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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
This is where we optimize starting out the customer base. We ask ourselves, what are we doing to turn them into fans? What are we doing to turn them into fans? What are we doing to make them successful? Because if we obsessed them, we start there. Then by default, we're going to improve the product.
Intro
You're listening to the digital utopia podcast, a resource dedicated to helping b2b leadership and executives gain clarity and focus in a chaotic marketplace.
Frank
Hey, gang, welcome to the digital utopia podcast, Episode 25. I'm your host, Frank Cowell, I'm joined by my co host,
Joe
Joseph Freeman.
Frank
Yes, it's been some time I think we had a week off you listeners didn't realize we had a week off. But we took a week off. We doubled up on some recordings. So it's good to be back in the studio with you Joe
Joe
It is after camping and refreshing
Frank
Yeah, we both camped we did. That was fun. Get out there in the outdoors. For us. Yeah, fresh air knives and like wood and burning fires and s'mores and stuff are
Joe
also like lighters and lighters. Yeah. bekins
Frank
so manly. Love it. Okay. Hey, you know what we came across a report recently, I think is a good basis for today's conversation. It was called the state of rev Ops, from HubSpot. And their subtext to this was reducing friction in the flywheel. Right. If you've been following HubSpot at all, you know, the flywheel is the thing that they're pushing, they're trying to say, the funnel is dead and, and while there's some philosophical things that you can get on board with there, just no like flywheel funnel, however, you you end up talking about it, like it's all good. And the whole point of this report is how you can reduce friction in that process. And so I think it'd be good to go over some of their, their contrasting bullet points that they put out.
Joe
Right Old World versus New World thinking,
Frank
yeah, that's how they positioned it. Right. Right. Because old versus new,
Joe
like used to people used to camp for a living
Frank
camp for another living hotel.
Joe
Exactly. Old World versus New World thing, which I think, you know, they touch on it in terms of business, in general, you know, marketing sales, they don't really touch on servers, we're going to touch on service here. But they talked about it, you know, old world being, what, 510 years ago, new world being now, I think there's still a lot to uncover in terms of what the New World post, you know, pandemic looks like with marketing and sales and service. So maybe that's a follow up later. But for the context of this episode, it's old world is probably what, five years ago here?
Frank
Yeah, you know, when this think you're right, in this timeframe that we live in, we are dealing with those kinds of sections of time, five years is, is really considered a big window in context of a lot of these things, right. And it really is, I mean, just reverse, you know, go back five years ago, and certainly the Tech has come a long way. Certainly the approach that organizations b2b are taking has come a long way. And interestingly enough, at the same time, I mentioned this, before we started recording, you know, the more things change, the more they stay the same, too. So I'm a huge fan of that kind of thinking, which is kind of like, you know, big versus little zoom in versus zoom out. And I think, you know, the stuff that doesn't change, or things like strategy, right? Like, there's always still strategic approaches that don't ever change. And it's more about the strategy of the strategy before you kind of get down to the tactical level. So yeah, I think you're basically just to your point, yes, five years is, is is really the window we're kind of looking at in today's world. And we talked about these kinds of thing,
Joe
which is significant, too, because above and beyond just technology changing, some significant things in technology have changed that have allowed, you know, quote, unquote, New World, one of those being kind of cross channel attribution, we can now track people moving from Facebook to, I was gonna say Instagram, but basically the same thing, from Facebook, to LinkedIn, to the website, to their phone to you know, you can you can travel with them everywhere they go, that wasn't possible, you know, pre, five years ago, you couldn't do anything like that. Now, pretty much every software is integrated in such a way that you can do that. And so it's opened this whole new world of what's kind of opened the door for RevOps, we've been talking a lot about revenue operations, right. And I think that's one of the catalysts that allows us to finally connect the customer journey from total stranger all the way to fan.
Frank
Yeah, and I think there's a ton of positives there. And I think that the danger that I would just encourage our listeners to watch out for is the danger and now that you can kind of connect every single.is throwing the baby out with the bathwater syndrome, where, you know, once you have this kind of data accessible, I think the knee jerk reaction is, oh, that's not working, dump it. And so what ends up happening is, you don't give things time to mature you don't give things time to create a halo effect and build brands. So, you know, wield this power responsibly, I guess is what I'm saying and, and realize when efforts are for building brand and awareness and positioning and realize when, you know there are efforts that are meant to drive immediate and direct response and ROI.
Joe
So let's dive into this particular part. Yeah, for old world versus New World thinking old world, they outline the outline five different bullet points here that we'll call old world. So let me run through those. Okay, and then we can kind of go one by one and talk about what the New World version is that they suggest and unify any thoughts we have on right. So, Old World, one old world was single move thinking, Okay, well unpack that a minute. Number two was focus on bookings. Number three was aggressive sales tactics that alienate leads and offer deep discounts.
Frank
It's my favorite sales style, aggressive sales tactics, sarcasm
Joe
for customer service and success are cost centers, and five sales and marketing bicker over success and failure. So they're saying those are five indicators of the old world approach?
Frank
Yeah, I mean, to be fair, I mean, some of the things they've listed here, are more symptomatic, as opposed to someone's, you know, willful approach, like, nobody set out to say, you know, what our approach is going to be, we're gonna have a sales and marketing bicker. That's what we're gonna do. Right like that. That's clearly symptomatic there. So some of these aren't necessarily the thinking. It was just what was happening, what people were putting up with,
Joe
maybe more than putting up with there was maybe no other options. Yeah, there wasn't anything to help remedy that. Yeah. I mean, aside from Kumbaya, but in terms of technological solutions that would allow them to no longer bicker, and instead of work together, there wasn't anything out there.
Frank
Yeah, I think that did contribute a lot and has contributed a lot to you know, I've heard a lot of old salty sales dogs, you know, say marketing has never done anything for me. And I've heard salty sales dogs say that. And, you know, to an extent they may be their experience, maybe right, you know, and I, to your point, I think there hasn't been some of these enablers that have allowed them to work.
Joe
Well. Okay, so let's talk about number one single move, thinking. Now, they say that new world version of this is multi move thinking, what does this mean to you?
Frank
Yeah, single move, thinking just really thinking small, right and thinking about, in my opinion, you know, your customers next step, or the sale you need to make next, or the deal you need to land next, or the market you need to go into next. And that, to me is single move thinking rather than thinking holistically about customer journeys, rather than thinking holistically about ecosystems for your buyers. And that's really the difference when you can move to the one deal the one market and really thinking holistically about entire buyers journey, entire ecosystems, because when you start thinking about the entire buyers journey and ecosystems, you start to look at your customer in a different way, you start to think about more than just your offering. And you start to think about how you can bring value to them above and beyond the thing that you're Hawking. And then that opens up potential partnerships, and opens up possible revenue streams, it opens up new offerings that you've yet to think of. And so that, you know, multi move, thinking to me is really just thinking more holistically. And understanding that you're offering isn't necessarily the center of the universe, right? Yeah,
Joe
I think from a tactical standpoint, too. And I don't know if this is what they were inferring at all. But I know, when we started doing this, however, many over a decade ago, years ago, we would do one thing at a time, we would build a website. And then we would go back and maybe SEO it or someone else would SEO it right? Or we would create a content plan. And then someone would maybe come back later and stuff it with keywords and everything was very siloed. And these days, when you build any marketing campaign, or put together anything that's going to help in the sales and marketing effort, you have to think more holistically right from the get go. You have to be thinking of your audience. And you have to be thinking of bots, and you have to be thinking of all the ways that this is going to be consumed cross platform, because no longer does somebody just go to your website to read something that can get shared in so many ways on so many platforms and re packaged in so many different flavors. Yeah,
Frank
yeah. And I think that speaks well to, you know, the idea of looking at the entire buyers journey. And understanding that the way that your buyers engage you today is very different than you know what they did, you know, many years ago, which is the old world thinking right? The old bro thinking was, well we've got a number on our website and a Contact Us form. Right. So that was just one aspect of thinking holistically. He is meeting your buyers where they are being available on their terms, understanding how they like to buy, how they like to communicate. Just one simple example I've got, I'm doing business with a national home builder where I bought my home earlier this year, from a national home builder. They've got like a great process to everything, but I'm getting a call from their Claims Department right now because they have a warranty thing they're taking care of for me. And I keep getting these voicemails from this really nice lady. So I go to call, call her back, and I get her voicemail. And I've been asking now for three voicemails, hey, if it's easier for you just texted me. So we can coordinate like what we're trying to coordinate here. And I've yet to get a text message. And so I think this is an example of, you know, not not understanding the ways in which buyer communication preferences change. And it doesn't matter what your industry is, you know, you have to be able to be there and meet that. So understanding journeys and communication preferences, and then again, just ecosystems, right, like, what else? Is your buyer dealing with? What you know, down the chain down the line? What, what else does your buyer engage with? That maybe you have nothing to do with that understanding is really critical.
Joe
Yeah, so that's single move thinking, as opposed to multi move thinking, you need to be multi move thinking. Next, number two is focus on bookings. So that's the old world, the new world is focused on the lifetime value or the LTV of bookings. So what does this mean?
Frank
So I think, you know, for our listeners, when we say bookings, the context here is just, you know, transactions, bookings, in this sense, you know, might mean, you know, you're booking reservations on something or, you know, booking time, this generically speaking is just transactions like focusing on, you know, whatever transaction is at and that you have on the table with your buyer, be at a contract be at an online purchase, you know, what have you the switch to LTV thinking meaning taking into consideration, what happens after they buy this thing from me? Is there something else that they buy down the road? And again, going back to, you know, obsessing about the buyers journey? Are there ways to be for our brand to be part of their life, after this initial transaction, and viewing that first transaction as just the first of many, in so this requires being open to changing your offerings and changing your business model? Possibly, you know, and if you're not thinking of yourself as being a lifecycle based business, then you're not preparing yourself for again, this new world thinking and you're not being there, throughout their journey, because let's face it, buyers in all sectors today have way too many options. They don't need you. They don't need me. They don't. You know, now more than ever, where we are so irrelevant to people. We think about that. I want you to wake up every day and realize how irrelevant you really are in this world, because of the plethora of options that your buyers have
Joe
not only options, but accessibility to those options. Absolutely. Even if there was a lot of options 15 years ago, it might be hard to get something to your door that was manufactured or produced or service somewhere else these days. That's not even a barrier. No, you can go anywhere and get anything from anywhere within about with prime you can get in 24 hours.
Frank
Yeah. And sometimes sooner, right. So I think this idea of focusing on LTV means you have to be open to what you're selling and how you're selling it, and what that business model looks like. And so that first transaction is just the first of hopefully, many. So how can you structure that first transaction such that it's the start of a relationship, not the big whale of a sale that you're trying to land? That's the shift in thinking,
Joe
I love that. And we've experienced some some wins in that sort of shift in thinking for ourselves and our own business? Yeah. Something else that HubSpot points out in this report is that in the past, just looking at metrics, looking at numbers of bookings, within a certain time period, like a quarter, you could celebrate that as a win, not realizing that, if you were to zoom out and look at the lifetime value of whatever you won that quarter, it could have been because you were discounting or could have been because of a seasonal uptick. In you know, analysts know this, they know to look for those types of patterns and what have you. But in general, in business, sometimes we celebrate wins that are not actually wins. We had anything to do with and long term, they don't result in wins because those discounted buyers that helped you get to a certain metric in that first month may never buy again, they're not the right people
Frank
or to your point, like you don't realize that you haven't systematically solved the problem.
Joe
Right.
Frank
You may have had a lucky quarter. And then you know what you mentioned a moment ago about zooming out. We touched on that in a previous episode where we talked about attribution, in so this is important that zoom out is really important. I find that a lot of b2b execs that I meet often have to be reminded about trends and patients and the effect of momentum. Because they often zoom in sometimes to the 90 day view, which 90 day views are absolutely critical to creating movement in the organization. And to keep pressing on. But measuring progress, you have to zoom out to larger timeframes. And so that zoom out is really critical.
Joe
Yeah, and especially, you know, coming through 2020 and beyond, there's going to be all kinds of peaks and valleys that are just anomalies. Oh, yeah. And you're gonna have to zoom out to see what's really happening. And quite honestly, what we're seeing is, there's probably a reset, right, you probably you're gonna have to discard most of the data you have from, you know, pre 2020, because it's just not really relevant anymore. People aren't exhibiting the same behaviors that they used to. Right.
Frank
Yeah, there's, I'm finding that the opportunities that are in the marketplace, generally speaking, are real. And so they're solid. But there are fewer. Right? And so you have to you have to look at that. And to your point, 2020 might be a throwaway year from a data standpoint, it's certainly, like you said, a reset. I think that's a great word. And certainly I don't think that businesses should use that as an excuse to not hit aggressive objectives and excuses for failure. And, you know, me I'm big on, not externalizing and making excuses, but it certainly is a massive consideration. You know, as much as I'm a fan of not externalizing, I would be a fool not to consider 2020 as something that has made for a severe roadblock for many businesses.
Joe
Alright, let's move on to number three aggressive sales tactics that alienate leads and offer deep discounts. So that was the old world, the New World, he
Frank
told you, I'm a fan of aggressive sales tactics. We're gonna
Joe
confuse everybody. Aggressive sales tactics, okay, new world would be product lead growth and consultative sales. So what's the difference here?
Frank
Yeah, so I mean, a little bit of this, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna bang on HubSpot here. For a moment on this report, a little bit of this isn't all that new, you know, I've been selling for a long time. And for as long as I can remember, we've talked about consultative selling, right? Like, that's how you differentiate and, and that's how you create value with buyers. And you can actually create a sales process that buyers would actually rate as like valuable unto itself. Now I'm
Joe
gonna stop you right there. Because even though you've been doing that, for a long time, we've been working with companies for a long time that this is new to them. This
Frank
is true, but you have to remember like, I didn't invent this. I've learned it from other great people as well. And so I've been around people in my career that have, you know, taught me and talked about consultative selling. And, you know, I've certainly added my own style and panache, if you will, but but the idea is, I didn't invent this, this is not that new. But But to your point, there are a lot of companies who still go about, you know, b2b selling in a very traditional salesy kind of way.
Joe
Well, my guess is HubSpot is saying that now, because there's a lot of data to support this in this report, based on their findings, people are starting to adopt this new method. So even though it existed, even though, people were using an even training on how to be consultative in their selling, it was not widely known or accepted. And I think it's starting to emerge as kind of the way to do it in this new world. Right.
Frank
Yeah. And then I think the idea behind product led growth is that you really look to your customer base, to help inform how you're developing products, and how that can be a growth engine for your brand. Hmm.
Joe
I think that talking about the way that we sell our own product and be helpful here. Yeah. consultatively. I mean, maybe you can walk us through, and we have in other episodes, but walk us through quickly the discovery phase on, you know, how do we actually bring value to our own prospects during the sales conversation?
Frank
Yeah, well, one of the things we do and we mentioned this, I'm not going to go into this whole process, because this gets really deep when we have I think, episodes, 14 and 15, if I recall, where you could go back, and we dive into this pretty deep, but essentially, right from the get go, we use first conversation as a filtering mechanism. And that Intuit unto itself is valuable, because we don't take the lens that we're trying to get that first phone call to convert into the second meeting, and improve our conversion rate, we actually expect that conversion rate to be really low. Because our goal isn't to move you into the second meeting, our goal is to actually help you get pointed in the right direction. And we know that the majority of people that we talk to are probably not a good fit for us. In fact, if you're doing your targeting, right, if you're doing your offering, right, there's a good percentage of people you'll need to filter out because you need to be able to set your client up for success and your team up for success. So right from the get go, you know, we're looking to get them pointing in the right direction. We make the assumption that probably isn't us, the majority of the time, maybe like 50 60% of the time, you know company comes to us, it's not for us. And so right away, we're looking to get them pointed in the right direction,
Joe
which we actually do. And we do not just turn them away, but actually say here is a great resource for you
Frank
we keep, we maintain an accurate list of people we can refer these companies out to, because that's part of the value we provide. So we do that right from call one. And then when we move into discovery and beyond, what we're looking to do is have very deep discussions that are actually less about the, you know, service we sell and more about understanding business, understanding the client's business, helping the client have some paradigm shifts in the way they think about their business. So even if they don't move forward, they can walk out that meeting feeling like they had some, they had some real value. And that's an aha moment. This, by the way, this happens all the time in our sales process. We had someone just the other day say, Wow, I'm going to change, how do I now present to investors and to potential clients, how we present you know, who we are in our concept in our in our deck. And so that kind of stuff happens all the time. But that can only happen if you if your aim is to bring value and not just make a sale,
Joe
so did your aggressive sales tactics ditch or consider ditching your deep discounts just to make the sale. Instead, you can want to try and bring some consultative, you know, value to each and every one,
Frank
I would think tactically, if you guys just want to implement something right away, just change the nature of your first call, that that initial, it's not the discovery, it's kind of the qualification call, or we call it the Connect call, just change the lens on that for your company, that your goal is to just help them get pointed in the right direction. And just understand that very well might not be your brand. And if you just make that lens shift, you'll start to have a better sales pipeline, you won't have a bunch of fake stuff in your pipeline, which is what happens in most sales pipelines. Most of it's fake, most of it's not real, most of it's not going to ever turn into business. That's because they let too much in. Okay, the
Joe
next one. Number four, it's customer service and success are cost centers at the old world. And the new world is customer service and success are profit centers. And I particularly like this one, this is interesting to me, because this is the crux of DevOps, right? This is making sure that the all of the difference of marketing, sales and service teams are in such alignment, that nobody is an actual cost, and nobody is an actual burden. You know, we've heard the four years that the marketing team is the first to go if you're gonna cut expenses, but that's not true. Right? They all have to work together in order to become profit centers. So let's talk about the difference between a cost center and a profit center when it comes to the services or these departments.
Frank
Yeah, so I think organizations often look at operations, which is where the product is delivered. And then there's like the separate unit called customer service or customer success. You know, in my worldview, I don't view those as separate areas you might have like, service and or success as part of operations, I get that you might have some distinct teams there. But they all live in operations, right? And whatever, you know, is about delivering the product. And so when I look at that, and I hear that their profit centers to me what that means is, how do we, how do we create such success with our clients, that they stay longer, they buy again, they buy more from what we have to offer, they refer other people to us, they leave us reviews, they agree to participate in case studies. That's what we're talking about. This isn't always just about, you know, increasing their contract come next track renewal period, it's about obsessing over their success so much that all of these great byproducts happen, and that your existing clients themselves become an economic engine. By the way, this is the drum I've been beating here at at Digitopia, it's the drum I've been beating with in the marketplace, with clients with prospects in that's you need to stop obsessing over the new, you need to start obsessing over the the assets that you have. Your assets that you have is your IP, your existing customers, it's your existing employees in your existing base, there is an economic engine that is untapped in most organizations. And if you were to put your emphasis that by the way, that's what we call top down optimization. And we've talked about this many times on this show, go back and listen to some previous episodes, where we talk about top down optimization. But this is where we optimize starting out the customer base, we ask ourselves, what are we doing to turn them into fans? which is essentially the question you asked around your customer success, right? Like that department, or whoever's in charge of that. What are we doing to turn them into fans? What are we doing to make them successful? Because if we obsess there and we start there, then by default, we're going to improve the product. Right, right. We're going to improve the product such that it's world class such that ultimately you're increasing LTV, because again They stay longer, they buy more, they refer more. They buy again, right? All of those things,
Joe
right? I think you can even take like customer success and the fan out of just the part of the delivery of the product and move it all the way up to when they first start interacting with the brand. I mean, that's really when they start to decide whether or not even if it's subconscious, right, whether or not they're going to be fans, or that's the journey. That's where the journey starts. And I think we might have mentioned this book before, but the no BS guide to maximum referrals and customer retention at the Dan Kennedy book, Dan Kennedy, one of my favorites, oh my gosh, so he talks a lot about this in that book. And there's actually a fun little formula in there that you can plug in your own numbers. And you can see how much you're leaving on the table by not maximizing, you know, the client experience and creating fans out of your current base. And if you just plug those numbers in and then plug in, you know, numbers to a formula that shows growth from new contacts, new prospects, it's it's wildly different, you have so much more potential by tapping into your current base, and just putting all of your efforts into making them fans, rather than going out and getting new new contacts in the database day after day.
Frank
Yeah, certainly getting new contacts, new new eyeballs, new opportunities as a part of your growth model, certainly. But the the economic engine, is, there's so much potential for your existing customer base to be your economic engine. And most companies have it backwards. They think that marketing, you know, because in sales were because those were the economic engine in the early days that they're always the economic engine. And I would suggest that if you flip it once you get established, so that your existing base as your economic engine, it forces you this is one thing I need everyone to understand. It forces you to obsess about your product value. Because if you don't obsess over that, you will get left behind your customers, you will become complacent and so will your customers and your customers will leave you. And so if you obsess about customer success, you're forced to bring maximum value with your offering. And it's so important to start there. Because if you do that, well check this out. All of those success stories, all those amazing examples of success, help your sales team close more deals. Guess what helps your marketing team put out better webinars which bring you more leads. As I'm telling you as a listener, your existing customer base and your obsession over their success is your economic engine. Makes a lot of sense. Period. End of story.
Joe
Yeah. Okay, last one, number five, sales and marketing bicker over success and failure that's in the old world. In the New World sales and marketing work as one,
Frank
kind of not a new idea, not a new idea here, right. This is again, we're all banging on HubSpot for kind of, you know, stating the obvious here. But in fact, they kind of coined the term Dan tire over there at HubSpot, marketing, right sales and marketing as one being aligned Kumbaya on one team. So I think that's something that's been talked about for quite some time. And I would say, you know, something that we talked about a moment ago, which is sales, marketing and service aligned as one, that's the real aha here is getting the service representative, whoever that executive team member is, at the table, working with both sales and marketing, as one team having a true this is where you get true rev Ops, right, instead of just shoe marketing, you can do that. Or you can have rev Ops, which brings service into the mix and brings the executive team into the mix. Now you're really operating as one unified team. And again, I'll go back to you know, service being the economic engine, I think that most organizations don't give enough clout and credit to the ops team, the team that's delivering the offering. They don't give enough. They don't lend enough of an ear to that ops team. Because really, what should happen is once a company is up and running and established, the ops team should be giving feedback to both marketing and sales as to what's working, what's not working, what kind of clients do you want more of? What kind of offering Do you want to sell more of what do you want less of that feedback needs to happen on a regular basis. And it's not happening in most organizations. Instead, what happens in most organizations is marketing generates a lead sales complains about it sales closes something and an ops complains that it was oversold. Right. That's what happens in most organizations, always. And so if you get these three teams together, along with the executive team and create a true rev ops team, and let the ops team, the head of service, if you let that team primarily dictate the offering, you're going to you're going to have a much better product in the end and have much more success
Joe
much and that's what we're looking for success, success.
Frank
Growth.
Joe
Okay, so we are moving into this new world whether you're ready or not
Frank
train has left this As leftists, and when they chew, it's gone.
Joe
Whether you consider it Old World five years ago or old world, January 2020, I mean, whatever it is, we're moving into a new world here. And revenue operations really is that philosophy really is what's going to make this all come together for you. And if you haven't already, you need to dive into learning a little bit more about what that is, you can do that, obviously, by going back to some of our previous episodes, we also have on our website, some good reading around it, but you need to need to start diving in. And you need to start figuring out how you're going to implement this in your own organization.
Frank
Yeah, we have some free tools and assets. There's a book that where we talk about high level strategy, all sorts of stuff for you at buildingyourdigitalutopia.com highly recommend you go there, lots of free stuff for you to engage with and in start really, on the journey towards grading this alignment and, and moving into, like you said, the New World, because the train has left the station. And so you got to get on board with this if you want your organization to be relevant and take advantage of every opportunity that's available to you today. So with that, this has been a fun episode. I really enjoyed talking about this report. We'll have to do this again sometime and start picking apart other people's stuff. So
Joe
we throw a link to this report up super fun.
Frank
We should put that in the show notes. DJ, can we do that? We can do that? Yeah, DJ is nodding his head. Yes. You don't hear him but he said yes. We're gonna have this in the show notes. link to this report. Also a link to buildingyourdigitalutopia.com will always be there. And folks, thanks for joining us. We're going to see you again for Episode 26 coming up soon. Take care.
