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MarTech Podcast
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To have reporting as part of your company sierra. Well have you ever spent a day. Nepean spreadsheets reconciling different data sources. Trying to figure out what's actually driving your business. Performance reality is that when teams use multiple systems the data informing your insights becomes incredibly difficult to reconcile and trust pubs spot. Sierra platform was built differently. It was handcrafted from the ground up and not cobbled together through acquisition so rather than having insights locked away in different silos systems. Your entire team has access to one unified system so you can align your team to a single source of truth and get a clear view of your businesses performance across marketing sales services. The whole team helps spot will help your team adapt and evolve as fast as the changes in your market by enabling you to make better smarter data back decisions through custom reporting and built in analytics to learn more about how you can scale your company without scaling complexity a hub spot dot com and this podcast is also sponsored by linked in marketing solutions. Let's pretend for a moment that you're about to launch a campaign. It tested well. Your entire team is happy. Everything is going according to plan except for the one thought in the back of your head. How do i ensure that the people i want to target are in the mindset to receive my message the answer is linked in because when you market on linked in your message reaches the people who are ready to do business and that means that your advertising campaigns will work as hard as it can as soon as you launch it there over sixty two billion decision-makers on linked in and that's why seventy eight percent of to marketers rate linked in as the most effective social media platform for their organization. I personally use linked in both as inorganic growth channel to syndicate our content and use it as an advertising channel to retarget mar tech podcast listeners. With some offers from our sponsors and hey the messaging platform is a great way to reach potential podcast guests as well so look whatever. Your marketing goals are from brand building to lead generation. Lincoln will help you reach your audience with the features that you know about like targeting by job title company name and location but you can also re target based on custom triggers from your website or even by uploading your crm lists and customize your campaign based on the action you want the customers to take so look do business where business is done and you can get one hundred dollars of advertising credits towards your first lincoln campaign. there's some terms and conditions that apply. But you can get it by going to lincoln dot com slash martin again. It's one hundred dollars off of your first linked in campaign but going the lincoln dot com slash mar tech all right. Here's the second part of my conversation with brendan red. Linger senior director of product marketing at ring dna brandon. Welcome back to the more tech podcast. Thanks for having me back then excited to have you back on the show excited to continue our conversation yesterday we talked about. Abm being strategic about who. You're prioritizing your marketing and your sales efforts and a big part of that is having your sales marketing team being on the same page. Actually driving some alignment. It seems like traditionally. That's not something that was easy to come across. I will quote glengarry glen ross or at least reference it. maybe this isn't a quote. Coffee is for closers. There's your quote but look it's always the marketing leads. That are the problem in. The sales team can't close sales marketing marketing blame sales and we never figure out who's to blame and that's the game that we play when we don't have marketing alignment. So what does it actually look like. When you do have marketing alignment and how the heck do you get there. You see a lot of people still writing about this still talking about it after all these years. But i think it's because it's really freaking hard to do because at the end of the day marketing cares usually. They're held to lead number or pipeline. Number sales is held to a actual revenue number. And i think a lot of the disconnect between cells marketing just stems right there. They're not actually measured in compensated on the same thing so for marketers. I do like to push them to be measured on as down funnel metrics as you can usually that's pipeline and then if you are held to a revenue number as well that's great and then also sales maybe they're compensated or comte a little bit differently not just on clothes one revenue but maybe a metric that it also aligns with marketing. It could be closed. I remember when i was in sales. So i actually started my career option sales for i got into marketing. One more thing. We have in common buddy but i remember the spreadsheet that i use to calculate my comp every month there was this gigantic sophisticated thing that i talked. A bunch of numbers and doing one of them was actually. How many leads that. I close that. We're passover so that actually aligns with marketings objective as well. Yeah the sales that i was doing. Wasn't that sophisticated. I was more running around from business to business trying to get him to by telephone services and water coolers. But that's another story for another day. My first job at a college wasn't a pretty thing. Meant yeah yeah. I hear ya most people's are but i think mine was especially terrible. What you're saying is there has to be. Kpi alignment that. We're all working towards the same thing so we should all be credited with the same metrics. Get not just kpi but aligned on comp a little bit closer to sure because if there's one thing i know about managing people as they respond to incentive and what's the biggest incentive that you have it's over their paycheck right big their beijing is if this number gets bigger. So will the number in your bank account. Which in theory megaton of sense but as a marketer. I'm sitting here saying look. My job is to get qualified leads to the sales team and if they stink at their job i still want to get my paycheck so i have to be dependent on them getting some not only through the top of the funnel but all the way through the bottom my jobs get him to the front door. Their job is to get him into the bedroom. If you know what i mean. And that's a harder sell literally that's why they are in sales so from marketer's perspective. I think i get a little anxious when my compass tied to the efficiency and effectiveness of the sales team. So how do we all work with the same metrics get along but not start pointing fingers and getting mad at each other when the numbers. Don't turn out to be what we want them to be. That's a good question. So a lotta times. Sales has no idea what marketing does all day. They think all we do is write blogs posts on social media record podcasts. That's how they think we'd like the arts and crafts department. But i don't think they understand everything that we do. I don't think they understand what we can do to actually help them a lot of the stuff that we talked about yesterday. With accelerating deals are helping deals close becoming more aligned with their accounts at day care about closing. They don't know that we can do this stuff for them and a lot of times. Marketers aren't proactive in going out and saying hey sales rep. Here's an account that you care about. Here's an idea that i have that we can actually close. That will help close deal. That really doesn't happen that much. So i do think a lot of times. If you're currently not on the same page it can be just as easy as that you know yesterday when we were talking about. Abm as a marketing strategy. One of the things that you referenced was that marketers are using abm to stay in front of customers that have passed. The sales accepted lead stage. And they're doing the mid funnel marketing to make sure that that leads stays warm and that the company stays top of mind and to me. This is an indication that it's not just about kpi alignment. It's also understanding what the system of record is and making sure that both parties are working from kind of same or at least a similar tech stack. Not my job as a marketer is not only to drive someone to the front door. It is to put a sign showing where the stairs are and then put the lights on in the bedroom. I know dragging metaphor out. Far too long mildly inappropriate. But let's keep rolling with for now look the marketer's job is not just to say great. Give me your email. It is to understand where in the buying funnel the prospect is and to keep presenting them with relevant information that will help them move. Farther in the sales cycle at the end of the the sales team is going to be responsible for negotiating the deal and hopefully being persuasive enough to get the lead to become a customer but marketing can play a key and sophisticated role in that to talk to me about using the same system or at least marketing still engaging with leads after they've been acquired as a sales accepted lead. I think that's actually a great point. Because a lotta times marketing working out of marquette cells as martinez sales are working out of salesforce and sometimes the data doesn't match up so when one system says one thing one says another what's correct the marketers your marketing arguing and just further perpetuates the problem. That's why i go back to having a navien platform like damn base. That really is gonna be that source of truth. So that it ingests the data from your salesforce and your marchetto and follow your other systems and then make sure that your sales marketing teams are looking at the exact same thing and then you can decide how to act from there. So it's not one leader stuck here one. We just suck over here. It's not your system. Says one thing minds us something else. What's right it's not. We're all looking at the same data. We're all looking at the same accounts. Were all working off of the same information and now we can actually focus on the things that matter like going on selling those accounts at the end of the day when i think about marketing and sales alignment there's really three components to this mentioned incentives. Making sure that everybody is motivated by the same outcomes right. It's not just about getting leads to the front door. It's about getting customers. Driving revenue and both marketing and sales are gonna play a crucial part in getting those new customers. The second is working on the same system of record or working on systems that are talking to each other making sure that the marketers are marketing all the way through the funnel and making sure that sales knows that marketing is creating materials collateral and notifications that held understand what stage a lead is in so they know what the appropriate next step is. I think the third thing that we didn't talk about is the people component. There's a communication component here. Where all the. Kp is all the alignment all of the you know financial rewards all the systems and marceca re that we could do. They don't mean shit if the people don't talk to each other and get on the same page in terms of who's doing what and what needs to be said to the most important leads so i guess the last question for you is. How do you make sure that your marketing sales teams are actually talking to each other to make sure that there is alignment not only on. Who's responsible for what from a technology from an outreach perspective but that we understand the actual stages and howev specific lead is being managed. I think there are a few things here one like. I'm going to set expectations from the beginning. This is before were even selecting our target accounts. We actually didn't even talk about tearing. But i think tearing our target accounts is maybe we can get into a little bit more. Maybe not. i think that helps with being able to scale. Abm but from the beginning you align with sales and say here are all of the resources that you now get from marketing. That's intent data. That's your direct mail that you're vip programs. Everyone sending out wine kits these days like there's all of these things that marketing can do because marketing has a lot of the budget. Marketing has a lot of the technology here other things that they can do to help. You closed the deals that you care about but on the other hand marketing expects a bunch of things from you and that's everything from. Sla's too you can. I've even seen people put making sure you're meeting with the marketing team or at least eurabia marketer once a week. There's a lot of things that they need to agree to at the same time before you can just say great. Here's all of the extra resources that you have to help. Close your accounts. And then i really do. A lot of it is just building. Trust going back to know retired about earlier sales thinking that marketing is just the arts and crafts department. Well if we can go get some early wins. We can socialize. Abm within the company we can do a little bit more like internal marketing with our abm programs. It builds that trust with the sales team that oh yes the marketing team does actually care about of this thing things that i care about and they actually do want to help and a lotta selves up. Just never take that perspective then once they gain that trust wants the gain that credibility with sales then the communication lines open then you're talking regularly then healthier in slacks in meetings and one on one a lot more frequently with your sales team and when that happens then everyone gets more visibility into a tap that target accounts so you can deliver a much more rather than rushmore personal and much better experience for those target accounts at the end of the day. When you're thinking about reaching sales and marketing alignment. I think there's three important components to consider from a management perspective. You're looking at aligning incentives. Making sure that everybody is rowing the same direction and at the same a gold at the end of the same rainbow. You need to talk about technology or the systems that you're using talking to each other and making sure that marketing knows where somebody is after the lead has been acquired all the way through your nurture campaigns down into your bottom of funnel direct response type stuff. And you also need to make sure that you're communicating between the two teams and this isn't just an executive level communication. This can be down to pairing your sdr. And you're a e with an abm marketer. Making sure that there is some sort of touch point for marketing and sales to stay in sync and manage it down to even at times. The individual lead level reaching sales and marketing alignment is something that can have a gigantic impacts on your revenue making sure that everyone in your marketing and sales organization is focused on the same things working towards the same goals can have a huge impact on your performance. And that wraps up. This episode of the mar tech podcast. Thanks for listening to my conversation with brandon. Red linger the senior director of product marketing at ring dna. If you'd like to get in touch with brandon you can click on the link to his linked in profile on our show notes. You can contact him on. Twitter handle is brandon underscore lee underscore oh nine. Vr a. n. d. n. underscore l. e. underscore the number zero the number nine or you can visit his company's website which is ring. Dna dot com a special. Thanks to hub spot for sponsoring this podcast. If you're ready to align your team to a single source of truth to get a clear view of your business performance across marketing sales services the whole team hub. Spot will enable your team to adapt and evolve as fast as the changes in your market through data back decisions with powerful custom reporting and built in analytics to learn more about how you can scale your company without scaling complexity could hub spot dot com and also a special thanks to linked in marketing solutions. For sponsoring this podcast. It's time for you to do business. Where business gets done and you can get one hundred dollars of advertising credits towards your first linked campaign. there's some terms and conditions that apply. But you can get one hundred bucks off if you're launching that first campaign by going to linked in dot com slash martic again. That's lincoln dot com slash mar tech. Just one more lincoln our show notes. I want to tell you about if you didn't have a chance to take notes while you're listening to this podcast head over to marc tech pod dot com where we have summaries of all of our episodes and contact information for our guests. You can also subscribe once a week newsletter and you can even send your topic suggestions or your marketing question which will answer live on our show. Of course you can always reach out on. Social media are handle is martic pod. Marta c. h. p. o. d. unlinked twitter instagram and facebook. Or you can contact me directly. My handle is benjy shop. Be nj sha p. and if you haven't subscribed yet and you wanna daily stream of marketing and technology knowledge in your podcast feed. We're gonna publish an episode every day this year so the subscribe button and your podcast nap. We'll be back in your feet tomorrow morning. all right. that's it for today but until next time my advice is to just focus on keeping your customers.

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