a couple of things that work for us here. And I think that what people miss is I just laid out tactics. And I think that people miss on the strategy side, like we are a, we have air quotes for the listeners here of "marketing agency" with a highly differentiated product, sold to a very specific niche that I know needs it that's strategy, right? And so if you don't have a differentiated product and you don't identify your ICP and you start doing these tactics, they may not work as well for you. Strategy first right? And so we have that strategy walked in on who we're selling to, why they need us, why we're uniquely differentiated amongst their alternatives and different things like that. And then we think about it, just content marketing with effective distribution across the channels where people pay attention. Chris (11:08)It's like basically what it comes down to. And so while other agencies continue to write blogs for SEO and spend a hundred dollars a click on marketing agency pricing and all the tactics that people have been doing for 10 years that are mature, expensive and flooded. We continue to do marketing on LinkedIn and still, I don't see any marketing agencies executing well on it. Linkedin and podcasts has been a gold mine for us over the past two years and will continue to be because companies are very slow to react to new opportunities and they have the wrong mindset when it comes to content marketing, which creates a huge opportunity for people that do like our content marketing. I'm not, I'm not measuring on how many leads that I got. I'm not measuring it on transactional. And so just the mindset about how we approach content marketing is the, is the secret advantage for us. Kathleen (12:01)There are a lot of marketing agencies with podcasts. What makes yours different? Chris (12:07)It actually makes an impact for the people that listen to it. I think it's, it's way more actionable, distributed at a much higher frequency from people that actually do progressive stuff. And I think that's why people tune into it. And we get plenty of notes. I would say probably at this point 20 a week from people said, Hey, I listened to your podcast at the beginning. I thought you were full of. And then six months later, I started doing those things and we stopped running ebook downloads on LinkedIn. And we started doing it more like the way that you said, and our pipeline went up by 300% this quarter, the first quarter of this year. And that's what people say. And so I know that it's making an impact. I'm not sure that you get that on other podcasts. So, Kathleen (12:49)So for those who haven't heard of it the name of the podcast, state of demand gen, and it's published how often three times a week, and it is available it's video and audio video Chris (13:03)On YouTube micro video on LinkedIn and long form audio on apple, Spotify, and all those other different channels. A key thing for people to think about there. And I've been talking about, we consult for a lot of people that are doing a podcast, and I hear this thing a lot. We need to make it short because people's attention spans are slowing down or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So we want to do the seven minute podcasts. We, our average podcast length of somewhere between 60 and 90 minutes. Yeah. And so it has nothing to do with the length it has all to do with, is your content good enough to justify someone listening to it for that long? And I want people to think about that if they're getting ready to start a podcast as well. Kathleen (13:42)You're preaching to the choir on that one, cause I, mine are usually 45 to 60 minutes and I always tell people it's going to be as long as it needs to be. Yeah. It's, it's the boring guests that, that would be a really short interview. Try to avoid getting those lines. Chris (13:59)Okay. We'll try and get the 60 minutes that are misaligned. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Kathleen (14:04)So, okay, so that's the podcast. Now I want to talk about LinkedIn because that is such a core part of your strategy. That's where I, at least to me, I feel like you've been very visible and very successful. So can you kind of break down how you think about LinkedIn and how you advise others to think about LinkedIn? Chris (14:22)So when it comes to LinkedIn, I consider it a a highly effective content distribution, medium, and by acknowledging and understanding how dynamics of social platforms work, it can give you an advantage on how to use them. And so I'll give you a couple of examples about, and people think that if you like execute on LinkedIn, that you might miss on something else, but what they, what they don't understand that you build skills that you take with you to new platforms, right? And so in 2014, I spent time on Instagram. One of the most important things was trying to build an audience on Instagram. I figured out how to do that. And in 2019, when I saw LinkedIn working, I knew how to take the learnings of how to build an audience and move that over there, which is not just wait for people to follow you. Chris (15:10)It's having a proactive strategy to get more people into your community audience. And so one of the things that we started doing probably in may of maybe for the past two years, is 30 people a day and connect with, with people that are active on the platform have posted in the last 30 days like content. That is like the stuff that we pump, we publish that's one, one consideration. The next consideration that we see across a lot of different channels is that I try and do all of the work in the feed, meaning that I'm not looking for someone to click on a link. I'm not looking for someone to comment. They're like, blah, blah, blah, like some algorithm hack to make a comment so that you can send them an email with a PDF. I'm trying to get to places where people consume and anyone that's listening to this you'll know that you're much more likely to consume something that's in the feed versus a link that moves off the platform. Chris (15:59)And it's also better for LinkedIn. And so inside of the feed and the last one is 100% selfless, just con giving away the best stuff that we do. I publish stuff that people pay us a lot of money for. And I publish it on the internet because I know that it creates a huge inbound interest for us because we are considered the best, the smartest, the most forward-thinking because of the content that we produce. And so we publish that. I also know that a majority of people will never use it. And so those are a couple of key pillars in how we operate LinkedIn. And then the last one is just pure consistency. Like I don't think that marketers really understand. I think maybe they get, they get bored of doing the same thing. I've been posting videos on LinkedIn almost every day for 18 to 24 months. Chris (16:46)And I'm not, I'm not bored of it at all. It's pure marketing is about finding something that works and then being incredibly consistent at delivering it while also innovating on a micro level. So you've known, you'll notice that we've changed up how we actually do the videos and how we film them and what quality it's in and how we cut them in different things like that. But we're still leaning into video mainly because a lot of people don't do it. And so I think it's just a huge, huge white space as a marketer on LinkedIn, it might feel like a lot of people are using LinkedIn and publishing content. They're good, but go look at other channels, go look at how competitive it is an SEO. Go look at how competitive it is and Google search ads for a trade show booth. Like all the places where you spend money are way more competitive from a cost of maturity standpoint than places like LinkedIn or a podcast. Kathleen (17:33)So I'm interested to know how you work with clients on this, because I think as marketers, in many cases, we are naturally more comfortable putting ourselves forward on a platform like LinkedIn. But I do hear from a of executives, a lot of subject matter experts, this reluctance, and sometimes it's driven by, I think, fear that they don't have enough to say, you know, I think, you know, somebody can be an expert in something, but still have that almost imposter syndrome of like, well, am I do I know enough to really, to really put it out there? And then sometimes it's also driven by I can't come up with something every day. How do you do that? So like, how do you, how do you counsel somebody who, who doesn't come from a marketing background to develop this muscle memory, to be able to do this regularly? Chris (18:24)Yeah. So I know how to do this because I've done it before at a company, as an employee in 2017, we were selling into hospitals and we had our subject matter expert VP of medical education. That was a practicing physician. That was our subject matter expert that people in the community found credible that had was an evangelist that had used the technology as a physician for more than 10 years. And so we had, and then became an employee of our company afterwards. And so we had that person. And the way that you figure this out is instead of trying to have forced that person to create information everyday, where they have to think about it, it's a marketer shop to put them in situations where they're going to demonstrate expertise anyway, create a fireside chat, do a round table, have them present on a webinar, on a new clinical trial, whatever those things are. Chris (19:11)And then you record that event. And so I liked that also from the subject matter experts side, those people prefer that than recording a podcast in a, in a zoom on their own. They want to be out in engaging with people and talking with people. We had some of the most success, cause I, I heard people say, Hey, like this isn't worth my time to write this blog. But then when you say, Hey, we actually got you a spot to talk about the same thing that, you know, I didn't say this, but the same thing that we were going to write the blog about, but we're actually going to do it in Tulsa, Oklahoma with 12, you know, the best physicians in Oklahoma. And you're going to be speaking at that dinner and then we're going to record it. And it's a completely different story. And so people need to, I think, change the way that they set up their subject matter expert to allow it to work. Kathleen (20:00)That's interesting. And then are you, are you publishing those recordings through that person's profile? Chris (20:09)It was mostly through the brand in 2017. I think dynamics have changed quite a bit since then. But we could go just straight brand on Facebook, organic and a crushed back then. And like, it's just not, it's just not like that anymore. And so the distribution mechanisms over the past almost five years now have changed a lot. And I would at this point switch to some combination of brand and personal, depending on the platform. Yeah. Kathleen (20:33)I mean, I really feel like today the power, the real potential is in marketing through personal brands. I mean, you can just from my company, you know, we publish a lot of stuff through our company, LinkedIn page, but I find it gets just dramatically less traction than anything put out by our CEO or head of product. The, you know, and so one thing is how do you get the content out of them, what you just addressed. But then the interesting challenge that, that introduces if you are going through the personal brand is how do you, how do you then make sure there's engagement on the backend, right? Because a great post with really good content is going to get engagement. It's going to get responses and questions. And so it's one thing if you, as the marketer are going in through the company page and engaging with comments, but then when it's on, you know, your CEO's personal profile, are you training that CEO to engage? Are you somehow gaining access to their account so that you can engage on their behalf? How, how do you, how do you think that should work? Chris (21:34)So I'll talk about the ideal way and then maybe like a different, the ideal way is that whoever it is, it could be the CEO. It could be another person in your company recognizes how important this is and does all of it, right? Like I've never had someone else leave a comment for me or answer a message or anything. That's all me, the reason is because I recognize how valuable it is. I recognize that at the moment I can have, you know, a thousand touch points with different potential buyers in the market on my own by myself, and have 50 conversations this morning through comments on a LinkedIn post that I made versus what other CEOs might do, which is like go to a dinner once every couple of weeks to meet with one person. And it just get way more scalability of interaction this way. Chris (22:20)I wish people would understand that. And so presenting that to people because I did this as an employee in 2007, around the same timeframe as I would run Facebook ads of the content of that this person was creating. And then I would engage in the comments and I recognize, Hey, I'm having a hundred conversations a day with buyers. Our sales, our sales team gets three connections when they go outbound in a day, like what what's going on here? Why doesn't the company recognize that this is a way better way to do what we're business development. What we're trying to do is connect with buyers in a way that they want. And so yeah. Yeah. I Kathleen (22:57)Mean, I think it's really interesting to me because I don't think you can underestimate the importance of engaging. What I always say is like, you might get comments you could have a great post and you might get comments, but people aren't going to continue coming back to comment and engage with you. If you don't respond to them, you know, it's like a one-way conversation at that point. Chris (23:18)Yeah, because people think that social media is about pushing out, not, you know, being social. Kathleen (23:26)Yeah. so we've talked about the podcast, we've talked about LinkedIn, I'm curious to know how you approach written content on your website. You know, what are your thoughts around the classic kind of written blog? Are you doing much of that or is most of it like repurposed podcasts content? Chris (23:50)We don't, we don't even repurpose podcast content on the website. It's just like, I believe that the the idea of what a website is for, for companies should change and we're trying to pave the way on it. And I'm also interested cause I'm very interested. It'll probably be within the next, you know, it'll be soon where we can say that we hit 10 million ARR and we didn't spend a second on SEO and companies can understand that there's a different way than writing long form blogs and different stuff like that. I'm interested in proving some points there. And so, no, we haven't done almost anything from a written blog content standpoint. Because I just feel like the way that people discover and research products has changed and they're doing it in specific places that are different than Google in 2009. And so our website and what I think companies should consider for their website is buyer enablement and a path to a high intent conversion. And that's it. And so if those, if we're serving those two things on our website, publishing pricing, case studies messaging about what we do, how we work and a way to get in touch with us to start a scale sales conversation and everything else that we're doing is in places where people actually are. Kathleen (25:00)So you talked about how the way people buy has changed. What, how would you describe the modern customer journey? Chris (25:08)I think the key that people I think the key that people need to understand in, in the difference in change is the access to trusted peers that B2B professionals have, that they didn't have five to seven years ago. And so I can interact with 30 marketers and understand what tool they use and what tactics they're doing in different things like that on LinkedIn and on Twitter in revenue collective through a text message through a private slack message through call through a zoom, all those different things that were much more difficult to do in 2014 as a B2B professional, you know, that you didn't interact with your peers in the way that you do today in 2014. And because you didn't have access to trusted peers, you trusted a couple of sources. You trusted analyst firms, you trusted conferences and you trusted Google search because you didn't have access to people. And that's the major change that's going on here is that now people get their information through their peers that they trust. And so leaning into that as the core shift is what I'm talking about, which I think would be very heavy on customer success and very heavy on effective content marketing and what I would consider the dark funnel, AKA social and other places that are difficult to track in attribution. So Kathleen (26:27)Where do you review sites fit into all this? Because that is sort of a, a way people get peer feedback, but it's not the same as your connections on LinkedIn or the people in the slack channel. I know there's a lot of companies, especially in the software space that spend a lot of money on peer review sites. I'm curious what your take is. B2B Chris (26:46)Companies love every channel that is lower funnel filled with intent. So because they can easily track it, the person's in buy mode and they can run performance marketing against it, which is why review sites, Google paid search. I don't even think contents indication fits into there because there's no intent, but review sites and Google paid search are lowest funnel, high intent. And that's where people are going to going to do things. What I think is actually more impactful is getting to the people before they have intent. And then they're not looking for a review site. They're just going to Google and searching your brand. And that's what I think people need to think about people. People fight companies fight over the small amount of buyers that are actively buying that have no preferred brand. So you're just competing with three vendors for somebody that doesn't care, it's going to be shopping on price. Doesn't have certain features, you're going to win some of them, but you're gonna lose a lot of them to, as opposed to figuring out what you need to do at the top of the funnel so that people don't even compare other vendors. And that's what we do. Kathleen (27:44)Yeah. You gave me the perfect segue into my next question. Cause you talked about people going on to Google and searching for your brand for refined labs. What percentage of your traffic is direct? Chris (27:56)I don't, I don't know. And I don't care. Kathleen (27:59)I mean, I have a theory. I'm so curious to know if it's, if it's true. And that's something that I've seen. It's really interesting, even just with the company I'm at that, that the, the percentage of direct traffic as, as a part of the overall mix is, is growing. And I would think that yours would be a very large percentage direct Chris (28:18)Or direct organic search. Yeah. I'm not sure how Google chucks it up. I honestly like what I'm looking at is something that's way further down the funnel than where it's being sourced from. Cause I it's weird as a marketer, when you get to this level, it's just you, I don't need data. Like I can, you can just feel what's going on at qualitative insights. What's happening in the CRM, inbound volume qualified pipeline where our conversations starting, we have conversations started in LinkedIn, DM through our website revenue collective through a text message through inbound emails from buyers. And so like, you can just feel where this stuff coming from, why what's going on. And I love being in that spot. Of course we use data. But nowhere near to the level that marketers obsess about it today. Kathleen (29:04)Yeah. I feel like we spend a lot of time and waste a lot of time just on tracking and reporting. And a lot of times we're tracking and reporting on metrics that even by traditional marketing logic are a waste of time. So that's really interesting. You talked earlier about having started out on Instagram and then moved to LinkedIn and I sort of put a mental pin in that and I wanted to come back because I do feel like marketers by and large suffer from shiny penny syndrome where like a new channel is hot. Like in the last year it's tick talk and it's clubhouse and this and that. And all of a sudden everybody's like we have to be there, right. Because everybody's talking about it. I have really strong opinions on that, but I'm really curious to know what your take is. Chris (29:56)So I think what people obsess about is they look at a channel or tactical level, not looking deeply at whether their content strategy was working. If you're, if you can't produce content that people like on LinkedIn, you have no business trying to go to Tik TOK right now, at least for B2B marketing. And so I think people should think about those different things. When I mentioned being an Instagram, it was Instagram in 2014, selling a $60 product, organic yeah. Influencer marketing posting every day, building an audience, engaging with the community and watching sales grow. And so I just had a clear understanding of what that dynamic was in that channel. And LinkedIn's no different, right? And so once you understand the dynamics of one platform, you can move them to another one, which leads me to a place like if Tik Tok does become a place where it's important for B2B to go, we have a content strategy, we have the operational infrastructure and capabilities to support it. And we know how social networks work and we're going to be able to win there. And so that's the way that I look at it. But I think the companies look at it too at a channel level and not holistically at like their organizational capabilities. Kathleen (31:03)Yeah. Amen. I mean, that's my whole thing. Somebody asked me when clubhouse first came out, you know, what my thoughts on it were. And, and I, I, my thing was like, it's not for me. Right. It could be for somebody else, but I am. I'm all in on LinkedIn. I know I don't have the bandwidth to do two channels really well. Like you gotta, I, I think you gotta kind of pick your, pick your channels and it doesn't have to just be one for other people. It could be more, but you have to understand your bandwidth and your ability to really dominate and master the channels that you've chosen before you start to spread yourself. Chris (31:37)Yeah. And it was just clear, like I'll find, I'll find the clip. I think it was late 2020 where I said this, where it was very obvious that some but that other platforms would copy the clubhouse feature because that's the same thing that happened with Snapchat, right. Instagram and Facebook, and all of the other platforms now have stories and clubhouses audio thing is now getting rolled already rolled out in Twitter and it's coming out on LinkedIn. And it was very obvious that that was going to happen from that standpoint and other people that don't understand those dynamics, stop doing everything else. And when all pot committed on clubhouse and now you watch your user growth fall to the floor because it's available and put channels that are far more popular. And that's what I think that people need to think about. I think that the scariest part is that companies stopped doing things that are working in order to chase something else. Kathleen (32:31)There seems to be this like weird feeling that you have to be in the early adopter crowd. Of all things. I don't know if you, if you know Chris (32:41)That it's gonna work. Then being an early adopter is when I would consider myself an early adopter on LinkedIn, at least from a high activity standpoint. And it certainly benefited me, the algorithm reaches nowhere near what it was two years ago. And so if you know that it's going to work, then, then I think it's a good move to be early. But I don't think that I think a lot of marketers just read a report or some, see some ad or see some content about a new platform without knowing whether or not it's going to work or how it's going to work for them and then just try and do stuff. And that's, I think that the difference is having the experience to really know how it's going to work. Yeah. And you Kathleen (33:18)Talked about that when, when we spoke on your podcast about you test things on yourself and on your own marketing, kind of you use, you use yourself as, as a Guinea pig, if you will, before we roll things out to clients, can you talk a little bit about that? Chris (33:34)So at the moment we have a system where we can experiment more with a lot of things underneath the Refine Labs brand. Test, measure, characterize. Show companies what good looks like. And basically it becomes an R&D arm for our company to roll in new quote unquote products for our customers, which bleeds into our idea of just continuous innovation, which is not something that marketing agencies do. Marketing agencies get married to one channel and then try and make it as profitable as possible, which is why you see SEO agencies that still don't do anything else. And so ours is, we are trying to constantly disrupt ourselves when there's a day where Facebook ads don't work anymore, then I'm going to be pumped to have six more things that we can roll into the mix, other companies aren't. So they're going to keep telling their clients to run Facebook ads along the lines of why there's a lot of agencies that still tell their customers to run display ads. Chris (34:26)And so we have tested a lot of different things from the beginning. The reason that we, that I know is because people told me that they weren't going to work. So podcasts, LinkedIn, the way that we execute events, the way that our top level content strategy with a subject matter expert works, influencer marketing, both for other, with other people, with us and myself, with other brands direct mail account based marketing in a thoughtful way, not like, you know, the way basically it's sales driven way. The companies execute it today. There's a million different things that we're incubating and testing here, and then we'll eventually productize. Kathleen (35:05)So let's talk about a couple of those. You talked about events, the way you run them. So what makes it different? Chris (35:13)It's driven on ex in-person experiential combined with digital amplification to create, reach and awareness of a content strategy versus collecting leads to try and sell people. And so B2B companies run events to co to have people register so that they can do sales to those people versus having people register to create an experience for them so that they can participate in content creation so that you're creating content that other people want so that you can amplify it on the internet and the more people see it. And that's the core difference about the way that we look at events. And I would say that a lot of companies don't even execute events at all. They're too busy building trade shows at least events in the way that I've stated them. And so just completely have been doing that since 2017 as well, just looking at our trade show booth expenditures and saying, how else can we spend this money to get a dramatically better return? Chris (36:08)And I think the key is creating real life experiences that then get amplified digitally. And then once they get amplified digitally, it can feed the future in person experiences. Kathleen (36:20)Give me an example of what that looks like. Chris (36:24)Back in the day in like February to February, 2020, we were, we were heavy on these. We're going to do one a month, the whole year of 2020. Obviously we couldn't do that, but we did one in January and February. At that point, like Justin Welsh was operating as CRO at a high growth SaaS company, him and I got together and I invited him to do a fireside chat. We handled the event, you know, 40, 50 CEO, CRO, CMOs were there. We presented in person. Yeah. How to scale out your revenue team to 50 million. Like what Justin did. Chris (36:59)We talked through different things between sales and marketing, and what's changed since he started there in 2015 to 2020. And if he could change things, what he would do, we went to Q and A for 30 minutes. We had high production, film and audio there. We created a nice video with B roll. We created the whole long form interview. It became a podcast. We had people come inbound to us five months later that were attending that event, but we didn't try and sell them right there. And doing that at a specific cadence to feed your top level content strategy, I think is a really smart idea. Kathleen (37:34)Does that only work if you are, well let me rephrase that. So you're, you're in Boston, correct? Chris (37:43)Yeah. Kathleen (37:44)Did you hold the event in Boston? Chris (37:46)No. Kathleen (37:47)Okay. Okay. So the, where I'm going with this as, like, if you're somebody who's in some small market where, you know, 50 of your ICPs are not within 50 miles, do you, I'm assuming you need to hold these events in a, in a location where it's pretty easy to get folks, because generally they're not traveling for this. I would assume. Chris (38:08)I would say that generally people aren't traveling for them, but you should travel to them. You're, you're traveling to a trade show booth and spending $150,000 to build a structure that gets torn down three days later. And so what's a flight to LA to put on an event. And so that's, that's what I'm thinking is you go to the places where you think that there's a high, a high density of potential people and the, you mentioned 50, I think these can be properly executed 12. I think that people get caught up in numbers a lot as well. Yeah. Kathleen (38:39)That makes sense. A couple other things you mentioned. So you've talked a few times about influencers and I think a lot of times when marketers hear the phrase influencer marketing, they have a very rigid, traditional definition for that, right? They think about, well, a lot of people think Kardashians. But they think about traditional paid influencer partnerships, which I think is only one subset. How do you look at influencer as part of your mix? Chris (39:06)I want every B2B company to listen to this real quick, to understand that they all do influencer marketing right now. And the way that B2B companies do it right now is analyst relations. And an analyst firm is an influencer. They just had a lot more influence 10 years ago than they do right now. And so what I'm suggesting is if you were going to have a, what I would consider a brand collaboration or a sponsorship with somebody else that wasn't an analyst firm that you actually consider structuring it, like you do with an analyst firm where they, you know, have, you know, make a video and content about how to use your product, they review it, they interact with people. They maybe take a couple of calls with people that are interested in purchasing it. Like that's an interesting thing to do with 20 people that influence buying decisions in your market. Chris (39:57)The people look at it and say, it's influencer marketing and blah, blah, blah, blah. And we haven't even gotten to the measurement point, which is another reason why companies don't do it, but I would challenge them to try and quantify the impact of their relationship with Gartner. Yeah. And so I'd never said that clearly before, but a lot of companies just look at it in the, I think in the wrong way. And so from an influencer standpoint, yes, there is like the strict, like paid, you know, paid promotion, post type of thing, which I don't think is the way that this is going to play out. I think there's this like analyst firm relationship with people that are smart, that can, that I just laid out that I think is a very open area, collaborating on content, whether that be an in-person like physical event, digital content on a podcast, you know, whatever, from that standpoint, there's an interesting one with evangelists that I think companies consider, which is like basically making a, like a VIP customer list with people that are influential. Chris (40:52)Some people call it a customer advisory board, whatever you want to do, where these people get more stuff. Maybe they get flown out to a specific event that's hosted by your company, that they, that they get a lot of different stuff. They already love your products. Why don't you just do surprise and delight so that they're more likely to tell people how great your stuff is. And so those are some of the potential open opportunities that I see there. And again, like when it comes to measurement companies won't do this because they can't track attributable ROI. They want to have affiliate marketing, not influencer marketing. And that's the part. Kathleen (41:31)You talked about direct mail and piqued my interest. Tell me your thoughts about direct mail. What's the way to do it right? Chris (41:41)I think that companies and people listening to this should consider the differences between direct mail and gifting. I think that most companies that are executing what they think is direct mail are actually doing gifting, which is just sending a gift to someone either to say, thank you, but most likely just to bribe them into having a meeting. And I think there's a different way to run direct mail where it's more experiential and actual marketing that can still be driven toward conversion. That's more easily measurable. And that's what I would, I would consider what would be an example of that. So let's see here, let me try and figure out one that we're not actively running. So you, you're a company that sells to massive banks. And at the moment you have bank of America and chase, and you're trying to get whoever the other six top banks are. Chris (42:38)And so you put together a, a package that has, you know, a thing, maybe a nice bottle of wine, a QR code on that thing, somebody who receives it scans the QR code, there's a video of how Bank of America implemented your product and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they have an opportunity to book a meeting there. And I think that there's some micro then companies go for such scale and not thoughtfulness that they wouldn't do something that can only send a six people, even though those accounts are million-dollar accountants. And so I think that that's an interesting one. I think that you also could go for scale as a different conversion mechanism than outbound sales that might work better too. Kathleen (43:15)So are you suggesting then that gifting is the, the way to look at it? Chris (43:22)No, I'm suggesting that companies consider a different way of running direct mail, which I would say is more marketing than gifting. Kathleen (43:30)Okay. Yeah. It's interesting that you mentioned the smaller scale because, and this was one of the reasons I wanted to ask you about direct mail. When I had my agency one half of what we did had to do with promotional products, which I hate calling it that because it sounds super cheap, but my husband became really, really good at what you're describing. We called it dimensional mail, but I'm sending to small lists, like really curated packages with, and like tying what was in the package and with the messaging. And it was amazing how he was able to get meetings for people with that approach. And I think part of it is like, nobody likes, nobody likes to throw away a box, right? If you get a box, even if you have a gatekeeper, like a secretary, generally you're opening in that box to see what's inside. Chris (44:15)And I think from a direct mail standpoint, what companies need to look at is not the conversion to a meeting, but the conversion after that, I think it's pretty, pretty easy to get a, to get a meeting. I think it's really hard to get a meeting with somebody that wants to buy an actually bought. And I think specifically on direct mail companies will optimize to the meeting by giving people a a hundred dollars gift card to sit on it or to do all the other dumb stuff that they asked to do. And all those people move immediately to close loss and it does the business. No good. And so I think companies should just think about when I'm mean when we're doing our tests with direct mail over the next three to six months, it's not about the meeting conversion rate. It's about the, it's the met the meeting to proposal, we're meeting the closed won rate that I care about. Kathleen (44:58)Right. you just said a word that I'm really interested to probe a little bit more on, which is gift cards. Kathleen (45:08)This is another one that I have a lot of strong feelings about, but I want to hear what you have to say. Cause there's, there seems to be this like movement that has happened, especially during COVID, it's gotten much more widespread, like get a gift card for sitting through a demo of something. What do you think about that? Chris (45:23)It's just, it's companies optimizing for a metric that doesn't matter and, and building it into their customer acquisition costs and considering it, and probably not looking at it afterwards and just measuring it on demos. And what I've always been interested in from for a very long time is instead of having to bribe someone with a gift card to sit on a demo, how do we do great marketing so that they want that demo? And that that's the difference between giving away a gift card and doing marketing. I don't consider giving away a gift card doing marketing. I consider it a way to do sales, buying a lead or doing sales. Kathleen (46:04)Yeah. I feel like there's also a perverse incentive there where like, you, you, people are doing your demo because they want the gift card. Chris (46:10)I know I've audited enough Salesforce instances to do this. All of them go to closed lost after the demo, your sales team hates it. I don't know why. I don't know why people still do this, but in the only place that I've seen, I've seen it or heard about it work is in MarTech and that's great. But when you're selling to it or finance or HR or any of the other functions that are not revenue generating, I think that you're going to struggle in the data that I've seen shows that. Kathleen (46:38)Yeah, I would, I would agree. I always feel like it attracts the wrong kind of buyer. And it sort of cheapens what you're doing. It is, it is very like transparently pay to play. Chris (46:54)No, but, and again, I, I think that when a lot of companies move on dumb stuff like this, it creates a massive opportunity. I just don't think that people consider the opportunity of going in a different direction. Whereas I want, I'm going to earn my demos. When people sit on those demos, I'm going to earn them. And so in the future, I'm not going to need to give away gift cards and more people are going to do that. And so companies don't look at that. They look at the hack to get to the next round versus building something that's sustainable with IP and talent and operational infrastructure to actually execute on that longterm and continue to build on it. And that's the way I think companies should look at it. Kathleen (47:31)All right. We are rapidly coming up on our 60 minute mark. So we're going to go rapid fire for the next few questions. And on time the first one is you talked about getting companies to shift the way they think about marketing and to focus on, you know, pipeline generation or you know, revenue generation really is better put it. I would assume in the short term, then that there's, while that shift is happening how can I put this? It might make a lot of people very uncomfortable because many of their leading indicators, if they're changing the way they're doing marketing and they're doing some of the things you suggest like many of what they think of as leading indicators to pipeline are going to start to dry up. And so how do you handle that panic that I have to believe sets in initially and convince people to stick it out, to see the results? Chris (48:23)First showing the company that what they're doing right now and what they're measuring, doesn't align to what they're trying to accomplish. So getting aligned that I get that you're hitting your MQL target. I've had these conversations 50 times marketing continues to hit their MQL target. We continue to miss our qualified pipeline and revenue targets on the sales side. And just by surfacing that information and then knowing why that's happening. I think the key is that a lot of people keep doing that because they don't know why, or they don't know what to change. And so by first showing them that what they're doing right now, isn't working. And second centering on sales, qualified opportunities, because when you center on sales qualified opportunities at a stage that matters not you advance with an SDR and book the meeting, but the AEA had the meeting, there's still an amount attached to it and that's qualified. And so in that case, and you sent her on that, that number should never go down. When you change your marketing model, when you shut off your performance marketing, it will have no impact on that number. And that's why if you center on sales qualified opportunities, there's nothing to be afraid of. Kathleen (49:22)Yeah, that, that's interesting that you said that because my next question was going to be, and I assume one of the people that panics the most is the sales leader, because they want to keep their sales team busy. But if you're focused on SQLs that.. Chris (49:33)Right? The wrong sales leader, the sales leader with the 2011 mindset would panic that way. The smart sales leaders that I interact with are pumped that their SDRs don't have to follow up with 3000 leads a month that don't close and they can do strategic outbound using intent data or a million other higher productivity activities than following up with content downloads that don't want to talk to you. And so smart sales leaders should, should appreciate this. Should enjoy it. It's like a path to building a better company. Yeah. Kathleen (50:00)All right. Shifting gears. I always ask my guests two questions at the end of the interview. So I want to hear what you have to say. This podcast is all about inbound marketing, which I define kind of loosely. It's not the traditional, you know, put an ebook up and wait for leads to come in. It's basically pretty much what you're talking about, which is doing your marketing in a way that your ideal customer seeks you out and comes to you. When you think about inbound marketing defined in that way, other than Refine Labs or yourself, who is doing it really well right now? It can be a company or it can be an individual person. Chris (50:47)I'm trying to think. Hmm. I don't really have a lot and on, and honestly, I don't want to shout someone out as like a, as endorsement of someone that I don't think is doing an awesome job. And so I'm going to pass on this one. Chris (51:04)Yeah. I could shout out a customer. Kathleen (51:08)You're the first person I've interviewed who hasn't given me a name. I don't know how I feel about that. Chris (51:15)I definitely don't follow the grain, so I get it. Kathleen (51:19)Alright. Second question. I hear marketers say all the time that one of the biggest challenges they have is just staying up to date on everything that's changing with the world of digital marketing. How do you personally stay up to date and keep yourself educated by doing it? Chris (51:39)And so by by consistently pushing boundaries in places where I don't need a report to tell me what to do that I went and did it. And then I would be the one that publishes the report on what to do. That's where I think marketers should strive for. I think that a lot of marketers just get information and copy tactics from people. Like I imagine that there's plenty of people that take B2B enterprise, SaaS marketing and copy what's happening with ClickFunnels to sell a $60, $99 course and then try and sell that, do that, to sell a 100K ACV SaaS and fail. And so I think the company people should really like look deeply at what they're doing. And the reason that I know something's working, something's noticed because I've tried them. And then I understand the dynamics from the buyer standpoint. And I know, and so, and it builds experience to know in the future, if you're thinking about something, whether or not something's going to work based on past experiences. And so I would encourage people to listen to customers and then start executing and testing new things for themselves. All right. So learn by doing yeah. Kathleen (52:45)Well this has been great. I can't believe 60 minutes has passed so quickly. I feel like we could have definitely gone longer, but I have another five minutes that we're going to wrap up. So if somebody is listening to this and they want to learn more about you or connect with you or ask you a question, what's the best way for them to do that? Chris (53:04)So you can you can connect with me on LinkedIn, Chris Walker, and then questions feel free to shoot them in the LinkedIn DM. And we will cover them on a future episode, or I'll just answer you there Kathleen (53:15)And definitely check out the podcast as well for lots of really interesting conversations. And if you're listening to this episode and you liked what you heard or you're learning something new and I hope you did, cause I sure did. Please take a moment and head to Apple Podcasts or the platform of your choice and leave the podcast a review so other folks can find us. And if you know somebody else who's doing amazing inbound marketing work, tweet me at @workmommywork, which is my Twitter handle, as bizarre as that is. And I would love to make them my next guest. That is it for this week. Thanks for joining me, Chris. Chris (53:50)Nice. Thank you, Kathleen. This was a blast.

In this episode of Metrics and Chill, Mark Thomas, Head of Growth at Powered by Search, walked us through how he, as the only marketing hire, drove the strategy that led to an increase in Sales Qualified Leads by 142% quarter-over-quarter.

Darryl shares some of his must-do strategies to build better alignment between sales and marketing to create the revenue engine. He believes firmly in SLA, sales lead agreements to keep both teams focused on revenue and maintain transparency between marketing and sales goals.  We discuss marketing attribution to sales pipelines and what metrics are important to a CRO. Darryl shares some lessons learned on the people process of managing a revenue team and how to avoid misunderstanding and negative outcomes with your sales teams. He explains the criticalness of breaking down silos between marketing and sales, both in process, people and to build a culture of revenue team first, department or divisions second approach. We discuss some of the mar-tech that he deploys at VanillaSoft to rev up his demand-gen engine and how reverse engineering revenue goals to SQLs is key to putting a strategic demand gen plan for successful revenue attainment. As always, Darry doesn't hold back, he injects a bit of his humor but is all business about the practical and pragmatic approaches to build a world-class revenue team at VanillaSoft. He also gives us some of his favorite marketing/sales book recommendations such as Blue Ocean and some insights on what advice he would have given a younger Darryl Praill.  

In this episode of Serious Social, Colin Jacobs will be exploring how to drive sales qualified leads through better marketing qualified leads on social media. Listen now to discover what a successful demand generation campaign looks like and why demand-gen is much more sophisticated than just selling on social.

To kick off the show, Joe and Robert detail their "advanced" Clubhouse experience (likes and dislikes) and why it may have legs. And did you check out the Tom Cruise deepfakes? Roku buys Nielsen's Advanced Video property, and increases its chances to corner the personalized TV advertising market. Axios details the ever-increasing amount of gambling properties getting into the content marketing game. Twitter does a Twitch and plans to launch a "Super Follows" program, which will most likely integrate into Twitter Spaces. And finally, Facebook launches a huge ad campaign against Apple's privacy restrictions. Can anyone say Philip Morris? In rants and raves, Joe discusses Wall Street Bets move to decentralization and Kings of Leon's new NFT while Robert rants about Google's privacy bomb. ------ This week's sponsor: Exceed.ai It is a known, and sad, fact that SaaS companies spend a not-so-small fortune on lead gen. CRMs are clogged with leads that, truth be told, get very little attention, usually in the form of nurture automation, a.k.a. pre-defined email sequence. The result? Few leads are converted and qualified into SQLs. Money spent goes to waste as sales team don’t have the capacity to properly qualify leads resulting in cold to lukewarm leads being pushed to sales calls just to ‘fill in the quota’, so to speak. This time, it’s time that’s wasted. You know where this is going… there must be a better way... Enter Exceed, intelligent AI that autonomously and automatically nurtures and qualifies leads. Exceed digs into your CRM and starts engaging leads in two-way conversations via email, website chat and text messages. The interactions are wholly conversational and personalized based on user and historical data. Once the AI qualifies a lead it independently books a sales call with the relevant sales rep and – immediately – goes back to qualifying more leads.  https://exceed.ai/ ------ Catch past episodes show notes at ThisOldMarketing.site.

Stop wasting your marketing budget and start investing in real prospects. Listen to 9 podcasts about how to attract the right leads, how to qualify them, and say no to misfits. Learn about staying on top of mind with the right leads and how to close deals faster. As a bonus, we have a toolkit that every B2B marketeer needs and we host an expert session to help you be the best B2B revenue marketer! Sign up for the full series here: https://marketingguys.com/revenue-marketing-series/ Episode 4: Many B2B marketers that use marketing automation focus on getting out leads to sales: the more SQLs, the better. In this episode, Elias has a chat with Scott Ingram on why it’s better to focus on revenue as a commercial team and how to qualify better in both Marketing & Sales. Scott Ingram is the host of the Sales Success Stories AND Daily Sales Tips podcasts. He's the author of three books: Sales Success Stories, B2B Sales Mentors, and Finding Sales Success on LinkedIn. He's also a quota-carrying sales professional, working for the professional services company, Relationship One, as an Account Director. Scott lives with his wife and two daughters in Austin, Texas where he hosts the Sales Success Summit each October. We discuss the following topics How to qualify leads as a marketer How to say no to misfits in an early stage Tips on creating a good lead scoring model (based on profile and engagement) How to align marketing & sales pragmatically Scott also mentions the webinar with 5 creative prospecting examples. That webinar can be downloaded here: https://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/14877/441293/5-creative-prospecting-examples-that-worked-in-the-real-world LinkedIn Scott: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottingram/  Website Sales Success Stories: https://top1.fm/ If you want to be on this podcast or would like to know more about Marketing Technology, visit our website at marketingguys.com or contact Elias Crum at e.crum@marketingguys.nl

Nemanja Zivkovic, CEO at Funky Marketing, joined me on the Modern Startup Marketing podcast. Mixing it up! This episode is a little different. I usually have venture-backed startup founders and marketing leaders come on as guests. This time I brought on a fellow marketing business owner to share his experience and wisdom. Nemanja started Funky Marketing in Jan. 2020, with a total of 6 employees at the time of the conversation. Funky Marketing is based out of Novi Sad, Serbia. They're helping B2B tech companies generate revenue growth, primarily through inbound and content strategies and scale. We covered a lot of juicy stuff, including: The term “agency” vs. “team” to describe the business; Nemanja's role as CEO at Funky Marketing; Who they look for in their ideal client (3 buckets); The types of packages that Funky Marketing offers to customers; Nemanja's past experience in B2C and now focusing on B2B (because there's so much to shake up); Where most clients get marketing and growth wrong (the big challenges that he's seeing repeatedly); Why to go after SQLs (not MQLs) and how to succeed by building a content machine; The problem with creating a content machine that's optimized for SEO, and why using social media to have direct conversations with prospects can be more meaningful; Marketing is not sales, so the timeline is not the same; How to shorten the time to close (HINT: use ads); Creating sales and marketing alignment (up to revenue); Starting a marketing company in Serbia - opportunities and challenges; Creating an event for marketers to do everything besides marketing; Tips from Nemanja - read comics to get better at marketing, get used to putting yourself into uncomfortable situations, and more. You can find Nemanja on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/zivkovicnemanja Find out more about Funky Marketing: www.funkymarketing.net For more content, subscribe to Modern Startup Marketing on Apple or Spotify (or wherever you like to listen). You can find Anna on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/annafurmanov or visit this website: www.furmanovmarketing.com Thanks for listening! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/anna-furmanov/message

Accurately reporting on marketing attribution has historically been one of the biggest challenges facing marketers. Here's how one expert solved it. This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Dreamdata founder Steffen Hedebrandt spent years working as a marketer trying to accurately measure the ROI of his marketing campaigns and investments. After struggling to find a software tool that could do it for him, he finally built one for himself.  Today, Dreamdata helps marketers process data from multiple platforms to make sense of what's working, and which marketing efforts are driving results for the business.  In this episode, he shares some of the key lessons he's learned, and what marketers need to know about marketing attribution reporting. Check out the full episode, or read the transcript below, for details. Resources from this episode: Visit the Dreamdata website Read the Dreamdata blog Connect with Steffen on LinkedIn Transcript Kathleen (00:00): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host Kathleen Booth. And this week, my guest is Steffen Hedebrant who is the co-founder of Dreamdata. Welcome Steffen. Steffen (00:22): Thank you so much, Kathleen. I'm happy to be on a show that is about my, one of my very favorite topics as a marketer. Kathleen (00:31): I am excited to talk with you because we're going to talk all things, data, and my listeners know that I am a huge marketing nerd and I love to nerd out on really specific marketing topics like this and data is, is one of my favorites. So before we get into it, I would love it. If you would tell my listeners a little bit about yourself, your story how you came to be a co-founder of Dreamdata and what Dreamdata itself does. Steffen (01:01): Thank you very much, Kathleen. So ever since I left university I've been working with all things growth. You can see where it kind of, basically I started out doing doing a lot of SEO, then moved into more like regular business development that then like then I became a marketing leader and now I'm a co-founder of a company. So I've been doing a lot of different stuff that needed to grow. All of it has been B2B though. So when I'm, when I'm talking here today all of my experiences based out of a B2B world and not at the B2C world. So I think that's always important to, to know today. I'm a, I'm a, co-founder at at Dreamdata and we make a, a B2B revenue attribution platform. And we so this is kind of a big thing for us. Steffen (02:01): We first of all, we do B2B attribution. You can say, and, you know, B2B is quite a lot more complex to track than, than the B2C scenario. You have multiple stakeholders and a deal. The deal takes three, six, 12 months. The deal is closed by a team effort from marketing to sales, to maybe customer success as well. So there's a ton of touches involved in this, and that's why we call ourselves a revenue attribution platform, because we heavily believe that all touches matter and not just the marketing touches here, like doing only marketing attribution would be seeing that the effort of the sales people was not important in the B2B deal. And we want to give the holistic picture, not just the contribution of marketing to it. So if I take a step back and why I find this really interesting, I was a marketing leader at a company called Airteam, which does school screen-sharing devices for schools and businesses. Steffen (03:11): And I joined when there was like 15 people and left around a hundred and from zero ad spend to $150,000 a month. Initially I knew every time I pushed a button, I knew the effect on the other side, but as you go and you've picked all the low hanging fruits and that you're running on all channels, it gets pretty muddy, whether it makes sense to add in another 10,000 euros or 20,000 euros to the monthly ad spend. And that's because of this problem that does maybe three or four people involved in making a decision. So you might make your marketing investment on getting one person to your website. And then another person comes to validate the product. And then a third person comes to pay for the product. Then you can only see that you spent your money on like getting the new step to sign up or the demo call where in fact, all three people were actually part of the same journey. And that's why you want to kind of, you want to be able to actually match the spend you had on the first person with the revenue you make with the, on the last person who comes with the credit card. Kathleen (04:20): This is so interesting. And, and the timing of this conversation is perfect because I was just having a debate with somebody on LinkedIn about marketing attribution. And he was rightfully saying that, you know, while everybody loves when marketing can report on like marketing sourced leads, like, Oh, we brought this person in, you know, there's also marketing influenced leads and, and, and marketing influence pipeline. And we were talking about how, at least in my experience, most C-suite people don't really care about marketing influenced pipeline because it seems like a vanity metric to them. Like, and I think it's because of a lack of really good data. I think they just think it's like a made up thing. Like, what do you mean you've influenced this pipeline? And there's also this natural tension between sales and marketing of like, who gets credit. And I feel like, I feel like so much of that almost like toxic attitude is, is, comes because we don't have really clear visibility into what's really happening. Kathleen (05:36): It's like, you know, it's like marketing saying, okay, this lead, I get a hundred percent credit for, because I sourced it and sales saying, well, I get a hundred percent credit for this one because I sourced it. And there's like, it's very binary. There's no in-between. And, and that's precisely because of what, like you're describing, we don't have that crystal ball into like, what are all the touches, the journey with all the different people in the mix. And so I'm so interested in, in what you do, because it seems to me that that having that kind of data would open the door to maybe changing the conversation that happens around attribution within companies. Steffen (06:15): Yeah. I have so many comments but you can say, so how I fundamental approach to attribution is let's get all the touches there before we talk about anything else, which means if you have this sales and marketing alignment conversation, then the first thing you can see is, look, this is all the touches that we have on this account. Then after that, you can then discuss, you can have an opinion about what was the important part that magazine actually started the journey or that sales finished the journey, but you got to have all the touches there. And I think what, what most B2B companies are struggling with is that they are the CRM system is dictating dictating what's going on or what, what, what is perceived as the true, if you can say. And the problem about that is that I think a lot of them have this original source field and that original source field can be modified constantly by whoever wants to know, move us this webinar. Steffen (07:24): Or I met him at this event and kind of then like just the fact that you can constantly change it, according to your opinion is a big problem, but it's also a very narrow field into a, kind of a less, it's kind of a less touch before you converted the the person. But what goes ahead is all the kind of anonymous behavior until that you actually convert them into the first time, you know, what person. So that's kind of also what we, the way we approached this, this, that we, we give our clients, the, each we put on the website and that script starts to assign everybody who comes to the website with an anonymous ID. And then we record everything that the anonymous ID is doing. And then at the point of time where they identified himself, we get the consent to go back and look at the anonymous ID. So it's not just the last touch. He came from this retargeting thing. Then the first time we heard about him was this original source in the CRM. Kathleen (08:22): And you're pulling data in from a lot of different platforms, correct? I mean, you're sitting outside of kind of the rest of the tech stack and, and aggregating all of that. Steffen (08:34): Yeah. And this is where I probably couldn't, we, we could need your advice as well because we, we feel like it's kind of, we're kind of trying to make a new category where we kind of want to be the center to check in the middle. So we basically built data pipes to every tool that you would use. So sales would have their CRM marketing, some automation, customer success, a tool, maybe just a BDR tool that's as well. So you basically, we integrate all the data over to us. And then instead of Kathleen being five Kathleen's in each system, we would organize you to be one person that are present and have touched us in all the tools. And then we map you to the account. So every person, or we basically build a timeline. So if there's Kathleen and then Steffen from the same account, we'll just put every time there's a touch, we'll put it into the timeline. Kathleen (09:24): So how are you, I mean, in principle, that sounds great, but I imagine that the potential for like duplication at the, at the individual contact level is there, I imagine trying to somehow, like the biggest nightmare I have in my many systems is trying to associate all the various contacts with the parent account and like capturing all of that. So how, how do you handle that across so many different systems? Steffen (09:55): Yes. That's some of what you you pay us to run our algorithms to fix, we can fix it inside of whatever tool, but we will fix it on our end. So like, we will identify duplicates on persons, on accounts, et cetera. And then we have like a hierarchy of like rules that kind of run through and then fix this, these things done in this way. Kathleen (10:24): And how does that work? Is it bi-directional so like when you clean it up I, you know, I assume like, let's say I have HubSpot and Salesforce and outreach and all these different tools then desk. And I have like my messes in each of those platforms. And then it goes into your platform, you clean it up, is there, do you then have a function where you can sort of like push it back out and correct. Steffen (10:52): Right now we don't push it back out, but we, like, we fix the we, we fixed it within our, you can say data model and we also expose the data model to the client. So if they want to like use it to, to push back, then they can they can do that. Kathleen (11:08): So what would be, obviously people are using your system for attribution, but I imagine they're also using it for other things, because it sounds like if you had insight into what's happening at an account level with all of your contacts in my head immediately goes to, this is so great for account based marketing. I could, I could do account level scoring. I could use it to run ad campaigns. What are all the different ways that people are using this? Steffen (11:40): Yeah, so I can think are like main main users right now are the marketing, the attribution, and it's also the customer journey to get an insight of all the touches, but I use it myself when I do business development to sort of see, okay, now that account that I had been targeting, he actually came back to our website. Now it's a good time to reach out. And what I mean by that is that it's a great way to, for your reps to know who to work with and what to do, because you can see now that account is active in some sort of system, would you, and you can see what they've done. So you can kind of also figure out what you want to do next. Steffen (12:27): Does that make sense? It can also be kind of figuring out your, your channel mix more like on a, like a leadership level because we, and if we do attribution all the way down to a specific campaign, but we also aggregate it up per channel and some channels play very, very, very different yeah. Roles. And if you look inside of Google analytics, you would only see kind of less touches, but there's actually a lot of channels that work well, if you're able to track from, like, where did they start campaigns that don't start campaigns? What would be some examples of that? Oh, that's a lot. But like, for like, let's say digital businesses, it's very typically a Google ads, for example, a search ads. I've never, I have to confess, I've never been able to make Google ads, looks profit, look profitable inside of Google ads. Steffen (13:24): And the problem is that if, when we go back to the example that I gave you before, is that you do your investment on some sort of persona that has some sort of intent, but then some person comes with a credit card afterwards, which is to touch. You would see in the Google analytics and those sorts, but the spend was made at another place. So the spend actually starts a ton of journeys, but it's the first touch. It's not the last touch. That's so incredibly important to understand, because if there's a 10 X difference in revenue from first to last touch, then Europe probably heavily investing in a source. I'll give you another example. In my old company I, I had the beginning of 2018 or so I went to the CEO and said like, now we need to really heavily bet on content. Steffen (14:17): And we went out and hired two writers, a designer, eh, a videographer, and then a manager for the team and for the first nine months or so, the only thing we had to show was, Hey, look, organic traffic is going off in Google analytics. And it's like, yeah, but you can't really pay salary with organic traffic increasing in in Google analytics. And that was actually the point of time when at the end of 2018 met my two co-founders who had just left their old jobs to, to build this company. And basically because we'd been using Segment, I don't know if you're familiar with that. Kathleen (15:04): I haven't used it. I've heard of it, but I have not used it. Steffen (15:09): It's a customer data platform. And because we had been using that, we were able to replay our data from like all the visitors from the website and what they've done, and whether they, they ended up becoming deals. And so, and what I could suddenly see is that basically with that technology that now co-founder of it, we were able to prove that the content actually started a ton of journeys, but it was not the last touch on those journeys to become a revenue. And then we started seeing specific clusters of content that were super valuable, but completely impossible to see inside of Google analytics. Kathleen (15:54): And why is it so hard to see that in Google analytics? Steffen (15:58): It's because this thing, as the example I gave before, like it's very, it's very rarely at the person with the credit card that does the research and what Google analytics shows you is like they came in from this source or this source, and they did this and this, and then, then your direct channel will be the channel with all the money. And that's a, you can't really scale that somebody comes directly to your website, they give, give you money. You need to kind of understand that full journey in order to sort of do more of what works and do less of what not doesn't work. And let's see if I can let's let's go on to just talk a little bit about concept then, because I think what I've, what I've seen is really that it's so important that you look at what you do, content that has a strong intent versus a big volume. Steffen (16:54): When I look across all our B2B customers here at Dreamdata, all those articles that they've done, where they've done keyword research, and they have a lot of traffic on the keywords. So rarely that there's any revenue on those those articles, but very narrow articles with a lot of intent, like searching for an alternative to a competing product or that those sorts, they drive so much revenue out of very small chunks of traffic. And I think that's a mistake I've made so many times because you get so fascinated by this large amount of searches, but when did it arrive on your website? There's several intent behind it. Kathleen (17:38): I'm so glad you said that because this is something that I have been preaching for a while. You know, and it was funny at the last company, I was, we made a very niche product and we, there was like almost no search traffic for it. It's a tiny, tiny amount of search traffic. And I think most people, had they done keyword research would have been like, it's totally not worth creating any content around this. But, you know, my thing is the 20 to 30 people who searched this every month are like the 20 to 30 people who will buy from us. And, Oh, by the way, at that company, we were selling to government. And so one sale could be like millions of dollars. So we did this whole content strategy, like a whole pillar content and topic, cluster strategy around this like extremely tiny, tiny niche topic. Kathleen (18:35): And we, the great thing is we were very quickly able to own it. And Google, like we had all the top search results. In fact, we'd beat the national security agency and we beat Wikipedia for one of the topics and it worked. So I totally agree with you. Like, it's just funny to me that people do, they, they, they try to, like, as somebody once said, like eat the elephant in one bite, when, you know, there's just an easier way to do things. And it's to go after those tiny, tiny topics, when, you know, the intent is so good. So I love that you have data to back that up. Steffen (19:09): That means also kind of, when you then pull them to your website, you don't pull a big audience that you have to pay a ton of money to retarget, but you know that the people who then come you'll want to pay a lot of money to, to get in front of it. Kathleen (19:22): Yeah. It's worth it to spend a lot more, you know, per impression or per click, if you know that that's the right person. And it's funny because I had the same conversation. This is like making me think of a bunch of things. I had the same conversation recently. I was doing some training for my team on how to use LinkedIn really well. And we were talking about hashtags on LinkedIn and people, a lot of people don't even realize like how useful they can be. And one of the questions I got was yeah, but how much search volume do those hashtags have? And I was like, I don't even care if they're super relevant to us, even if there's like a tiny number of people searching, like those are the people that we want to see. So it's just, I I'm so on the same page with you about this, Steffen (20:08): But it is kind of also when you compete for the big things, like you also most likely competing with some extremely powerful players that you can kind of, you can forget about outspending them because they have a ton more money than you have. So you want to go around those big guys in there and find the topics where, where they're weak. Kathleen (20:27): That's exactly right. So now I want to know all the other cool things that you've discovered looking across your customer's data, because that's really interesting that you're able to surface those insights. Steffen (20:39): I think yeah, it's also, you know, I'm a marketing leader by background myself. So being able to peek into these different kinds of machines, it's it's very interesting. One component that I would like to stress as well is it's a metric. We call it time to revenue, which means from the first person from an account who was anonymously on your website until the account is close to one, how long does that take? And it's significantly longer than most of our customers expect. So, so what companies don't do really, really well is that from the point of time where an account hands over an email, then the typical CRM sales machine, they know exactly how each stage, how long that takes. But they forget to actually add all the research time where customers are anonymous and actually like still trying to understand what you do. And it's part of the same journey. I think that's my point, Kathleen (21:39): Right? That famous statistic, everybody cites that people get 75% of the way through their buying journey before they want to speak to a sales person or whatever that number is. Steffen (21:48): Yeah. And so like the reason why this is so important is that a mistake I made a ton of times in my, in my old job was I was trying to judge my ad spend in the same month that I made the investment. Even though I know that the average journey is maybe six months or so, but it was all I had kind of say, okay, I spent this money and we made this money this month, but it's, it's a ridiculous thing to do because the number you pull up is vanity. So what were you able to prove with this is that we can help people actually understand when they can judge an experiment. If the average journey is like, let's say 160 days, you cannot do the confusion after 60 days or, or, or the sorts of that. And also kind of for us, marketing people the CEO cannot come in November and say, Hey, you need to impact the budget this year, because I actually know my time to revenue is 160 days or so. So if you want me to impact this year, we need to start that investment a lot earlier. Kathleen (22:53): Oh, that's so interesting because that is a mistake I see people making a lot is trying pay-per-click ads and deciding within 30 days that they're not working. I can't tell you how many times. I used to own an agency. So I I've seen a lot of different companies, I've been, you know, in a lot of companies Google analytics. I'm now in house myself. But so often I see people try it for just a short amount of time, 30, 60 days. And then they conclude pay-per-click advertising doesn't work for me, you know? Steffen (23:27): The problem as well to that is that it's not going to hurt the first month because you've sort of stuffed the funnel then like three months go by and you realize, Hey, we're not getting any SQLs now because it takes 90 days to become an SQL. For example. Kathleen (23:46): You've got to know that it is so important to know what your leading indicators are for pipeline. And I mean, I feel like in sales that's a little bit easier cause I used to be in sales also. And, and I knew, for example, when I was in sales, that if I didn't do a certain number of like initial, we call them exploratory calls. If I didn't have enough exploratory calls in a given week two to three months later, I wasn't going to hit my target for closed one deals in marketing. We do a much poorer job of that. And I think because it's less straightforward and you know, harder to measure. So I think it's really interesting that you you're able to pinpoint that time to revenue and give marketers a better sense of like what they need to do now. And if they're not doing it, what the effect is going to be in that future timeframe. Steffen (24:35): And if there's another thing to preach around, this is also that the granularity matters when you're looking at your pipeline, meaning that it's kind of vanity. Let's say you're judged on delivering a hundred MQLs per month. Then you don't just want to increase that a hundred MQLs to 150 MQLs. You want to look at who actually moved on and become, became a sales qualified lead. And then you want to granularly understand each of those, let's say 25 journeys. Where did they come from? Was it specific ads, specific content or something else? And then you want to focus on increasing the amount of SQLs or basically the accounts that kind of go all the way through your pipeline. You want to repeat the success of those campaigns and the new one is stop everything else almost because that's wasting your own money. And it's wasting also the salespeople's time, Kathleen (25:37): For sure, like knowing which types of leads are the best and then turning up the dial on those. Steffen (25:43): It's kind of, I think most sales people like say sales leaders and CEOs are saying, they look at the spreadsheet and say we had 50 SQLs. Give me 50 more. And then, then you just scale your whole spend to try to hit that overall number, but you just waste so much money if you have no, if you don't understand the kind of granularity that is driving the specific SQLs. Kathleen (26:09): Well, and I think part of the problem, I was just talking about this with somebody. Part of the problem is that so many marketers are judged by the number of MQLs they're able to deliver. When in reality they should be judged on the same thing sales is, which is revenue at the end of the day. Revenue growth. Because the incentive, if you're judging marketing on MQLs, is for marketing to send over everything. And half of it could be garbage. I was having this conversation and we were talking about like, sometimes you, you know, marketing will send over a lead that's like, Oh, this person downloaded an ebook. Well, that is not a person who's ready to be called by sales. Like not at all. If you're being judged on revenue, you're more likely as a marketer to say, okay, this person only downloaded an ebook. Let's hold off. Let's make sure we're nurturing them really well and push them to become a hand raiser. And then once they've raised their hand, let's send them over. But absolutely reverse incentive in place the way I think a lot of companies incent marketers. Steffen (27:15): Very much agree. I'd like to see, I think we will see, I would rephrase it. The thing I think we should see marketing wanting to go to SQL focus or like later stage pipeline focus. Of course there are some parts of the deals that they are not in control of, but you want to be tracking them onwards from MQL to like, are they actually really quality leads? The ones you sent through? Kathleen (27:42): Yeah, for sure. And it's funny because we started this conversation talking about like sales and marketing, kind of sometimes being adversarial and wanting to take credit for things. And I think this, this almost comes full circle and brings us back to that because sales and marketing are both being judged based on revenue, as opposed to MQLs, SQLs, all of that. And if I also sort of believe that like compensation for both should be tied to revenue, if everybody's being judged on the same metric, then all of a sudden there's no need for anybody to claim credit. Everybody's getting credit based on the same number. So you, you row together as a team, right? Steffen (28:24): Actually I have a few customers who trust our data so much that they're starting to assign compensation to the marketers based on the attribution models, like are marketing actually starting journeys that ended up converting like three months later. So that's radical, but they are judged on whether they actually just have these first touches on the deals that actually end up becoming like actual signed deals. Kathleen (28:50): That's interesting. What about influence? Are they compensated on their influenced revenue too? Steffen (28:56): Not that I think, but they're also pretty radical in the thinking, but I like that it's kind of the they're so data-driven that they want to reward the market system that sense. Kathleen (29:06): See, it goes back to what I said in the beginning, which is that nobody in the C-suite cares about marketing influenced revenue. I just haven't found anybody yet. Marketers love it, but leaders don't. Steffen (29:18): And I think this is also kind of, if you want to be taken seriously as a marketer, as a marketer, you want to, you need to have the narrative, you need to be able to explain why, what you do becomes revenue, because then it's, it's a lot harder to let you go during a pandemic. If you're actually delivering, like, let's say 70% of all deals marketing touched or something like that. Kathleen (29:45): Well, I love that point that because heads of marketing, CMOs, VPs of marketing, have the shortest tenure of any position in the C-suite. And so anything that can help us justify our existence and keep us around longer is a good thing. Steffen (30:03): So incredibly complex to be a marketing leader, because one day they're shouting leads and then your day it's like, we need to new have a new branding, a new position or something like that. Kathleen (30:15): Everybody thinks they're a marketer, right? Steffen (30:20): So also super different kind of, I think my strong side. So the more like numbers serving my marketing, which makes me struggle sometimes when it's about like communication and positioning and those sorts of things. So I guess did the challenges too. I can now I'm the, I'm the founder, but for markets this out that they really need to be explicit about what they're good at and what the CEOs can expect when they hire you as a marketing leader. Like I'm not going to do the perfect branding campaign. I'm looking to do stuff that drives revenue or, or the opposite, Kathleen (30:56): Right. Or, or if I'm weak in this area, we're going to have to be ready to hire somebody. Good to support me. Yeah, absolutely. Well, we're going to switch gears for a minute here cause we're coming up on our time and I want to make sure I have a chance to ask you a couple of questions that I always ask all of my guests. So the first one is, you know, this podcast is all about inbound marketing. Is there a particular company or individual that you think is really setting the gold standard for what it means to be a great inbound marketer these days? Steffen (31:29): So now by me being Danish I think I can throw a company out there that you haven't heard of before. Normally I would say like Intercom or Segment or something like that who do superior content, but there's a Danish company called Sleeknote where I'm a huge fan of their continent, their CMO is called Emil. And they've produced kind of the thorough content that like makes you feel bad about to continue to do it yourself. So precise and so like dense and rich and yeah. Check out their blog. I think that's fantastic. Kathleen (32:09): I'll definitely check that out. And I always love when I get answers to that question and it's a company I haven't heard of before. So thank you for bringing Sleeknote to my attention. Second question is, digital marketing changes so quickly and I always hear marketers saying that one of their biggest challenges, it's so hard to keep up with everything. So how do you personally keep yourself educated and, and stay on the cutting edge of everything with digital marketing? Steffen (32:37): I think for me, it's the, the newsletter from growthhackers.com, which is kind of a weekly digest of the top posts in there. I think nowadays, it's the five best posts that they share. It's Monday evening when it comes out. And I think that's the most kind of cutting edge stuff that I see. And I think I've reached, I don't read many blog posts anymore because I've reached the kind of an experience level where I know that the basic tactics of most of the stuff, but in there I still like get "Oh, that I haven't seen before. And I want to implement that ASAP." Kathleen (33:18): Yeah. I'm going to have to take a look at that. I have, I switched roles recently. And so my email changed and I haven't been getting the growth hackers emails, but it is good stuff. And you're right. Like when you reach a certain point in your career, it becomes harder to find content that makes you go like, wow, that's really cool. I didn't know that. Steffen (33:37): So I've also like recently switched from like being a marketing leader to like marketing and sales leader. So like now I'm back to reading books, like High Quality Prospecting, Predictable Revenue and all that kind of stuff. So within sales, I feel I still have a lot, a lot of stuff to catch on. So there I'm actually willing to, to open the books again, but within marketing, I feel pretty comfortable about a bunch of stuff. Kathleen (34:04): That's great. Well, growth hackers is a good one. All right. If somebody is listening and they want to learn more about Dreamdata or they want to connect with you online, they might have a question, what's the best way for them to do that? Steffen (34:16): I think LinkedIn is where I'm the most active. I read everything on Twitter, but just reach out on LinkedIn. That's, that's a good spot. And the marketing innovation that we do, you can read on the Dreamdata.io blog to follow that I put out pieces there once in a while as well. Kathleen (34:35): Fantastic. And I'll put links to all of that in the show notes. So head there if you want to check out the Dreamdata website and blog, or if you want to connect with Steffen on LinkedIn. And if you're listening and you learned something new or you enjoyed this episode, consider heading to Apple Podcasts or the platform of your choice and leaving the podcast a review, that's how other people hear about us. And if you know somebody who's doing amazing inbound marketing work, tweet me @workmommywork because I would love to make them my next guest. Thank you so much Steffen. This was a lot of fun. Steffen (35:11): It was a big pleasure to be here. Thank you, Kathleen.

Sales messaging is a vital part of a sales reps’ daily work. It’s how they engage with prospects and it can make a big difference in their results. While the perfect sales message will connect and engage the buyer (eventually leading to a sale), a weak sales message will just be ignored, or worse, will damage the reputation of your company. In this article and episode of the Modern Marketing Engine podcast, my guest, Mario Martinez Jr., CEO and Founder at Vengreso, discusses what marketing and sales leaders need to know about sales messaging and some actionable tips you can start implementing today. Plus, he announced a new tool Vengreso created to help your sales team deploy a consistent message throughout your sales organization. Now, it is self-evident that sales messaging is crucial for sellers, but why is sales messaging important for marketers? Mario says that marketers should be supporting the sales team with all of the right messaging, from the Go-To-Market messaging to the messaging to engage with buyers, including messages for social media and sales enablement content such as playbooks, sales cadences, case studies, ebooks, blogs and the like. At the end of the day, there is just one type of messaging: messaging designed to attract your buyer, not sales or marketing messaging. Today, the modern marketer is more integrated in the sales ecosystem than EVER before, so it’s imperative that marketers have a defined sales messaging strategy. Things Every Sales Messaging Strategy Needs Automation in sales and B2B marketing has made life easier for our teams in many regards. But it also has reduced a lot of the personal touch we used to have in sales messaging. That’s why at Vengreso, we teach our sellers to leverage personalization and hyper personalization in all their sales messages. In fact, we created a sales methodology with the foundation of hyper-personalization. It’s called the PVC method, which stands for Personalization, Value, and Call to Action. The PVC Sales Methodology focuses on prospecting, from the “pre-hello” to the “hello.” The purpose of this methodology is to help salespeople who are having a hard time connecting with potential customers, create more conversations with their targeted buyers.  And the best thing is that the PVC sales methodology can be used in inbound or outbound sales, when writing an email, a text message, a LinkedIn message, or making a phone call or video conference via Zoom. No matter the medium, every effective sales messaging strategy needs to be personalized, valuable and contain the appropriate call to action for the situation. “Sales messaging should be structured around PVC to attract our buyers, not detract or distract them,” Mario says. “Never before has the buyer been so digitally connected, socially engaged, mobile-attached, and video hungry. And salespeople must be as well, becoming video producers to create engaging video messages.” Mario says that in the new normal, sellers will be remote 60% of the time. In fact, according to Gartner’s Future of Sales research, by 2025 80% of B2B sales interactions between suppliers and buyers will occur in digital channels. Why? Because 33% of all buyers desire a seller-free sales experience (44% for millennials). There is no going back to a sales rep that is 100% of the time in the field. That’s why we must teach sellers social selling skills, including how to personalize their messaging, bring value and add the right CTAs to their sales messages. At Vengreso, we offer virtual sales training programs in modern selling skills, such as Selling with Video, Selling with LinkedIn and more. Now, let’s look at the PVC components in more detail. Components that Every Sales Messaging Framework Should Have Let’s talk about each of the components of your sales messaging framework: P – Personalization V – Value C – Call-to-Action Personalization is more than just using the prospect’s first name. If possible, sellers should take the time to research the prospect’s social networks and find shared experiences or recent events or news related to the prospect’s company that they can mention in the sales prospecting message. When creating a sales messaging strategy (whether cold calling scripts or video messages) make sure the sales message brings value to the conversation. Adding value may sound like a cliche, but we must realize that each buyer has an individual business pain, and if our messaging speaks to that particular pain, we’ll have a greater chance of getting through. So, how do you bring value? With content that helps solve their problems, especially related to the solution you are selling. It can be a webinar, a report or a relevant blog article. Provide value instead of just asking for a meeting. Instead of asking for a meeting, add a call to action that keeps the sales conversation going, such as asking a question for them to respond or inviting them to an event. Sales-Ready Messaging vs. Marketing Messaging What’s the difference between a sales-ready message and a marketing message? Marketing messaging is generally one-to-many. For example, marketing will create an email drip campaign to take leads, convert them to MQLs, then to SQLs and finally hand them over to the sales organization.  Sellers do the same thing but instead of one-to-many, they do it one-to-one. That is why sellers have to deliver hyper-personalized messages. Marketing can’t create messages the same way.  Marketing messaging is focused on the buyer persona, trying to hit the pains of that persona. In sales-ready messaging this can also be the case if the seller doesn’t have enough information to personalize the messages, as in a cold email or cold call. But the ideal sales-ready message is hyper-personalized to the individual, not the buyer persona. The seller must be able to find out details about the prospect, such as interests, particular needs, and other background information. For example, when Vengreso sellers reach out to sales leaders, they do it through video, holding a whiteboard and writing the prospect’s name on the board. They find bits of information to use in their sales-ready messages such as an interesting LinkedIn post or a recent promotion. That way, they can personalize their messages with phrases like “I saw that you posted….” or “Congratulations on your recent promotion to…” Now, who’s responsible for writing these sales messages? Marketers usually cringe at the idea of a seller writing a message. And, in general, you don’t want salespeople writing messages if they are not writers, as it would take them too long to write and may not be as good as the text from a trained copywriter.  Mario says that the responsibility for writing these messages falls on the shoulders of the Sales Enablement team -- or if you don't have one, the marketing team. “But the marketing team must be in tune with what is happening in the field before writing. We have our marketing team listen to sales calls weekly so they can structure sales messaging. They must understand the sales process in order to create messaging that attracts buyers and sells more.” What is a Sales Message vs. a Product Message? Another important distinction we must make is between a sales message and a product message. In short, while a sales message includes the PVC components discussed above, a product message centers around features and functions. Product messaging should always reside inside of marketing. The idea is to take the features and what the products do and translate them into benefits, into how they solve real-world problems. Sellers are usually trained on products to attract a potential customer, but they are sometimes not trained in communicating how the product solves actual problems. From our experience, if you were to ask 100 sales reps at a company to tell in one sentence what business problem they solve for their customer (the value proposition), 80% would not be able to answer consistently. Marketing must be able to articulate in one sentence the business problem that the company solves and sales leaders should make sure their sellers know it well so that they are all communicating the same message. For example, at Vengreso we know that VPs of Sales have two common problems: a) they want to increase the number of sales conversations that their sellers are having and b) increase their sales pipeline. So, a message to that buyer persona (if the seller doesn’t have details to personalize the messaging to the individual) would start by asking if they have one of those two problems. If the answer is “no,” they would just stop reading. If the answer is “yes,” they’ll continue reading. In that case, the sales-ready message should provide value before introducing the solution.  For example, the sales-ready message could say: If you have any of those two problems, here are two resources that can help you out: I encourage you to watch this webinar [ADD LINK] with your team in your next one-hour call. It will take you through two things your sellers can do right now to create more sales conversations on LinkedIn. Read this blog article [ADD LINK], which tells you five things you can do to improve your sales video messages. Do you see what we are doing here? We are providing value, which is what a good sales message will do. Once a conversation is started with the prospect, product messaging comes in. That’s when the seller goes deep to explain the product features and translate those features into business benefits.  How to Develop Sales Messaging The PVC method will help you develop your sales messaging with the right elements. But how do you deploy those messages so your team can use them? Usually, the marketing team would create a “42-page document” with the messaging, upload it to a local server or the internet and send the link to the sales team for them to use. The reality is that most sellers will not use that document. That is why we created a sales productivity and sales messaging tool called FlyMSG. FlyMSG is a text expander tool under the sales prospecting tools category. This Chrome extension helps marketers and sellers improve their productivity and efficiency by letting them expand pre-written communication templates and messages for use in their daily digital communication. Or as we like to say it: “Type less. Sell more." FlyMSG solves these three real-life problems: Allows sales and marketing professionals to write complete messages, emails, LinkedIn connection requests and more using only a short and simple shortcut (FlyCut), leaving more time to focus on the needs of the customer. Increases the reach of sellers in their pipeline, allowing them to focus more on selling and less on administrative tasks. Uses a centralized repository of each user’s best, templatized messages (FlyPlates), creating unity in each user’s overall messaging. A large portion of our PVC Sales Methodology templates are inside of FlyMSG for free to download. FlyMSG is the only text expander tool that allows you to add images, video, rich text format, hyperlinks, as well as categorize your templates. Mario says that with a corporate account, a marketing team can own the creation and distribution of a company’s sales messaging. “Marketing can write the messages, add the templates to FlyMSG and make them available to all sellers,” Marios says. “Then, all sellers have to do is type the shortcut (FlyCut) and the message will automatically expand, ensuring usage, adoption and consistency in all sales messaging across the sales organization.” Mario gives the example of a FlyCut he created called -bookameeting which he created to expand automatically to a pre-written sentence inviting someone to book a meeting with him with his calendar link included. It's a huge time saver since he uses it often. 

Lilah Waite of Lead Forensics joins Christoph Trappe on this live recording of the Business Storytelling Podcast to discuss the topic. We are discussing: What are MQLs and SQLs How important is the speed when we follow up with each of these? Is there such a thing as too fast? What are the best practices for follow up? Why do so many talk about MQLs vs. SQLs How do we make that hand off easier? How important is building audience to drive good QLs. What are some other uncomfortable truths Grab your free trial of Lead Forensics here: https://lnkd.in/ddTY46M This episode is produced by Trappe Digital LLC and supported by Lead Forensics. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/ctrappe/message

The Episode in 60 Seconds One of the contributing factors to CMOs having the shortest tenure in the C-Suite is a lack of understanding of their role at the revenue table. A CMO must take up the mantle of responsibility to track activity and results, grow the company despite the changing attitudes of the buyer, and make meaning for the CEO and CRO. On this edition, Mark Donnigan, B2B marketing leader turned consultant, unpacks six key performance indicators that every CMO should track and report on in the revenue conversation. He is joined by Golden Spiral's SEO and analytics expert, A. Chris Turner. The KPIs are: Net New Revenue from Marketing-Generated Sources Percentage of Contribution from Marketing to Overall Revenue Qualified Pipeline Generated Leads (MQLs) Length of the Sales Cycle vs. Win Rate Sales-Qualified Leads Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) Our Guests Mark Donnigan is a marketing leader, business builder, value creator, and market maker. Formerly the VP of Marketing at Beamr, Mark focuses on high-impact programs that drive revenue, activate the market, and deliver real business results. He has 20 years of experience contributing to the success of startup, emerging, and growth-stage product and technology companies that have been backed by some of the largest VC firms in the valley. His secret weapon is his strong sales acumen, making him a powerful ally and collaborator to the head of sales. Mark also co-hosts a podcast called The Video Insiders, speaking on topics like video compression, codecs, encoding, transcoding, workflows, technology trends and business models. Mark Donnigan has prepared a free presentation for those who are curious about his viewpoint on category creation and building a marketing system. Click to download.   Chris Turner is Golden Spiral’s Senior Director of Digital Strategy and Performance Analytics and an expert in all things digital. Chris manages and monitors the online strategies for our clients related to paid media, content, social media marketing, and digital optimization. Chris helps our teams build synergistic digital strategies that touch on everything from relationship building with partners to content creation and syndication — all to help clients make an impact through their business. He leverages his experience of 10+ years of marketing leadership to direct marketing teams to success based on addressable KPIs and data-driven tactics. Chris has a bachelor’s degree in information technology and a master’s in information systems. He is well educated, heavily experienced, and always seeking more knowledge. Show Notes  Today's CMO must be intentional. - John Farkas A successful CMO: proactively seeks alignment with the CEO has a command of the ecosystem intimately knows the customer, the market, and the competition has a world-class understanding of marketing strategy, tactics, and tools Executive Level Marketing KPIs 1. Net New Revenue from Marketing-Generated Sources (12:27) The total dollar figure for a period of time (e.g., monthly) of new gross sales from marketing channels only.   2. Percentage of Contribution from Marketing to Overall Revenue (13:53) All marketing income (new and renewal) represented as a percentage against all revenue from all sources.   3. Qualified Pipeline-Generated Leads (MQLs) (15:06) A MQL is not just a lead. It must meet the criteria of a future customer. Do you have deep information on the role of the lead? Is this lead at the decision or purchase table? Is the lead's company in your niche? Does the lead's company fit the profile of your target customer? Is the lead's company the right financial size for a good deal? (Some companies have other criteria for leads.) 4. Length of the Sales Cycle vs. Win Rate (20:43) How long does a lead spend in your funnel? Count the days from first touch to signed contract for completed deals. What percentage of Qualified Pipeline-Generated Leads convert. By looking at both numbers at the same time—and in light of the other KPIs—you'll be able to see the impact of a lengthening sales cycle or a high win rate versus decreasing income. 5. Sales-Qualified Leads (26:46) An MQL shows promise. An SQL is certified by your sales team that it meets all of your criteria and has a probability of converting. Some companies divide SQLs into qualified and accepted leads. For more information on titles and definitions, check out this excellent article from Golden Spiral's President and COO, Peter Smith. 6. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) (31:17) Mark Donnigan goes into detail about how to calculate CAC for SaaS companies that have long sales cycles. Listen to this section for a greater understanding of the number of marketing expenses you must pack into the acquisition cost. 

In this episode, Anish Jariwala talks about the secret ingredients of success in marketing, especially in critical times such as 2020, as well as the transition from traditional marketing to ABM and his three C’s for improving marketing efforts. He details a few ways you can figure out the right accounts for your company and gauge interest in those accounts, what trends and changes he’s observing in the marketing industry, and he shares his candid thoughts on MQLs and SQLs. Contacts Anish Jariwala | Follow us on LinkedIn

Show Resources: Episode 14 - Low Budgets Episode 22 - How to Scale Episode 15 - Benchmarks Episode  10 - High Performing Offers LinkedIn Learning course about LinkedIn Ads by AJ Wilcox: LinkedIn Advertising Course Contact us at Podcast@B2Linked.com with ideas for what you'd like AJ to cover. Show Transcript: Your LinkedIn Ads are performing well, but your boss or client isn't giving you much budget. This week, we're making the case for scaling on the LinkedIn Ads Show. Welcome to the LinkedIn Ads Show. Here's your host, AJ Wilcox. Hey there LinkedIn Ads fanatics. So we highlighted someone back on the q&a episode, her name is Felicia Gheorghe, and she asked this question and I thought it was definitely deserving of a more detailed dive. I tend to recommend some pretty large numbers in budget and spend. And so she asked, "Hey, I'm struggling with really low budget over here. What numbers do I bring up to justify and convince that scaling up and add is necessary?" And this is a really good question. Because when we're faced with really small budgets, and our boss or our client won't give us additional, we really do have to build the business case around, "Hey, this really is performing well, you should feed it while it's working." So we'll get into all of that today. In the news, I just got back from vacation and so I'm struggling to record this at like seven o'clock at night. I think I just decided I'm never going to take another vacation again. But a nice little piece of news, B2Linked just turned six years old last week, so Happy Birthday to us. And a friend of the show, Kylee Lessard, who's a product marketing manager at LinkedIn. She shared a poll last week and I wanted to just share the results of this because I thought this was really interesting for everyone. She asked, "What kind of stories content do you want to see from brands on LinkedIn?" And the options were info, like news events and products. Educational, like data, insights, tips, tricks. And people, employees and culture. And then there's another other category where people could vote in. And I personally think that educational content, like data, insights, tips, tricks, would be the most interesting content to me. So that's what I voted for. And as soon as we can see the results here, 57% voted the same way I did. People with employees and culture came in second place with 26%. And news and info came in a measly 13%. And I think this answered perfectly a question that I've had for a long time, which is, in a business to business context, what sort of content do you put in a stories, ad or even in a company's story. So based off of this poll, I'm going to start with more of that educational content. Thanks, Kylie for hosting that poll. And a friend this week, who is part of the alpha for stories ads, he shared something that was a little disheartening to me, but it's probably not in its final revision. He said that when you're part of the alpha, you don't bid for stories inventory separately from a separate campaign, you do it as basically a checkbox onto a sponsored content campaign. So if you have something that sponsored content running, then this would just be another Inventory slot that you could stick sponsored content into. Personally, I think that would be a terrible user experience, if that were to continue. So I hope we get our own inventory with it. And then from an advertising perspective, I really hope that we're getting our own inventory and we can bid specifically for it, because that means low costs get in before the competition happens. So we'll see in the beta or when it finally comes out for release, I'm crossing my fingers that we get a really low floor bid so we can really start talking about the great deals that can be had on LinkedIn. I wanted to highlight a review from CRBladen, who's in Great Britain. He said, "He speaks my language. I love ajs podcast. He's super knowledgeable and give sound and strategic advice for LinkedIn marketers. As a freelance LinkedIn marketer, it's great to hear someone geek out over LinkedIn Ads and share my passion for the platform. Thanks, AJ." Hey CRBladen, thanks so much for saying that. I will geek out with you anytime. I would love to feature you as well, talking to you listener, to leave a review on whatever podcast platform you listen to. And I would absolutely love to give you a shout out. All right, with that being said, let's hit it. So diving into this issue of starting with a low budget and then wanting to prove out the model so that you can scale, it's really helpful to have listened to Episode 14. That's all about basically how to have success with small budgets. So feel free to pause this one, and then go and binge listen to Episode 14 and come back or quite honestly, they're okay in reverse as well. So to me making the case about taking a smaller budget and growing it either to my boss or the company's owner or the client, it all comes down to confidence. And I certainly don't know all of your individual situations because everyone's situation is different. But I've talked to some who have low budgets because maybe one they've been burned by an agency that's done bad work, and so they're Trying to lower their risk, Two maybe they have money, but the Exec team needs to see the quote unquote, results, before going all in. Three, they don't understand how digital marketing works. And then it's our job to educate them on investing enough to make sure we have a sizable amount that tells us whether or not it's working. Or number four here, they just don't have the money to invest. And I know this is a hot take, potentially, but I don't think it's our job as marketers to change the financial culture of the company. So if you really feel like your growth is being stifled because you're killing it on LinkedIn Ads, and you want to scale, but you just can't make a case for them to grant you more budget, then I would say it's not your job to fight that battle. And it might be better just to drop the client, or maybe even switch companies if your internal. And I know this is a LinkedIn Ads podcast, but the nature of LinkedIn ads is really high risk. First of all, it's expensive. And so any mistake you make is automatically an expensive mistake. And then also the traffic is more mid to top of funnel. So it's these long sales cycles, and people just aren't ready to make big commitments yet. And so if you have an executive who's looking to see quote, unquote, results, for my experience, that usually means that they're looking for a return on their investment, which isn't going to happen fast with LinkedIn Ads 99% of the time, because it's specifically for longer sales cycles. It's catching people outside of their level of intent. So the risks to you as a marketer in going out on a limb to fight for additional budget, just because you have confidence in the results, it puts you at risk of really looking bad to your boss or bad to the client. And certainly that's scary. That's something that we really need to consider. On the flip side of that, though, I do think that you as a marketer have the responsibility to first of all, be aware of the financial situation of the company, and the number to be aware of the financial culture of the company, so that you don't stick out like a sore thumb by pushing them to increase budgets, and then end up losing your job or looking bad or leaving a bad taste in someone's mouth. And based on that, you definitely want to pick your battles, because maybe your company has the money. And you know that LinkedIn Ads has the best potential for the highest quality leads, and you need to fight to change your executives minds. Or maybe your company doesn't have the money to scale. So you decide to sit back and just keep doing the best job you can, even with a low budget, even if you are highly confident that it would scale. So if it's a battle you want to fight, then absolutely go for it. But your relationship with the exec team, I feel like is super valuable. And LinkedIn Ads is a high risk platform by nature. So guard your reputation and guard your job before you go on a fight just to increase your budget. So if you're looking for the formula on how to scale, definitely go back and listen to Episode 22. It's all about how to take good results and scale them up. But what we're going to cover today is how to identify whether there's something there that's worth scaling, and really how to analyze your traffic, your conversions, your lead quality. So we're gonna dive a little bit deeper in here. 8:20 Case Study I want to share a case study from a client that we worked with. And the company is called pilot.com. And they provide SAS software for bookkeepers. And our partners, they're ultra sharp marketers, which is always a plus. They were spending a really healthy five figure per month budget. And they were spending that with us for many months. And then suddenly they came to us and said that they wanted to increase their budget by nine times overnight, ASAP. Well, scalability and efficiency are kind of our thing. So we did this with a plone. we rebuilt the account structure to sustain that kind of growth, which if you're curious, go back and listen to episode seven on how we do that. And we were totally successful at nine xing the budget overnight. And it was incredible. We stayed perfectly within the efficiency thresholds of the cost per MQL that we needed. So I'm sure patting myself on the back. And I'm telling myself this story that we did such a great job at managing the ads that they went and had an internal meeting and started comparing to the other channels. And they were instantly blown away when they saw the numbers that LinkedIn Ads performance was so mammoth compared to the others that they realized they needed to suddenly nine x their budget, but the truth probably is more than if we would have been paying attention to the signs along the way. We could have been a lot more proactive in suggesting smaller budget increases early on, and we could have taken advantage of the faster growth opportunities as we saw them and gained confidence in their LinkedIn leads. We're definitely not a salesy type of organization. We're not pushy to our clients. So we're the last ones who are proactively, going to our clients and saying you should spend more. Because as an agency, I feel really dirty suggesting that because as clients spend more, we make more. And so it seems really disingenuous. But if we would have done that, if we could have taken advantage of the three to six months beforehand where we could have made smaller gains, I think we would have been further ahead than if we just waited for this realization that the LinkedIn leads are gold. And we should suddenly nine x our traffic and have that drop like a ton of bricks. 10:30 Comparison So as you're running your campaigns, what you first want to do is take a look at your metrics. And it's pretty easy to see that the top line performance and engagement metrics, but I know you you're a sophisticated marketer, and you're going to go deeper than that. You're going to dive into your CRM and pull out your cost per MQL, cost Per SQL, cost per SAL, cost per proposal, cost per closed deal. And then what you want to do is compare your numbers to the benchmarks that I shared in Episode 15. And if you know that you're significantly above benchmark in everything, your confidence should be really high that you're on the right track. And that given a higher budget, you could probably do a great job. And as soon as you start looking at those bottom of the funnel types of metrics like MQLs, SQLs, closes, you'll definitely want to compare this to your other marketing channels. Because let's say for instance, your cost per SAL on Google is like $3,000 and on LinkedIn, it's 2000, there'd be a really good case to be made for taking budget from Google. And I think you also need to realize that your account is in a constant evolution of your ammo that we've talked about before. It's your audiences, your messages and your offers. And I'm sure that you know that your cost per MQL, cost per SQL, and deeper, these are lagging metrics. And so if you look at them now, they'll tell you the story of what was happening in the account weeks or even months ago. So as you evolve your offers and messaging tests, there may be significant room for improvement, that just given a little bit more time to bake out, you can actually realize, and I've said this before, but my recommendation is don't compare with Facebook on like a cost per click, or click through rate, or cost per lead level because LinkedIn is significantly more expensive and the targeting is so much more precise. If you do compare and start robbing LinkedIn of your budget, just because Facebook is cheaper on a cost per lead basis, you'll likely end up cheating yourself out of the real value of LinkedIn, which is the lead quality. And similarly, don't compare your results with Google ads if you're looking at just cost per click, click through rate and CPL because search channels score really high in intent, which makes sense because you're targeting the people who are already looking for what it is you do, but they score really low in the budget and authority categories, which tells you if someone is actually able to purchase from you, and do they have the authority to do that. They're fundamentally very different channels. And they tend to actually work really well hand in hand, rather than head to head. Okay, here's the quick sponsor break, and then we'll dive into the order of confidence for scaling. 13:19 The LinkedIn Ads Show is proudly brought to you by B2Linked.com, the LinkedIn Ads experts. If the performance of your LinkedIn Ads is important to you, B2Linked is the agency you'll want to work with. We've spent over $130 million on LinkedIn ads, and no one outperforms us on getting you the lowest cost per lead. We're official LinkedIn partners, and we don't have a sales team so you'll deal only with LinkedIn ads, experts from day one. Fill out the contact form on any page of B2Linked.com and we'd love to chat with you about your campaigns. Or heck, show up to our offices on horseback. No matter how you get in touch, we'd love to work with you. 14:00 Order of Confidence For Scale Alright, let's jump into the order of confidence. And what I mean by order of confidence is, as you're advertising, you're going to amass certain metrics. And then based off of how good those metrics are, it will probably give you more confidence that either what you're doing is working, or it's not working, and you should change tactics. So if you're looking at your ads, and you're looking at just the impressions number, what does this tell you? Well, really not very much. Your bidding really qualifies the ad to be worth LinkedIn's while to show to people to give it impressions and that's not very confidence inspiring in my book. But then you go to the next rung down and we start looking at click through rates. Now definitely compared to the benchmarks that we laid out in Episode 15. And that will tell you whether you're being successful at crafting a message that people are either more or less likely to click on. And this is great, but it also doesn't make a strong case for getting additional budget to scale. You've just proven that you can write something that people want to click on. So now you're looking at the conversions or leads number. You're generating conversions and leads and that's great. It means you're offering something that people actually want. And this is quite a bit more inspiring. Similarly, if you're looking at your conversion rate, you can find that you've got enough conversions coming in that you can start to feel confident in how effective your offer is, at getting people, especially cold traffic to reveal themselves to you, to fill out a form. If you have a 12% conversion rate, that tells you that one out of every eight people that you engage with on the ad will end up converting and that feeling is a lot more confidence inspiring to me. You can also now calculate based on your cost per click, what you can expect your cost per lead to be. If you divide your cost per click by your conversion rate percentage, that will tell you what your cost per conversion is. So if you know what your max cost per lead is, and you know what your conversion rate is, you can use basic algebra to figure out how much you're able to bid for traffic, and still stay underneath your goal cost per conversion. So let's say that you have a 12% conversion rate. And you've determined that you want to stay under $120 per conversion. So in this case, we're trying to solve for cost per click, so that's our variable. We're going to divide that by 12%, or .12. So let's say that you have a 12% conversion rate. And you've determined that you want to stay under $120 per conversion. So again, this is basic algebra, so try to follow along. Because good crap, this would work so much better if you could see this So our formula here is your cost per click over your conversion rate equals 120. Our conversion rate is .12, or 12%. here. And so if you evaluate that, you end up multiplying both sides by 12%, you end up with a max cost per click of $14.40. And so in that case, I would go and set a manual bid of maybe even up to $14.50 or $14.75. So I'm going to land somewhere around there. And like I said, that's pretty confidence inspiring. But we can go deeper here. If you're looking at the MQLs or marketing qualified leads level, now you're seeing that your leads are actually turning into marketing qualified leads. For most B2B organizations, this means that the lead quality is high enough for them to qualify to move on to have someone in the sales department take a look at them. And this is confidence inspiring, because you at this point, you know that your targeting is good, you know that your leads aren't garbage, they're passing that initial threshold. The next step is really looking at lead quality and this can be either anecdotal feedback that you get from a sales team, or you have a lead scoring mechanism inside, let's say, your CRM or marketing automation system. When you get enough leads, that you start to get feedback on their quality, this gives you a lot more confidence in your LinkedIn ads performance. And I've also found that anecdotal feedback, even if it's not statistically significant, it can sway sales teams, or sway executives, simply because this is a second voice, a second testimony that what you're what you're saying is true. The next stage is SQL or sales qualified lead. And every B2B company has different names for these stages so this is just the basics. But, you might call it an SAL, you might call it a BPO, whatever you call it, it's just the next qualifying stage. And this stage is actually my favorite stage to track and for marketing to be held accountable to because it incorporates both the lead quality, because it incorporates both the lead quality from my targeting, as well as the cost efficiency that we're driving. At this stage, you're starting to see your leads be qualified in the sales process is having promise. And these could start leading to close deals and this is amazing. This really gives me the ultimate confidence in my advertising efforts. Because now I can present a cost per SQL and an SQL conversion rate. And I can go to the executive team or I can go to the client and inspire a lot of confidence in additional budget, especially if you can say, oh, and in the last few weeks, we've made some big additions to the platform, and it's likely going to do even better than that as the database out. And of course, if you're a big spender or you've just been driving this traffic long enough, you can start to see proposals come in when your leads start getting proposals at volume. And let's say they have a near 50% chance of closing. This gives excellent confidence that actually efforts are turning into a return on investment. Even if it takes that deal, three months to go from proposal to close, if you've got 10 of these things, and you know that they have a 50% chance of closing, that might as well be money in the bank. But of course, what every business owner wants is closed deals. And so when you start amassing enough data, that you can generate closed deals, and track them at some kind of volume. I think that's all the confidence that you'll ever need. But of course, we definitely need to talk about limitations, because not every audience is scalable. Not every offer is scalable. So let's jump into some of the things that might stop you from being able to scale. The first is your audience size, let's say that you want to scale and you even have the budget. But if your audience sizes are too small, you just won't be able to spend more budget on them. And as you implement the things that we learned for Episode 22, all about scaling, you might find that you've already hit this level of diminishing returns, because your audience just isn't big enough. And unfortunately, this is just kind of the way it is, it's possible that you've already found the optimal amount of scale in your account. And that's actually good to find out where your limitations are. 21:12 Limitations The next limitation, though, is a lot easier to deal with. And this is your click through rate. It might be that everything you launch has click through rates between, let's say, 0.4%, and 0.5%. So even if your audience is nicely sized, because so few people are actually clicking on your ads, you just can't generate enough traffic to spend what you want. In this case, the limiting factor for you is most likely your offer itself. Go back and listen to Episode 10 to learn all about offers. If you can go and create an offer that is so attractive that all of a sudden, every ad that you write gets a click through rate of 1% or higher, this will instantly give you opportunities to double your traffic, and even drop your cost per click significantly. There was one notable case where we had two different ads, both going to the same audience. One was getting a click through rate of like 1.3%. And the other was getting like 0.6%. And so I looked at that and said, "Wow, the ad that's getting a 1.2% click through rate is obviously a much better ad. Let's scale that." But then as soon as we started looking at the conversions that were coming from it, we found that the ad that got clicked on less the one with 0.6% click through rate ended up having a conversion rate that was three times higher. So we paused that high performing ad, even though it was amazing at getting people to click because conversions are so much more important. Remember as advertisers, the closer you can get to the money, the more valuable your decisions and actions are. All right, I've got the episode resources for you coming right up. So stick around. 22:59 Thank you for listening to the LinkedIn ads Show. Hungry for more? AJ Wilcox, take it away. 23:10 Resources If you haven't already, check out Episode 14 all about low budgets. And then Episode 22 is all about how to scale up effectively and efficiently. We mentioned account structure, which Episode Seven goes into. And then you should definitely listen to Episode 15 all about benchmarks to let you know if you're doing a good job, or if you're totally falling off the horse. And of course, a classic, one of our most popular episodes Episode 10, all about crafting the right offer and the right call to action. If you are one of your colleagues is looking to learn LinkedIn, point them towards the LinkedIn Learning course on LinkedIn advertising. I am the humble author of that. But I can say it's a really surprisingly good course especially for the price that LinkedIn Learning charges for which I think is $25 or free. You'll see the link right down below in the show notes where you can click right to it. Also make sure to subscribe on whatever podcast player you're listening to right now. And then please do rate and review the podcast. If you review, I'd love to shout you out. With any episode ideas or feedback, hit us up at podcast at B2Linked.com. And with that being said, we'll see you back here next week. Cheering you on in your LinkedIn Ads initiatives.

A unified marketing and sales funnel is the solution to better prospecting in any organization. In this episode of the Modern Marketing Engine podcast, my guest, A. Lee Judge, Global Digital Marketing Director at Hexagon GeoSystems, discusses his approach to digital marketing and how it is contributing to sales prospecting with a focus on quantifiable attribution.  B2B Marketing leaders are being held to a higher standard in 2020. CEOs and CROs want to see marketing drive activities that demonstrably help salespeople be more productive. Sales prospecting is one of the most undesirable activities in sales. Marketers are asked to deliver marketing programs that enable sales prospecting to be more productive.  Listen to this episode to learn more about how marketing can help sales to prospect better. This podcast is brought to you by Postal.io. A Sales and marketing engagement platform that generates leads increases sales and improves customer retention. Request a demo to learn how to integrate direct mail and gift into your existing strategy by visiting Postal.io. How the Full Marketing and Sales Funnel Works Marketing must identify the buyer persona using feedback from the sales team. There must be a two-way communication between sales and marketing to clearly understand the changing needs of the customer. Data shows that prospects will self educate and conduct research before engaging with a sales rep, so marketing must get ahead of the competition and educate their prospects first. How? By understanding the prospect’s questions and pain points, which sales knows really well. Sales organizations should never hold back information from the marketing team, otherwise the competition may end up educating their prospective customers. Lee says that organizations must understand that it’s the customer’s journey not the sales journey. And it's not a linear journey that they can control. That means neither sales nor marketing own that journey. There shouldn’t be a wall between sales and marketing when optimizing for the prospect’s journey. Prospects will interact with sales and marketing on and off during their journey, talking to a sales rep, while reading the blog or social media posts, then going back to the sales rep and so on. According to Lee, there is just one funnel, the Sales and Marketing Funnel. In traditional sales funnels, marketing doesn’t know what is going on with the SQLs they handed over to the sales team, so if there is a roadblock or lack of information, then marketing can’t help. But when there is only one funnel, sales and marketing are in constant communication, collaborating to move leads through the funnel. Marketing can provide the content sales needs to help the prospect understand the solution and move through the funnel on their way to making a buying decision. In his role as Global Digital Marketing Manager at Hexagon GeoSystems, Lee supports hundreds of marketers in this process, helping them use technology and understand the business, so they can have a clear view of sales and marketing activities and create content that is enabled for sales. The Modern Marketer is Data Savvy Today’s modern marketer is not just a creative person who creates great content, but also a very data-savvy marketer. The modern marketer must understand data because data is what holds marketing and sales together. Data will help marketers understand where people came from, how they responded, as well as to segment people by campaigns. That data must be shared with sales so they know what the prospect’s needs are. Marketing should be able to show Sales a picture of the customer’s journey. For example, how many times the prospects visited the website and which pages, how many emails they received and opened, which webinars they attended and so on. The prospect’s digital journey provides very valuable information for the sales reps. That means marketing needs to collect that data and make it easily accessible to sales. “Marketing can’t qualify, Lee says, “but if sales lets marketing know who they are looking for and what they expect to know, then marketing should be able to set up the processes to deliver on that information.” How to measure attribution Lee tells the story of a company who made the decision to cut particular tradeshows from their budget based on the information the sales people put in the CRM. The sales reps were asked to identify which deals could be attributed to trade shows. The CEO didn’t cut the show which was attributed to deals, hence proving to deliver ROI, but cut the rest of the events from the budget. This story illustrates the importance of attribution data. The attribution dilemma stems from the difficulty of connecting an opportunity to a multi-touch sales cycle. Was it the first touch, the last touch, or several touches? Lee says there is no right or wrong answer to this question. It depends on the length of the sales cycle, how in sync sales and marketing are, and the structure of the CRM and the tech stack. If there is a culture of documentation within a company, then attribution is easier. Such a culture states that “if it’s not in CRM, it didn’t happen.” When sellers take the time to document in the CRM what they did, not only do they help marketers know what is going on, but they can prove the ROI of their sales tools. Finally, Lee says that the bottom-line message for sales and marketing is to keep the one team mindset in mind, communicating with each other, knowing both have the same goal. Outline of this Episode [3:00] About Hexagon GeoSystems and A. Lee Judge [6:10] How Marketing Can Help Sales Target Prospects [11:05] The role of technology in the sales and marketing funnel [12:50] The characteristics of the modern marketer [20:01] Sales Prospecting Attribution  [26:14] The one team mindset for sales and marketing Featured on this Episode Connect with A. Lee Judge on LinkedIn Follow A. Lee Judge on Twitter: @ALeeJudge Website Resources & People Mentioned The Modern Selling Podcast with Vengreso CEO, Mario Martinez, Jr. Connect With Bernie and Modern Marketing Engine https://www.Facebook.com/modernmarketingengine/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/bernieborges/ https://twitter.com/bernieborges https://instagram.com/bernieborges https://Twitter.com/MMEnginePodcast

Nicolas Noailles, SDR at Matera, is sharing his job search experience in COVID 19. After completing the Sellinstruct training program, he confidently nailed his interviews with his ICPs in the SaaS industry. Nick talks about the winning mindset it takes for one to land and secure a job in today's difficult economy. If you're at a tough spot now, play this episode. It's always worth listening to somebody booking 5 SQLs on their first prospecting day. In case you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us or check us out at sellinstruct.com

Most marketers consider a decrease in MQLs to be a bad thing, but for Lessonly CMO Kyle Lacy, cutting MQLs in half led to a 10X increase in marketing ROI. This week on the Inbound Success podcast, Lessonly CMO Kyle Lacy explains how his team achieved a 10X increase in marketing ROI by redesigning the company's website, redefining what constituted a marketing qualified lead, and refocusing the efforts of the sales team.  It's a case study that holds lessons (no pun intended!) for anyone who is using inbound marketing to drive organic growth. Check out the full episode to learn what Kyle and his team did, and how you too can apply this approach to get better results with your own marketing. Resources from this episode: Connect with Kyle on LinkedIn Follow Kyle on Twitter Visit Kyle's personal website Check out the Lessonly website Check out some of the resources Kyle mentioned: Listen to the Inbound Success Podcast interview with Dave Gerhardt Learn more about Anthony Kennada of Front and Kathryn Loheide of Formstack Learn more about The Revenue Collective Transcript Kathleen (00:00): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Booth. And my guest this week is Kyle Lacy, who is the chief marketing officer at Lessonly. Welcome to the podcast, Kyle. Kyle (00:27): Thanks for having me. Kathleen (00:28): Yeah, it is a, it is a funny time to be, to be doing these podcasts with everybody stuck at home and, and interesting stories of trying to work with, with dogs and children and spouses and construction noise and all the things that happen when you're stuck working from home. I will say I have two dogs in my office, so they may bark while we're talking. Kyle (00:49): I also have a dog who may bark. Kathleen (00:52): Yup. We're just going to roll with it. I'm sure everybody who's listening is dealing with the same thing. No, I was really looking forward to talking with you. I I've been following, I think your career for a while now, since I became part of a group online that you're in. And I'm really fascinated by the work you're doing with Lessonly. So maybe before we jump into that, you could take a minute and tell my listeners a little bit more about who you are, what Lessonly is and how you came to be doing what you're doing. Kyle (01:21): Yeah, sure. I'll spare the early career comments mainly just because I worked at an agency, I started an agency and then I failed miserably. So I think that's another podcast for another time. Kathleen (01:35): Had I, I had an agency for 11 years. Yes! Kyle (01:39): Mine was five and it, we did okay and then it started going downhill. But because of that agency, I had the opportunity to go work for a software company in Indianapolis called ExactTarget. And at the time ExactTarget was the largest email service provider in the world, email marketing platform. I was, I was one of, I think 600 people hired that year in 2012, but it was my first foray into software. And it's where I fell in love with software. So I spent three years at ExactTarget where we ran, I ran content marketing as well as the thought leadership team there. And we IPO'd, bought by Salesforce. Spent a year at Salesforce. Realized that the large corporate company was not for me even though, to be very clear, Salesforce, Salesforce is large. Corporate culture is not what you would expect. Kyle (02:32): It's actually really cool. I just could not, I could not work in a, in a company of 20,000 people. I realized that I wanted to be a marketing leader. I definitely wanted to be a CMO sometime in my future. So the best bet for me, I believed, was to go work for a venture capital firm. And they recruited, a company called O-, firm called OpenView Boston, which is, they have a little over a billion under management and they invest in series B, series C in B2B software companies. Spent two years there. Basically got my MBA in software. I mean, it's the best learning you can possibly do is to be on the other side of the table, especially with the venture capital firm. And Lessonly was looking for a market leader. And Lessonly is based in Indianapolis. My wife and I wanted to move back from Boston. And it just made sense. Lessonly was a portfolio company of OpenView and everybody that was important to my network was involved at Lessonly. So I've been at Lessonly now for three and a half years and started as the VP of Marketing and now Chief Marketing Officer. Kathleen (03:39): That's great. And tell me a little bit more about what Lessonly does. Kyle (03:43): Lessonly is training software for sales and customer service teams. So everybody from large telecom companies to small software companies. Kathleen (03:51): Great. And, and you had an interesting year. One of the reasons I was fascinated to talk with you is that you were telling me last year, you guys actually cut the number of marketing qualified leads you were bringing in, intentionally. I feel like when you talk to marketers, that's not normally something they set out to do, but you set out to do that. And that resulted in actually a big jump in revenue for the company. So I want to pick this apart and, and I guess start with like, why, why did you set out to reduce your number of MQLs? Kyle (04:25): It was kind of haphazard, to be honest with you. We, we knew that we had to blow up and redesign our website from the ground up in August of 2018, because we started seeing a drop in organic traffic because our site load time was just pathetic. And so Google was starting to ding us on load times on the pages of our site. So when we overhauled it, we were looking at our marketing qualified lead definitions and realized that, I realized something that I hope most marketers realize in the near future, is that it was pretty much BS, right? Like we were sending, we were working thousands of MQLs, and you could be breathing and becoming a marketing qualified lead for Lessonly. Right? And so what we basically said was, we're going to get rid of all of our forms, all of our content downloads, except for a few. Kyle (05:16): And then our demo form is going to be the main form on the site. So if you fill out a form and you use a work email for a demo, you become a marketing qualified lead. So you can imagine that we cut them, I mean, it was over 80%, I think, of our SQLs. And the one thing that that did was that it highly qualified the people we were sending to the inbound team, the inbound SDR team. It also allowed us to spend more time working those deals. And it, it created a closer alignment between sales and marketing because sales actually started trusting the inbound opportunities that were being sent over. So for us, what happened was we cut MQLs over half and we, we, I mean, we significantly for, I think we, I think that over a year we four to five X'd inbound revenue that was direct sourced from our website. Kyle (06:17): And it was pretty much the, the idea that, hey, marketing marketing should own a revenue number and all this crap about, hey, we influenced revenue, which most marketers talk about. I think it was just complete BS. It's like, yeah, you should influence a hundred percent of closed revenue. Like you're marketing. Yeah. I don't care if it's expansion. I don't care if it's net new revenue. Right. So for us it was, it was, it was the opportunity to control our destiny when it came to what we were direct sourcing. And we significantly improved revenue just because we've cut down. Kathleen (06:53): So this topic is particularly interesting to me because it may or may not be hitting home. It's just something I'm dealing with at the moment. I've always been a big believer in ungating stuff, by the way. Like I always, every time I've done it, I've, I've seen actually conversion rates have, if anything, gone up because people like to see the content and they're like, Oh, now it's totally worth getting, you know, giving you my email address. So I, I've never had a problem with ungating content and removing a lot of forms and things like that. What I think is interesting is that, and I'm dealing with something similar to what you described right now with the company I'm at, where historically the sales team, you know, has, has been handed every single person that converts on anything on the website, as a lead, which in my book is not your, it's not a lead. Kathleen (07:43): As you say, if they have a pulse, they're a lead in that scenario. And, and I'm working towards doing something kind of similar to what you described. But what I think is interesting, being in the middle of it is, you know, there's the whole notion of buy-in that needs to happen at that early stage. Because it's one thing as a marketing leader to be like, I'm going to do this. I'm going to like remove all these forms and, or I might have forums, but I'm not going to pass the names of the people who fill them out over to sales. Like for me, it's a contact us or a request a quote form for you. It was a demo form. You know, when that first happens, I don't have to tell you your conversions go down. Your sheer number of people converting goes down and on paper that can look really bad. And I know, you know, I've gotten comments like why have our leads decreased, what's happening, what's wrong with our marketing. And so I'm curious when you guys decided to do this, how did you navigate in that early stage, the communication around, and did you, I don't know, did you like, did you start out by saying this is what's going to happen? And here's why, and here's why it's okay. Like how did that work? Kyle (08:51): Yeah, what we tried to do is we had a lot of conversations with the sales team, especially myself and the directors of sales and our president who basically is our chief revenue officer and, and our CEO. We had a CRO at the time as well, actually, if I remember correctly and we just had long conversations around that, like, here's, what's happening now, everyone, your conversion, I don't care what the lead to MQL conversion rate is. I care about what the MQL to opportunity created conversion rate is, and it is terrible right now. So what we want to do is while we decrease MQL is what we did was we just forecast it out. We said, all right, if we take our best qualified MQL, here's what the conversion rate could potentially be over the course of the fiscal year. And here based off of our average contract value and our conversion rates, here's what we can expect and would still like, it still was rough. Kyle (09:50): The first three months, the first couple quarters, three to six months after we did it. But what happened was once we got through our sales cycle and found that more revenue was converting, more, a more reps were getting to quota. It's, it, it became more aligned. We also move the BDR and SDR teams under marketing. So we were forcing alignment because marketing was controlling 70% of meetings for the sales reps outside of there, outside of the channel and partnerships and like referrals and self source, like those other, those other channels. The one thing I will say, which, which we can put a pin in and talk about later, if it's not, if it's not contributing to this conversation, but we have found that, that at a certain point of scale, it's really important that you're building a database, even if you're not handing the people off to sales. Kyle (10:51): And I think that's a mistake that I don't know if it was a mistake necessarily. But we are now is trying to figure out, all right, now we need, we've got to scale pretty significantly outside of our scope. And because we let all these people just read content and didn't download it, then we don't have a place for them to, we don't have, we don't have a database for us to park it to. Now, the other side of the coin was say, well, you influence them. They're going to come back when they're ready. It's just really hard to play it around that. Kathleen (11:27): Yeah, no, I think it's totally germane to this conversation because it really speaks to the whole, like the whole construct of how we think about the people that are in our sphere of influence, right? Like I think as marketers, we're trained to use the word lead to refer to anybody who converts, but really there's, to me, there's like a lead and then there's just a contact, you know? Kyle (11:54): And I think that, I think the difference is, what I'm finding is that in the first, especially for SaaS companies in the first between one, and let's say 10 to 20 million, 10 to 15 million in revenue to be very surgical in your go to market, you have a very specific group of people. And I think after that, when you're trying to grow it 70 to a hundred percent off of 20 million revenue, you've got to build a community of people. So it's like a, it's, it's, it's, it's moving more thought leadership oriented into the market, instead of it being very, very tactical and surgical. I think those are the two that's the transition that we're making. Kathleen (12:36): Yeah. And I guess the question becomes like, how is there a way for you to lay the groundwork for that scale in the early stage, without compromising what you're doing? Kyle (12:46): Yeah. I think gong, gong, gong.io is a great example of a company that's done that they, they did not send over an MQL or whatever, a contact that filled out a form for an ebook. They never sent it to anybody. It was, it was just a newsletter, right? They were telling them about their webinars. Like it was never sent to sales until it hit, you know, till they hit it. I'm assuming they had a specific score and then it's sent over to sales and then if they need a demo or something. Kathleen (13:18): The other thing I guess, that I, that I wonder about as you decided to make this change is is the whole culture of sales within the company. And it's interesting that you mentioned you moved BDRs under marketing, because when I think about, you know, the experience I'm having right now of a sales team, that culturally is used to getting these leads that are really just, as you say, like they converted on an ebook or they downloaded a case study. You know, how you follow up on that kind of a lead is, is culturally. Like it builds a culture that's very different than the type of culture you need to be successful in an organization where you're only working. People who've declared their intent. And so maybe, maybe that was solved by moving BDRs over. I don't know, but how did you handle that? Kyle (14:06): Well, it's the difference between volume and, you know, working, being tactical with deals that actually matter, right? So, you know, our inbound SDRs, they handle all the inbound, inbound demo requests and chat on the website. That's definitely a volume play. Our BDRs are more surgical, right? They are they're outbound. And they they have specific accounts that they're were reaching out to based off of our ICP. So it's, it's mostly around the outbound sales effort that then hands these opportunities over to the account executives, they know exactly the accounts they need to hit. We give them lists, there's re like we have ads going out like that. It's a very account based marketing approach. They're inbound, it's organic, it's Google ads. So it's more volume. So an account executive that has to deal with everything from an ebook download, which is what shows no intent whatsoever, other than, Hey, I'm interested in whatever you wrote about to somebody that is, is working demos. It's a very different account executive and account executives in my mind, other than their ability to self source, which they should is there. They need to move a demo through the sales funnel to close one, not try to figure out if these 500 ebook downloads are actually worth anything, because that's why we have Marketo. That's why we have HubSpot. That's why marketers are good at personalization and working deals that and, and, and pushing them through the pre sales motion before they're ready for a demo. Kathleen (15:48): Yeah. I think though it can also create a terrible prospect experience. If you just like you're on the website for the first time you convert on an ebook and all of a sudden you have somebody trying to hard sell you. It's not, it's not a great experience. Kyle (16:00): Yeah. Imagine, imagine being well, we're all consumers, right? Imagine going to Wayfair and like down like reading a guide on how to clean the certain couch that you want. And you've got a sales rep, like emailing you, asking you like, Hey, do you want to come see the couch? Do you want to come see the couch store? I could see the couch. Like, it'd be terrible. So the way that we think about it as let's try to, let's try to be as consumer marketing oriented as possible, right. Let's make the buying experience as easy as we possibly can and try not to force the people because people, I don't know why we, we thought that was a good idea to begin with. Kathleen (16:38): So I always like to say that, like, as you say, we're all, we're all people, we're all buyers in our lives, but for some reason we come to work and we put this marketing hat on and we forget everything that it is to be a human being. We do the opposite, right. Kyle (16:52): Experience is all that matters experiences that either have a good experience or a bad experience. And you're going to choose to buy based off of that. Kathleen (16:59): Yeah. So you, you, this was prompted by the need to redo the website and that gave you a window of opportunity to change your approach. And you were removing a lot of your forms and really then kind of relying on the people that filled out a demo request for your MQL. I would assume that there, that you did some things on the website to try and really ease the path for people to get to that demo request a motion. So can you talk a little bit about that? How did you optimize for that? Kyle (17:32): Yeah. The biggest thing we did was a product tour. We built a product tour. If you go to Lessonly.com/tour, or I think, or you can go to the main page where it has the tour button it, you pick which use case you are, are you a customer service? Are you sales, are you talent and then walks you through the product and then you can sign up for a demo. Kathleen (17:53): So is that product tour different based on the use case? So you're speaking to - okay. Kyle (17:58): Like a business outcome oriented basically. Right. So, you know, a sales, sales and customer service use cases are going to be somewhat some of the different, right. So that was the main thing other than just rebuilding the site. So it loaded correctly all the time. Right. Like, and, and redoing the brand and cleaning it up and just things that we had wanted to do. But that was the main thing was that products who were, and we created a demo video. It was a two minute demo video that you watch after you fill out the form. Kathleen (18:29): So this is an interesting question. And I get this sometimes from people like um, the role of having an on demand mini demo video versus like an actual guided demo over the phone or zoom, or what have you from a sales rep, how do you think about, like, what, what place, what role do all of those individual things fill and how do they fit together? Kyle (18:52): I mean, we just, I don't, honestly, I don't really know. I do know that we wanted to give somebody something after they filled out the form to kind of wet their appetite before they had a call with an AA. And I think that there's, there's, we definitely could do click rate optimization tests and say, and tests like whether or not the demo video should be included after the forms filled out. Right. But for us, it is you go through products or you fill out a form, you have the opportunity to watch the video if you want. But then the goal is, is that our inbound SDR is going to try to get at you on a call with an account executive. And sometimes they do a demo walkthrough. Like sometimes they do a software walkthrough on the first call. Sometimes it's a second call. It depends on the discovery that happens on that first call with the account executive. Kathleen (19:42): Yeah. So talk to me a little bit about numbers. You started from where you started to where you got to with these changes, what was the impact and how did it, how did it evolve? Kyle (19:55): I mean, we, we saw, we saw, I mean, it took about three months. So moving our, you know, we redesigned the site, we were done in September. We launched it end of September. And we started seeing revenue impact by January, February. Cause our, well, yeah, January, February, cause our sales cycle is 30, 60, 90 days. And it's over the holiday as well, which, you know, impacts all sales. But so by, by the end of last year, 2019, I mean, we had, we had went with four to five X to inbound revenue, closed won revenue because of, and it was because of that change. And it was because we just decided that, Hey, inbound reps are going to focus on the things that matter. And the rest of it's going to be automated. Kathleen (20:48): And your MQLs were cut by half. Is that right? Kyle (20:50): Yeah. If not more than that. Kathleen (20:52): Okay. I'm trying to do the math now. And I'm definitely not a big math person, four to five X increase in inbound revenue, 50% decrease in MQL. So that's like a 10 X ROI. Kyle (21:04): Yeah. Yup. Kathleen (21:07): In three to four months. Kyle (21:09): Well, no, I'm sorry. We, it, it was over the year, but we saw, we saw like we were doing five X, the revenue in Q four of 2019. They, what we were doing in Q4 of 2018. Kathleen (21:23): Wow. Kyle (21:24): So it's actually, it's actually more than that. You could tell on my, my, my teammates would tell me that I am not the math wizard. Kathleen (21:34): Yeah. This is why we all went into marketing, which sadly now has become a math game. Kyle (21:39): If we were doing 200 grand in Q4, we were doing our Q4 2018. We were doing a million in Q4 of 2019 as an example to dumb down the math, but it was, it was significant and it was a step. It was a stair-step right. It was a stair-step Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4, to do that in 2019. But it was because of the website overall. Kathleen (22:04): Now, did you put in place anything new to nurture the folks that were downloading the eBooks, but that you now are no longer passing over to sales? Kyle (22:16): No, because we didn't, we didn't have any ebook downloads. And then we start, what we have been doing though, is starting to build nurture tracks and using, I think we moved over to Marketo beginning of last year. I don't know. It's all new. It's all Kathleen (22:33): Right. 2020 is it feels like 10 years long. So of course, Kyle (22:38): So it's, so yeah, we have nurture tracks running and, and we're, we're kind of evolving our marketing playbook now to say, we need to introduce webinars series. We need to introduce some things that are more database building, where we can just hit people randomly with content, because we have really good content, right. We spend tons of time and energy on this content. So we might as well start sending it out on a regular basis because before that we weren't, which is why my point before on the surgical go to market compared to the community building side. So we're lucky that we had thought leadership going on for the past two years with a book that our CEO wrote. So now it's, now it's up to us to say, all right, let's continue growing this community and, and 10 X that community instead of the revenue, it, but we hope that both of them happen. Right. I mean, that's yeah. Kathleen (23:29): Yeah. I would love to talk about that for a minute. So as you make that mental shift, you know, you've done the website, you've, you've narrowed down your definition of an MQL, and now you're focused on community building and, and getting a larger audience really to get your content in front of how are you thinking about tackling that? Kyle (23:49): Oh man, it's it's testing. I mean, it's testing for our, for my team on the demand side is like bread and butter. I mean, as we do it constantly, so it's testing, it's, it's introducing a webinar series, it's introducing webinars series with paid ads behind them to make, you know, to drive signups it's testing on what a monthly or weekly email newsletter would do. It's testing. Like, should we sponsor sponsor more virtual events where we're not necessarily working those leads, but building more of a database, what do we do with all the contacts that are already in our Salesforce instance? Right. So I think, I think the, for the next six months for us, it is testing. It's trying to, like we did, we sponsored morning brew the newsletter at the beginning of the year, and that went really well. And that was great. We loved it. So it's like doing those types of things to say, all right, let's dip our toe in the water. What should we do with analysts? Right. Which should we do with analysts firms, with the Gartners, with the Forresters of the world. And that's something that we had discussed in the past, but we're really putting pen to paper now and implementing it. Kathleen (25:00): And do you have an actual, like, formal community in the sense that, okay, and where is it? Kyle (25:07): Yeah, we do. It's called Llama Nation and it's actually a customer community. We have not opened it up externally. And as of right now, we have no plans to do that at the moment. And it lives on a, it's a mobile app. Kathleen (25:22): So now you just gave me the perfect segue, because one of the things I wanted to talk about in this podcast interview was the llama. Because I, I love what you've done with it. And there are, I'm sure are people listening who are like, what the heck are they talking about with a llama? So maybe you could explain why llamas are significant when we talk about Lessonly. Kyle (25:46): Well, I mean, it was, it was before my time that Ali llama showed up at Lessonly, but it was basically a chalkboard drawing that just kept showing up and the cofounders were like, we're not going to have llamas as a mascot. They kept putting it off. They kept putting it off and all, he just kept showing up. Ali's the name of our llama. And so eventually it just became part of the culture. And that led to a cus, a employee award called the golden llama that we give out quarterly to an employee the best best lives our values as a company. And then it turned out, and then when I came to Lessonly, we decided just to double down on it in all of our marketing, our 404 pages, our direct mail, it all includes Ali the llama. Kyle (26:38): And it has worked extremely well for a lot of reasons. I think one of them was just llamas became cool in 2019. Target released a llama line. Like you could go find little, little gold figurines at Target of llamas. Like it just became pop culture. Right. It was. And so we, we just doubled down on it. And the one thing that we did that worked extremely well was that we took the golden llama and scaled it and said, we want to send gold llamas out to prospects. Right. And our director marketing, Ben Bataglia had that idea one day. It's like, why don't we just send golden llamas prospects? And so we bought, there's this company up in Northern Michigan that produces these three inch llama figurines that I think we've probably kept them in business for like two years. But we bought, we bought 500 of them. I spray painted 500 llamas, golden llamas, and I'm pr-, I'm probably going to die young just because I inhaled it. Kathleen (27:38): So many gold spray paint fumes. Kyle (27:40): So we, and we started sending them out and all it was, was a box of the golden llama. And it had a card in it that said that, Hey, we get, it told the story of, of what we do with the golden llama at Lessonly. Lessonly gives this to a teammate that exhibits the values of your company. Had nothing to do with the product, have nothing to do about Lessonly. It was just recognize a teammate for great work. And we've sent out three to 4,000 of these llamas since 2018. And it is, it's just a fun way to, to tell the Lessonly story. So we use it in direct mail where we will dress up plush llamas with racing gear, for reaching out to a racing company, or we'll put them in a Ford truck and direct mail. And for trying to, if we're trying to get into Ford motor company, so we involve the llama in everything, everything we do. Kathleen (28:34): I love that. What is the response then? Kyle (28:37): Oh, it's been great. I mean, it's cute. Number one, I have a very talented group of designers, right? I mean, we do, we do some great stuff. It's not corny. It's just cute. It, it's not overwhelming. I think there's a lot of times people use mascots where you show up on the homepage and it's like the mascots right in your face. And you know, it's subtle, but it works because it, it makes sense. I don't know how best to explain it other than we did a very good job implementing it. And we have right now, not sure when, when we're going to publish this, but at this, at this moment, we're recording. We have Better Work Week, which is an entire week at Lessonly, that's devoted to celebrating people that do great work. And we had a zoom call on Monday where all the actual Ali llama showed up to the zoom call. Kathleen (29:31): That's awesome. Kyle (29:32): Ali llama lives in a farm out in New York state, upstate New York. Kathleen (29:38): So what advice would you give to somebody who was thinking they wanted to incorporate a brand mascot? Kyle (29:48): Man, I, I, I was very lucky that I inherited Ali when I got to Lessonly and my, at ExactTarget, we had a color, it was orange. We didn't have a mascot. So I think that the only the thing that I know works out of those two instances is make sure that your internal community, your stakeholders, your teammates, and your customers get involved first, it's gotta be cultural. And it has to be loved by employees and by customers before you could ever bring it to market to say, Hey, this llama was part of our culture. So the goal, like the llama at Lessonly for the first three or four years, it was just an award. And it took that long. And then we said, all right, let's, let's, let's introduce it to everybody else. And it worked because the employees believed in it. And the same thing went with the orange culture at ExactTarget. Kyle (30:51): You went through an orange onboarding, right, as an employee. And it didn't matter if we were 2000 employees, everybody understood what orange meant and because of that, it seeped into the customer base. And because the employees loved it, the customers loved it. The customer's peers loved it. And it created a community outside of just our, our first degree network of employees and customers. So I would say if you're going to do it, make sure that you include people around what the mascot is, what the color is, what the mission is, right. Get a committee of people that are involved and then start introducing it into the internal culture of the company. And if it hits and it works, then you can talk about introducing it outside of it. Kathleen (31:34): That's good advice. Yeah. We we have, the Attila's logo has always been a gorilla who's named Attila the gorilla. So that's one of the things that I've been like, trying to figure out is what do we do with Attila? So there may or may not have been a little selfish inspiration behind that. Kyle (31:52): Well, you got, I mean, you can, you can introduce a ton of stuff like plush gorillas, like just things stickers that people can put on there. Like there's just a lot that, that you could do with that to see if, and as long as you're not forcing it, then, you know, people should like it. Kathleen (32:09): Yeah. Well, fascinating story again. I love, I love what you're doing and there's so much creativity behind it. And I can't wait to kind of see where you take it with Lessonly. Especially as you look to build your audience. I'm gonna just shift gears for a second. There are two questions I ask all of my guests. And I'm curious to hear what you have to say, especially because you've had this interesting combination of like agency, VC and operator background. This podcast is all about inbound marketing. And is there a particular company or individual that you think is really like setting the standard for what it means to be a great inbound marketer right now? Kyle (32:48): Man, I, I I've been, there are two that I respect a lot, but they're there, they're usually the ones that people say, which I, so, so I'll give you three. Kathleen (33:03): Alright deal. Kyle (33:04): So Dave Gerhardt at Privy is probably the best inbound marketer that I know hands down. I steal things from him all the freaking time. And my team steals things from Privy's team all the time. Anthony Kennada, who was the COO of Gainsight and is now a COO at Front, he, he is extremely good at category creation that then drives the inbound for sure. And the other one's Kathyrn Loheide, who was VP of marketing at Formstack and Formstack is a local company in Indie, the remote, like a remote culture. But she is, she is the, one of the better demand gen leaders. Well, Mar I mean, marketing, I'm not even gonna, I'm not gonna say she's, she's a marketing leader. Like she has all the facets, but she's very good at the demand gen side of it. Very good at the process and the science side of it. I just can't get her to get on a podcast with me. She's too busy working, right? Kathleen (34:06): Yeah. Well, that's always the challenge with the good ones and that's, those are really good ones actually. So I have interviewed Dave Gerhart and I totally agree with you. And funny enough, his is the name that comes up the most for a reason, obviously. But I didn't, I haven't heard of the other two. So I love when I get those answers. Cause now I have two new ones to go check out as does everyone who's listening and maybe I could convince them to come on podcast. Although it sounds like Kathryn, probably not. Cause you're gonna hear. Kyle (34:32): Yeah, I can. I can, I can, I can try to set that up. But I would say like the, the marketers that have the ability to scale companies are the great marketers. Anthony is an example of somebody that was early in his career and helped Gainsight scale to a hundred million dollars in six years. And there are very few people that can do that. And it, it shows a lot of rigor, a lot of process and a lot of creativity and those people should be continuously celebrated because there are very few that will stick with a company that long to see it through most of the time you see people jumping every one or two years, but the great marketers in my opinion, will stick around and try to try to push people past their comfort zones to grow revenue Kathleen (35:18): Well, and I agree with you because it's also a very special person who is able to be successful as the company scales, because I have found, and you talked about like liking to work for a smaller company versus a bigger company. You know, some, sometimes it's just people, people don't like to be in those, like you get bigger and by definition, they're not happy in that environment. So somebody who is able to like chameleon-like shift and be successful in all of those situations, that's really unique. Kyle (35:47): Absolutely. As long as long as you know that the time to leave, if you force it and the company struggles because you're forcing it then you need to make the decision it's fine to move companies. Every two or three years, sophomore is not an easy job, right? It's very stressful. It's very fast paced and it's okay, but you need to know like, Hey actually, somebody I'm a shareholder, you know, and Anthony said this on a conversation I just had with him on he's he's a shareholder of a company. He wants the best person in that role to grow the company bigger than what he did, but he had the, he had the wherewithal and the personal insight and integrity to say, it's my time to move on and do this again at front from Gainsight, because he knew that somebody would be better at this next stage of the company's growth. Kathleen (36:45): That's great. I love that story. All right. Second question. The biggest pain point I hear from marketers is that digital marketing is changing so quickly that trying to keep up as like drinking from a fire hose. So how do you personally keep yourself educated and, and stay on the cutting edge? Kyle (37:04): I actually disagree with that comment. I don't think that it's changing that dramatically. I think that marketers who try to figure out how Tik Tok and drive leads are just looking at the next shining object. There is nothing has changed since I've been, I joined ExactTarget and I've been doing digital marketing for 15 years. Nothing's really changed. Email ads, direct mail events. So maybe, maybe social is more of a communications play, right? Like it's not changed that much organic. So, you know, I think that, that I think you have to get, you have to truly, we spend way too much time chasing these new things. And we don't try to understand how customers are buying our prospects and want to buy, right. And it might be that you just need a great email newsletter to drive our business. And you don't need to try to figure out how to build an AI artificial intelligence engine on the front of your website to change content based off of who's visiting, which I think is really cool, but you know, maybe you don't need that and you don't need to chase the shiny objects and you you're, you aren't selling, you know, a product to a bunch of tweens, right. Kyle (38:24): And if that's the case, then you need to understand how tweens buy right now. Right. So that, sorry, I'm on a soap box. But that being said, if I, the way that I stay in front of things is through the group that you and I are in, which is Revenue Collective. I mean, if you could find a community of people that are, that are the best at what they do that are constantly sharing content with each other, that's where, that's where I learned about things to test. Kathleen (38:49): Yeah, I totally agree. That's been an amazing group for me as well and well worth it. So check out revenuecollective.com if you want to learn more. Kyle (38:59): 2010 people were saying email marketing is dead. Kathleen (39:03): People have been saying email marketing is dead since email started, let's be honest. And I think marketers also like to say things are dead because they know people will read whatever they're about to say. Kyle (39:13): I mean, I have a, I have a slide deck on my LinkedIn page that says marketing is dead. Kathleen (39:18): Yes. Everything has died many times, you know? Well this has been so much fun. If somebody wants to learn more about you or connect with you online or learn more about Lessonly, what's the best way for them to do that. Kyle (39:34): Kylelacy.com. Lessonly.com. I'm on LinkedIn and Twitter, Kyle P Lacey. And that's the best places to find me. Kathleen (39:43): All right. Well, I will put all those links in the show notes. So if you're interested in connecting with Kyle head over there to check that out. And if you're listening and you learned something new, of course I would love it if you would head to Apple podcasts and leave the podcast a five star review, because that's how other people find us. And if you know somebody else doing kick ass inbound marketing work, tweet me at @workmommywork because I would love to make them my next guest. That's it for this week. Thank you so much, Kyle. Kyle (40:11): Thank you for having me.

Lots of marketers talk about "big data" and its promise for improving the way marketing decisions are made, but few have truly explored the full potential that data holds. This week on the Inbound Success podcast, MDT Director of Digital Marketing Don Seaberry talks about how he is using R programming language, SQL, and Python to create advanced models for extracting insights from large volumes of marketing data. Don is a self taught data scientist, and explains how he learned to code, and why and how any marketer can do the same. Check out the episode to get the details on how Don is using data models, hear examples of the ways that it has changed how he approaches marketing, and what it takes to level up your game as a data scientist. Resources from this episode: Connect with Don on LinkedIn Visit the MDT Marketing website Check out some of the resources Don mentioned: The Measure School YouTube Channel Think With Google Search Engine Watch Follow Fernando Machado on Twitter Check out Cory Henke's interview on The Inbound Success Podcast Visit Joe Martinez's website Transcript Kathleen (00:00): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Booth. And this week, my guest is Don Seaberry, who is the director of digital marketing for MDT marketing. Welcome Don. Don (00:22): Thank you. Thank you very much. Glad to be here. Kathleen (00:24): Yeah. Welcome to the podcast. I would love it if you could tell my listeners a little bit about yourself, who are you, how did you wind up doing what you do, and what does MDG marketing do? Don (00:37): MDT marketing is a marketing agency primarily focused on digital, but we also do print marketing. Based in South Florida. We've been in business, this is our 25th year anniversary. And we work primarily with higher education clients. Colleges, universities career schools, that type thing. I've been with them somewhere between four to five years. So, so you know, I'm getting a little long in the tooth with them, but I actually have one of the shorter changes 10 years, cause we probably average 10 to 11 years as far as just tenure with the company. People come and they stay. Kathleen (01:18): Wow, that's impressive. Don (01:20): Yeah. I've been in marketing about 15 years. I actually started, I was in sales and a law firm hired me to do inbound business business development. Had no idea that also meant manage, they had a raging out of control, $40,000 a month Google ads campaign. I didn't even know what PPC was. So I learned on the job. I had a knack for it. I liked it. And it was a really good way to do something online. And you get out of the rat race that was sales. Because I did that for a long time before this. So I basically fell into it, which I'm sure most people were at that time probably were falling into it. Kathleen (02:00): Yeah. And what do you do at MDT today? Don (02:05): So I basically manage digital strategy for our clients. You could say all digital with the exception of social. I kind of stay out of that world a little bit. We have a specific name for that, but if you're talking Google ads, Yahoo Search, Bing ads, Quora ads, your Reddit, anywhere else, you can do Hulu, Pandora, anywhere that you can, you can do any type of digital marketing, I pretty much drive strategy for that. Kathleen (02:33): Great. And one of the reasons I was really excited to talk with you is that you are highly analytical at what you do. And that has really helped you to be able to leverage data more, I would say, than, than the average person, certainly more than I do in my day to day. Analytics is I, I mean, I can, I I'm decent at it, but I'm certainly not on your level. And specifically, like, doing some custom programming to extract data and really use that in decision making. So maybe you could talk a little bit about what you're doing and what you're working on. Don (03:12): Sure. obviously probably like most, I came from Excel work, and Excel is a great free tool. It has this one limitation with stuff. And one is one limitation is the ability to handle large data sets and large amounts of data. One of the things that I wanted to do when I initially got to MDT just as a senior analyst before my current role was just be able to go back and look at years of data and be able to just try and determine correlations between different pieces of data. Is there really a correlation between, you know, cost per conversion and when I run in this area of the country at this time of day? But I wanted to be able to see that across all the clients, kind of get a snapshot of it, then be able to break it down and just, you know, determine trends. So we started, I had a little bit of SQL background. I took the SQL courses in college. So I started in SQL, a little bit clunkier because you have that database piece of it where you have to pull the data in first and then you can write queries to do the analysis that you want. So I had a, a genius of a mentor named Travis Sari, who his masters I think is actually in statistics or data science. Kathleen (04:28): Oh my God. I feel like that's my worst nightmare. Those are the classes that were the hardest for me. Don (04:35): I hated them. Fortunately, I had a friend who was a professor of mathematics at Spelman university who helped me survive statistics class. One on one tutoring was awesome with Travis. You know, he kind of turned me on to Python obviously. And I, I was a little bit more comfortable with the programming language just because I just felt like it's a little bit more intuitive. So we're using that a lot to really just kind of get through large data sets right now and do analysis on them. And with the eventual goal, there are machine learning applications, artificial intelligence applications. Is there a way that we can take all of the data that our sources do give us, as we know the Googles, the Bings, they only so much data, but there's a mountain of data that is there. So is there a way that we can take those and start to do predictive analytics to kind of return if we do this, what can we expect as a result of that? So that's the direction that we're heading right now. We're really more focused on using it for just data analysis, looking at trending and using it to inform, you know, not only day to day how we manage but now, we're starting to look at it to inform how we actually build things from the ground up. Kathleen (05:47): Now I am sort of blown away by this. And I guess my first question is really, you know, given that these platforms do provide us with so much data, right? You mentioned Google and Yahoo and Bing. And they have some built in like native tools to look at that data and, and extract insights. And then of course, they're, you know, as you mentioned, there's Excel, there are plenty of third party platforms that are built to help you crunch these numbers and figure things out. What, why is it that those platforms are, do, won't do what you need to have done? And instead you've gone the custom programming route. Don (06:29): They have their limitations, right? You know, I actually like Google Data Studio. There are things that I had built in Google Data Studio. Like if someone comes to us and they say, we want to do a PPC audit, we have a built in PPC audit that as long as they give us access to the Google ad words, account. Kathleen (06:51): Just press a button and spin it up, right? Don (06:54): Just connect the data and boom. And instead of it taking, you know, it used to take hours, you know, sometimes days to do that same you know, to do the analysis required to come up with the results or to give them feedback. You know, now we do that in like five to 10 minutes. So it was a definite time saver, but it has its limitations. I'm a huge proponent of granularity. I wouldn't get as granular as I can't get as deep into it as I can. And when you start talking about the type of data sets that we're looking at, the potential, you know, millions and millions of rows of data you know, you want a program that's robust enough that can look at everything and just spit it back out. And you don't want to start your application and step away and come back to it two days later because it'll take us that long to finish the work, if it finishes at all without just throwing up all over itself. So I like the granularity. I also can like to understand how things work. So it's one thing for you to spit the data out for me. It's another thing for me to understand the code that was behind. I feel like I understand a little bit better when I understand what actually caused that analysis to take place, if that makes sense. Kathleen (08:07): Hmm. That does. So give me an example of like something that you would want to know that you would need to create a custom coded solution to figure out the answer to that question. Don (08:19): Well, I'll tell you one thing, one of the things that we're working on, you know, a big time suck for any agency is campaign set up. So if either you bring in a new client very often, you have to build out campaigns for them. So one of the things that we're looking at, especially with Google, for example, Google ads, PPC, is we went back and we're going program by program. So, you know, a lot of our schools have the same type of programs where there's surgical techs and medical sonography, that type thing. So we're going in, we recently went in, we looked at six years of data at program level and things like we're trying to develop what we call it. So are there keywords that have proven to be successful year over year, over year, over year, as far as the cost per conversion and number of conversions, what ad copy, what combinations of ad copy have proven to be successful? Don (09:19): When you talk about a Google where you can do a responsive search ad with, you know, 15 headlines and four descriptions, and then you multiply that over different programs, over different schools over time, that's a mountain of data to get through, right? That's not something you want to pull into Data Studio, or that you want to pull into Excel and spend hours and days trying to figure out. So what we did is we, we downloaded it at the program level across the entire MCC, six years of data, let's say for keyboards. And then we went in, we trimmed that too, by conversion type, we sorted it back in version, count, trimmed that by year and match type, top 20 performing keywords by match type by year. And then we merged all of those into one data set, spit it out to a CSV. Now we have a keyword bank that we can use. Don (10:14): For example, if we need to build a surgical tech campaign. And we also sped out, we gave ourselves an idea of you know, what the average cost per click was just to kind of get a sense of maybe where we need to start as far as bidding, or when we set it up. We did the same thing with ad copy. The ad copy was really interesting. Cause there was just thousands on top of thousands on top of thousands of pieces of data. Once we got the custom coding written and R spit it out, like nothing. Kathleen (10:43): Like what did you learn about ad copy? Give me some examples of takeaways. Don (10:47): The big thing that we're looking for, really a couple of things. Number one, what combination of ad copy tends to work the best and what resonates with students the most? So one of the things that we found is I would have expected things like online. Don (11:07): You know, you, you start to get a sense of the things that now I can address in my landing page content based on what they interact with. We started to find that people, students wanted to know what was in it for them. Can you help me with job placement? That was really successful. Can you help me with financial aid? They wanted it to be easy. They wanted it to be simple. They wanted to know that they weren't going to have to go into the poor house. Well, you know, right off the bat, that there'd be a way for us to actually be able to go to school. And we started to see that combination of those types of things. And students really love the hands on piece of it. So we started to see what they reacted to. And it was typically always coupled with, is the school accredited? Cool. Is my degree going to mean something or my certification going to mean something? And they want it. Don (11:56): They, in most cases they had some sense of what the brand was and that helped as well. So we started to get a sense of what's actually important to the students. So we know going forward, I need to continue to leverage that, but I need to also make sure that I take that in the other content, not just ad copy, but landing pages. If we're doing direct mail to them, which we often do now, we make sure we bake that type of information into direct mail because it's important to them. And the end result is, you know, we see greater engagement on the front end and it helps us to improve return on investment on the backend once they actually engage with the school and they're trying to get them to start. Kathleen (12:36): So that sounds amazing. And it sounds like information that any marketer would want to have. Can you speak to, how hard is it to set this up? How long does it take? Like is, is the juice worth the squeeze, I guess, is what I'm getting at? Don (12:53): I'll answer that this way. Yes. The juice is definitely worth the squeeze. One of the things that we have actually used it for, we don't always get to connect to the client's CRM and see the final disposition of a lead, you know, does that person become a student? Do they graduate? You know, we don't always get to see that, but we do have a couple of clients that we get pretty good visibility where we can be, you know, they'll typically maybe once a week or once a month, something to that effect, they'll actually send us back enrollment data. So because of how we tag things on the front end, we actually know what channel that came through. So we've been able to use R to determine, okay, is this a channel that actually drives return on investment? You know, we market to return on investment first. Don (13:45): Then we back into efficiency, things like cost per lead and then cost per click. That type of thing. The most important thing is did it make the client money, period. You know, return on investment. So because we have the ability to dump it into a script and us, they send us that information back. We have a script that we can dump it into. It will match it up based on the source that it came from. So we have, let's say, for example, Google ads, then we have a lead management tool that goes into first and it had this lead ID in this information. So we have a script that takes that lead management tool data, and the data that the client sends us. It matches it up. And then we start to see, okay, is this something that we need to continue to run for this client? Don (14:28): Do we need to reduce budget or just cut it out? We actually had one client. Well, we stopped the channel that was actually driving conversions on the front end, but over a year, the return on investment just didn't make sense. So in that case if I'm talking about, you know, kind of being Hippocratic in my approach, you know, do no harm to my client, then the juice is definitely worth the squeeze. The biggest piece of it really is just the patience. You have to have the patience to do the work, to get comfortable with the scripting. But honestly, you know, R programming, Python, any of that. There's so many places you can go online that are giving you a jumpstart and it's not, you know, it won't be an issue of, I have no, I don't know where to start. I don't know where to begin. If you go on YouTube and you put R for data science, you're gonna find a mountain of information on that. And a lot of, a lot of times, same thing with just internet searches, you will find the information that you need. And a lot of times what you're looking for, you'll find that someone else has already done it and put it out there. Kathleen (15:30): So, okay. Real talk for a minute. Like, I know I can find these things on YouTube, but for somebody like me, who's intimidated by statistics, who, you know, I mean, I get basic analytics, but the notion of learning to code scares me. And you know, is it realistic to think that somebody like me could go online and really learn this? And, and how long does it take to learn something like this? Is this like a week, a month, a year? Don (15:59): Okay. I'll tell you what I did. If you have, if you have some comfortability with, you know, custom functions in Excel, for example, you're gonna probably be a little bit more comfortable when you get into the SQLs and the Rs of the world, because you just kind of understand the way the architecture, if you will, works. I understand how a database is set up. I understand what I'm trying to query. That kind of carries over to R. You understand a little bit more of what you're trying to query and the information that that you're trying to get at? I think any reasonably intelligent person can do it. You have to have one, really the will to do it. And just the time. You might spend a week, if you just kind of pick and poke around and find the pieces that you need, you might spend a week figuring that out. Don (16:53): But the beauty of it is, kind of, once I figured it out, a lot of times once you've done it, like these two scripts, we've written, the one where we dealt with return on investment, I can just pop the information in now. Boom, once it's done, it's done. The asset database, it probably took me, I'd say a day, right? Each one of those scripts, one for the ads, one for the keywords. But now that I've got them, all I have to do is drop in whatever data I'd want. There might be a couple of changes that I make to it. That might take me 15 minutes and boom, it does the work. So once you get past that piece of it, you go. Kathleen (17:31): So why don't you think there are more off the shelf tools that can do this for you? Cause it seems like from what you've said, it seems like the insights you're able to extract are pretty darn useful in terms of making decisions about your campaigns and optimizing your ROI and even optimizing other campaigns that have nothing to do with PPC. I'm sort of surprised that there isn't a commercialized like, software product out there that that makes it easy for people like me. Don (18:01): You know, there probably is. Because we have a genius of a guy in our marketing tech department who develops all of our like reporting products. And he primarily Power BI to do that. Genius. I mean the stuff he can drill down to, absolutely genius. Obviously there is a learning curve about a power BI, or you're talking about a Tableau or something like that. I kind of take the approach, again, I like granularity. So the more granular I can get, the better. The more cause you know, the more, you know, any solution or any analysis is only as good as the data that you put into it. So the more points that we can pull together and we can give that algorithm time to kind of work through, the better. So you probably, you probably have some, I'm just kind of, I kind of nerd out on that stuff. I like that stuff. And again, I kind of like to understand how it works and I have an idea in my brain most of the time of really where I'm trying to go. And I'm just, I'd rather just have control of where the levers are a little bit more than necessarily on the box, but I'm sure there are some that will do it. But I'm sure there's, there's probably ways. Kathleen (19:17): So who do you think should, should think, can seriously consider doing something like this or learning how to do this? Because I have to imagine that it's not really right for every marketer, you know, you have to be dealing with, I would guess, certain volumes of data. And, and you obviously need to have the ability to like put what you learn into some form of action otherwise, who cares, you know? So like talk me through, if you were talking to other marketers, which you sort of are through this podcast, like who should really think about something like this? Don (19:55): Definitely a person, like if you live in the numbers every day and by living the number, I mean, you're actually pulling the levers on campaigns every day. A lot of platforms are pretty much forcing us more and more towards automation. So, you know, some of those day in day out practices that we would have really been engaged in you know, keyword bid management, you know, average position, Google and tools like it can sunset. So you can't even, you know, that that's not even a metric you can get to anymore. But a lot of those, those day to day things that we used to do, those things are going to go away, what it won't do. And actually it will actually write ad copy for you if you want it to the places you can do that. Don (20:48): This is going to give you the ability to focus on what's important. Ad copy and creative and your keyword less than blah, blah, blah, and all and all of this stuff. So if you, if you're living in the weeds every day you definitely should be learning some of these data science tricks. Absolutely. No question about it. You should get comfortable with it because if we're doing less day to day management, that means we have more time for analysis and we can start to dig deeper and do a bit. And I would say if you're director level, you know, kind of the level I'm at, I still think there's value in it because one of the things that you want to start to consider is, okay, is there any way that I can use you know, data science to understand what are the things we're talking about? Don (21:39): Is, is there a way to use it to figure out what combination of channels works the best together? So if the person comes in through Google ads and doesn't convert, do you know, do I see conversion rates go up if I send them email or if I do direct mail or not just through Google ads, remarketing, are, am I seeing better numbers of ads, Google ads, YouTube then being remarketing, you know, is there a way to determine what channels work better using data science? Those are some of the things and that one's a little trickier because you have to be able to track that lead all the way through so that, you know, there's something to think about there. But I would say anyone probably at least from director level and down that lives in this world, especially in agency world, you should be learning this. Kathleen (22:28): So earlier you mentioned that you're now using this for some predictive things. Can you tell me a little bit more about what you mean by that and how you're using it? Don (22:39): Right. So, so one of the things that we're trying to figure out and, and the coding is kind of still out there. We have to, we have to figure this piece of that out. But let's say for example, we're in Google ads, we're in Google ads. And, you know, if you have, you know, 20, 25 accounts you live in every day, you're constantly making changes and you're constantly trying to track those changes. One of the things that we're trying to determine is, is there a way that we can start to pull change history and to, to, you know, master spreadsheets. Pop it into R, use Python and then say, okay, here's what I'm going to determine. This type of program. When I made this type of change across the MCC, historically, what have we there's as far as maybe if I change the bid strategy, and if I switch from this particular bid strategy that, that particular bid strategy, what did I, what have I seen historically? Is there a trend that I can see across accounts that says switching from this to this, I tend to get better results. So kind of trying to predict future performance based on what we've seen in the past, just on that body of data. Kathleen (23:56): And it sounds like really trying to extract some best practices. Don (24:01): Absolutely. Yeah. Kathleen (24:03): And as you mentioned in an agency setting, I can really see where that would be useful because having owned an agency myself for about 11 years, you know, one of the big challenges is always, how do you disseminate information about what works and what doesn't across different people in teams. And so I could see where that would be really valuable. Don (24:22): Definitely Kathleen (24:22): So interesting I'm, I'm like intimidated and intrigued all the same time as I imagine, many people are. Don (24:32): But you have to start somewhere. Kathleen (24:33): So, yeah, and I would say the other thing I was going to say is if this is something that interests you, if you're listening, I actually shared this with Don, a great community for conversations around analytics is Christopher Penn's Analytics for Marketers Slack group. You can probably Google it and find it, but I will put the link in the show notes to it. Kathleen (24:53): And Christopher is also another amazingly accomplished brilliant data scientist. And he started this community just for other people, interested in analytics and you don't have to be as experienced as Don. I'm in the community. And I am a complete amateur. But it's great. It's a great resource. And you can ask questions and learn a lot there. Shifting gears, Don, I have two questions I always ask all my guests and I'd love to hear what you have to say. The first of which is really we talk a lot about inbound marketing on this podcast. Is there a particular company or individual that you think is really kind of setting the standard for what it means to be a great inbound marketer these days? Don (25:37): There's, there's, there's a couple of people in digital world. One person that immediately comes to mind and I think, you know, him is Cory Henke. Especially because video is so important. And if there is a video Yoda, there is probably Corey Henke. Incredibly, incredibly intelligent guy. There's another gentleman that I follow quite a bit. I actually met him at Pubcon. He presented and he presents quite often. His name is Joe Martinez. He really lives in digital world, especially on the PPC. And he has just, you know, stuck his toe in everything where there's Google ads being as Apple ads, Quora. He's a Quora evangelist of sorts at this point because that platform, he really believes in it and they have definitely improved that product. I can tell you that. So I follow Joe. His company has a, they have a blog that they typically put out. Don (26:45): So if you connect to Joe, he'll, and he'll normally like you know, let you know when a new blog comes out and this year, another young lady that works with him as well, I believe her name is Michelle Martinez, is also really, really smart. My, my hidden little gem, just really more so for the way that they think, is Fernando Machado and the team at Restaurant Brands International. They own like, Popeye's. They own Burger King. There's all these chains that they own. And they're just, it's just genius to just, you know, stalk their LinkedIn feeds and just see how they think and the difference in the way that they think, especially as it relates to driving social engagement. And you know, if you think about the craze over the Popeye's chicken sandwich and the way that went bananas, and then the way Popeye's leveraged that, that was Fernando's team behind that. And they've done the same thing with some things I've seen. They put out the moldy Whopper, where they were showing that that is organic, that it will mold over time. That it wasn't like the McDonald's cheeseburger that three years later looked the same. Fernando Machado was behind that. I just loved the way that they thought. Kathleen (28:06): That's cool. I had not heard of them. So I'm going to have to check them out. And I love learning about new people to follow. So that's great. And also now I have a craving for a Popeye's chicken sandwich, which I have not had yet. I keep hearing about how great it is. So I'll have to add that into my rotation this week. Second question is that the biggest pain point I hear from marketers is always that it's so much to keep up with so much changes, and it's really hard to stay educated on best practices. So how do you personally stay up to date and educated? Don (28:41): I'd definitely start since, I mean, we all have to be on, it was an 800 pound gorilla in the room, right. Especially as it relates to digital. So obviously, subscribe to the Think with Google blog if for no other reason than to just try to stay out in front of what Google is doing. I'm a huge fan obviously of Search Engine Watch. Well, most people probably think of that just in the context of PPC, but it's actually a tremendous amount of information. You can actually go on there and find articles on what we've talked about today. R programming, machine learning. There's even an article that actually shows you how to write a machine learning algorithm for your campaigns based on weather patterns. Kathleen (29:30): Wow. Don (29:31): So there is so much information on those three sites. Love those sites for just pure data science and learning. There's a channel that I particularly like on YouTube. The gentleman's name is Ken Yee. And he just, he just breaks it down to basics, and there's a lot of good how to's and information that you can learn from him. And then tracking and tagging, conversion tracking, it's all about Measure School for me. Measure School YouTube channel. Kathleen (30:06): Oh, I will definitely put links to this in the show notes for all of that. Very cool. Well, if somebody wants to learn more about you or reach out and ask you a question or connect with you online, what's the best way for them to do that? Don (30:18): Probably LinkedIn you know, I'm on LinkedIn. I'm very active on LinkedIn. That's how we connected was on LinkedIn. You know, just look me up. Don Seaberry. I'm there. I'll probably accept the invitation. I connect with as many people as I can. So feel free to reach out Kathleen (30:37): True story. That is how we connected and how Don wound up on the podcast. So check him out on LinkedIn, Don Seaberry. And if you're listening and you liked this episode, or you learned something new, please head to Apple Podcasts and leave the podcast a five star review. That is how we get found. I would love it if you would do that. And of course, if you know somebody else doing kick ass inbound marketing work the best way to get them on this podcast as the next guest is to tweet me at @workmommywork, because I do find my guests through word of mouth. So reach out to me and let me know who you think I should interview. That is it for this week. Thank you so much, Don. It was great talking to you. Don (31:15): Thank you for having me. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The idea for today's podcast episode initially came from a Patreon supporter, who wanted to know what the ideal time is to start writing sequels when working on a series. In episode 81 of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast, Autumn and Jesper have an in-depth discussion about, not only how to plan a series, but also what the author need to be mindful about during the actual writing. Tune in for new episodes EVERY single Monday. SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST! Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review. Join us at www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy. For as little as a dollar a month, you'll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going. Read the full transcript below. (Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion). Narrator (1s): You're listening to the am. Writing fantasy podcast in today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need a literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing. Join two best selling authors who have self published more than 20 books between them now onto the show with your hosts, Autumn Birt, and Jesper Schmidt. Jesper (30s): Hello, I am Jesper Autumn (31s): and I'm Autumn. Jesper (33s): This is episode 80, one of the am writing fantasy podcast. And today's episode is actually a suggestion from one of our support us on patron. I always set what is the ideal time to write SQLs when working on a series? So we quite found this quite interesting question, and we decided to turn it into a full episode. However, we did decide to rephrase the question slightly. So we rephrased it into this. Jesper (1m 5s): How do you plan and write a series? So that's what we're going to talk about today. I think it was a great topic because I mean, fantasy, everyone loves a good series, but yeah, it's an interesting, you know, figuring out when do you need to write the whole series? How much do you plot the whole series? How do you figure it out and want to release books and how all that happened? So I think it'll be a good episode, hopefully. So yes, that's the plan at least how we usually succeed in our plan. Jesper (1m 36s): So I'm sure we'll get there, but for now, I mean, gosh, we haven't talked for almost a, for a week. So how are things over on your side of the Atlantic? No, it's pretty good over here. I must say to them, I sort of have my I'm like a trail doc with the notes in the trail or whatever you, however you say that properly. But my main focus is just getting everything done for a moment before summer holidays comes around. So I must admit that it's quite busy at the moment. Jesper (2m 7s): I'm getting the self publishing success course recorded, but I'm halfway through it at one that so impressed with how well you get your half the courses done. It's amazing. So yeah, you're going to have that one ready. I think you'll make it, you'll get it done before you end up going on vacation and yes, I, you are totally burning the candle at both ends. How's that? Yeah, I'm thinking I can last for a couple of weeks burning in both ends of the handle here without collapsing, but I'll probably need the rest. Jesper (2m 41s): Once a summer holidays comes up because it's not only the self publishing success. Cause we also preparing to launch our fantasy writing course by the end of August, just because we're even more insane because you know, why not? We also, we also the middle of launching three nonfiction books all at once. Autumn (3m 3s): Oh, it's crazy. Yes. I mean I'm elbow deep in adding images and formatting those books. So I think we're totally insane, but I'm so excited to see all of this happening. We said this was going to be a big year and not just because of pandemics and riots and protests. We're hoping for it to be a big year for us too, with courses and books and exciting things that will hopefully help out other writers and authors. So I think we're doing well. Jesper (3m 33s): Yeah. The idea is basically by the end of this year, we sort of want to have all these, these elements in place so that we're ready for next year where we want to focus on fiction writing. So we have all the nonfiction parts and all the course parts and all the author business services and all this stuff. We want to get that done before we get to the end of this year, end of 2020. So that we're basically ready to shift our focus a bit next year, but well, I'm actually, I have to say I'm really pleased at all the three nonfiction books that's so that's the plodding book, the workbook that goes with the plotting book and the getting story ideas and creating a story premise book, all three of them have actually earned the number one new release tack on Amazon for their respective categories. Jesper (4m 21s): So that's pretty damn cool. Autumn (4m 22s): Yeah. Celebrate, waving the sparklers. I was very so excited to all three of them, which I'm going to say, if anyone wants to know Yesper is in charge of, you know, managing the categories and the Amazon ads and that's all I own, but I'm so excited. It was fantastic to see those little orange tags come up. Jesper (4m 41s): Yeah. Especially if all three of them, Autumn (4m 43s): I thought that was pretty cool. That's was a full study. Jesper (4m 46s): Yeah, indeed. But an actually to be honest, it's not that hard to do, but we will explain how to do that in the self publishing success course that once that comes out for free later this year, so, and it it's, it's not that hard to do so it's nice with those orange tax day on Amazon, number one, new release. That that's really cool, but to be honest, as long as you know what you're doing, we probably only earned $10 royalties for that, Autumn (5m 12s): But we have the tag. So that's awesome. And yeah. Talk about proofing concept. I think people should be very excited about this course because it really works. Jesper (5m 23s): It does work for sure. But how are things are with you? Autumn (5m 27s): Oh, it's good. We're in a, we're in, I don't know if I've ever mentioned this, but I'm definitely not a hot weather type of girl. And so I like the coal and I like the North and summer is tough, but we just, we went through a humidity so thick that it felt like you were breathing under water, finally got cleared off and we're in like barely 72 degree days. So it's like, you know, you kind of want to fleece on, it's just gorgeous, gorgeous, low humidity. I just signed me up for a lifetime of this. And so when I hit weather, I also hit my work prove. Autumn (5m 60s): And so I'm just plowing through a lot of work and it's good. I've got some graphics, I've got beautiful weather. My garden's doing well. I'm working on books, writing just a little bit on this side, just because Hey or writers, which is what I was actually going to say about half. The reason why we want to get our platform done for him writing fantasy is because we're writers we would have. Right. So we're so excited about these books that we've been plotting Jesper (6m 26s): Really want to get back to fiction writing. Autumn (6m 28s): Yeah. So it's good. Things are, you know, this week is a good week. World is in chaos, but I, I still remember my leadership course from my old full time job. And we read the seven steps of highly effective people, which was an interesting book, right? Yes. I love that. And I come back to that idea when you feel overwhelmed to work inside your sphere of influence. So I am working very hard in my sphere of influence to make sure that the sub positive positivity and productivity around me and, and occasionally taking a little bit of time off for maybe some self care and sitting on the porch and drinking some tea. Jesper (7m 7s): Yeah. I think I read that book first, the first time when I was in my early twenties, nice time. And it was like, yeah. And when I read it, it was like, wow, I read a press like complete eye-opener. It was like, wow, I never thought about things this way. It was like, it's amazing. It is a good book. I love that book on the internet with the yam writing fantasy podcast. So over the weekend I noticed a conversation going on in the am, writing fantasy Facebook group. Jesper (7m 43s): And well, I guess before I get into that, I have to say that I appreciate all the different points of view and also the willingness in the group to respect other people's opinions, because there were certainly some different opinions in that conversation there. But anyway, the conversation was about using a story structure on not using a story. Autumn (8m 5s): Interesting. I missed that one and I was even in the group a couple of times this weekend. Yeah. Jesper (8m 11s): That, well, it was sort of, it started in one place and then it, throughout the comments, there was probably like 40 comments on that one. And then down, down the road, somewhere there in the comments, it started, they started debating whether or not a story should have, you should follow a story structure or not. And on one hand, some said that they didn't want to read something for Blake and others then said that it's not about creating something formulaic, but rather how to apply a structure to a story, to, you know, study writing and understanding how stories work. Jesper (8m 47s): And I thought that was pretty interesting. Autumn (8m 49s): That is a good conversation. I will have to go look for that one. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Jesper (8m 56s): Since we've written an entire guide on how to plot a novel, it's really no secret where we stand in this conversation. No, I decided not to pitch in there in the comment section, but a it's I think it's pretty clear what our view is that stories that work to follow a structure and that there's nothing about being formulaic or anything. We do explain why in the plodding book on why we think this way. So I'm not gonna labor that here. But my main point, I guess, is just to acknowledge that I like to see how the Facebook group is able to have constructive conversations when there are different points of view or disagreements. Jesper (9m 35s): I, I really think that was nice to see. Yeah. Autumn (9m 37s): Yes, there was. I did notice recently, I mean, there was a few people talking about how and why they like the group and how very supportive and people were, you know, open to different interpretations. We're very honest with each other and very kind with each other. And they compared it to other groups that seem to be dominated by just a couple of individuals and how much am writing fantasy isn't that way. And I just really, it was hard not to chime in there and say, thank you, but just let it then go on. Autumn (10m 7s): It'd be like, yeah, I think this group is pretty fantastic too. So I think that is there do a wonderful job of being nice and supportive, but also being good critique partners and helping each other out. So it's a really wonderful group. Know what I thought? Because go ahead. Okay. Jesper (10m 26s): No, yeah. I was just about to say, because honestly it's not that easy, you know, especially, especially when you're thinking about anything on the internet, you know, a Facebook group, or it could also be common sections on YouTube or whatever, but when people can behind, they can hide behind the screen and behind the keyboard and you don't have to sit there in front of somebody and tell them the same thing to their face. It is so easy to be the let's call it nasty commandant. Who's very opinionated about everything and thinks that, you know, the best and those kinds of people it's so easy to do. Jesper (11m 3s): And, and I think sometimes it's not because those people want to be nasty or anything. It just comes across differently when for one, you hide behind your screen. And secondly, when you're writing and you cannot hear the person's tone of voice or see the expression, it just in writing in general, I can also see it from a day job perspective. You know, when you get emails about something that's very different when they call you something. So I just think that this whole conversation that was going on there, there was definitely different opinions in there, but it never turned nasty. Jesper (11m 38s): And I really liked that. So I just wanted to do a shout out to every group members and they I'm writing fantasy Facebook group and say, well done everyone, you know, keep the conversation going because we can all learn from one another. And I think that's important. And the group is just, Autumn (11m 54s): Just awesome. So big shout out to them because they're, it's really a dynamic group. I'm not even a Facebook fan, but I absolutely love, I love the group. So that says something to me. I mean, either Jesper (12m 7s): If I didn't have to, if we didn't have the Facebook group and I didn't have to run some ads for us on Facebook, I would definitely on the stall it for me. Autumn (12m 16s): Yeah. We're in the same boat. They're the things we do just to, you know, because we're writers. What I thought was interesting. So I did some research and then I, we just got a nice email from James Brown, who is one of our new Patrion members, but he was actually emailing back regarding our newsletter. We send out to people who join our list or pick up one of our things like the starter kit or the global download. And I thought it was neat because it actually spawned something in me that I had thought of ages ago and just remembered. Autumn (12m 47s): And that was that we send out a newsletter with like really good writing tips that almost invariably, whenever one of them goes out, we hear back from at least a handful of people. Somebody says, Oh my gosh, thank you. This came at the perfect timing. Just like James just said. And I was thinking of all the writerly things that I'm involved in and even non readily. I mean, I'm into like what travel and bushcraft and all this other stuff that I got going on in my life. None of them, once you sign up for something or do a course, they all Peter out and maybe you'll hear from them when they're doing affiliate marketing for someone else. Autumn (13m 21s): But we don't do that. We have this newsletter that goes out every three weeks or so with really good tips. And it just keeps, we keep adding to it and adding to it. And I don't know anyone else who does that. So I wanted to give us a big Pat on the back and say, this is really cool. I don't know anyone else who keeps delivering this to people and trying to be helpful, no matter, cause you signed up for a free something like five years ago, we're still trying to give you helpful tips. And I also think it's cool because you know, it's something people can sign up for and just gone to, but I realized today that there's no easy way of getting it unless you pick up something free. Autumn (14m 2s): So I know we've talked about fixing up our website, I'm thinking, you know, we have to find a way of like, just, just subscribe to the I'm writing fantasy email list. Didn't get tips. But right now, if you want to get these awesome tips, you have to go and like pick up a free writing course, like the starter kits. So that's always there though, if anyone's interested. Jesper (14m 26s): Okay. You know, actually I was thinking that the best place to start is probably to just talk about how do you even decide if a series is the right choice for the story that you want to tell. That is one thing is that we're going to talk about writing and series and how to do that. But before you eat, you can even get to that pot. It is relevant to question the story you want to write. Is that supposed to be a series? You know, is that a good match? Autumn (14m 56s): Yes. I feel like channeling our old AI, old Mick grumpy. I just feel this need to bring him back to life. Jesper (15m 3s): Oh, I forgot about it. Autumn (15m 6s): He was the best devil's advocate. And I feel that urge within me to be the devil's advocate and just say it's fantasy. Of course it's a series. The, Jesper (15m 16s): If anybody doesn't know what autumn is talking about, trying to go to the am, riding fences, YouTube channel and what some of the older videos, and then you'll you'll understand what she's doing. Autumn (15m 26s): Believe it or not the first podcast, because I recently added the transcripts and he is in the first, like first 10, 15 podcasts. So if you go back there, you will actually hear old Grumpy's voice and his salty sarcastic was done. Jesper (15m 43s): Yeah. I think from a business standpoint, at least, and we talked about this before, but from an orthopedic standpoint, it makes most financial sense to write in a series. But I think you could find some arguing where not all stories and, or I guess characters are suited for a series, not all the time, necessarily the autos books that just works well as standalones as well. Autumn (16m 12s): I totally agree. There is definitely some books. I'd be nice, still playing with. I love trilogies. I've got two Epic fantasy trilogies, but I have this idea for this other story. And my initial instinct was, Oh, trilogy. But I keep looking at it going, I don't know if there's more than one book in there. So there is, you know, I could feel a gut instinct kicking in, but there's definitely ways of doing this as much more concrete as step by step then saying how much material, how much does my character change? Autumn (16m 44s): Is there enough action to make this last for three books? Is it two books? Is it seven books what's going to happen here? Jesper (16m 52s): Yeah. And it also comes down to how much you're putting at stake, but also the actual, what should we call it? Environment in which the book takes place. For example, you know, if you have like somebody trapped in a snowstorm or whatever, right, right. That's going to be difficult to sustain for series for three books. Autumn (17m 17s): No, I agree. And I think that's where you get into looking at, I'm sure we're going, we're moving in this direction. But if you look at themes or your, what your premise is going to be for the story versus your series has a premise. So this, if your premise is the dire events that happen when so and so is trapped in a snowstorm and such, and they're running out of food, that's a good premise. But how can you break that down into three separate, equally exciting ones that would each be an entire novel, even if it was only 50,000 words, but when we're talking about fantasy, so we're talking about 80 to 110, 120,000 words, those are big books. Jesper (18m 4s): Absolutely. So I think step number one here in this whole conversation is to say, is this story I want to tell, suited for series, but for the sake of not having to stop this or already now, I think we have to, we have to assume for now that this is the case that you want to write the series, otherwise this whole episode won't be, Autumn (18m 30s): But I think that's a good step. One is you've got to look at the idea and say, you know, like I said, so you come up with this idea of being lost in a snowstorm. So, okay. Maybe is it the entire world is, you know, North of the wall and you're stuck in snow or ideally you're developing and you're expanding your timeline, your timeframe. So maybe you can make a whole series about a snowy Hoth like world and be able to make this really dredge out. Or you're going to have to revisit your idea until you can break down the big idea into three separate little ideas that kind of fit into it. Autumn (19m 9s): So let's say we're there. And so we're going to move on to the real question is how do you go about plotting this? And when do you start writing the sequels and how does that all work out once you decide that this really is going to be a series? Jesper (19m 26s): Yeah. And I could, I think we actually talked about this in a past episode, but I could just reiterate here once again, what our process is just for the sake of completeness here. And just in case somebody can't remember what we said in there. I don't remember if it was last week or a couple of weeks ago, but I do remember saying this before, but let me just repeat it here then. So when we are creating a new series, we start out by creating a premise description for the entire series and how to do that is exactly, is explained in that brand new book on how to get story ideas. Jesper (20m 6s): So just check that one out. It only costs a couple of dollars, so everybody can manage that. I think. So I'm not going to go into how to develop the premise here, but basically we create a premise for the entire series. And then once we have that, then we use that as sort of the guiding star so that we know, okay, this is the, this is what the entire series is going to be about and what's this going to encompass? And then we basically break that one down into a premise for each of the books in the series. Jesper (20m 43s): And in that way, we start to understand how are we going to deliver on that guiding star? Absolutely. So we don't, we don't do any detailed plotting for this. So these, these premises are just short descriptions. It's probably a couple of sentences. Autumn (20m 58s): Yeah. Very high level. I think the most high level, maybe a paragraph, but yeah, you can get away with like two sentences, even for the series theme. It's not overly complicated. I mean, an example from my second trilogy is the series whole premise was one culture was trying to undo a punishment created by having lost an ancient battle. That was enough. Obviously there's a lot in there. You can mine out to separate what happens in each of the three books to fulfill this premise. Jesper (21m 32s): Yeah, absolutely. And, and I think the danger here is once you feel compelled to stop putting in all those details in already at the beginning stage issue, you know, so we purposely make sure that we only plot the first book or the current book that we're working on. So if we're done with the first book, then obviously we move on to book number two and so forth. But we are only doing the plot for the actual book that we are working on. And then we just leave all the rest with only the premises set. Jesper (22m 6s): Because even though in our case, for example, we plot in quite a lot of detail. We are very focused on all the small nuances in the plot before we even start writing. But even though we do that, there's still gonna be a few things here and there that pops up during the writing of the first draft that isn't in the plot. So we don't want to waste efforts and we don't want to waste time. We want to be as efficient as we can. Jesper (22m 37s): So hence starting to put in a lot of detailed plots on book two, three, four, five, et cetera, once we're still on one, on one, it's just going to be a waste of time because we have to correct all of it afterwards. Yeah, Autumn (22m 50s): I think I like to put it. So I like to, when I first did my first series of what I was writing alone, I would maybe work out like put in the seven steps of story structure, going back to the beginning of this episode, when we kind of hinted, we like structure. I used the seven steps all the time, even in my personal writing. And maybe I would take the premise and I would put in the seven steps and I'd make sure that those are filled out pretty concretely for book one. And I might have them outline in two and three. Autumn (23m 20s): I might have an idea of which character is that book going to be based on because that's typically how I often wrote. I would have I juggle a ton of characters and that's just what I known for in my personal or fantasy writing. So I would often pull out as different characters as the main character for the SQL, the next book or the next book. And so I have some ideas of the things that, that one's some big things, what the inciting incident is, what the climax is maybe one or two small hurdles, but it would be, as I wrote book one, I would say, Oh, this is going to be the thing that's gonna, they're going to have to face that in book two, or they're going to face that in book three. Autumn (24m 1s): And I just go run over to the, a where I have that in Scrivener and saved and I would drop it into the plotting note. So I wouldn't forget. And I could go back and look it up later, right. When I needed it, like when I'm working on the plot. So, but it stayed very high level and it changed, it was much more fluid. You didn't spend days and days and days or weeks or months trying to work out these detailed plots when, you know, just having to me having those files at least organized saying, Oh, I know I'm going to put this here. I'm going to put it there. Autumn (24m 32s): That was enough that I could move forward, knowing that it's going to be three books. I could name the books. I could brand the books. Heck I could do the covers for the books even, and go ahead and even promote that it's going to be a trilogy, link them all together, but I could just be writing book one, which is pretty cool. Jesper (24m 52s): Yeah. And even beyond that, I would say for our first joint fiction book that we talked about, that we're going to do next year when we were doing the plotting for that one, not even haven't gotten advice to write anything at all, but when we're just doing the plotting of it, it happened several times that I thought of something like, Oh, okay, maybe we should do this in a later book then. So I now have a word file would probably like 30 items in it. Jesper (25m 23s): It just says in some later book, and then I have a sentence or two saying something that could have, I have no idea if it's two or book five, but it's just some ideas that I have sort of once we then start plotting book, number two, I can, we can go to that file and pull it back out and see, okay, is there anything in this list that actually fits in here? Maybe some of it is never going to fit in anywhere. That's also okay. It's just ideas. Right. But it's, it's nice. It's nice to have sort of it, at least for me. Jesper (25m 53s): And I think this is not unique to me at all. I think it happens to most writers, but once you get into the narrative and the story of it, whether that could be just the plodding, if you plot in detail like we do, or the actual writing, but it will spark new ideas. You will start thinking about things that, Oh yeah. And then I can do this and I can do that. And it's just so good to just pack them in that placeholder file and just let her sit there and then come back to it later. So it doesn't derail it. Autumn (26m 20s): You hear now. Yes. That's a very good way of doing it and saving them is so important. Cause I think, I mean, especially, especially if you had something that does happen that you're like, this is going to be perfect for having ramifications later. You don't want to have to reread your own book or you don't want to forget about it. I'll leave this thread. That's going to drive you and readers insane. It's nice to have a place to park that, like you said, and, and pick it up. That is funny though, because we've sort of answered the original question from Irish, which was sort of, when do you start writing the sequels? Autumn (26m 52s): If you're writing, if you are writing a trilogy and basically were saying that, you know, as you're going through this, your plotting one book at a time you're saving your ideas into the, for the other books and delete these files. You're basically writing one book at a time. So you finish one and then you go to the next one. And you plot that though. I have to admit if when I was really fired up and really just chugging out these books, I would probably get about three quarters of the way through book one. Autumn (27m 22s): And then I would start, I'd feel confident enough that I could start plotting book two, but not writing. I have finished book one or at least I think it was book two and started book three the exact same day. I mean, I don't think I even took a breath. I'm like, Oh, I did that finished book. I'm not even the next one. I've got to go and tell Facebook, I'm not going to tell anyone I'm I just had the idea for the first scene. So I kept writing, but I write them back to back. Even though I have written books, multiple books at the same time, I think we've talked about that in a different episode. Autumn (27m 54s): So I've written two books at once, but never in the same series because too many things can change. And if you started too soon, you're going to be kicking yourself because you're not going to be adding detail and you're going to have to go back and edit pretty heavily. Jesper (28m 8s): Yeah. Speaking of editing her heavily and having major headaches and whatnot, the whole point that we've sort of touched upon a few times by now the whole point about story structure really becomes important when we're dealing with series. If you're just writing a standalone single book, you can more easily adjust as you go. You know, for those who more rely more heavily on their intuition for story creation, that can work to some extent when you're doing a single book, but once you start juggling three, four or five, six books, if you don't have a proper story structure and you know, you have the arc plotted out, you know, the character arcs as well, where the, where things are going, going to change. Jesper (28m 56s): So to speak over time, you're gonna have so much to do in editing that it, Oh my God, I can't even imagine the headaches. Autumn (29m 7s): I still remember my first book by debut work. And when I discovered story structure, cause I think I got lost at chapter three. I might've made it up to chapter nine before I really threw in the talents that I need to go back and figure out what I'm doing and learn plotting. But it's just, that was, you know, that wasn't even a third of that book. That was a huge book. And so, yeah, I, I can't imagine trying to do that and understand where the character is coming in and their character arc is making them change. Autumn (29m 38s): And that is affecting the plot. And the plot is affecting the character arc in that bundle of things. It becomes this giant ball of tension that explodes into the climax. And plus you have to add the villains arc and or the antagonist. However you want to put it in. All of that is coming together in this spiraling, twisting DNA, strand of synergy, doing that and doing it powerfully so that you have a really well connected and dynamic trilogy or series. If I can find someone who can do that off the top of their head and hasn't written like 30 books, I would just be so astounded because I can't imagine knowing it, maybe someone's a subtle writer and they just could do it out of instinct. Autumn (30m 22s): But man, not me. Jesper (30m 24s): No. Well, I'll, I'll, I'll make a bold claim here. I will say that if anybody says that they can do that, I do not believe it. I don't care how, how a claim. They, I don't care if they're Stephen King. I do not believe it. What I would do believe is that they can, they can write the books, but they will spend a ton of time editing it to make it make sense. And the progression is just right from one book to the next, et cetera. Nobody is able to do this intuitively without any structure in place or if they do, then they've just decided that, okay, I'm just going to write it and then I will make sure it all makes sense afterwards. Jesper (30m 60s): And then you, you spent just as smart, just as much time or even more during the editing, which is own, that's absolutely fine. You can do it however you want. I just feel like I would rather spend a bit more time plotting upfront. So I don't have to redo work that I hate redoing work. So once I've written the first draft, rather move straight into editing it so that it sounds nice, but the whole story is there. The arc is there on the character arcs and the story progression is already there because also when, when we are talking about these character arcs, if you have a six book series, the changes in the character should have happen incremental throughout with each book. Jesper (31m 43s): It shouldn't be so that in book number six, you can see that the author, all of a sudden figured out, Oh, I heard somebody said something on a podcast once about character six, all of a sudden the character changes and everything happens in one book because I just remembered now that before I finished the series, I should also have a character arc where the character changes. That's not how it works and that can be difficult to handle again, unless you want to do the whole thing in editing, be my guest, but I wouldn't, but who it can be difficult to do unless you know where you're heading. Jesper (32m 22s): And you, you have a firm understanding like, like it was discussed in that Facebook thread that we talked about a bit earlier, right? We're saying that it's important to study writing and understand the structures of stories. And I do firmly believe that that's true because if you understand how structures works in a story, how character ox works, then you will be able to embed it into your series. And you just, again, gonna save yourself so much headache, Autumn (32m 52s): You will, and you will help improve your plotting. You'll know how you're going. And it's funny while we were talking about this, all only thing that popped in my mind was so you think George RR Martin is a plotter. I answered my own question because book seven is still not finished or released. And he managed to give the information to the filming agency so that they could create their own script and create their own using his framework and what he planned to happen to create the final episode. Autumn (33m 23s): So there you go. So George RR Martin, that's the only way to handle the, what 150 named characters plus how many others that he's got going on in those books. So yeah, it shows, I think a level of, I wouldn't even call it professionalism, but it's a level of understanding the depth of storytelling, that if you want to have something that's really layered and impactful and full attention, and you have your characters shifting and changing, and that fits the plots, what happens? Autumn (33m 54s): It doesn't just happen because you need it to happen then because you know, you needed your character to change, but that the plot has wrangled them and massage them enough that the changes reflected and make sense. So that readers are surprised, but also understand that doesn't happen unless you've sat down and thought about it quite a lot. And that comes with plotting. And when you're going to do that over the course of several books, I mean me, like with all my characters, I like to actually have characters who have arcs that. I mean, the one that is tied to that book, they have a character arc that ends, begins and ends in that book. Autumn (34m 29s): But then they go on to the next book and they could have a character arc that spans two books. But because they're not tied to the plot is tightly. And all of that with you're juggling like six source. So I'm not going to admit how many characters are in my six book series and keeping readers and grossed and keeping everyone straight. You don't do that unless you have it written out, you have that framework in place. Jesper (34m 58s): Yeah. The other thing is all also that it's important that each book is interesting on its own. It shouldn't be. So that the, for example, if you have a trilogy then book number one, that's usually exciting, right? Because then everything is starting out on, Whoa, this is, this is a new adventure and yeah, everybody loves it. And the third book is also very exciting because we get to the final battle. There is the climax of the entire story. Jesper (35m 28s): Everything is nice and dandy as well. And then book number two, there is just like a placeholder sitting in between there, right? And that doesn't work, you know? And again, the, if you can embed every single book in the series with story structure, then each of them will also be an interesting read on their own. And they have to be, it has to, they have to have their own conflicts as well. It can't be just like, yeah, this is then the middle of book where it's all about them traveling halfway across the countries. Jesper (35m 60s): And then they have, there's a few via places talks throughout, but that's it, you know, nobody wants to read this. Autumn (36m 6s): You don't want to see that inverse bell curve in the tension graph where it's like, Brooklyn's exciting too is like, Oh, why did I bother picking this up? Just picking up book three. Cause I'm hoping it's exciting again. No, it really should be an escalation where you're getting more and more exciting. We're booked to is more intense. And I mean, I know I've seen readers say that on some of my books that it's like, I rarely read a second book that you know is better than the first, but that's what you want readers to be saying. They went to say, Oh my gosh. Autumn (36m 38s): I mean, I have a, between book two and three, I have a hundred percent through rate because they're tied so tightly. And you just have to know, but at the same time, the story that starts in each book, book one as its own premise and it begins and ends in book one book two has a premise and it begins and ends in book two. And the same thing with book three, but they're all tied together by this bridge of this premise. That is the serious premise that if you can do that and you can create this tightly knit series where each book is standalone, but equally actually even more exciting than the one previously. Autumn (37m 15s): Oh, just readers adore it. And I have to admit when I was a teenager or when I found books like that. Oh, well, that's why I write them now. Isn't it? Because that's what you get so engrossed in as like homework, no food, no, I'm just reading this. I don't care. It's 3:00 AM. And I have a test in chemistry in the morning. I am doing this and that's, that's exciting and that's what you want to do. And this is what you want to find as a reader. And that's what you want to write as a writer. Jesper (37m 40s): Yeah. And I just thought about when you said that actually in fantasy, I feel like with, with a series, we really need to be a bit careful with the overpowered characters as well. That's very serious. That really becomes a problem sometimes in some stories where it's just like, well, okay, honestly I gave up at book number six in the wheel of time series, but, but the main character there rant, he's, he's becoming like this Superman kind of thing, you know? Jesper (38m 15s): And I mean, some people enjoy that. That's fine. But I just feel like you need to be careful with overpowering the characters as you progress through the series. Because if you get to a stage where the reader basically knows that nothing can beat this person, then it takes out a lot of tension of the story. You have to keep reader right down the balance where they're not quite sure if this guy's going to make it or not. Right. That's why you want to keep them. But if it's like God like powers and you're immortal almost or whatever then I mean, okay. Jesper (38m 50s): Of course, of course there's also interesting stories about vampires who I modeled and stuff like that. But then you have to come up with some, some other threats that really, you know, I love and one of Anne Rice's books where the, I guess it's listed, but I think it is, but he is so powerful once you get far enough into those books. But at some point he wants to feel what it's like being a human again. So he actually finds, I can't remember if it's like a Sharman or something, but there's some magic involved and somebody is able to take your body and your shift buddy with somebody else. Jesper (39m 28s): And then he does that. Yeah. Autumn (39m 30s): Yes. I remember that. Yeah. Jesper (39m 32s): It's just so amazing that story, because he wants to get back in his vampire body. But what if this guy just don't want to shift back because now he has the vampire body and he's a million times stronger than let's that isn't in human body. Right. So he can do nothing. So it, the entire story is really why, how he's he comes up with a plan on how to trick this person so he can get back into his vampire body. And it's it's I like that, you know? So that kind of thing work. But my point is just that if you want to do something like that, if you do have really overpower characters, you have to work extremely hard at coming up with something that makes it in an intriguing read, because just throwing five dragons at him who cares, right. Jesper (40m 18s): I mean, he's a model, Autumn (40m 19s): Right? Yes. And I think that's such a great point because it does when serious lose that excitement and that tension because you just feel like, Oh, well the hero can handle it. I'm just reading it. Cause they're my best friend, but it's lost that flavor and that excitement. And it's a very easy to do as your character becomes, you know, the character art continues and they become so strong and proficient at their magic or whatever they can do. They're just fantastic heroes. And I mean, I still remember that even from dragon Lance, you know, the heroes become so great, but a lot of them kind of die off before they get to the point where you feel like they're immortal, they're facing mortality. Autumn (40m 57s): So you feel that. And I think that is a very such a valid point and something, I had a hard time with my first time out writing a series is it's so easy to make your characters get powerful, but then you are having to make sure that your antagonists, your villains are equally powerful. You have to make sure that they're still weaknesses. So I do think people, regionally writers when they're doing character arcs, think that, you know, the proficient becoming proficient in magic is important, but that doesn't have to mean that they have all powerful encompassing powers that, you know, they can still just, if they're a water elemental, they only control water. Autumn (41m 33s): You don't need to give them the control out of fire earth and air because, well, that's just getting crazy and then you can't defeat them and that's becoming, you know, you've got to keep it. You got to keep the weaknesses there as well as the strengths. And you have to show progression in possibly other ways than just power. Otherwise you're going to be writing yourself into a little box corner of, Oh, how do I, I'm going to have to bring out the gods at this point to create destroy this character. And that's not a character I planned on writing, but there you go. Jesper (42m 5s): Yeah. And I think apart from all this story's structure and character arcs and all this other stuff that is really about well said that the writing itself, I would want to just take a side step here and talk a bit about the writer, him or herself, if that's all right. Absolutely. Because I feel like apart from all the writing craft stuff that we basically is what we've been talking about for about, for like 25 minutes or so. Jesper (42m 39s): But the other thing that I really feel that can't be neglected is that you also have to ask yourself, can you commit to write a series? Because you know, writing one novel is a lot of work, but a series. Wow. You know, you're talking a whole new level of commitment here. So yeah, I think it's just worth mentioning that before you jump into the deep end of the pool here, I did, you know, I started out saying, okay, I'm just going to ride trilogy. Jesper (43m 10s): And I jumped straight into the deep end and it can work. I mean, I wrote the entire trilogy, so it's not that it can't work, but I'm just saying that maybe sometimes it's at least worth considering if you want to dip your toes into the water and maybe start off with a standalone or something first, just, you could still tie that standalone into the series. Maybe it's something that happens a hundred years before or after, or whatever you want to do. So that still ties together with the series in one way or another. Jesper (43m 40s): But I just feel like it's, it's worth considering if, if you can commit to that because it is a lot of work. Autumn (43m 51s): Yes. I think that's a fantastic point. Yeah. We, we both just dove right into trilogies on our first bet out, but Jesper (43m 59s): Yeah, but I think we've sorted out or concluded by now all these podcasts that we are in saving, listen to, Autumn (44m 7s): I I've told more than enough people that I'm definitely jumping into the fire, just so maybe you don't have to. So this is a fantastic word of warning that it's, it's a lot of work. I mean, that was three years. Plus I rewrote the first book a couple of times to learn what I was doing. So it was my debut. So that was like five years of my life. And then I went and wrote a second trilogy in the same world, but why not? I got a little bit, but we Jesper (44m 32s): Are a lot of work and it, there's nothing wrong with maybe coming up with a novella for seeing if you like the characters, like the world, make sure that you've really got it in you to keep going, because that's horrible to disappoint readers to write something that you're planning. You know, you leave all these loose ends and you get to the end of the book. And you're like, I really just don't want to write book two and three it's, you know, don't do that to readers. It's just, I, I try not to pick up series until I know they're complete because it's so painful otherwise. Jesper (45m 3s): And a lot of readers feel the same way. Yeah. That is absolutely true. And I think it's basically safe to conclude that maybe, well, two or three elements here, depending on how you look at it. One is the writer, him or herself. Can you commit to write an entire series because the demand and the work involved in that is, is a lot. So think about that. And then the second part, and I guess this could be two things or one thing. Yeah. Jesper (45m 33s): Depending on how we look at it, but understand plodding, understand story structure. Those two things are pretty important. And I know that there are a lot of people out there who don't want to plot and that's absolutely fine, but at least understand the whole line of thinking that we started out with about creating that premise per the series first and then per book below so that, you know, that overall, all this stuff, you know, it fits together and it's not just like a random book here and then something else happened over there. Jesper (46m 10s): And you know, that everything fits together before you start, that is incredibly important and it will really help you, even if you don't want to do all the detailed plodding and that stuff, that's fine. But, but at least put those guiding stars in place from the get go. Yes. I think that was a fantastic summary to this podcast. All right. So next Monday, it's all about character creation. We will explain how to use the integral types to create great characters for your novel. Narrator (46m 44s): If you like, what you just heard, there's a few things you can do to support the am writing fantasy podcast. Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review. You can also join Ottoman Yesper on patrion.com/and writing fantasy for as little as a dollar a month. You'll get awesome rewards and keep the M writing fantasy podcast going, stay safe out there and see you next Monday.

Ein Lead ist eine Begriff aus dem Vertrieb bzw. aus dem Marketing und beschreibt eine Kontaktanbahnung oder die Angabe von Kontaktinformationen durch einen potenziellen Interessenten. Dabei wird zwischen MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead) und SQL (Sales Qualified Lead) unterschieden. MQLs sind Kontakte, die z.B. ein Whitepaper heruntergeladen haben, dagegen sind SQLs bereits informierte und am Kauf eines konkreten Produkts oder einer Dienstleistung interessierte User. Leads können je nach Unternehmensziele und KPIs unterschiedliche Ausprägungen haben: E-Mail Adressen, Telefonnummer, Positionstitel und weitere Unternehmensdaten. Mehr Infos finden Sie in meinen neuen Coaching Kurs: https://oezkardescheung.clickfunnels.com/content

Never miss a new episode: https://sendfox.com/lp/mnyll3We see a critical shift in marketing, sales, and client success roles nowadays.In the next couple of years, we’ll see T-shaped teams that can wear multiple hats. Marketing will be aligning all the programs with the buying process and will be working with sales on sales enablement and nurturing while running onboarding and deal expansion programs.Sales will be in charge of content creation, driving awareness, creating niche communities, nurturing, and onboarding clients.The client success process will be restructured and ran by marketing and sales.The new reality shows that future teams must be t-shaped and flexible. We won’t see departments in the most progressive B2B companies but will see a one Revenue Operation team where everybody’s goal is hitting the revenue quota.Critical skillsets will be cultivated and developed in-house, technical, and niche-based tasks that will be outsourced or automated with software.What does it mean for B2B marketers?The faster you’ll understand the full-funnel process and become involved in sales and client success, the quicker you’ll make marketing revenue-driven in your company.What does it mean for SDRs?The faster you’ll learn marketing, content, and community creation, the quicker your company will grow.We sat down with the CEO of Refine Labs, Chris Walker to discuss these shifts and the future of revenue operation teams. You’ll learn:- How to determine the revenue operations?- How to pivot your company from traditional marketing&sales to revenue operations?- How to map a go-to-market strategy and develop a RevOps program?- How to generate SQLs with ungated thought leadership?And many more.Chris Walker оn Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-walker-41597028/

In this episode of Let's Talk ABM Declan chats to Richard Lane, Co-founder and CEO, and Lee Durham, Co-founder and CRO, of durhamlane. Richard and Lee coined a phrase; '#NeverStopSelling', believing that the wheels of commerce have got to keep turning, whatever the situation. Here's what they cover: - How to prospect in this new environment - The role of durhamlane in your ABM tech stack - How to progress MQLs to SQLs and close - How sales and marketing alignment drive success

What's the secret sauce that top growth marketers use to predict performance and develop their marketing plans and budgets? This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Onna Head of Growth Peter Schroeder shares his process for building growth models, and how he uses them to predict future marketing and sales headcount needs, allocate budget, and more. Peter's approach to growth modeling can work for any type of company, from an early stage startup without a lot of marketing performance data, to a well established high growth company looking to take its performance to the next level.  Highlights from my conversation with Peter include: As head of growth for Onna, Peter focuses on the demand gen side of marketing (as opposed to the brand building side). Peter says that a focus on growth is particularly important at early stage companies where very often investors have high expectations regarding growth milestones. Onna is just this type of company. It is early stage, having just closed a Series A round of investment with funding from companies like Slack and Dropbox, and the growth goals are ambitious. When Peter thinks about growth modeling, he begins with the revenue number that the company is trying to hit, and then reverse engineers the funnel so that he can determine things like required budget and headcount. Peter's growth models are built as spreadsheets that reflect patterns in historical marketing data with regarding to channel performance, conversion rates and more. He says that while many startups say that they don't have enough data to build a growth model, he believes this is just an excuse and the small amount of data you do have coupled with anecdotal feedback from your sales team are enough to get started. Peter encourages marketers not to get too wrapped up in making the model perfect. He says to follow the 80/20 rule and spend no more than 20 percent of your time building the model and at least 80 percent of your time working on growth-oriented activities. Using his spreadsheet, Peter identifies the cost to acquire a customer by channel, and then he models out what the cost is at each stage of his funnel, by channel. While most marketers think that CAC will get lower over time, Peter says it is just the opposite and CAC will increase as your efforts saturate a particular channel. Peter says that the ket metric marketing should be measured on is marketing contributed revenue. He uses his growth model to report on that, and says that the model is a helpful tool to incorporate into leadership meetings and regular marketing checkins. Another way that Peter communicates about marketing success is by sharing his team's work internally. Resources from this episode: Visit the Onna website Follow Peter on Twitter Email Peter at peter@onna.com Listen to the podcast to learn more about Peter's approach to growth modeling, and how to build a growth model of your own. Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Booth, and today my guest is Peter Schroeder, who is the head of growth at Onna. Welcome, Peter. Peter Schroeder (Guest): Thank you so much for having me. Happy to be here. Kathleen: Yeah. I am excited to talk to you, because I speak with a lot of marketers, and your title is head of growth. So maybe you could start out by talking a little bit about yourself and kind of your background and what led you to where you are today, as well as what Onna is, and then we can talk a little bit about what it means to be a head of growth. About Peter and Onna Peter: Yeah, absolutely. So what head of growth really means is, it focuses on the demand gen side of marketing. It's not as involved in brand-building and any of those other activities that don't directly result in pipeline generation for a business. So what the head of growth really does is, like I said, just focuses on all areas that would drive the business forward from a revenue perspective. So that's like a little bit of the differentiator. And I think that we're starting to see it more and more at early stage companies where you really need to focus on that revenue growth as opposed to like brand-building. Kathleen: Yeah, definitely. Those results are kind of where the rubber meets the road. Peter: Yeah, exactly. Kathleen: What has your career path been? How did you become a head of growth? Peter: Yeah, absolutely. So I've been in the software world for about eight years. I was in marketing roles and digital marketing roles. And I think that ever since I started early on in my career, it's always been demand gen focus. Whether it's paid media events, webinars, it's always been about things that directly impact the revenue side of the business. I think that brand is very much so a luxury that early stage companies just can't afford to focus on exclusively. I think a lot of our demand gen activities residually affect that brand. Making sure that we're going to market with a unified message, consistent branding, that's something we want to do on the demand gen side. So I think that branding will come, but it's just not a luxury that most companies have. Most early stage SaaS companies have that runway. They have those numbers that they need to be held accountable for. So that's really focusing on the demand gen side. So being a marketer at early stage software companies, I feel like it's just kind of comes with the territory. Kathleen: Yeah. I would say amen to all of that, but especially if it's a company that's venture-backed or that's looking for investment, those numbers are critical, and usually investors are watching them really closely, so I can see where your kind of role would be important. What does it mean to be a growth marketer? Kathleen: Now, when you come into a role such as head of growth, how do you approach that? I know we were going to talk about growth modeling, and I love this concept, because especially at early stage companies, I've been at some, and the question is always like, what can we expect in terms of growth? And what's it going to take to get like if we want to grow by 2X? And a lot of times, I think, marketers come into these roles and they sort of feel like it's like putting their finger up in the air and measuring where the wind is blowing, and they pull a number out of the blue and sometimes feel nervous about it. But you've really dug into a little bit more of a scientific approach to figuring out growth. Peter: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So I can give you an example of where I'm at right now. So I'm at a company called Onna, which is a platform that centralizes data from your favorite apps, so think Slack, G Suite, anywhere where you get work done, to deliver a connected enterprise. So we're gathering all that data and we're supercharging it with machine learning and unified search to give you all that data in one place. This last year, to give you like a stage for the size of our company, we closed our series A with investments from Slack and Dropbox. And with that investment, we have really aggressive growth goals on the sales and marketing end. When you're getting funding from companies at that level, we have really big goals for 2020. So what that means for me is coming into the business and thinking, how can we hit those aggressive growth goals? And starting at the revenue number, what's the revenue number we have to hit? And then sort of reverse engineering that funnel to make sure that we have the funnel covered at all stages from a budget perspective, from a headcount perspective, just overall coverage on all ends. And what that means, for example, is we don't want to generate more pipeline than we have the headcount to be able to close from a sales perspective. So this is where a sales and marketing alignment gets really close, so working with sales to make sure we know when they're hiring people. For the marketing side, we know when we need to bring in what amount of pipeline to make sure we're able to close at an effective rate. Otherwise, from a marketing perspective, if we're under-generating pipeline, that's going to impact the sales department. On the flip side, if we're over-generating pipeline, things are going to slip through the cracks, because we don't have enough coverage from a headcount perspective to be able to sort of reign all that pipeline in. So when we think for like planning for a whole year. So for example, we want to grow 2 to 3X next year, which is really aggressive growth goals. That comes with a lot of hiring, a lot of pipeline generating. So we just want to make sure that we're scaling in unison to be able to support each other effectively. Kathleen: I am loving this topic, because I think this is something that so many marketers have had to grapple with. And I love that you talked about almost starting with the end in mind. The investors want you to reach X amount of revenue, and how do you back out what's needed to get there? Right? And especially that you talked about sales and marketing alignment, because obviously those are both really important parts of the puzzle. So knowing that that's what you have to do, where do you start? How do you break this up into manageable pieces? How to get started with growth modeling Peter: Yeah, definitely. So I don't know if you can start with somewhere manageable, but you kind of have to think about all stages of growth modeling to make sure you have all your bases covered. A lot of people just want to say, "Okay, we're going to do everything in everything." And that's just not possible, especially when you're smaller stage. You need to focus. You need to understand where you have the biggest opportunity to have an impact. You have to understand historical trends. Where did your early customers come from? Recognize those patterns. Try to map out, if you invest more money to try to amplify those channels, how does that impact it? So it's really like a full scope sort of understanding of how you want to grow your business. And I know that people will hate to hear this answer, but it starts in the spreadsheets. You have to get into the spreadsheets. You have to start mapping out your numbers. I know that early stage companies like to say, "We don't have enough data to back that." But I think that early data is really good early indicators. And like I said, I think just as a really good place to start is to start with that revenue number. Then based on historical trends, you can reverse it up from closed won. Then you can go up to opportunities. Then you can go up to SQLs, MQLs, leads, traffic, and you can understand the whole funnel. And then that at least gives you a sense of what you need to bring in from a lead perspective, and that gives you a place to start. Then once you have that lead number, you can break it up by channel based on what you've seen by channel. How much does it cost for you to acquire a lead at each channel? And then you just start laying out the whole framework, and it shows you how much you need to invest in each channel, what headcount you need to support that investment. And it helps you go back down that funnel and give you that coverage. Kathleen: Okay, so there's a lot there. Peter: Yeah, there's a lot there. I have a slide that I can give to you that you can put it in the show notes, but it kind of articulates from a funnel perspective what you have to look at and where you have to identify conversion rates to get those numbers to be able to map out your channels. Kathleen: Now, you said something that really caught my ear, which is that a lot of people in startups are going to say, "We don't have enough data." And that was running through my head as you said it. So you talked about even the early numbers are good and kind of interesting numbers, but there is a certain amount of data that's needed because when you talk about things like looking at performance by channel, et cetera, some early stage companies coming out of stealth are going to have really basically nothing, or they might have a pipeline but it's entirely from having an SDR on the team and dialing for dollars and not any inbound. And so how much data do you really need in order to do this? Like do you have to have a basic inbound pipeline up and running? Peter: I mean, it's a good question. I guess it depends on where your company has seen growth and if it has seen growth yet. Like you said, if it's coming right out of stealth mode, that's when you lean on your early employees, their experience, historical trends, market research, and you put together some baseline numbers to at least have something to measure against. If you're early-stage, you pull together the data that you have, and you start mapping out against it. But everyone should be able to at least pull something together. And I think that the use of this data, I also don't want to over-advocate for it, because I think that we can get stuck in analysis paralysis too. And our primary function as marketers are people who create, people who drive demand. So I think that when we think about the balance between this growth modeling and actually acting upon it, I like to use a simple 80-20 rule. We shouldn't spend more than like 20% of our time planning and building out these frameworks and building these models. It's like, at a certain stage, especially when you're early, do the best that you can. Have something to model against. Have something to show that you have actually thought about your growth goals and you're not just spending money to spend money. But at the end of the day, like you said, you could only have so much data. We all only have access to so much data. And at the end of the day, we need to execute on it. We need to be able to put our plan into action and put our plan into motion, so at the end of the year we're not pointing back to our growth model and being like, "Well, we didn't do any of that." We need to actually execute on these things that we put together. Kathleen: So I want to make sure I'm understanding you correctly. You come in and you're looking at historical information around conversion rates and volume at each level from traffic to lead all the way through to closing a deal. And I assume you're also looking at the growth of those numbers over time, in other words, how the conversion rate has changed over time? Peter: Yep. So conversion rates also paired with like unit economics. So by channel, how much are we acquiring customers for? What's the lifetime value of those customers? What's our payback period? So being also very conscious of the economics by channel. How to build a growth model Kathleen: Okay. And so let's say your revenue is at $5 million a year, and your investors come in and they say, "We want you at 50 million by the end of next year." Walk me through. How do you take that model and use it to answer that question? Peter: Yeah, that's a really good question. So that'd be 10X in growth, so --- Kathleen: We can make it 2X, if that's easier for the purpose of this. Peter: Sure. Let's go five to 10. That might be easier. So what you have to do is, you have to sort of dissect the pipeline from this last year. So how much revenue in the last year have you gained? Based on that revenue, what was your closed won percentage? Where was the pipeline coming from? And you'd have to identify where's the best opportunity to amplify that pipeline. Like, do we dissect our pipe and dissect our deal flow and find out that like 90% of our deals came through channel partnerships? Well, that means that we might have the biggest opportunity to go into those channel partnerships and amplify it with resources and money and going to events. So it's really identifying historic trends and pattern recognizing, and then coming up with hypotheses by channel that support our growth goals, and then kind of filling in the numbers to help support that so you have something to measure against. Kathleen: Okay. So let's use the example you came up with, like channel for example. Let's say we decide channel is the biggest opportunity because we see that a large volume of our customers are closing from there. If the hypothesis is that that's where we need to put our resources... You talked a little bit about using growth modeling to determine plans and budgets and that sort of thing. How do you translate that hypothesis into a concrete plan and a budget? Turning growth models into marketing plans and budgets Peter: Yeah, definitely. So I think at a high level, it starts with your revenue number and what you need to get there. So you need that. You need your cost to acquire customer by that channel. And then you can basically, based on what you need to do from that channel, based on your projections, you can divide it by your cost to acquire a customer, and you can basically fill out your funnel and recognize the cost at every stage of the funnel. You can associate a dollar amount to an MQL, an SQL, an opportunity, and a closed one. And it helps you understand at each stage of the funnel what you need to acquire a customer for. So let's say in that example, you do your math, you look at your cost to acquire a customer, you look at the number you need to get to, and you recognize that you need to acquire an MQL at a price of $1,500. Well, it helps you know when you go to that channel partnership event... Let's say you spend $100,000 to promote that event. You need to be able to acquire X amount of MQLs at $1,500 to have that event back out and to continue to support your growth goals. Kathleen: Okay. So it's more about the cost of acquisition than setting an arbitrary budget, for example. Peter: Yeah, exactly. It all comes back to, what is that cost to acquire a customer? And then you can compare it to your funnel metrics to identify dollar amounts at every stage of the funnel. Kathleen: And to what degree, when you build this model, are you baking in assumptions about becoming more efficient over time? In other words, especially with earlier startups, they might be spending a lot to acquire leads and customers. But presumably that number should come down over time with the volume, with efficiencies, with lots of lessons learned. How do you account for that? Peter: Well, it's interesting, because I think the classic assumption is that you do get more efficient by channels as you kind of do it longer. But it's kind of my mindset and philosophy to assume that channels get worse as we grow, because we saturate them more. Kathleen: Oh really? Peter: Yeah. Our goals get bigger. We have to assume that we will run out of runway in certain channels. At a certain point, we will sort of maximize them. So I think it's really important to think about as we scale and as we grow, as we throw more resources at different channels, as we have to ramp people, there's a lot of factors that come into... Like we talked about in our example, going from like five to 10 million, there's a lot of factors that go into building a growth team during that period and doing it in such an aggressive time period that we have to assume that we won't figure out things as quickly as we want to. And what that helps us do is it helps us sort of like protect ourselves. We'd rather over-plan and plan for the worst and then outperform and then go from five to 10 million in eight months instead of 12 months. We would rather do that if best case scenario comes to fruition than actually plan for best case scenario. Kathleen: So do you pair your... Call it your analysis of the conversion rates, of volume, et cetera. Do you pair that with a demand waterfall, then, where you kind of lay out where those new leads are going to come from by channel, by event, et cetera? How does that work together? Peter: Yep. So ideally you would pair up and have... I know I keep going back to spreadsheets, but at early-stage companies you just have these big, ugly spreadsheets- Kathleen: I mean, every good marketing nerd worth their salt loves the spreadsheets, so you're preaching to the choir here. Peter: True. These big, ugly spreadsheets that all just feed into your number. And it helps you lay out month by month, and add it up to quarter by quarter, and then total into a year where every single lead is coming from by channel and how that lead ultimately impacts revenue. So you have this big spreadsheet all the way month by month, from lead all the way to revenue, that is marketing-contributed and pairs up as well with sales headcount to make sure that there's enough salespeople to support that pipeline and that revenue that you're bringing in. So I don't have a really pretty way to scrape that together. Based on your business, if you're doing more outbound, if you're doing more inbound, it's something you kind of just hack together in the spreadsheets. But that's the way that I've always done it, and it seems to work to a certain extent. Eventually you have to automate that, but early on it's definitely a good way to build this out. What role does sales play in growth modeling? Kathleen: What part of this are you leaning on the head of sales for? Because obviously a lot of this data has to come from them, correct? Peter: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. So they're responsible for that revenue number, and I would say that revenue number alone. Marketing should own the funnel all the way to the pipeline. And then once it gets to the pipeline, there's that sales and marketing handoff. And then sales is responsible for winning that business that we put in the pipe for them. So what they're really doing is, they're letting us know what's that conversion rate from pipeline to closed won, and what do they need to like support their sales goals based on the reps that they're bringing on, the quotas that they're putting in place. And those are probably the big things. Kathleen: It sounds like this really would form a great basis for a service-level agreement between marketing and sales, because it gives you some pretty concrete numbers and expectations. Have you used it for that before? Peter: Yeah. Yeah, so for our SLA, we don't think like too concrete in place from these numbers perspective. It's more so like, we think of sales and marketing as like almost one department. So it's not like we're going to hold a gun to your head for this. Based on this, it's like we're one department working this together, like we are generating leads for you to close. So I've never found SLAs too crucial, unless there's like a war between sales and marketing, which thankfully I've never had to deal with. It's always been really close, viewed as one department. Using growth modeling to determine headcount Kathleen: Yeah. So you talked about how you can use this to model out sales headcount, but how do you use it, or can you use it, to model out marketing headcount? Peter: Yeah, that's a good question. It's a lot harder, because it's not one-to-one. What you need to do, though, is you need to recognize based on your strategy that you have in place... Let's use the channel partnership example for one. If 90% of our pipeline is coming from those channel partnerships and we don't have anyone on marketing dedicated to that channel, someone needs to own that. If there's that much of our business relying on it, we can't just leave it up in the air. So then we have to look at our org chart, and we have to understand who contributes to that channel, who owns that channel, where can marketing contribute. And it helps paint a more clear picture than kind of just arbitrarily structuring your marketing department. It helps you align your headcount to the numbers a lot better. Another example is like early on when people put a lot of money into paid. No one really owns paid. It's just a lot of sort of cooks in the kitchen. You can look at that paid number and you can say, "We're spending X amount of money. Definitely warrants someone." And that helps you go to your leadership team, helps you really advocate for that internally, to get someone to manage that budget. I think whenever you see a significant part of your budget going in this growth modeling, it helps you really paint a clear picture that you need people there to support that and you need to grow your headcount. Kathleen: Yeah, it's funny. I've never met anybody who has a really good formula for figuring out marketing headcount increases over time. It's definitely more of a black box than sales headcount is for sure. Peter: Yeah, absolutely. And I think based on this growth modeling, if any of your numbers are falling behind from the growth modeling perspective, it's also something you can point back to if no one's owning it and say like, "I have an assumption that we can be X more effective or X more efficient if we bring in someone to to manage this budget. Right now it feels like we're kind of just burning money to put it in this channel." So it helps you build those arguments a little bit more. But it's definitely not as like one-to-one to sales. Like if we spend X on this person, we should get X out. Growth modeling in action Kathleen: Yeah. Now let's talk about once you've built your growth model, because you... Like all these great spreadsheets, you build it, and then what? So what does your cadence look like in terms of how frequently you're going back to that model over time, adjusting it, checking assumptions, et cetera? Peter: Yeah, so this growth model should feed into your overall overall marketing strategy, and it should be something that your team is measured against as a marketing department as a whole. Like where do you kind of stick your pin in the map, and what do you point out and say, "This is what marketing is going to do. This is what we're going to be held accountable towards"? So for me it's always been marketing contributed revenue. Like what do we actually drive at the end of the day? And I know that some people don't like doing that, because there's multi-touch attribution and all these other things with actually tracking and stuff. But I think it's so important, and I think it gives marketing a seat at the table, per se, from a revenue perspective, where we're saying we're actually driving revenue at the end of the day through marketing activities that we do. So I think it's something that at least I've always measured against monthly, quarterly, even weekly sometimes once you're getting close to the end of the quarter and really needing to push your marketing team to be like, "Where are we at? What did we say that we're going to do? Are we falling short? Are we on target? Are we running ahead?" But at the end of the day, the whole marketing team should be aligned to to those numbers as well to make sure that we're all on the same page and to make sure that we're supporting revenue-driving activities. Kathleen: Yeah. It seems like it would be a really good management tool for a marketing leader to just pull out in team meetings and use as a pulse check. Peter: Yeah, yeah. It's brought out at marketing check-ins, and it's also brought out at leadership meetings too. Like what does leadership care about? What do they want to hear about when you sit down for your weekly or biweekly or monthly or whatever your leadership team does? Those are the numbers that they care about. They don't want to hear about like, "Oh, we held a webinar, and it was fun." They want to see like, okay, how many leads did we bring in? How many of them came to the pipeline? What did that mean from a revenue perspective? They care about those really hard numbers that marketing in 2020 needs to be ready to talk about, like the actual revenue driving impact that we have. Building a growth-oriented marketing tech stack Kathleen: You talked about multi-touch attribution and being able to say what marketing's contribution was towards top-line revenue. What kind of a tech stack do you think you need to have in place in order to enable that? Peter: Yeah, I think it really depends on the size of your organization, because at Onna, we're selling enterprise deals, so we're very much at the stage where we can just go in, dissect the deal, manage it in a spreadsheet, and it's really low-touch, minimal effort. As opposed to if you're selling SMB and you're selling annual contracts of $50, and it's very self-serve, you need to have a robust attribution system in place to be able to measure that. So it's not something that I've had a ton of experience with, but from the people that I've talked to that do have to build out that attribution system, people have recommended Bizible, that it's a really good multi-touch attribution tool for them to use. But again, I just haven't had to get into that too much thankfully, which I'm happy about. Kathleen: Now can I ask what kind of tech stack you guys have that you're using? Peter: Yeah, so we use Pardot and Salesforce, and we also have a sales ops person on our team already, so they're able to... Like I said, sales and marketing is kind of the same for us, so our sales ops person's able they both to run reports, slice data for us, pull any numbers or data that we really need. Kathleen: That's awesome. And now how long have you been at Onna? Peter: So I've been at Onna for a few months now. Setting expectations for your growth model Kathleen: Okay. And this isn't the first time you've held this kind of a role. So I'm curious to know, expectation-wise, someone tries this for the first time... I feel like it would be like setting KPIs overall or like setting your professional development goals. It seems like one of those things that you would get better at over time. So what has your experience been with the first one or two times you build a model like this? How accurate do you think someone should expect to be out of the gate? Peter: Yeah, I think there's a few things. I think that, like you first said, you definitely get better. You have to start somewhere though. It's going to be iterations on iterations, and hopefully it becomes like your own personal playbook that you can sort of bring wherever you go and adjust no matter where you're at. But it all starts with actually doing that, starting somewhere and actually improving on it. I think the second thing is, you need a team and a leadership team that's okay with challenging and pushing each other and being candid with each other. Because the first time I did this, no one asked me to do this. No one said this is something that we needed. It's something that I felt that I needed to be able to support the decisions that I was making. And so I went to the CEO of my former company. I said, "Hey, this is something I've been working on. It's an MVP. It's lightweight. Please tear it apart and give me feedback and go back to the drawing board with it." And one, he was so happy that I took the initiative to do it. It's not anything he asked for, but it painted such a clear picture of what marketing's doing and why marketing exists. And he did. He tore it apart. He told me from a CEO and founder perspective what he wanted to see, what our board cared about, and what I should be focusing on to help build out the bones of this growth modeling foundation. So I think you'd definitely want that from a leader and you want that from a team. And I also get that not everyone has that team in place. So then I think it's about having a network and being able to go to peers and be able to go to other people you know to help build that out, if you're not in as like a secure place, that you need to go to your team with something a little bit more buttoned up than that MVP version. Kathleen: Yeah, that's a really good point. And I appreciate that you brought that up, because I think there probably are some marketers out there who are thinking like, "We don't have enough information, or, "I don't have a tech stack that can give this to me." But it sounds like, to me, what you're saying is, don't let that be something that stops you. If you don't have the data internally, you either know someone who has comparable data or you can Google it and find out what industry averages are. But it sounds like it's just worth starting with something and then iterating, and as you build data you can refine. Peter: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's important, saying again, if you're at a company where no one asked you to do this and you go build this growth model and you present it to them, it will be a big deal in their eyes. These are the things they want to see. These are the numbers that they care about. This is how you paint marketing in a light that that leadership and investors and everyone really wants to see. So if no one's asking you for it, I'd encourage people to build out these models and show the nitty gritty of what marketing does. Kathleen: Yeah. Yeah, that's great advice. And I think... What is it? The average head of marketing lasts 18 months these days. And so that is something that I'm sure is top of mind with lots of people who are listening, which is, how do I set myself up for success so that I beat the odds and last longer than 18 months? It's a depressing number. Peter: It is. And I think people fall into this trap of marketers not getting the credit they deserve for a few reasons. It's like marketers need to show what they do internally. If you don't showcase what you do, if you don't share what you do, people in product who are writing code all day are just going to be like, "Oh, marketing doesn't do anything." You need to showcase the things that you're doing and boast them proudly. Sharing your work is a very important thing. Like at Onna, whenever my team creates something, does something, we have like a marketing shares channel where we show everything that we do, so it allows us to showcase what we do. And we want to hold ourselves accountable. We want someone to call us out if something isn't up to our brand standards. If something doesn't look good, we want people to call us out on that, because we want to be better and we want to be held accountable. And the second thing is marketers that just sort of never execute and just move too slowly. We want to be known as a department that can get things, spin something up, spin up an MVP and be able to iterate. So that's another aspect, that we want to be known as a team that's on the ball, that's snappy to a reasonable amount. We don't want people to come to us and throw off what we're working on. My team operates in marketing sprints so we can protect ourselves from those things that come in. We have our priorities locked in for two weeks, but we can tell people and we can set the expectation but next sprint we'll put this in and we'll get back to you in like two to three weeks with something ready. Kathleen: Yeah, I love that marketing shares channel idea. It was funny. Months ago I interviewed Dave Gerhardt, who has been the VP of marketing at Drift. He's just left to take a new role. But he talked a lot about sharing your work, but it was sort of more internal within the marketing team. And I've done that now for a while. Ever since I first talked to him about it, I started implementing it, and it's been great. But what I haven't done is that next step, which is what you're talking about, and that's having marketing shared outside of the team with the rest of the company. And I love that, because you're right. I think a lot of people do think marketers are just sitting back there, as somebody once said, doing arts and crafts, right? And it's a lot more than that. And unfortunately a lot of the work we do does take some time before there's very publicly visible things to show for it. And so taking those pieces and sharing them out as they're ready, I think, can be very powerful. So I'm going to do that too. I'm going to copy your idea. Peter: Yeah, I really like it. And I think that I've heard from some people like, "Oh, my team's afraid to share things internally." And it makes me question like, how can you be afraid to share things internally but okay to share them externally?  Kathleen: Yeah, that's a bad sign. Peter: Yeah, that's a really bad sign. So it just promotes good work, good behavior, good actions. So I'm a big fan of it. Kathleen: Now, do you wait until those things are done? In other words, are you sharing drafts of things, or are you sharing completed, shipped work? Peter: To the whole team, we're sharing shipped work. We do have the internal marketing team sharing where we share early versions, early drafts, to make sure that we are buttoned up. But we're sharing to the whole team final products. Kathleen's two questions Kathleen: Great. That's awesome. I love it. Love this topic, and I will definitely put your slide in the show notes. Changing channels a little bit right now, I have two questions I always ask all of my guests. I'd love to know your thoughts on this. The first is, when you think about inbound marketing, is there a particular company or individual that you think is really killing it? Peter: Yeah, absolutely. I think Ryan Bonnici at G2, the CMO over there, he's doing amazing work. I think he built an incredible team over there from an inbound perspective. If you're not following him on Twitter, on Instagram, follow Ryan Bonnici of G2. He's like my favorite CMO in the world. If you're thinking about going to a marketing conference in 2020, check out the G2 Reach conference. I think that I went last year, which was the first year, and Brian's just doing incredible things out there for all marketers. I encourage everyone to watch him and see what he's doing. Kathleen: Yeah, he's incredibly creative. I interviewed him as well, so I will also put the link to my interview with Ryan in the show notes, because he talked about some really cool stuff that he did at HubSpot that he was rolling out at G2 Crowd as well, so that's a good one. He is super creative, and he moves fast also. Peter: And he's also just a really good person and really funny. He's just entertaining too. If you ever get the chance to talk to him or watch anything that he puts out there, he's genuine. He's thoughtful. He doesn't just talk about marketing, but he talks about like mindfulness, things like imposter syndrome for young marketers. Just overall great person, great marketer. I think he's doing it better than anyone. Kathleen: Yeah, agreed. All right, second question. Marketing changes really quickly. A lot of marketers I talk to feel like they're drinking out of a fire hose. How do you personally keep educated? Peter: Yeah, I think marketing is changing rapidly, but I think the fundamentals kind of stand the test of time. So I'm a big fan of reading marketing books depending on what I'm going through. Like one of the things I always fall back on is How to Win Friends and Influence people by Dale Carnegie. If you just understand empathy and you understand actually what makes people tick and what people want, that's where marketing starts. We're trying to influence people. We're trying to empathize with people and understand their problems and present them with value. I think things like Elad Gil's High Growth Handbook, it's a book that he wrote that just outlines anything that really anyone could go through at a SaaS company. And then depending on what your specialty is, like if you're in something like content or copywriting, reading, something like Ogilvy on Advertising, such a good copywriting book. So depending on what you're going through and what role you're in, there's so many books that have been written that tell you the foundations and the principles of what have been done, what you should be doing, and things that have already been tested. You don't have to go learn things on your own. These things have already been done, so learn about it and then put your own flavor on it based on what you're going through. Kathleen: I'm so excited that you mentioned a couple of specific books, because I love marketing books. I have a lot of them on the shelf here behind me, which you can't see if you're listening. But yeah, I have Ogilvy on Advertising, but I haven't read a couple of the other ones you mentioned. So my little trick for that is, I love to listen to them on Audible at like 1.5 speed. But then if it's a book that has a lot of meat to it, I'll get the hard copy and do that at the same time so that I can mark up the pages. It's a good way to get through things quickly without... Peter: Yeah. Yeah, I think audio books have been great, because you can just power through them on your commute. They've been great. But for the books that I really like, I do love having a physical book and highlighting it and writing in it. That's hard to beat. How to connect with Peter Kathleen: Yeah, 100%. Well, I love all of those suggestions, Peter. If somebody wants to learn more about Onna, or the topic of growth modeling, or they want to just reach out to you and connect, what's the best way for them to find you online? Peter: Yeah, people can follow me on Twitter @peterschroederr with two Rs. If you have any questions about this, any of this, just feel free to email me at peter@onna.com. Happy to talk to anyone anytime and help people out who are like going through this for the first time and and just walk them through this. Just as much as as growth modeling, I love that career modeling with people too, and building out their own careers and next steps and sort of where they want to go. So big fans of both topics. You know what to do next... Kathleen: That is incredibly generous of you to offer. Thank you so much. If you are listening, I will be putting the links in the show notes for those things, so head over there if you want to reach out to Peter. And if you did listen and you learned something new or you liked what you heard, please consider heading to Apple Podcasts and leaving the podcast a five star review. That helps us get found by new listeners, and I would really appreciate it. Thank you so much, Peter. I appreciate everything you shared with us today. Peter: Thank you so much for having me. I had a great time. Hope everyone enjoys it.  

Partner relationship management software provider Allbound is growing at 150% year over year largely due to the company's inbound marketing efforts. Here's how they're doing it... This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Allbound Director of Marketing Tori Barlow goes into detail about the company's inbound marketing strategy. From the tech stack, to team structure, metrics, paid ads strategy and more, Tori pulls back the curtain on what she's done to drive growth - and why collaboration with the sales team is key to her success. Highlights from my conversation with Tori include: Allbound sells partner relationship management software, which is designed to help companies manage their partner channel sales programs. When Tori took on marketing for Allbound, she started by building a strong foundation of KPIs, tech stack, performance monitoring and strategy. When it came to KPIs, she identified the company's Salesforce instance as the "single source of truth" and used it to establish what the historical performance had been. She used the data from Salesforce and the company's overall revenue target to determine how many marketing qualified leads (MQLs), demos and opportunities they would need to hit the revenue target. When it came time to define MQLs, Tori didn't want to simply define that as anyone who requested a demo so she worked with the sales team to create a scoring rubric based on the content her prospects were consuming. Any prospect that reached a score of at least 50 was passed on to sales for follow up. Once a lead is designated as an MQL, they become a "sales accepted lead" (or SAL) when a demo has been booked and a sales qualified lead (SQL) once the demo has happened and the sales team identifies that there is a viable opportunity. Once she had her lead stages defined. Tori focused on the tech stack. In Allbound's case, they set up Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager, and then used Marketo and Salesforce to track their performance. Now, they are beginning to experiment with account-based marketing and buyer intent data, but Tori's advice for marketers is to focus on and really master the basics first. They are also using Sendoso to send out direct mail as part of their ABM campaigns. In tandem with all of this, they adjusted their paid ads campaigns to focus less on the top of the funnel and more on nurturing what Tori calls "hand raisers." All of these changes have contributed to Allbound's organic traffic increasing 40% year over year and their search engine rankings increasing by 23 positions. In addition, the company's revenue has grown by 150%. Tori accomplished all of this with a marketing team of two people (herself and Allie, her coworker). She is now in the process of hiring a third person and the company is also onboarding a marketing and sales operations specialist. Resources from this episode: Visit the Allbound website Request a demo of Allbound Connect with Tori on LinkedIn Listen to the podcast to learn more about simplifying the messaging for complex products and services, and how, if done right, it can help you get better marketing results. Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host Kathleen Booth, and my guest this week is Tori Barlow who is the director of marketing at Allbound. Welcome Tori. Tori Barlow (Guest): Hi. Thanks for having me Kathleen. Tori and Kathleen recording this episode. Kathleen: I'm excited you're here, and I'm really excited about what we're going to talk about. Tori: Me too. About Tori and Allbound Kathleen: Yeah we connected because I heard that you guys were generating a ton of inbound leads and I'm always excited to pick apart how that's happening. Before we dig into this conversation though, can you just tell your story. Who are you? How'd you get where you are today, and what does Allbound do? Tori: Yeah, so I'm really excited to chat with you as well. Thanks again for having me. So I'm Tori Barlow. I am the director of marketing here at Allbound. And a little bit about me, I am originally from Atlanta, and currently live in Denver, Colorado. And I have been in marketing for, I want to say, over eight years now. I kind of started an agency life where I learned the ropes of paid search, SEO, email marketing. So kind of had my hands in a ton of different pots in marketing. And then moved in-house where I manage the SEO and paid search programs there, which was quite different from going from client relations to an in-house type of role. So that was a huge change for me at that period of my career. And then moved back into the agency life to get a little bit more hands-on with analytics and attribution from a marketing perspective. And really understanding how in order to have a successful marketing program, what are the key tracking metrics that you need in order to measure success and do your job. So that was kind of the beginning of my marketing career. And how I ended up at Allbound, I previously worked with our current CEO, Daniel Graff-Radford, who is amazing and anyone listening should reach out to him and connect with him. He has a wealth of knowledge throughout many industries. But I always told myself if I ever got the chance to work with him again, I would jump on it. And so that's how I ended up here. And so Allbound is a five year old company and we sell software that's called Partner Relationship Management Software. And essentially what that is, is a tool for partner managers to manage their entire partner life cycle. So let's say Zoom, for example, has distributors and resellers for their software. Zoom's partner manager would kind of manage all of their partners from training and onboarding to deal reg all in one platform. And Zoom is one of our clients as well. So that's a little bit about me and Allbound. Kathleen: That's great. Oh my gosh, a couple things. One, I love that you said, you had this person that you'd worked with and if you ever got the chance to work with him again you would, because that really resonates with me as a marketer. It's so important to have a great working relationship with the CEO. And to be really aligned in terms of your vision and how you do marketing and how the CEO participates in marketing, all of those things. So if you find a great relationship where you have that kind of alignment, it's like, yeah, jump at it every time to do it again and again and again. Tori: Oh yeah. And I think all marketers can relate to this. It's sometimes challenging bringing your ideas or budget requests or program requests to executives or CEOs. And if they kind of understand the working cogs and wheels of what you do, all the better. Kathleen: Yeah, totally. It's so much less exhausting. So the company is five years old. How long have you been there? Tori: So I started back in March and it's been a whirlwind. I can't believe it's already the end of the year. And I still feel like I'm learning everything every day. But yeah it's been several months. And when I first came on there was not really a consistent marketing strategy. So I was so lucky to be able to come in and work with Ali Spiric, my other marketing colleague, and kind of develop this entire marketing engine. How Allbound is growing with inbound marketing Kathleen: That's the part I was really excited to talk to you about is, you know you guys are growing pretty quickly. And to be able to support that kind of growth and not have things break and fall apart you need to have a really strong foundation. And this is something I'm very, very passionate about because it helps you do your job better. It's like, my husband always likes to say you, sometimes you have to slow down to speed up, right? And this is a great example of that. Like in the beginning, if you take the time to put the right engine in place and to get those things set up right from the get-go, you will go so much faster later. So let's talk about that. What kind of an engine are you building? Because you guys are getting great inbound marketing results. And I'm curious to hear what goes into creating a platform to deliver that. Tori: Yeah, I think that's a great question. And going back to your, you know, one day hopefully nothing will break. I wonder if we'll ever get to a day where all technology is smoothly running, but it's nice to think about. And I think there's different steps you can take to put into place of avoiding that, essentially. But when I first came on in March we kind of had carte blanche to figure out, okay these are our goals, these are our revenue goals. And as a startup it's pretty important to generate that net new revenue. So from a marketing perspective, you have to have all the pieces in place in order to support that from a sales perspective. So when we sat down and kind of understood the KPIs, we first understood and kind of worked backwards. Okay, this is our revenue goal as a company. How can marketing help facilitate that? And so our first step was kind of looking at historical data. Our source of truth is Salesforce. So we tried to identify, okay, month over month for the last one year, because that's all the data we had, was, how can we back into, how many MQLs do we need, how many first demos do we need, and how many opportunities do we need in order to get to that revenue number? So I know I was a little intimidated when I only had one year's worth of data to plug and play all these numbers. So that kind of took a little bit of the stress off with forecasting and backing into MQLs. And once we figured out, okay, this month we need 50 MQLs, or this month we need 40 MQLs. What are the programs in order to do that, to get to that number? And the way we defined MQLs, or a marketing qualified lead, was we sat down with sales and we talked through, okay lead scoring's a big part in our base of prospects in Salesforce. What do we define as a lead that's ready to be passed to sales? And so that was probably a very pivotal conversation and a very important one for us to tackle first with the sales team. Plus it kind of gave... Go ahead. Working with sales to define MQLs and SQLs Kathleen: Oh no, I was going to say I would love to talk more about that because I've actually seen a lot of marketers and sales people asking about this recently. Like, how do you define MQLs versus SQLs? And it's not the same everywhere obviously. Every company has to figure it out for themselves. But I'm curious, in your case, when you worked on defining, in this case a marketing qualified lead, was that purely based on demographics and firmographics? Were there behavioral aspects to it? How did you pin that down? Tori: Yeah it's a great question. And I think I would like to think of it as an ever evolving process specifically within startups or smaller businesses. Only because you want to grow that base, you want to grow the time on the phone with potential customers that we kind of decided, okay for our marketing qualified leads, anyone who submits a demo, regardless of company size, employee size, et cetera, we're passing them off to sales because we need to grow our base. So we kind of opened up the floodgates for just any sort of behavioral, if you cross this request threshold, we passed you to sales. On the other hand, if they fill out a piece of content or if they take one of our quizzes, that probably is not a very good indicator that they're ready to talk to a sales rep. So we created a scoring process based on priority content intent and then kind of going down the tracks of, this isn't really a priority so we're not going to assign a ton of points to this. But we came up with a method of once they hit 50 points within our marketing automation software, then we'll pass them to sales and they're deemed ready to talk to them. I think over time we'll want to revisit this every six months as we grow our base and say, all right, people who have 30 people in their company, or less than 50, we really don't really see any traction with them anyways so we're going to maybe negate that score or take away from that score. Kathleen: Then do you, beyond MQL, do you also have an SQL or sales qualified lead category? Tori: Yeah. So our process is, it goes MQL to sales accepted lead and that is a demo on the books and a calendar invite to the prospect. And then after that it's a SQL or sales qualified lead. Which kind of sounds confusing now that I think about it, with a lead verses opportunity, but our SQLs are deemed qualified opportunities by the AEs. Kathleen: Okay. Got it. All right, so sorry I interrupted you there because I wanted to learn more about your MQLs. Keep going, keep telling. Tori: Yeah it's a very important piece of the puzzle. Kathleen: Yeah. How Allbound tracks marketing performance Tori: So then our next question is, okay we have our metrics, we have our goals, now what? And how do we track this? So one of my favorite parts of a marketing engine, if you like to call it that, is what do we need to track and how do we prove our success? And I think every marketer's nightmare is, okay, I just got $100,000 for this year in marketing spend, now what? And I think this is an important piece to any marketer is, do you have your tracking set up? Do you have all of your firing implemented correctly from your marketing automation platform to your CRM and vice versa? Otherwise you could be spending good money on something that you have no idea if it's working or not. So our first goal was to set up something called Google analytics. And that is essential to, I believe, every digital marketer understanding website behavior, website trends, seasonality. When I first came onboard, I remember seeing so many different spikes and trends year over year. And kind of digging into the data a little further we realized, okay, this isn't even implemented correctly. So we needed to take a step back, and what you mentioned earlier of, take some time to slow down and then you can get there faster essentially. Kathleen: Yeah. Tori: So we stripped out all of our analytics and reworked everything to, again, what our goals are that we just sat down to define. So we were tracking goals incorrectly in Google Analytics. So we kind of reworked that puzzle to then match up to what our company goal was at the end of the day. So that was a first step. And then mirroring that and implementing that all the way through GTM, Google Tag Manager, and all of these other pieces to the puzzle for what Google Tag Manager can track as well, like Bing, LinkedIn, Facebook, all of those important channels from a marketer's tool set. So we started with Google Analytics and GTM, and then the second piece of the puzzle was our marketing automation platform. So in our instance we use Marketo. And within Marketo, we had to really sit down and think, okay, this is our new lead scoring, is it even set up correctly in Marketo? So that also was not aligned with the goals we just sat down to create with the sales team. So we kind of had to plug and play with what we were firing for behavior scores and what we were sending over to Salesforce as an alert to the sales team. So this sounds pretty easy to sit down and tackle in one day. It's very, I would like to say it's more of a manual process and more of a thoughtful process that I would recommend going through. Only because you want to make sure you're now tracking everything to the proper standard that you've just decided. So we sat down and we mapped out all of our ideal conversion levers from a source of truth or Marketo or Salesforce standpoint, and then integrated that within the platform. So that was the third piece of the puzzle. And then the final piece was making sure, okay, do Marketo and Salesforce talk to each other okay? And if not, we need to fix this stat. So that was another big undertaking of, okay, this field maps did that, do I need these Salesforce fields for my Marketo campaigns, et cetera? So working with our marketing automation specialist at the time was a very heavy piece to the puzzle on implementing all of that tracking. Kathleen: Yeah, I just went through that at a place I've been working and it's overwhelming at times. That's all I have to say about that. Tori: I know I'd like to feel like I'm a technical specialist now in Marketo, but it's so much more than that. And so cumbersome that it's a lot to handle. But it is- Kathleen: Now that Marketo-Salesforce combination, you really almost need just a marketing ops person. Tori: Oh for sure. Kathleen: To manage all that. My eyes glaze over when I just think about it. Tori: Yeah. Marketing ops I feel is a role that is so important for any marketer these days. And it's funny, we're actually about to hire a sales and marketing ops person that will kind of combined to one. And I already have like five pages of requests for that. Kathleen: Are you just like so excited for that person to start? Tori: So excited. Kathleen: They're going to walk in the door and you're going to be like, "I'm so happy you're here." Tori: I want to take you for the first week. Kathleen: Yes, yes. Let me buy you lunch because you're going to be my new best friend. Yeah, I totally agree with you. If you have somebody good who knows how to make the technology work, oh gosh, what a difference that makes. So you have Marketo and Salesforce, you have Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager. Are there other analytics platforms that you're using in combination with those things? Tori: Yeah, it's an interesting question. We currently don't have any implemented right now, but we are shifting a lot of our strategy to be more cohesive with the sales team. We're noticing that, to your point, what this podcast is about with inbound. You know, inbound is definitely a good chunk of our revenue source and lead source. But what we've kind of dabbled in this year is ABM. And I know it's such a buzzword and so hot right now, but it's been around for awhile as everyone said. But we just tried to implement a strategy that worked for us as a small company and we saw success with it. So what we were seeing was our SDRs would outbound these targeted accounts, at the same time marketing would upload these targeted accounts to LinkedIn and target them with gated content, for example. So we would get those buyer intent signals from targeted accounts. And what we were noticing was, essentially, if our SDRs were outbounding these prospects, someone else within the organization would come in and request a demo on the website. So it was this tag team initiative that truly spoke for marketing and sales working together, which was like a marketer's dream, right? So we talked to ourselves and said, hey, this kind of manual process is sort of working so far. Is there any way we can scale this? And so right now we are kind of looking at some technology for reverse IP lookup functionality or data enrichment functionality, as well as some better prospecting tools for our sales reps that will ultimately work in conjunction with marketing efforts. Kathleen: Have you looked at any buyer intent data? Tori: Yes we have. We've kind of looked at... You mean specific software or just what we are noticing? Kathleen: No, like specific software that would deliver a high intent leads to you. Tori: Yeah, so we're going through that vetting process now. We have looked at G2 Crowd, we have looked at Leadfeeder, Clearbit and so we're kind of still in the vetting stages. So if anyone has any recommendations, love to hear them. Kathleen: I will give you mine when we're offline because I try to stay very unbiased on this podcast. Tori: Okay. Great. Kathleen: But yeah, I think, that's something that I'm really intrigued by right now. I think the potential for it is tremendous. And there's not a lot of companies really using it yet. Tori: I agree. And I think even, we just signed on with this one tool that helps us automate direct mail and then you can track that into Salesforce as part of your ABM strategy. And so, I remember when I first started marketing several years ago, my company was sending out direct mail pieces and people were like, why are you still doing that? Like that's so last year. And now it's back. Like now it's this thing again. And it's cooler now. Kathleen: So I just had this rant on LinkedIn about that because it was funny, somebody posted a Marketoonist cartoon about all these different things being dead. You know, like email is dead and direct mail is dead and the role of the CMO is dead. And I feel like at this time of year in particular, there's a lot of those, "2020s coming, this is dead" proclamations. And I honestly believe, first of all, nothing is ever dead. If it's not working, it's because you're not innovating or you're not doing it right. Tori: That's a good point. Yeah. Kathleen: So it's funny with direct, I think there's always been a place for direct mail. It's just that it was not, it was abused. Right? Tori: Executed. Yeah. Kathleen: People didn't do it well. So done well it can be very effective, for sure. So there, I just did my rant again on the podcast. Tori: I'll supplement that rant. I saw a really good idea for a prospect gift that an SDR could maybe send that said, it was a pair of socks and the message was, let's start on the right foot. Kathleen: Oh, I love that. Tori: We thought that was cute. So yes, to your point, I think it's creative and how you use it is what matters. Kathleen: Yeah, absolutely. So can you say the name of the company that's doing your automated direct mail? Tori: Yeah, we just decided to go with Sendoso. Kathleen: Oh, I love them. They're such a great company. Tori: I heard good things. Kathleen: And not only because somehow or another I won some sort of gift card to their swag store. I think I went to a webinar they did and they sent me this $50 voucher for their swag store. Tori: Nice. Kathleen: And their swag store is awesome. It's all pet related. So I have two Labrador retrievers and I got two Sendoso leashes, a Sendoso Frisbee, and a Sendoso tennis ball toy. And my dogs are going bananas over all of it. It's really cute. So thank you- Tori: I might have to go. Yeah, I might have to get a dog just for those swag gifts. Kathleen: There you go. All right, so any other elements to your tech stack that you think are important? Tori: For a tech stack, I think as a marketer I definitely get those googly eyes of, ooh, I really love this. Especially if someone is marketing to me in a smart way. Since we are marketers, we respond to good marketing, right? So I think I've had the tendency to say, oh, I really think this technology would be great. But I think something important that I've had to remind myself is, start with the basics. And if something's working, then find a technology to maybe scale that. I think that's been super important for us as a small company. So to answer your question, those are all the technology pieces we have right now, but I'm ready for more soon probably. Kathleen: But I think your outlook is really smart because I got excited about talking to you because you guys are not a huge company. You don't have an endless budget. And I don't think that there's enough information out there on when you're at that small but growing stage, what do you do? Like what needs to be in place? And I love getting into really granular detail about it. And you're right, if you have huge VC dollars, sure you can go out and buy every shiny penny technology solution that's out there. But if you don't, you really need to be judicious. And there are plenty of ways to do things in a scrappy manner and get great results until you're ready to make that big investment. And you know that strategy is working. Totally on the same page with you on that one. Tori: Right. Yeah. And I think sometimes you can feel like, okay, something's not working or maybe you have slow lead days and you kind of feel that altogether when those leads don't come through. And it's like, okay, what can I do now? Or what can I have now? And the reality is you just kind of have to sit it out and give it time to prove itself. And I know that sounds painful, but I agree. I think you kind of just have to do one piece of the puzzle at a time. And it's also important, you could have all of this technology and maybe the sales reps don't use it or they don't find it useful or they weren't onboarded correctly. So is it even useful at that point? So I think taking the technology steps one piece at a time and training is all the more important. How inbound marketing is fueling Allbound's growth Kathleen: Absolutely. Now you talked about getting results. Can you speak a little bit to how Allbound, like the kinds of results from inbound marketing that Allbound to seeing? Tori: Yeah, so we had to, once we got the marketing engine running and we had this year's worth of cleaner data than we've had before, what we started to see was an increase in MQLs and demo requests. And what I'll say for that, I'll kind of back up a little bit. At the same time of kind of getting all the tracking and the plumbing in place, we also started a new paid search program and a new SEO program. And what that entailed was, we were kind of looking at our keywords from a paid search perspective and we are really spending a lot of money on very top of funnel terms that these prospects would download content. Again, if we go back to when we sat down with sales and what was a good qualified lead, downloading content wasn't something of priority. So we re-swizzled a lot of our paid search strategy. We restructured our entire Google AdWords account and really focused on, okay, what are the keywords that the hand raisers are focusing on, and what types of ad copy and landing pages do they want to see? And so that was one piece of the puzzle of that fundamental building block. And then the second piece was the SEO strategies. So I'm kind of partial to both of them because that's my background and I have found tremendous growth just from having a set SEO plan. And so what we started with was the technical piece of SEO. So asking ourselves questions like, can Google see us from a code perspective? What is Google reading on our website that maybe we don't want Google to know about us? And by that I mean, maybe we're phrasing who we are in a way that we don't want to rank for organically. So we took an inventory of all of our top nav pages, what our title tags, what our code was saying from an SEO perspective, and really honed in on our top value drivers for our product. And then from there after the technical piece was in a good spot, we then focused on content. So our whole strategy has been laying that foundation from the SEO perspective, but then gradually creating content that's relevant to our buyer but also helps us rank organically for Google. So from that piece of the puzzle we were able to increase our year over year traffic by 40% from an organic perspective. And from a keyword ranking perspective we had increased 23 positions overall for our total tracked keywords in Google search console. So those incremental changes that we made just in these last several months have tremendously helped us with our visibility on Google. So that's one piece of the puzzle. And then from the ultimate goal from, how can marketing contribute to the revenue, we saw increases in month over month and quarter over quarter MQL volumes. Which ultimately resulted in more first-time demos for our prospects. What we got really excited about was once we piloted this ABM initiative, we started tracking something new for marketing, which is I think very important. And it's called marketing assist opportunities or meetings booked, which again, an SDR is prospecting and somehow marketing was involved in one way or another, whether that's LinkedIn ads or reading our content and self identifying through that. And so we started tracking marketing assisted conversions in Salesforce. And so the trend line is an interesting hockey-stick with how much marketing has assisted in opportunity revenue month over month just this year. Kathleen: That's so great. I'm so happy to hear that that's something you're tracking because I do find that a lot of companies look at attribution as a very binary. Meaning that they feel like it's either sales or it's marketing, right? And that does not in any way reflect the reality of the situation. You know? There aren't going to be a lot of cases except in really low touch, low price SaaS where it's all marketing, right? Or e-commerce. You know, if you're talking about a complex B2B sale, you're going to have a combination of both. Inevitably. And I feel like too many companies spend too many calories arguing over whether it's really sales or marketing that closed the deal. So it's nice if you can have that middle ground, look at assists or look at first touch versus last touch, and acknowledge that it's a combination of these things that leads to deals getting closed. Tori: Yeah, I 100% agree. I think every company struggles with the, no, this was an SDR deal. No, this is a marketing deal. We've struggled with that too. I think it's very common and natural. And I think what we are trying to for next year in 2020 is, we all have the same goal. So marketing goals are bubbled up into sales goals, which this year they really weren't. So we're kind of shifting that focus to really be on the same team and have that mentality of we're helping each other, how can you bounce back if leads are slow one month? You know, how can we help with outbounding with messaging or content? So we're trying to play that tag team game, and it's a learning game for sure. But to your point, we're all in the same company. Kathleen: Yeah. Yeah. You're all rowing in the same direction. So your organic traffic, it sounds like increased 40% year over year. What's happened with overall lead gen and company growth? Tori: Yeah, so our company revenue grew over 150% 2019 compared to 2018. Kathleen: That's awesome. Congratulations. Tori: Thanks. We have seen tremendous growth in our net new business and we are looking to double that even next year with all of our strategies in place. So it's been a very successful and also just fun year to be at Allbound. How Allbound's marketing team is structured Kathleen: That's great. Now what we haven't talked about, and I'm curious to know is, what does the team look like that's supporting all of this? The marketing team. Tori: Yeah. You're talking to 50% of the marketing team. So our team is very small. It's myself and Allie, and we are very nimble and agile with projects and what we're tackling. But if you look at all that's in our project base, we're tackling everything from webinars to paid social to paid search to reporting and email marketing. We're kind of tackling the whole gamut. So we definitely handle a lot that comes our way. But it's been so rewarding and I would say we've both learned so much and are so lucky also to have a wonderful CEO that says, you guys have carte blanche, test it, see if it works and let's find a new solution if it doesn't. So it's been really fun and we're excited to... We're actually in the process of hiring a third marketing person to join in January. So if anyone's looking, please send your resume to me. But I think this person would have a hand in the piece of the puzzle to be that marketing engine in 2020 as well. Kathleen: Wow, I am so impressed that you're doing all that with two people. That's a lot. And what amazing results too. That's great. Seriously, you guys are killing it. Do you have outsourced support as well or is it just the two of you literally doing everything? Tori: Yeah, so we outsource our marketing automation and Salesforce ops right now. So that is something that's, like we talked about, so key to the puzzle. And then we outsource some of our content writing. And so Allie does an amazing job managing the content strategy. We just put our first content marketing calendar together for 2020, so it's been great to have a plan for content which is good. But yeah, it's been primarily us tag teaming and then those outsourcing pieces. Oh, and we also outsource our paid search agency. They manage our, you know, they pull all the levers for AdWords and Bing, and then we have our SEO consultant as well. Kathleen: Okay, great. Well I'm super impressed that you've been able to do all that with a small team. That's amazing. Tori: Thank you. Kathleen's two questions Kathleen: Yeah. Well there's two questions I always ask my guests and I would love to know what your answers are. First, since you guys are doing so well with inbound marketing, is there anyone else, either a company or an individual that comes to mind that you think is really killing it right now with inbound? Tori: That's a great question. I would say I love the progress that a company called Terminus is doing, the ABM company. I remember when they were very small and their CEO was, several years ago, pitched to our CEO in an office and now they're this huge company. And I think it takes a lot of different types of marketing for something that successful to happen in a few years. And so I would say Terminus is kind of crushing it in that sense. And then I would also say, I've kept an eye on companies like Gong, I think Gong, the recording software does a tremendous job with relating and speaking to their target audience and they kind of nailed the messaging down. So I've had my eye on them and look to them as great inspiration as well. Kathleen: Yeah, I totally second those. Both of those. They're great examples. The other thing I like to ask people is that digital marketing changes so quickly, and as someone who is a master juggler working on all different aspects of marketing for her company, how do you stay up to date and keep yourself educated on everything? Tori: Yeah, well I love reading blogs like Search Engine Land and I keep up with the Google blog just to stay up to speed there. I'm really lucky with our paid search agency, they give us tidbits of what the Google betas are and what's coming up from a paid search perspective. And then we're really lucky at Allbound have something very special that's a monthly book club. And so we read sometimes the latest and greatest business books, but also other books that have proven to be successful in different frameworks like sales or marketing or product. So I stay up to date with that from that element as well. And I think that's great too because then everyone can kind of get in a room together and share their insights and share their perspective on certain things. And then from there you bubble off into different tangents and can research that on your own. So I love those blogs, but I also am a huge fan of just reading any sort of analyst reports like Forrester, huge fan of keeping up to speed with what the new tech reports are and who's entering the space from a technology perspective. How to connect with Tori Kathleen: That's a great suggestion. I love all those. If someone is listening and they want to learn more about Allbound or they have a question for you about what we've talked about today, what's the best way for them to connect online? Tori: Yeah, so you could just visit our website and fill out either a contact us form or if you're interested in a demo or a request a demo. We're also available to chat on our website as well if you have any questions. And you can reach out to me directly on LinkedIn as well. You know what to do next... Kathleen: Great. All right. Well, if you're listening and you feel like you learned something new or you enjoyed what you heard today, head over to Apple podcasts and do me a favor and leave the podcast a five star review. That's how we get discovered and more people can listen to these episodes. And if you know someone who's doing kick ass inbound marketing work, tweet me @workmommywork, because I would love to make them my next interview. Thanks so much for joining me, Tori. Tori: Thanks for having me.

In this episode of daily DBA, I pick up 5 important DBA related questions and give my answers! Do not forget to checkout BONUS QUESTION at the end of the video! - Questions Picked-up For This Episode: ============================ 1. What is materilized view and how can I purge the MV logs? 2. If locks are coming and releasing itself within 2-3 seconds, in this situation what we can do in oracle so locks does not occur even for few seconds. 3. Hi Arun, what happens if password file is deleted from the standby server? Will there be an impact on standby sync with primary? How will we fix the issue? 4. Scenario: we get complaint that one sql is taking long time for execution. When investigated and found that sql is using full table scan where it is fetching only 20% records. So we ran sql tuning advisory and fix sql profiles forcing optimizer to choose index. Finally issue got resolved query performance increased. Later, one user runs the same sql modifying the WHERE clause which fetches 80% of the records associated in the same table. Now what will optimizer do? Will it still use the same sql profiles which is fixed to it or it will skip sql profiles and chooses different plan? 5. What is better option for sql performance: SQL Plan Management or SQL Profiles or Hint to improvise performance of a particular sql? Or, do you advice the application team to modify their SQLs and use logical operator instead of BETWEEN, AND, OR instead of IN? Bonus: Hi Arun, I wanted to know from your personal experience, what is one of the rarest of rare crisis situation a DBA can experience in real-time like site crash or anything that hardly any DBA sees in their entire career which most of the DBA's are scared of or the situation is very challenging. - #dailyDBA #oracle #cloudDBA #dbaGenesis #dbaChallenge - Your comments encourage us to produce quality content, please take a second and say ‘Hi’ in the comments and let me and my team know what you thought of the video … p.s. It would mean the world to me if you hit the subscribe button ;) - Link to full course: https://dbagenesis.com/p/oracle-virtualbox-administration Link to all DBA courses: https://dbagenesis.com/courses Link to real-time projects: https://dbagenesis.com/p/projects Link to support articles: https://support.dbagenesis.com - DBA Genesis provides all you need to build and manage effective Oracle technology learning. We designed DBA Genesis as a simple to use yet powerful online Oracle learning system for students. Each of our courses is taught by an expert instructor, and every course is available with a challenging project to push you out of your comfort zone!! DBA Genesis is currently the fastest & the most engaging learning platforms for DBAs across the globe. Take your database administration skills to next level by enrolling into your first course. - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dbagenesis/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dbagenesis/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/DbaGenesis Website: https://dbagenesis.com/ Contact us: support@dbagenesis.com - Start your DBA Journey Today !!

If you focus only on top-of-the-funnel, you won’t close any deals. Lead nurturing further down the funnel is overwhelming, sure. On this episode, I tell you all about 4 specific ways to nurture MQLs into SQLs. What we talked about: Drip campaigns Email newsletters Event-based workflows Smart content Check us out on Apple Podcasts here. And if you don’t use Apple Podcasts, here’s an alternative link.

Hvordan måler du værdien i B2B leadgenerering, når det kan tage halve og hele år før at et projekt skaber omsætning? En dårlig måde at gøre det på er klik og visninger. En god måde er SQLs og måske weighed pipeline values. Hør hvordan du kan arbejde mere intelligent med at måle værdien af B2B leadgenerering i EP #381 af Marketing Brief.

I did an 8-hour long workshop for a new client of mine. The CMO of the company, Sara, is an incredibly savvy marketer in the B2C segment. Anything about marketing a luxury brand, she is on top of it. One of her key initiatives in 2020 is to work and enable sales. In the workshop, we identified sales stages, mapped content from marketing to sales, created a series of email campaigns to help outside sales engage with SQLs. We also created a drip campaign to continue engagement with prospects after events.   She asked me what is the different between the Drip and Nurture campaigns.   Here is how I explained to her:  Both Drip and Nurture campaigns use a series of marketing communication channels, mostly email or a combination of email and phone calls, to reach out to prospects.    Drip focuses on presenting buyers information so that they become familiar with your brands and products. The email series is more top of the funnel focused; the message is more general intended for a broader audience. A great example I use is that a person comes to a pet food ecommerce site and signs up for their newsletter. A Drip campaign may start with the first email to welcome the subscriber with a 25% off coupon. The 2nd email is to share tips and tricks to quickly find relevant pet food on the website. The 3rd email is to invite the subscriber to the exclusive FB community. This is a very typical Drip campaign, targeting the first-timer on your website to get to know your site and community better.   Nurture aims at further engaging with your existing customers and prospects that have already shown interest in purchasing. You create a series of emails and other marketing activities based upon their previous actions or interactions and their places in the buying cycle. Since you know them better, they are likely to be in the middle and bottom of the purchase funnel. You can customize your email based on specific segments, and various attributes, such as buying behaviors, content consumption and other information you may have about them.   Using the same subscriber as in the Drip example, this person joined the FB community and, from pictures he posted, you found out that he owns two cats of a certain breed. You also know that he has been on the websites to buy certain types of cat food. Your nurturing email may include suggestions for other types of cat food, toys, and other cat-care information which he may find interesting.    During our workshop, I told the CMO that many people use these 2 terms interchangeably. The big thing is not about knowing the difference between the 2 terms. The key is to create relevant drip and nurture communications that your audience finds relevant and useful without being sales-y and creepy. That’s hard to do right and it takes AB testing, data analytics, clean customer data and solid writing to tie everything together.   After the workshop, one of the biggest action items is to rework the company’s drip and nurture campaigns. It’s so much work, but I love working with the team to create the workflows and a series of emails that facilitates the customer journey.   If you have great drip or nurture campaigns, I’d love to hear about them and share with others.   Again, subscribe to my podcast on Apple Podcasts and share your challenges. I look forward to addressing them in a future podcast or YouTube video. If you happen to be on YouTube, please check out and subscribe to my YouTube channel. I publish one video a week.  Have an awesome day!!

Janine Pelosi is the CMO @ Zoom, the next-generation enterprise phone system. Prior to their very successful IPO, Zoom raised funding from some of the best in the business including Sequoia, Emergence Capital, Horizons Ventures and 2 of my favourites in the form of Matt Ocko @ Data Collective and Dan Scheinman. As for Janine before joining Zoom, she spent 11 years at Cisco where among many incredible achievements she led worldwide demand gen for WebEx and led their worldwide digital marketing team with a $25M annual budget.  In Today’s Episode We Discuss: How Janine made her way into the world of SaaS and came to be one of the leading CMOs today with Zoom? How has the role of the CMO changed over the last 5 years? Would Janine agree with Jason Lemkin that “the role of the CMO is to execute the vision of the CEO”? What makes Janine and Eric’s relationship so successful? What makes Eric the special leader that he is? How does the changing power of the CMO affect their relationship with the CEO?    When is the right time for startups to hire their first CMO? What should they look for in that ideal candidate? What should they have in place in terms of infrastructure, prior to hiring the candidate? What does the right onboarding process look like for a CMO? Where does Janine see many going wrong when hiring their first CMO?  How does Janine look to create alignment between sales and marketing? Why does Janine not believe in having the labels of “MQLs and SQLs”? How does Janine look to reduce the friction when handing off between marketing and sales? What are the common causes? How are we seeing marketing also blend with customer success? Janine’s 60 Second SaaStr: What does Janine know now that she wishes she had known at the start of her time at Zoom? Who does Janine most respect in the world of marketing today? Why? What would Janine most like to change about the world of SaaS today?  Read the full transcript on our blog. If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr Janine Pelosi

Subscribe to Modern Marketing Engine Apple Podcasts |Stitcher |Google Play | Google Podcasts B2B marketing and sales have always been close cousins, but Bernie’s guest on this episode of Modern Marketing Engine says that the advent of Account Based Marketing has made them even closer than that - and he says that when they get together as part of the same team, bottom-line growth of the company is the result.  Sangram Vajre is co-founder and Evangelist of Terminus, an account based marketing platform that helps B2B marketers run efficient ABM programs at scale. His experience at Terminus - and previously as part of the Salesforce team - has enabled him to see that ABM is simply the way B2B should function overall. Sangram’s new book, “ABM is B2B” explains how an account based approach that unites marketing, sales, and customer success teams as #OneTeam empowers the entire company to focus on target accounts and generate real revenue outcomes rather than vanity metrics such as “leads generated.” This episode is brought to you by Gong.io, the number one conversation intelligence platform for sales. Gong helps you achieve revenue success, skyrocket rep performance and gain critical market intelligence. Get powerful visibility into your customer conversations with Gong. Head to www.gong.io to get started. The Problem: Less Than 1% Of Leads Become Customers One of the points Sagram highlights in the beginning section of his book is that less than 1% of leads generated by the average marketing team ever become customers. That’s an appalling statistic, one that Sagram says would cause many marketers to lose jobs if the CEOs knew it was the case. It’s a statistic that proves that the common “get leads into the funnel” mentality of marketing teams simply isn’t working - and isn’t the right way to approach the B2B marketing role. Sangram believes that every marketer should be asking, “What is the total addressable market we can actually sell to?” If they are unable to answer that question, it reveals that they are not clear enough on who their future customers should be. He contends that if your company is only going to close a finite number of deals this year, then as a marketer you should be going after THOSE accounts - and there’s plenty of data to help you determine which accounts they are. Join Bernie and Sangram for this compelling conversation about how marketing and sales should work together to create an unstoppable team. The Value Of Marketing Is Defined By Sales Many marketers have bristled at Sangram’s comment that “The value of marketing is defined by sales.” They point to brand building as one example of a valuable activity that can’t be so easily quantified. But Sangram points out that branding ultimately does have a measurable goal - growth of the company (sales). To drive the point home, he points out that there are no B2B companies that have big marketing teams and no sales teams - but there are many companies with large sales teams and no marketing team. Sangram makes it ultra-clear when he says, “Our job as marketers is to either incrementally or exponentially grow the business. We are an extension of the sales team to help them close more deals.”  He believes that marketers have a bigger opportunity to drive revenue than ever before - they have access to information, know the target accounts, and have the technology that can tell them how to engage with them - so there is no reason they should sit back. In his mind, it’s time for marketers to earn their place on the team by pursuing the right kind of leads - the ones that have the greatest potential to convert to customers. Why Your Company Needs A T.E.A.M. Instead of Separate Teams One of the strengths that Sangram and the team at Terminus bring to ABM is a clear and simple focus on the things that truly drive account based marketing success. He refers to it as T.E.A.M. - Target, Engage, Activate, Measure. TARGET - the right accounts ENGAGE - those accounts where they are ACTIVATE - the sales team MEASURE - in a way that shows the entire customer journey and combines attribution and influence reporting Sangram believes that these four areas of focus allow marketing and sales teams to have intelligent conversations with CEOs and CFOs that create a compelling case for the tech needed to generate the right kind of leads. It also puts the marketing and sales teams on the same page, enabling them to work together in an integrated way that puts customer needs and customer success first. How One B2B Marketing And Sales Team Attained A 95% Close Rate To point out how much of a difference these principles make when applied company-wide, Sangram points to Thomson Reuters. This massive company applied ABM principles to their expansion deals, and their win rate increased to an astounding 95%. Compare that to the 1% statistic at the beginning of this conversation. It’s mind blowing but a testimony to the power of good execution on ABM practices. This is the kind of metrics B2B marketing and sales teams need to be able to show to executive teams or boards to explain what needs to be done and the kind of results that should be expected. These are the conversations that give credibility to marketers much more than how many events were run last quarter, how many banner ads were clicked, how many MQLs and SQLs got delivered to the funnel. If the leads marketing generates are not from the best-fit target accounts, marketers will never come close to the accomplishment of Thomson Reuters. Featured on This Episode Terminus - The company where Sangram serves as Chief Evangelist Sangram Vajre on LinkedIn Sangram on Twitter: @SangramVajre Sangram’s new book: “ABM is B2B” Sangram’s daily podcast: Flip My Funnel Outline of This Episode [1:36] Sangram’s story, his role at Terminus, and his daily podcast [7:28] The problem: Less than 1% of leads actually become a customer [10:27] Trends in marketing and sales Sangram has seen from 2016 through 2018 [13:35] How is the value of marketing defined by sales? [19:11] T.E.A.M. and #OneTeam :  [22:11] Why the CEO needs to understand this approach first [25:46] How some companies are seeing bigger deals, and 95% closing rates [31:07] Why it’s important to ask yourself, “What matters to me?” Resources & People Mentioned This episode is brought to you by Gong.io, the number one conversation intelligence platform for sales. Gong helps you achieve revenue success, skyrocket rep performance and gain critical market intelligence. Get powerful visibility into your customer conversations with Gong. Head to www.gong.io to get started. Katie Bullard Scott Brinker’s Martech Conference Thomson Reuters Salesforce The Selling With Social Podcast with Vengreso CEO, Mario Martinez, Jr Connect With Bernie and Modern Marketing Engine https://www.Facebook.com/modernmarketingengine/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/bernieborges/ https://twitter.com/bernieborges https://instagram.com/bernieborges https://Twitter.com/MMEnginePodcast   Subscribe to Modern Marketing Engine Apple Podcasts |Stitcher |Google Play | Google Podcasts There are TWO WAYS you can listen to this podcast. You can click the PLAYER BUTTON at the top of this page… or, you can listen from your mobile device’s podcast player through the podcast subscription links above.

In this episode, CEO Jack Kosakowski of The Creation Agency gives marketers insights and tips on how to think more like a salesperson and to uncover what your sales team really needs from the marketing department. Jack covers: The similarities between prospecting and lead generation How the amount of content noise and chaos requires marketers to help salespeople stand out and apart to get more conversations His own experience in both sales and marketing roles How sales and marketing alignment is a must The big problem of not aligning content strategy between sales and marketing The need to help create sales enablement content to help buyers and reps relate to one another  What marketers should do when there is a wall between sales and marketing How marketers hurt their reputations with sales teams when they don't define the MQLs, SQLs process The need to get more proficient with marketing technology and understanding data to develop a data-driven sales and marketing process The blur between social selling and personal brand building AI buzz versus reality in sales and marketing What salespeople should remember about working with marketing Why marketers need to talk one-on-one with reps to learn more about their day-to-day challenges The benefits of helping a sales rep build his or her personal brand His dream job Want to reach out to Jack? Connect with him on LinkedIn. __ About The B2B Mix Show The B2B Mix Show with Alanna Jackson and Stacy Jackson is brought to you by Jackson Marketing. Need help with your B2B online presence? Let's talk! Connect with us on social media: The B2B Mix Show - Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook Stacy Jackson -- Twitter, LinkedIn Alanna Jackson -- Twitter, LinkedIn

In episode #1049, we discuss different types of leads. Tune in to hear the definitions of prospects, MQL’s, and SQL’s. We have committed to throwing a FREE Marketing School Live Event in Los Angeles. Check out the details on this website if you would like to attend. Remember: we are capping the event at 500 people, so sign up now, if you’re interested! DM Eric if you would like to participate in the VIP dinner. TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES: [00:27] Today’s Topic: Prospects, MQLs, SQLs, Opportunities - What Do They All Mean? [00:45] Prospects are people who come to your site; all potential customers. [01:47] MQL’s are further down the funnel. [02:38] An SQL is a lead your sales team has found. [03:00] An SQL is probably a decision-maker. [03:50] That’s it for today! [04:11] We are almost at capacity for our live event, so register while you still can: Check out Single Grain for more info. Leave some feedback: What should we talk about next? Please let us know in the comments below. Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review. Connect with us: NeilPatel.com Quick Sprout Growth Everywhere Single Grain Twitter @neilpatel Twitter @ericosiu

In episode #1049, we discuss different types of leads. Tune in to hear the definitions of prospects, MQL's, and SQL's. We have committed to throwing a FREE Marketing School Live Event in Los Angeles. Check out the details on this website if you would like to attend. Remember: we are capping the event at 500 people, so sign up now, if you're interested! DM Eric if you would like to participate in the VIP dinner. TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES: [00:27] Today's Topic: Prospects, MQLs, SQLs, Opportunities - What Do They All Mean? [00:45] Prospects are people who come to your site; all potential customers. [01:47] MQL's are further down the funnel. [02:38] An SQL is a lead your sales team has found. [03:00] An SQL is probably a decision-maker. [03:50] That's it for today! [04:11] We are almost at capacity for our live event, so register while you still can: Check out Single Grain for more info. Leave some feedback: What should we talk about next? Please let us know in the comments below. Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review. Connect with us: NeilPatel.com Quick Sprout Growth Everywhere Single Grain Twitter @neilpatel Twitter @ericosiu

How do you define MQLs vs SQLs with a client?

Jason Reichl is the Founder & CEO @ GoNimbly, the first SaaS consultancy to focus on revenue operations. Currently growing 100% year over year, working with companies to un-silo their operations and create one strategic revenue ops team to support their Go To Market strategy. In the past, Go Nimbly has helped companies like Zendesk, Twilio, PagerDuty and Coursera to achieve alignment and increase revenue by 26%. As for Jason, prior to co-founding GoNimbly, he was Director of Product Management @ TradeShift and before that was VP of Product Management @ Lanetix.   In Today’s Episode We Discuss: How Jason made his way from Director of Product Management at Tradeshift to changing the way we think about scaling revenue operations with GoNimbly? Why does Jason believe that we have to remote handoffs between go to market teams? Why are they so damaging? How does Jason believe SaaS companies can use a “swarming” effect to create the best buyer experience for their customer? What does this involve? How does this change the type of metrics that we track? Why does Jason believe that your North Star has to be revenue in the go to market teams? Why does Jason also believe that it is damaging to have the same North Star across the entire company? How should North Star’s be segregated between GTM teams and biz ops teams? What are the mistakes many companies make when setting their internal North Stars? Why does Jason believe that alignment is a dirty word? Why is alignment actually a negative for the customer experience? What does Jason view as vanity metrics? If one has vanity metrics in place, what does Jason recommend as to keeping them or phasing them out? 60 Second SaaStr: What does Jason know now that he wishes he had known in the beginning? How does Jason feel about multi-year deals? How does Jason feel about channel/partner sellers? Read the full transcript on our blog. If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr

Recruitment Leaders and their marketers who need their marketing to be sales-led: about convertible leads, retained candidates, recruiter attraction, need to listen to this Recruitment Leaders' Podcast. Today the focus of this Recruitment Leaders’ podcast is recruitment marketing driving sales.  This is a crucial listen for recruitment leaders and their marketers – and recruiters who know that getting on the “right side” of marketing may be the key to their sales pipeline success! - If we have learned anything from the last 24 months, cleaning up your data (because the govt told you to) may not necessarily get you the financial benefits that your common sense tell you you should be getting from a clean database… I’m joined by someone who can bring data cleanliness and recruitment marketing to whole a new level.  Starting as a dustman (who’d have known?)  Segued into website build.  Became the mighty Broadbean’s 3rd employee.  Then moved to Ebsta.  His purpose now at Cube19 is to help recruiters generate growth from decisions based on real-time recruitment data. It’s all been about recruitment data (and the odd bit of “dirt”). We talked about two key things: 1. What Tips Can Ricky Give to Recruitment Marketers? What has Ricky learned about recruitment marketing from his vast experience in some high performing recruitment software businesses?  He answered the following questions: What are Ricky’s “hacks” for successful recruitment marketing? How do marketers make their functions a profit, rather than a cost, centre? How does Ricky define a high-performance marketing team look like? How do marketers navigate the (what I call) the marketing “love-in” that I see online and at events, which really offer little value, but give generic “tips” on marketing, but often don’t really add any real substance to help the average recruitment marketer add real value to the recruiting workflow? How can recruitment events REALLY work? (when so many of them don’t work…) What do recruitment leaders and recruiters need to “do” with their marketer to get real value and how does the marketer interact with their leaders and internal clients to ensure that they deliver the 4Cs (candidates, clients, colleagues and cash!) 2. What does Ricky think that Recruitment Marketers need to do with their data... ... to help them become more effective? Which data does a recruitment marketer actually need? How do recruitment marketers actually help the sales funnel? How do personas actually help recruitment marketers with their content / SEO strategy? Where does recruitment CRM fit into a recruitment marketer toolkit? Which tools are critical to a recruitment marketer? And which is the most important recruitment marketing tool? Recruitment Leads / MQLs / SQLs We discussed recruitment leads – and our tips for lead generation for recruitment leads, where recruitment CRM fits and how to manage the leads into successful conversion.  It’s about MQLs (marketing qualified leads) enabling SQLs (sales qualified leads) ... and our thoughts that if you’re waiting for automation to transform your business then you’re likely to stagnate your growth by not engaging data and humans in the best way. And what do recruitment leaders and their time-starved recruiters need to stop asking their recruitment marketers to do? We also talked about my concept of the “dashboard recruiter” – you can also hear more thoughts on this in my Mark Hodgkinson "Taming your Recruitment Data" Podcast: https://www.barclayjones.com/event-and-hack/recruiters-do-you-have-too-much-data-and-not-enough-information

Meet Sophie Steffen, a Digital Marketer at TravelPerk a next-generation business travel booking & management platform for companies of any size and the world's first and only all-in-one platform for booking business travel that is 100% free. In this episode, you'll hear how TravelPerk became the number 4 fastest growing SaaS company growing 700% year over year. Sophie takes us behind the scenes of the last two years of explosive growth and dives into the marketing strategies and systems her team uses, from Adwords to partnerships, attribution models and optimizing SQLs. There are so many great insights to share. Enjoy! Notes 03:08 All-in-one Platform For Booking Business Travel 10:02 Joining A Rocket Ship Growth SaaS 12:29 Most Successful Channels 14:05 PPC and Optimized SQLs 17:30 Using Your Data To Optimize 21:33 Partnerships and Building Relationships 24:44 Testing Networks 26:33 Turning Roadblocks Into Opportunities 29:26 A Multi-touch Attribution Model 34:28 Prioritization, Goals and OKRs 36:53 Lightning Questions

Meet Matt Stone, a marketing operations and demand generation veteran with experience in both transactional and enterprise sales cycles, currently with Gainsight, the leader in customer success software and #102 on the 2017 Inc. 5000. In this podcast episode we talk with Matt about Gainsight's amazing brand recognition, thought leadership, product evangelism, and how that was created to give the company so much traction. We also talk about how he runs the marketing operations' team and how he built a very, very powerful demand gen engine that brings in MQLs and easily translates them into SQLs, as well as what he sees happening in marketing in 2018. You are going to love this episode. Notes: 03:48 Customer Success Benchmark 04:45 The Periodic Table of Customer Success Elements 05:50 Growing Like Gang Busters 07:01 Coming In to Build a Traditional Demand Gen Engine 08:20 The Power Of Thought Leadership Across The Board 13:13 Speeding Up Demand Generation 18:31 Metrics Top And Down The Funnel 20:39 Converting MQLs Into SQLs 22:27 A Thoughtful Approach For A SDR Team 24:47 Marketing in 2018: More Personalization 27:30 Lightning Questions

Sales and Marketing. It’s no secret that these departments often have a rocky relationship—but if they can figure out a way to collaborate and play nicely together, the end result is what they both want—an increase in growth and profitability. In this episode of #CMOTalk, host BMG’s Shelly Kramer and guest Joel Capperella tackle one of the most difficult dynamics in business—the relationship between and the alignment of sales and marketing teams. The challenge: Sales needs the leads. Marketing brings the leads. But research shows that only 25 percent of MQLs end up being turned into SQLs. In this show, Shelly and Joel delve into the disconnect between sales and marketing, and ask the age-old question, ͞Can you teach a sales pro some marketing tricks?͟ We think it’s possible, and even better, a huge win for business when you can make it happen. Joel Capperella brings over 20 years of business developing, pipeline building, revenue increasing strategic marketing execution. He helps create habits that connect story to sales which helps his clients get more. More marketplace awareness, more conversations with the right people, and more revenue more quickly. He has worked with companies of all sizes. From juggernauts like SAP and Oracle, small startups with new injections of cash, and the entrepreneur.

My regular guest on Front Line Friday is Bridget Gleason, VP of Corporate Sales for SumoLogic. In this installment, Bridget and I have a conversation about Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) and Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs), and how to maximize opportunities and deals from them.