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About the podcast
The Digital Utopia Podcast is for SMB Marketers and Business Leaders looking to align their Marketing, Sales, and Service departments so they’re part of one powerhouse growth team.
Each episode will dive into the strategies, philosophies, and tools that will change your approach to organizational growth, give you renewed focus and clarity, and allow you to build a brand that not only helps you stand out—but win.
The Digital Utopia Podcast is produced by Digitopia and hosted by Frank Cowell and Joseph Freeman.
Episode transcription
Frank: [00:00:00] Companies need to step back and examine what marketing is supposed to be doing because in a lot of companies, marketing could be doing a lot of other things that isn't about trying to get a bunch of cold leads because in today's crowded noisy world, that just takes a long time and it's not super effective.
DJ: [00:00:21] You were listening to the digital utopia podcast. A resource dedicated to helping B2B leadership and executives gain clarity and focus in a chaotic market.
Frank: [00:00:31] Hey gang. Welcome to the digital utopia podcast. Episode 13. I'm your host. Frank. Coel joined by my cohost Joseph Freeman. That is the man we've had a spirited conversation this morning already. A little bummed that hasn't come through in this episode, but maybe we can fire it up a little bit and try to introduce some of that today. What do you think?
Joe: [00:00:50] I think maybe the spirit, nobody wants to hear our own personal banter.
Frank: [00:00:54] I don't know. Maybe we can get Arianne and DJ to do some outtakes and slip that in every so often. How amazing would this podcast be? If there were interludes where you just like spliced in some of the like wackiness that goes on pre....record.
Joe: [00:01:14] I'd say let's send out a user poll. Let's do a survey polls. Oh, no polls. And just assume it might be amazing.
Frank: [00:01:21] Sure. Why not?
Joe: [00:01:22] I feel like we're misaligned here now.
Frank: [00:01:24] Oh, come on. Don't look for the cheesy segues into the episode. Let's not do that.
Joe: [00:01:29] Isn't that how this works.
Frank: [00:01:30] It shouldn't work that way.
Joe: [00:01:33] All right. Today we're talking about sales and marketing alignment or maybe misalignment, and trying to get to the bottom of why that exists, what you can do about it. I know we've touched a little bit about it on past episodes, but today we're going to see what, gubu Frank has to say about this and
Frank: [00:01:52] Did you call me guru or gubu?
Joe: [00:01:56] Gubo is good.
Frank: [00:01:59] I don't know what either of those are.
Joe: [00:02:00] Alright, so Gubu, Frank's going to step in here and impart some, some wisdom. So should we just dive in? No intro, no, nothing. Let's just go. You ready?
Frank: [00:02:11] I'm sitting here waiting. I've been ready. Okay.
Joe: [00:02:14] Alright. So, let's just start off with a basic question from one of our listeners.
You know, we do talk a lot about sales and marketing and service or support. We talk about that being aligned in a big way. But I think we talk about it, assuming they're not. And we, we kind of give some advice on how to get them aligned, but let's just take a step back and ask the question. Why are most sales and marketing teams so misaligned? They're in the same company, they have the same goals, right? Theoretically, why are they misaligned?
Frank: [00:02:42] I think a lot of companies don't understand their engine, meaning in a business you're either a marketing centric business or you're a sales centric business. And a lot of businesses haven't taken the time to sit down and ask that question. What's our engine, or we have marketing centric company, or we sell centric company. And I think if businesses understood that they would then understand what each of those entities within the organization are supposed to be doing. But when you don't define that, then marketing is, is supposed to just drive the leads.
That's their job. They got to drive the leads and sales is supposed to close those leads. And if. That's not happening then, you know, the jobs aren't being done, right. People aren't pleased and aren't satisfied. And then when sales doesn't get the leads they're supposed to get from marketing, then they think marketing's kind of like a wasted line item in the budget.
Joe: [00:03:38] Always the first to go to. Right?
Frank: [00:03:41] Right. And you know, what I find with a lot of companies is that when you look at their sales volume needs to hit their growth goals, what I find oftentimes is that they're cell centric organizations. Yeah, they are expecting marketing to heavily contribute to sales when that's not what needs to happen in a sales centric company.
Joe: [00:04:04] Okay. I've got a bone to pick here cause I would agree that most companies are sales centric, but I also feel like when we start talking to companies, or
Frank: [00:04:12] I didn't say, I didn't say most were sell centric.
Joe: [00:04:14] Oh, okay.
Frank: [00:04:15] In a situation where you have. A company that's sales centric. They expect marketing to participate in driving sales. When in reality, marketing them becomes a support mechanism and they should support sales. Meaning sales should have the tools, the collateral, the resources they need to perform their jobs. And then marketing should provide ground cover in the form of awareness and positioning.
Joe: [00:04:44] Right.
Frank: [00:04:45] Because in a lot of companies, let's say all they have to do is, you know, let's say they have to land four, five, 10 clients a month, high ticket clients, they land four or five clients a month. They're going to hit their, their growth goals. That is not a marketing centric company. That is a sales centric company. Why because the volume is so low, just go get the 10 clients, just go get the damn 10 clients, stop screwing around thinking that, you know, it's going to be ads and it's going to be all this other BS.
Go get the 10 clients.
Joe: [00:05:16] Well, conversation I have often is all right, we're going all in on inbound. And for anybody listening who doesn't know what inbound is, that would be, you know, a type of marketing that is not going out and being as disruptive, but it's meeting people where they are when they're looking for specific types of answers to their problems. You know, we've been doing inbound for a long time and there was a time where we mostly only sold inbound, right. And, and we were kind of only preaching inbound and now that's evolved and we realize that there's a need across all services, but a lot of companies will say, all right, we're going all inbound. And I think the reality is you need inbound and you need outbound and you literally need to do anything. It's going to take to drum up leads and to close that business.
Right?
Frank: [00:06:02] Yeah. And I think I'll go back to the point I made, which is again, if you're a sales centric company, just go get the clients and then what marketing should do is build longterm brand awareness, brand positioning, work on initiatives that will create an even better funnel that will improve the business model. But in a business where he only need four or five, 10 clients a month, you technically don't need a whole lot of marketing.
You know, all you need is just make sure the positioning is right on the website. Make sure the sales team has some collateral, you know, if they need it, I've never been a huge fan of collateral. I think it's a crutch to most salespeople. I think it's a wimpy way to sell, but
Joe: [00:06:41] you're offending like 90% of our listeners right now.
Frank: [00:06:43] No, I think if you have someone here that's a true sales person, a true sales manager. They're going to be like FBI, Frank. Screw that collateral go out and close business. I think that's what they're going to say. I think marketers would be like, well, what am I going to do then? It's like market.
Joe: [00:06:58] Yeah. Well, I mean, marketers fill a pipeline, right? They, they, they help to nurture leads over the longterm. And there are going to be some quick wins that come out of that. Obviously .
Frank: [00:07:06] Again, I think in a lot of B2B companies, which are the companies that, that, you know, we talk to a lot and really who this podcast is aimed at. Marketing is a support mechanism. Again, ground cover awareness and positioning, support materials to the sales team. A great thing that marketing can do that you just mentioned is nurturing, right? Nurturing leads that come in and they don't do anything. You know, marketing can play an amazing role, their marketing complaint and amazing role with existing clients.
I just think companies need to step back and examine what marketing is supposed to be doing. Because in a lot of companies, marketing could be doing a lot of other things that isn't about trying to get a bunch of cold leads because in today's crowded noisy world, that just takes a long time. And it's not super effective.
Joe: [00:07:58] We consider this, for all the cold leads that come in, how many of them are actually getting picked up and nurtured past that first point of conversion?
Lot of the stuff that we audit, it's almost none. You've got databases full, whether they came in organically, whether they came in from paid or whether it was a list that was bought. Full to the brim 14,000 contacts. And how many of them have even been touched in the last year? None.
Frank: [00:08:22] Yeah. No, not, not at all.
Joe: [00:08:24] So there's a huge, huge opportunity to mine for gold in what's already in your database, if you are doing your marketing properly.
Frank: [00:08:32] Yeah. Yeah. Again, I think you asked what's wrong. I think what's wrong. Long is businesses. Aren't taking a hard look at the role. Marketing is supposed to play. And so therefore marketing gets set up for failure in a lot of organizations.
Therefore the sales team thinks marketing is shit and we don't really need them.
Joe: [00:08:52] Right. But still at the end of the day, I think they're both aligned on the goal of, we need more leads and more closed sales. So stepping one step back from that kind of overarching goal, was there so much conflict there? What's missing?
Why is there not alignment on. Who does what? And yes, I'm happy with the work you did. I'm happy with the lead you gave me, or I'm happy with the feedback you're giving me sales on the leads that I'm giving you. How come there's so much confusion there.
Frank: [00:09:22] So let's talk about marketing again for a second. I think organizations set marketing up for failure, but I also think marketers don't do themselves any favors.
Right? They get caught up in a lot of activities that the executive team, the sales team really doesn't care about. They get caught up in activities that don't produce measurable results. And so to my fellow marketers out there, what I would encourage you to do is start getting involved in the entire growth funnel of the book and not be so addicted to all the new ones leads start figuring out how you can engage your existing clients and turn them into fans.
Get the stories from them, get the information that'll improve the product, get the information that'll help salespeople close deals. Get the stories that salespeople can put in front of people, get the stories that you can put on your website that will attract more people to you. So I think if marketers were to not be so addicted to the new, and if marketers started worrying about the entire growth funnel and engaged there, they could bring a lot more value to their organization.
Joe: [00:10:29] This is a great point because, okay, I'm going to pull the curtain back a little bit here on ourselves. Um, as we, as we've been going through this journey of building a business that, you know, started started as custom web app solutions, that then turned into marketing that interned into marketing, the sales and service alignment.
We've actually sold marketing services that delivered what the customer thought they were buying, which was new leads. It's not only did it deliver new leads, but it delivered above and beyond the number of new leads forever. Had come into their database and here's the, here's the punchline.
Frank: [00:11:08] Yup.
Joe: [00:11:09] We got fired.
Frank: [00:11:10] Yup.
Joe: [00:11:11] Why did we get fired?
Frank: [00:11:13] Because there wasn't a culture of nurture within the sales team sales team expected that leads meant these people are ready to sign contracts now. There wasn't a commitment to building longterm brand positioning in the marketplace.
Joe: [00:11:30] Right? The feedback was always, yeah, there's a lot of. New contacts in the debate database, but nobody's ready to buy.
Frank: [00:11:36] Correct.
Joe: [00:11:37] That's that was almost always the feedback.
Frank: [00:11:40] So, so this is why marketers need to look at the entire growth funnel and figure out how they're going to drive value and impact sooner than later, in my opinion. And I think that starts with, you know, figuring out how to make the existing customers more successful, getting the stories and the data from them and the feedback from them.
Um, starting at that end, because everything you learned at that end of the spectrum make sales easier. Yeah. And then it makes marketing easier.
Joe: [00:12:11] And this is top-down optimization that we've been preaching.
Frank: [00:12:13] It's exactly what this is.
Joe: [00:12:15] We get in bed with a new client. One of the first things we do is have them create offers to their existing database. Now, whether that's to their existing customers, if they have something that they can sell to their customers, you know what, we'll help him put together that sort of an email blast or series to help do that, or just disengaged leads. And what's really cool about that is some of them do respond and some of them do take you up, but some of them don't, some of them bounce.
Some of them, you know, after three attempts, nothing happens and we can actually clean those out and we can start a little bit fresher. Right.
Frank: [00:12:48] Right.
Joe: [00:12:49] But I think that's where you need to start is mining what you already have.
Frank: [00:12:55] Yeah. And, and, and not just right, like, not just making offers to buy something, but sir, serving them, asking them questions, setting up one to one meetings. Imagine that. Another thing you've heard me say before, and I'm railing on marketing a little bit right now. Sales, just wait your turns coming. But, but you know, marketers that don't talk to customers really pissed me off. Marketers that don't talk to clients piss me off. And I think if you're a marketer here today, look, the wake up call is that this has been happening for some time that organizations scrutinize, marketing more and more.
They expect it to be more accountable today. Organizations have less patients. And so if you want longevity in your marketing career, you have to figure out how to get involved in the executive conversation. Look at the entire growth funnel of the business, figure out how you can bring value. Start at the end, start with the customers.
Start with the clients and work from there, help expose the points of differentiation, help expose the opportunities for improvement, help expose the success story. And I guarantee you're going to have a lot more relevance in your organization.
Joe: [00:14:08] Okay. So what are some tactical ways that we can talk about here that a marketer can actually help support sales? Because again, if the marketers bringing in a bunch of leads and sales and loving them, there's already conflict there. Marketers feel like they're, they're doing work that's not appreciated. Sales team feels like marketing, spinning their wheels on whatever, but it's not even there. Awesome.
Frank: [00:14:27] The absolute number, one thing, a marketing department marketing team can do for a sales team in a B2B situation. In my opinion, it's what. Maybe it's not the one thing, cause it can vary by organization, but I believe one of the top things it ranks right up there. If not the number one, um, is to create transformative stories of proof where your clientele is the hero in these stories. If you focused on that, if you, as a marketing team, if you obsess about that, you just sales.
Team's going to love you. You're going to attract more leads that one activity, that one tactic you can deploy in a number of different ways, and it'll bring you more fruit than anything you've ever done in your life. I promise you because your potential customers, your potential clients, when they see these stories and they see people like them and they see people achieving the things they want to achieve.
Then your sales pitch becomes really easy. All you have to do in your marketing is say, would you like that too? Let's talk. That's it. And so the, the absolute one of the biggest impacts you can make is to obsess about creating transformative stories of proof. And when I say stories, I mean, you put the client as the hero in the story, not your brand, not your product, not your service, not your offering.
Yeah, right. You're offering comes there as a guide in the story. It's Yoda to the clients, Luke Skywalker. Does that make sense?
Joe: [00:16:03] Hmmm, that's so pop culture.
Yeah,
No, no, no, do baby Yoda. No one cares about Yoda.
This baby Yoda thing, by the way.
Are you kidding me? I've seen the thing.
Frank: [00:16:13] No, we have Disney plus. You got to remember, like, I don't spend a lot of time watching TV. I got shit to do.
Joe: [00:16:17] Oh, you're so businessy
Frank: [00:16:19] I have got things to do that are more important than TV, but I've seen the little Yoda thing I've seen the memes. Let's put it that way.
Joe: [00:16:25] It's pretty cute.
It's NATO.
Frank: [00:16:27] It's cute. It's cute. And if you see the outtakes it's even cuter, let's see. They're not really out to fix the puppet.
You know what I mean? Like the, the manufacturer, the outtakes, it's cute.
I mean, little Yoda didn't accidentally mess up his line, but I don'
Joe: [00:16:40] know.
He's pretty believable. Maybe. Um, so now let's talk about sales where sales failing marketing. And I think this is a little bit more of a touchy subject because sales looks down on a marketing in many, many organizations.
Frank: [00:16:52] And again, I think that's because the perception has been set, that marketing is supposed to drive leads, right? And so then sales hears leads and they think people who are close to being ready to buy
Joe: [00:17:06] misalignment.
Frank: [00:17:07] And so they have misalignment and one lead means. And so once they get alignment and they go, Oh, okay, well, you're going to generate marketing, qualified leads, marketing.
And then, you know, we need to turn those into sales, qualified leads, but that then is another huge disconnect because they don't know how to do that. They don't know how to take a marketing qualified lead and nurture it and turn into a sales qualified lead. And it takes, oftentimes it takes a long time.
And so here's my indictment about sales today. Ready go. Sales people have become freaking lazy, lazy, lazy, late. This, this whole idea of marketing's now got to generate the right opportunity and Ooh, you're going to have a BDR to filter out anything and everything because heaven forbid, you know, you, you have more conversations than necessary, right?
Sales culture today has become so. Lazy.
Joe: [00:17:58] I blame the internet. There was a time when people jumped in their car and drove to a neighborhood and knocked on doors and didn't stop until they made a sale.
Frank: [00:18:05] I started the business knocking on a door, picking up a phone, calling people, going and seeing people literally wearing out the leather on the bottom of your shoes.
So to speak by that's what I did. And people think today, well, you can't do that. I'm like, no, you can. If people are too people find. Excuses today and excuses come too easy.
Joe: [00:18:30] Well, literally today you can't do that. You gotta do it through zoom,
Frank: [00:18:33] whatever, you can get creative, right? You can get creative, you can find something interesting to send that person in a box in a, you know, whatever you can, you can find ways to create one to one conversations.
Yeah. If you want to work
Joe: [00:18:48] well, I think everybody wants to work in theory, but then
Frank: [00:18:53] you got to actually do the work. Everyone wants the easy work. Yeah. And this is the problem. Yeah. Like if anything was easy, we've all heard the phrase, right. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it, but it's not easy. None of this is easy.
And so I think that's where my big indictment against sales today is sales as a culture has become way too lazy.
Joe: [00:19:15] Okay. So the salesperson wants to admit and recognize that maybe I've been lazy. What do they do and how do they realign with Mark? Getting here,
Frank: [00:19:22] sit down with marketing. Start having a regular meeting with marketing as my friend, um, Dan tire from HubSpot calls it, he calls it marketing marketing.
As he corrected me recently, it's not smarketing marketing like Shamir marketing. Um, and so have a marketing meeting on a regular basis where marketing and sales meets as partners in crime, not adversaries. And they figure out okay. Here's here are markets that we need to, to, to attack because you know, we have an opportunity to really differentiate in this marketplace.
We're really strong together. How are we going to go at this? And again, if you're a sales centric company, then marketing provides ground cover and support sales. They shouldn't be seen as the primary sole lead generator. Now, if you need 100 clients per month, bigger firm. Lots more volume. Now you become marketing centric depending on the size of your Salesforce, right?
Like this can vary, you've got 50 salespeople, then you're still some sales centric. Right. But, you know, flip where you now need more opportunities than, than your salespeople can generate them selves. So now you become of marketing centric company. And so now it's on marketing to generate those conversations.
But again, I'm going to go back to what I said a moment ago. The thing marketing can do. Uh, the number one most impactful thing to generate interest and opportunities is obsess about those transformative stories of proof in a, if the sales and marketing team were to get together and talk about that.
Talk about how to create that. No, by the way, bring in the service team. Right? Cause we talk often about marketing sales and service alignment, bring them in and all three organizations talk about. Okay, who are our best clients? What are the best stories? Who has them? Why did they experience that transformation?
What did we do? Right. How can we do more of it? And if everyone gets excited about that and starts exposing those stories and everyone participates and exposing those stories, man, marketing quote unquote, is going to be a hero. Yeah. So that's the opportunity, by the way. That's the opportunity marketing has.
Right. Like, I, I, I gave marketing a bit of a spank and today, but the opportunity marketing has is to be the galvanizing force. You're giggling you like the spanking thing.
Joe: [00:21:54] Okay. Everybody's giggling.
Frank: [00:21:56] Yeah. Okay. Marketing has the opportunity to be the galvanizing force within the organization. To be the one as the cheerleader.
That's a rah rah, let's get these teams together. Let's make this happen. And being the unifying voice, that's your opportunity. You want to stop getting relegated. You want to stop being the first to be laid off. When things have to tighten, you want to stop having to ask for every, you know, $25 software purchase, which by the way, if your sales counterpart wanted to spend $250 on lunch, they could do so.
No questions asked. Right. So you want to stop that kind of treatment and that kind of behavior. Then start being the unifying voice. Start caring about the growth of the organization across the entire growth funnel. Start caring what the executive team cares about.
Joe: [00:22:45] Let's talk about a service level agreement.
Frank: [00:22:48] SLA SLA.
Joe: [00:22:49] We, uh, you know, we'll often encourage companies to literally do this. So service level agreement would normally traditionally be between a vendor and a customer and kind of outlines the details of exactly what that service is going to entail and what the minimum expectations would be in terms of deliverables.
Uh, but this can be used for sales, marketing teams and service teams really, um, you know, to kind of align once and for all on what do we call a lead and are we agreed on what that is and when should it be passed off? And what's the minimum criteria that it should meet demographically, or maybe through some implicit behaviors?
Um, I want to break that down a little bit because I think it's been really helpful for a lot of companies too. Have that honest conversation and it kind of feels a little bit cheesy, but you literally sit down and you outline this together and you drop a contract and you sign it and you stick to it.
Frank: [00:23:41] Yeah,
Joe: [00:23:42] absolutely. You know, in the act of actually going through the physical signing and everything again, a little bit cheesy, but it makes you feel like I've made a commitment and I'm excited to do this. Just like, like, I guess just like anything, just like getting in an app and collecting your badges and putting in all of your metrics and stuff, it gives you something to
Frank: [00:23:58] fight for.
Yeah. And I think even if the, from the marketing team, if, if it's not about being the sole, the party that's solely responsible for driving ready now leads, you know, again, if you're a sales centric organization and marketing play more of a support and ground cover role, you can put things in there like, okay, marketing will produce one inspiring case study per month that you can put that in there.
That's part of the agreement. That's what we're going to do, because that is. Critical content for the sales team and also generating more conversations in supporting the sales team and, and creating more awareness and creating more buzz. Yeah. That would be an example of what you could put in there. It doesn't always have to be.
Marketing's going to generate 37 leads that turn into SQLs, right? It can be that, but it doesn't always have to be that, or it can be a combination of things.
Joe: [00:24:51] Also understanding what types of behaviors different leads are, are exhibiting is really helpful because there's a lot of times where I, you know, in my experience with marketers, they get excited about.
Whatever it is a lot of Facebook likes or they'll get excited about a lot of email opens, but the sales team is saying, well, hold on, everyone I've talked to and everyone I've closed. Didn't just open the email. They, they clicked through. Maybe that's a little bit too granular, maybe a sales. Person's not saying that, but salespeople often have insights into what people were doing directly before jumping on the phone and agreeing to signing a contract.
And if sales can help marketing understand what those people were doing. Great. Now as marketing continues to use, you know, automation and software and, and starts tracking the data, they can also start collecting data on what is happening, leading up to a sale. And they should agree on, yeah, it's, it's literally 35 website visits or it's, you know, a hundred page visits or they can start to agree on what they think is warming up a lead, right?
Frank: [00:25:53] Yeah. And you brought up the software. I think the software part's critical. I would recommend at minimum. Your marketing and sales teams are using the same software or at least software that's heavily integrated. So that way a sales person, by the time they, when they're ready to talk to that prospect, they should be able to look at that prospect's contact record and see everything they've done.
Not just like high level. They, they, um, they opened an email, but. What web pages they've visited, what assets they've downloaded, you know
Joe: [00:26:24] what ads they've clicked on
Frank: [00:26:25] ads. They're standing on what pain
Joe: [00:26:27] points.
Frank: [00:26:27] Yeah. If, if you're a modern sales person today, okay. If you're a modern salesperson and you can't see which ad they clicked on and you can't see which assets they've downloaded, you can't see which web pages they visited.
You can't see which social posts they've engaged on in your software. As you're getting ready to call that person. You got to change that up. There's no excuse today to not have that data. And so if you're working in systems that don't offer that it's time to ditch those systems. Yeah. Like quick, cause you're operating from a place that's really far behind guarantee you, your competition you're using tools like that.
Joe: [00:27:06] Right. There are a lot of easy things you can agree on in terms of what marketing delivers to sales. We already talked about some, right? Like the contact meets the right demographics. Um, they've exhibited the right behaviors in terms of, you know, engagement with digital digital assets. Um, you know, they've been scrubbed and additional data has been been out and there's all kinds of things, tactically, that you can put into the agreement from the marketing side.
But what is sales to marketing? And I think that's a little bit harder for people to understand because the lead flows through marketing to sales sales. So then what is sales have to commit back to marketing
Frank: [00:27:41] sales has to commit that they're going to follow up with leads within a certain timeframe, a certain number of times, following a certain cadence and sequence, delivering a certain type of content.
Joe: [00:27:51] What if they think a lead sucks?
Frank: [00:27:53] They have to guarantee that they're going to provide the experience. That is a continuation of the experience that marketing has created. And so they have to guarantee that they're going to provide that continuation. And they're going to have to agree between the two organizations, what that experience is going to be.
And then after words, let's say I run a month or quarterly basis. You can then look at the performance and then the feedback around that lead sucks, then that can come and you can start talking about it in, in, uh, in larger numbers rather than just complaining on a one for one basis. Bleed sucks.
Joe: [00:28:33] So here's, what's really helpful.
There is a lot of that lead sucks. And especially in the beginning, when you're trying to figure it out, that's just going to happen. What's really helpful is when salespeople make notes about each of the leads and don't just disqualify him by toggling a bad lead. Button or something like that, but literally go put detailed notes about why this was not a good fit, because for some reason it made it across the threshold, it made it past the goalpost for, from marketing.
They thought it was a good lead. So we need the insight from sales, whether that is I called them. And, you know, even though everything looked and smelled, right, they just weren't ready that that's some kind of feedback, but. Could also be that well, even though this met all of our criteria, there was this other thing we didn't think about.
And we started to see this come through consistently. That's a conversation to be had so that you can tighten up that criteria on the marketing side.
Frank: [00:29:19] Yeah. You can't just sit there, like here's where it comes across to, to marketing. When sales does this, it comes across like just a bunch of whining and crying.
Like those leads. It's like, okay, now that we've had our little moment stop. Enter the notes, as you just suggested, enter the notes into the record. Again, another reason why marketing and sales need to be in one system or a system that's heavily integrated. So those notes make it back to marketing. And the behaviors that marketing generated can are visible to sales either way.
It's either heavily integrated and you get all that data or it's one system, either way the sales has to take the time. To make those notes. And additionally, if they have great leads, make notes as to why they were a great lead. Yeah. You know, they hit the criteria. Yes. Okay. But this is another characteristic that made it a great lead and Oh, by the way, when you do your post-mortem and you do your quarterly strategy, you talk about the leads that became clients.
Oh, this was a great fit. And here's why marketing needs to hear that on a regular basis.
Joe: [00:30:27] But I'd recommend even more than quarterly. I think monthly, you've got to have a measure monthly to review what came in marketing, marketing review. It came in review, why it was good, why it was bad and have those honest conversations.
And they don't have to be long meetings, but they do have to be regular check ins. So you don't wake up six months down the line, frustrated with each other. You know, and that's also a good time to review that SLA. Speaking of the SLA, let's talk about what goes into a, a decent SLA.
Frank: [00:30:53] You're better at this than I am all the details.
You know, I have like some general, you know, thoughts of what goes into it. Number of leads marketing's going to produce. It matches this criteria. There'll be handed off in this manner. We're going to produce a certain amount of content sales is going to follow up within a certain amount of time and provide this kind of experience and turn it X percent into SQLs.
I mean, those are generally, well, those are the tactics of
Joe: [00:31:18] it, but in terms of the actual document, because again, someone's going to listen to this and be like, that's a cool idea and never do it. Right. I'm challenging you to do it. Literally get out a word doc or a Google doc or whatever doc. And create an outline that looks like this create a summary, right?
At the top of your SLA. You're going to have a little cup, just a couple sentences that outline the spirit of what you guys are trying to accomplish together. Next, you got outlined your goals, right? For both sales and marketing. And that's where all that tactical stuff kind of can, can fall in there. You want high level goals and you want objectives, and there's a difference, right?
Goals and objectives are different. Um, you know, the goal is kind of the spirit of what we want to do and the objectives are what we can actually measure to get there. You want a section on all the supporting needs, so maybe there's new software that's needed. Uh, maybe there is some sort of additional budget that needs to be freed up, but that should be documented in there so that you agree on that.
So there's no surprises. Um, you want to outline your main points of contacts because, you know, especially if you're a bigger company and if this document gets passed around, you want people to understand who's involved and who to contact, should something. Be a mess, right? If you've got a big sales team,
Frank: [00:32:25] just like a regular contract, right.
Real contract correspondence correspondences regarding this contract goes to this person via this method.
Joe: [00:32:32] Yep. And here's the big kicker. So you want to also put in your consequences. Oh, we talked about spankings earlier, right? Um, There will make
Frank: [00:32:43] it weird. There will make it weird. Literally just made it weird.
Don't make it. You made it weird. Okay.
Joe: [00:32:49] So consequences. There are going to be moments of failure, right? And when those moments happen, you need to know what the consequences going to be. It can't just be brushed over on the flip side. It can't be in a moment of explosion of frustration. You have to acknowledge that sometimes there will be points in this contract that are broken.
And if that happens, Here's how we get back on track outline that actually put in the consequences and the road map to getting back to success, and then finally conditions of cancellation. So, you know, it could be that you guys come up with a really crappy agreement and that it's just not possible to hit it six months down the line, nobody's doing what they said they were going to do, or they're trying, and they just can't do it.
You need to have an understanding, put it in writing. If this happens, we're going to cancel this and start.
Frank: [00:33:36] So, so, uh, beyond. Um, when we think about consequences beyond spankings, what are some specific examples of consequences that you could throw in?
Joe: [00:33:49] Yeah. So let's talk about maybe marketing, who doesn't hit, the number of leads that they agreed on.
And this is assuming that you have a good understanding of. If I get a hundred leads, we're pretty sure that, you know, 5% of them are gonna turn into sales conversations, whatever those numbers are. If you kind of have an understanding of that, you can also understand how much revenue should be expected from those leads down, down the line.
Right? And if marketing is not hitting the numbers that they agreed to, they're kind of responsible for lost revenue. You know. Yeah. And
Frank: [00:34:18] I think that shame for shame,
Joe: [00:34:21] I think that some of them consequences need to be, here's how we're going to make up for that lost revenue. And whether that is we're going to cut some costs or we're going to, uh, you know, in the next month double our efforts so that we can make up for that or whatever it is, you need to understand what the real consequences of not hitting your goals.
Are, there are none, maybe it's a crappy goal or objective, you know, because. Don't just throw stuff in there just to say, we're, you know, we're robots doing our job. You've got to throw stuff in there that really is going to move the needle. Therefore, if it doesn't happen, the needle doesn't move. Someone's got to make up for that loss movement,
Frank: [00:34:55] which is why I think it's really important to go back to what I said at the beginning.
It's really important for the organization to understand the dynamic between marketing and sales for that organization. Because if marketing is going to exist to drive awareness and positioning and provide ground cover. In a sales centric organization, then the SLA needs to be drafted accordingly.
Right? That SLA might be more look more like, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna create content and we're gonna create this kind of content and this kind of quantity to this quality. And then we're going to aim to have this kind of traction with our. You know, web presence and we're going to build about this many, you know, we're going to add to the nurturing by this much each month, whatever it is, like it needs to then say those things.
Joe: [00:35:42] Yeah.
Frank: [00:35:42] And by the way, marketers, just like, you know, if, if, um, If you were to hire a firm back, they're gonna scope out like, okay, we're going to do four blog posts for you and three emails a month or whatever that is for your organization. Make sure that specific, but again, understanding the dynamic of how marketing.
Is marketing the engine or is marketing the support and ground cover.
Joe: [00:36:05] But this is what I would have to say to marketers, marketers, if that's all outlined and it says you're going to be doing four blog posts, and you're going to be doing, you know, two premium pieces of content that are deep dives into whatever it is, a case study or something.
Great. Do those things. But if you are three quarters through the month and those things aren't moving the needle, do something else, do something better because at the end of the day, You outlined those things. Cause you think they're going to get you the results you want, but if they're not getting you the results pivot, you've got to pivot.
And I think this is one of my most frustrating moment. I love marketers. I love marketing. I like sales and marketing, but I love marketing. And I go to bat for marketers because I do feel like often marketers get kind of swept under the rug. However, there are a lot of times where they deserve it and they deserve it because they're not doing what they're supposed to be doing. They're checking the boxes of what they said they were going to do, but they wake up on day 27 of a month and say "oh", I guess, guess we're not going to hit our numbers.
You got three days at that point to hit your freaking numbers, figure it out.
Frank: [00:37:07] So my, my big, uh, I agree with your frustration by the way.
And I have that same gripe as well, and I believe that. A lot of people that call themselves marketers today, aren't marketers. I think this idea of the, some of these activities that the internet has created, like social media marketing. Like, I think so many people today who like get into social media.
Joe: [00:37:31] You're not downplaying that though. Right? Cause that is an important part.
Frank: [00:37:33] No social media marketing is very important, but the problem is, is that a lot of marketers for Ray first foray into marketing today is just social media marketing. And they actually don't understand marketing at its core marketing at its foundation.
Joe: [00:37:48] You mean like the psychology
Frank: [00:37:49] Psychology, copy and, driving driving a response. They don't understand those things at the core. And they think that, you know, getting the likes and the shares. Is the win.
Joe: [00:38:05] Yeah, if you are one of those marketers, by the way, go read Ogilvy on advertising. It's like a high level crash course into all of the things you need to then go and deep dive on
Frank: [00:38:15] Correct, read, Roy H. Williams read
Halbert
Joe: [00:38:19] Well, there's so much to read. There's so much to read, but I love that book because it gives you an introduction to all of the things you need to be studying up on regularly. And once you've read that book, you can literally go chapter by chapter and say, okay, now chapter four is about direct response copywriting. I'm going to go find seven books on that,
Frank: [00:38:34] But it requires, it requires the passion for real marketing, which is marketing can be a driver of growth. And so if you're in marketing, just because you like social media, then maybe you should consider a different path. If you're not passionate about marketing.
No marketing are the activities that drive awareness, positioning, and engagement. Those are the three things it's supposed to be doing. And if you're not obsessed about that, so that way we can create an uplift of in growth for an organization, but not excited about that, then you're not excited about marketing.
Right. And so get excited about marketing at its core and what it's supposed to be doing. Then, you know, learn the fundamentals and apply that to whatever your specialty is within marketing.
Joe: [00:39:31] I feel like I interrupted your social media rant. Did you have something to say there?
Frank: [00:39:35] No, that was my point is that there are so many, there's so many marketing jobs today. I use social media marketing, just as an example, there are so many marketing jobs today that make people think that they're marketers.
Joe: [00:39:49] Yeah
Frank: [00:39:49] Then the sad thing is, is there are, there are a lot of these jobs where whoever's hiring for them. They're not teaching people. What marketing really is. And sadly, wherever these people go to learn these things, they're not being taught what marketing really is.
Joe: [00:40:05] Well, there's a low barrier to entry, right? There's low barrier to smartphone, correct? Yeah. You're a marketer.
Frank: [00:40:09] You right? Woo. I'm a marketer, but that's not what marketing is. And so again, marketers, for those of you listening today to improve your, your position and your stature within your organization, uh, start becoming obsessed with the growth part.
Start becoming obsessed with awareness, positioning engagement, to drive growth. Look at the entire growth funnel. Figure out how that impacts where the company's trying to go. Talk to the clients, develop the stories, right? That's how you can improve your stature and salespeople. We're going to wrap it up here.
I'm going to draw, get this closed out. But if, so, if that's the takeaway for marketers. Oh, and Oh, by the way, the number one tactic for marketing that we talked about today, obsess about the transformative stories of proof, the inspiring stories. If you do that, you'll create a lot of, um, opportunity for your sales team sales team.
Number one thing, stop being so lazy. Go get the clients, nurture the clients, continue the experience that marketing has created. Stop complaining. Get on the, get on board with your marketing team, because they can be such an amazing asset for you. They can help drive an experience for your prospects, um, that is heavily, heavily differentiated.
And then finally get the service team involved service team. You have to care about what sales is doing, because those people that they sell to eventually end up on your plate. Right. And you need to care about what marketing's doing, because those are the people that end up talking to sales. So get with those two teams, share the stories.
Talk about what's working with the offering. Talk about, what's not working. Talk about where you're differentiated, share those stories, get together. So you guys can be one aligned unified team marketing, sales, and service folks. That's all we have for you today. Be sure to join us next week. And if you're really enjoying this conversation, subscribe, share this podcast with a friend, uh, spread it around on all the socials, whatever you can do to spread the love.
We would appreciate again, we're going to be back next week. Hope you have an amazing life until then take care.
