Be especially in a medium sized company. The sales people are what the executives envision as their connection for the market. So that creates this divide between the two groups right out of the box right and what we see is that typically like we're here in houston so lots of energy related companies right lots of companies that have been hugely successful for twenty thirty years right and very very sales driven and then for whatever reason after twenty or thirty years just sending sales people out to go. Knock on doors the lights on. They've decided you know what we need to start. Investing in digital marketing. And so here. They are trying to inject these new types of opportunities into an old school sales. So we find ourselves very often helping customers manage that transition if you don't come at it as a marketer with the perspective of a marketer knowing like you mentioned earlier the mindset of a buyer when they engage with that form and really thinking about that in building a process that is based on that journey that the buyer needs to go through then. You're really going to damage the rely on the entire campaign. so it's a cultural change ultimately to talk to me more about the overlap between marketing sales and mentioned in the beginning of the podcast that crm was traditionally a sales driven tool but now there is the notion of the blending of sierra understanding the relationship marketing email and even prospecting is building into crm whereas the marketing part start where does overlap with sales. And when is it really just sales teams responsibility. Well i mean ultimately they're both overlapped completely right in a perfect world. That's the way it would work. Because even when i'm closing a deal as a salesperson there are messages that my customers are going to receive one way or the other my retargeting ads or the email campaign to happen to be on or whatever's in a perfect world does should all work well together. And that's what we try to achieve. I mean that's kind of an ideal in. It's not as if there's not technology out there that does all of this. We're different in that we've simplified combined it into one solution that's easy medium size organization doesn't have a big back office staff manage it all and connected all and maintain it all so the way we make things work for our customers is. The sales process instantly drives the marketing messages. So as soon as you come in as a conversion and engage with the salesperson we begin to learn information about you in that goes into the crm then that changes the messaging that you're seeing right so even as you're down at the closing end of funnel the crm's using that information to change the messaging that you're getting so that's in a perfect world right. Most companies developing all the content. That would be needed to support all of the nuances and their sales processes probably a little bit beyond their scope. So let's talk about a practical example. I use what. I used my. Crm i think of it in three different stages specifically i'm talking about for my consulting business where have a networking pipeline right. There's a list of people that i'm trying to reach. I want to set a meeting with them. Understand what their business is about and understand if there is an opportunity for us to work together. and so i've built out a pipeline in my crm that has multiple stages about whether i've engaged with the person with our have set up a meeting my follow up of the meeting or as the conversation lapsed in my done and the goal of those meetings is to try to generate opportunities for my business development pipeline. Which is a separate pipeline. Where i'm looking at. Do i have a contact at the company. I'm trying to sell to meet the decision maker have a had a meeting with that. Have i scoped a project. Have i submitted a statement of work. And then i have a separate pipeline. Which is is this person a customer have. They signed the contract of a sentiment invoice have. We had our kickoff call. Is it an active relationship. Are they past due or is it time to talk about an extension. Right and i have three separate pipelines and the goal of one pipeline is to drive someone either into the next pipeline or into the. You know this is a lapsed customer. So you're saying is basically marketing automation component of sales next as the way that your platform works as as someone moves for one of those stages it would change the language that's being sent out to them in the marketing automation technology using the marketing automation technology. That's right and you described it as kind of three stages and typically what we see is at the top of the funnel. There's the need to focus on customers hain bright like what is the problem that they have that drove them to fill out your form right. Let's stay focused on that at the top of the funnel once we get down to as you described. We've had that meeting you've uncovered an opportunity than it's really at that point more about establishing credibility so that's where things like case studies testimonials and things like that come into play so just that one little chain right being able to automatically switch somebody from a. You have a problem. We have a solution type of female campaign to a. Here's how we yielded success for our customers type of campaign as they moved through the funnel just that one. Little change can be huge. It's really interesting as you're saying this i'm realizing that. The top portion this sort of vetting and prospecting component that i've been setting up in my pipeline that is really the process of learning about who the customer is and what their pain points are like that is the learn process and then the second pipeline that i've set up is really about credibility right. You're not selling. You're not asking someone to buy something. You are educating them and building credibility and really. Don't start selling in till the third part which is. Hey this is where there is. Overlap between what your pain is. And how i've supported by customers. Here's what i can offer you. do you want it. Yeah that's a good way to think about it and you know there's a lot of different kinds of sales organizations out there right so there's the sales people that have been trained in some sort of consultative sales which is a very close to what you just articulated bright and then there's sales people that have none of that kind of experience right. They're just going for the clothes on every call so the marketing messages. Half the reflect. The sales approach well right so we talked about earlier being able to nurture leads in this way right and win the salesperson just gives up this deal's not gonna close. I got to focus on the people that i am going to close this month so i can hit my numbers. We want to make sure that those people go onto some kind of drip campaign. That's where i see. Most companies just really are missing opportunity because in beat. Be for sure where. It's not so much of an impulse type of thing. The reason people don't buy is almost never because they're saying i don't want to ever do business with you. It's almost always other things that are really out of the control of the brand. It's things like well. Our budget doesn't start until next january. Or the ceo's on vacation or whatever right we're under contract until november with another vendor stuff like that. I'll use a dating metaphor. It's right person right place right time and if one of those variables is at a whack. You're they're not getting a first date or you're not selling your services and i can make dating and sales metaphors all day long. They're often very similar. So you just gotta be there when six months from now. Something changes in their world. And all sudden. It's the right time you wanna be the last message that got when they break up their boyfriend. Then you gotta be ready exact girlfriend. Hey whatever you're into so talk to be a little bit more about that nurture phase when you're going through the pipeline when you're learning about them you're trying to build credibility or you're actually getting to the point where you're selling and they're just not ready at that time there. Something that's missing. How do you keep the relationship alive. And had you still preserved some momentum so when they are ready your top of mind. Well i think that it can be more nuance than this. Of course but at a real simple level he wanted to go back to the pain right and just keep offering valuable content that space saying hey if you have this problem then. Here's some tips. Here's some tricks. Here's some interesting stuff. That may be helpful to you. So that's how you're gonna keep that line of communication open as long as possible right because if you keep going for the clothes in your email messages for instance eventually you're going to annoy them and turn them off in their and subscribe right so you want to go back to. I can just be helpful here right and then when your problem get significant enough that you need more help than what. I'm sending you to download a five tips and a pdf for watch my video or whatever then call me i'm here. We'll talk about how it can help in other ways. That's interesting because i would think that the nurture content changes depending on where someone is in the funnel right. If somebody is in the learn phase doing nurture content that talks about how to address the pain. Make sense if somebody gets to that credibility portion. And they're not ready to move forward. You're not necessarily saying. Hey here's more information about why we're credible about why we're the best. You're going back and saying his is still your pain point. Is that just because you're simplifying the process here. Who is that really a best practice of like no matter where someone is in the funnel. Just keep reminding them that. There is a way to address the pain that they're feeling no. It's a really good going. And like i said it can't be more nuance like for instance. You may have a major competitor. That when you lose a deal. It's almost always to them. Well when you know. That's what happened in a given deal. Maybe you want a set of messages that really contrast you with that. That's a real simple example. But also i try to keep it pretty simple especially for a medium size organizations jumping into this for the first time it doesn't have to be very nuance really what you're wanting to do is just maintain the brand awareness over a period of time that's ninety percent of the battle the asked me for marketers. Keeping a constant stream of impressions is always something that's important. That's why you see multichannel marketing being effective right. It's why one of the reasons gear at the mar tech podcast. We focus on staying in front of our customers across multiple different channels for a long period of time. We tried to do it in a lightweight just presenting the content because building. Your brand is not just making a strong impressions. It is about having a presence over a long period of time Craig any last words for today about why. Snb's need a crm solution. What's the biggest reason why they don't have one well. The achilles heel of the crm world of course is that sales. People hate us right. So that's the biggest reason why most companies don't have the management just has figured out a way to twister buys arm enough to get them to us so that's another reason. Why doing this type of thing to me is a win win for everybody involved. It's a win for the business because what you're doing is given the sales people a reason to play the game with the cro as he just keep the crm up today. The system's gonna do this work for you and you're going to build up this huge hopper of leads that you talk to over the last six months or a year that didn't buy and they're going to be coming back to you. I mean that's valuable salespeople. Get that but the flip side of that is that there's a huge win for the marketing group as well right so again in a small medium sized business maybe they're making that first big investment in say edwards or something like that to drive traffic to the site. Well the first thing they're gonna find out is they can drive conversions with all sorts of different techniques and tactics in ad words but then they hand them off to the sales people in they have absolutely no way to know whether the leads come from that landing page or that ad campaign are the ones that sales people are closing or is it the lease come from that other landing page that other at you know they just lose the track so when it comes to go into the board meeting at the end of the quarter and reporting on the results of your advertise i spent a hundred thousand dollars in s- quarter what came from. Well i got x. Number of leaks. I got this number conversions. That's all you can say. 'cause in sales guys are not going to give you credit. They're not going to say we hit our numbers. This quarter because of all those great leads for marketing. They're going to say it was our wonderful selling right and all the great relationships. We already have and things like that. So you've got to be able to tie that together in if you don't have all this information in one system you really can't so that's one thing that i'm really excited about. We just released a new capability that literally tracks the conversions coming in based on edwards ad group in that kind of fine detail so that now you can do a pipeline route or in a close report that says i might be getting a lot of conversions from this ad where i'm spending a lot of money advertising but i'm not closing over here i've got this ad campaign that i'm not really emphasizing spending a lot of money on it but percentage wise are closing a bunch of those leads so it's redirect that advertising spending based on what's happening in the sales process. That's a huge game changer. In terms of optimizing your digital marketing investments. We've seen that in our business and it's changed everything i think that's a good point as that. A crm system allows you to capture the data. Not only from your marketing efforts but connected to sail. So you're able to see and to end from what campaign is driving impressions to web conversions and form fills and then are those actually being closed and producing revenue and so that end to end reporting is something that's really powerful to not just optimize drive people to and through your website and make sure they're actually creating business results. So that wraps up this episode of the mar tech podcast. Thanks to craig klein. The president and ceo of sales nexus for joining us in part two of this interview. Which we're gonna publish tomorrow. Craig is going to tell us how to set up a crm so your sales team and marketing teams. Actually use it if you can't wait until our next episode and you'd like to learn more about craig you can click on the link to his linked in profile in our show notes. You can send him a tweet at craig. Klein cr aig k. l. e. i n. or visit his company's website. They've set up a special page for the mar tech podcast. It's sales nexus dot com slash mar tech s. a. l. e. s. any ex. Us dot com slash martic a special. Thanks to hub spot for sponsoring this. Podcast don't forget that the inbound twenty twenty one conferences coming on october twelfth through the fourteenth. So if you want inspiration if you'd like to grow your network or learn from global leaders in business and media like oprah winfrey spike lee you know me head over to inbound dot com. That's i n. b. o. u. n. d. dot com check out their lineup or register for free inbound 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 lincoln campaign. there's some terms and conditions apply. But you can get one hundred bucks off if you're launching that first campaign by going to lincoln dot com slash martic. Again that's lincoln dot com slash marshek. A couple of links in our show notes. I'd like to tell you about if you didn't have a chance to take notes while you're listening to this podcast. Just head of itamar tech pod dot com. We've summaries of all of our episodes and contact information for our guests. If you're a subscriber the mar- tech podcast. We'd love to hear from you. So we created benji shop dot com slash question. Where you can send us your topic suggestions or your marketing questions. Which will answer live on our show. Of course you can always reach out on social media as well. My handle is benjy shop b. e. n. j. s. h. a. p. on lincoln and on twitter. And if you haven't subscribed yet and you want a daily stream of marketing technology knowledge in your podcast feed in addition to part two of our conversation with craig klein the president and ceo of sales. Nexus.