Why Sales Leaders Should Put Marketing in the Room

Paul Clinton: Hey there, it's Paul Clinton again, Host of the B2B Marketing how to Stand out podcast. And this episode is all about uh, alignment between sales and marketing, uh, you know, how to do it, uh, what are some ways uh, from a sales lens to bring marketing into um, these relationships with the customer and ongoing uh, um, discussions and presentations and relationships during like longer sales cycles. Uh, we, we interviewed um, Aaron Walker who was recently the global vice president of direct sales for Lytics, uh, which is a near Enterprise uh SaaS company. And we asked uh, Erin a uh, number of these questions. She had some great ideas. Uh, so I hope you enjoy the interview. Um, hey Erin, uh, so thanks again for joining us uh, on the B, uh 2B marketing you know how to Stand out podcast. Kind uh, of just wanted uh, to get your perspective. You' got a lot of great experience in the enterprise doing direct sales, um, you know, with, with pretty big customers. Um, so I think you're going to have a lot of insights uh, for us. Um, but you know, kind of wanted to just talk to you a little bit upfront about um, this idea of um, alignment between sales and marketing. It seems like um, you know, this can look slightly different in different organizations and some companies, um, kind of put it under uh, this umbrella, uh, revenue oper revops. Um, but I kind of wanted to just get your thoughts on, on you know, how important uh, is that um, when it comes to trying to do messaging and positioning work, um, you know, how important is it for you to kind of have, you know, have alignment there?

Aaron Walker: The relationship between sales and marketing is critical and I've found that it has been um, a vital resource for me to have strong alignment on the marketing side. Um, marketing likes to paint the picture of the product and what we really do in the marketplace, in the market and how we can differentiate. Sales often will see that but then they, they regurgitate it in their own way. But having a clear line and a collaboration between your field marketing team, the marketing product marketing team, the technical team and the sales team to understand what is it that we really do in business value selling and business solution selling. I think having that relationship with the marketing team is extremely critical and, and

Paul Clinton: some uh, some sales leaders will say um, you know, marketing isn't really my thing. You know, I leave that to the marketing team. Um, you know, how do you view it and how do you view like what is the role of sales in um, the development of the messaging, um, of you know, what we say? Of course, you know, we hear the phrase Sales is closest to the customer. Um, so you know certainly um, the uh, marketing team can learn a lot from uh, listening to perhaps recorded gone calls or transcripts or things like that. But um, what are some like specific you know, tactics or ways that you kind of get um, that you know, better alignment. Um, so you can do the messaging and the positioning in a more effective way.

Aaron Walker: So it goes much further than after the sale or hey, here's a beautiful package, a first call deck of go to market. Here's, here's, here's everything for you. Go do it. I think it's really incumbent on from a leadership perspective and it's where I put a lot of emphasis on my role is to ensure that I'm crossing paths with everyone from a marketing standpoint, my product team and the technical aspects to understand most importantly what is it that sales is hearing? Because if there is a disconnect between what we're putting into the market and what we're really hearing from our customers, we need to mitigate that. More than 70% of our customers today, no matter the product line that you're selling in B2B, they do their research, they understand and know uh, who they're going to go to market with and evaluate. And so the marketing team is vital to ensure that they understand and know why we win. How do we differentiate between the competitors in the marketplace? And so where I have been extremely successful is partnering with field marketing to understand and bring them along. If we are at an event, I anticipate that they are there. They're listening to the customer's pain points. We're not leading with product, we are leading with asking questions and getting very inquisitive so that we come back with a solution that best meets their needs. And then probably the most important piece is then after the sale. So once you win, whether I win or I lose, um, on the back end it's really getting an understanding of how did we differentiate when we were doing a win loss analysis or then how did I lose? And understanding really where should I improve from there, A sales perspective or a uh, launch perspective within the product.

Paul Clinton: I know some sales teams like in the CRM you can track either close one or closed lost reason. The reason for that, uh, and how important is a data field like that in your CRM? Um, and sort of putting together um, kind of like the more common, um, I guess you could say objections or reasons why we didn't get the deal. Um, I mean is that something that we need to have top of mind?

Aaron Walker: I think Directionally, yes, absolutely. But in most cases you can have um, a drop down in Salesforce or whatever your CRM, um, uh, of choice is. I think that directionally, yes, but it has to be relevant and there has to be a consistent ongoing checks and balances or are we capturing the right data within the CRM? Directionally that gives you the great insights. But more importantly, um, as sales leaders, it is incumbent on us. If we're going into a big, a big account or a large account and you're having customer conversations, don't limit it to just the sales team or the customer success team or the technical team. Bring your product team and product marketing team or field marketing team along for the ride. As long as you have a marketing voice in the room that is a clear differentiator. Because I can tell you today in most of the companies that I've been at, bringing those product individuals or marketing individuals along for the ride so they can hear, yeah, they eat that up, they love it. And more importantly, it gives me credibility that I'm not one person asking for an enhancement on the platform. Because oftentimes as we go through and we look at the roadmap review, does sales have a seat at the table? Yes. But often if I don't have the buy in from my CTO internally, my CMO internally, if I don't have those same level of inputs from other executives, then my voice is often yes, that's maybe one customer or maybe that's two customers. If I have other executives that absolutely have had it, had that exposure and that engagement, it gives us more ammunition to help make improvements faster to the product.

Paul Clinton: In the roadmap, do you have a thought about having the marketing leader or marketing person in the room, so to speak, uh, on the sales call or is it more kind of uh, uh, a post mortem where they're taking a look at some of the call transcripts or some of the notes in the CRM and they're kind of getting it

Aaron Walker: that way, having some tools and resources, example being like gong, that gives you great insights of uh, who's leading calls. Is it more customer or is it sales or is it product or is it tech? That gives you great directional insight, especially as you look at larger customers. Um, for your specific question, if you have someone that's in the room and they're from, from product, to be very fair, they're an executive representing your customer, your company. So my anticipation is that they don't necessarily, they bring an added value to a business leader. Right. So customers see Us, uh, as sales, sometimes they see someone else as support. When they hear someone that understands and knows the technology and they also understand the pain points, they have same similarity stories. They actually have more credibility and they give me a differentiator, just as a company in general, when I allow for their engagement not only at that meeting, but that customer also has an additional name and resource after the actual transaction and sale.

Paul Clinton: Yeah. And tell me that sounds great. So you sound like you involve the product marketing team a lot more. Um, you know, is there, is there kind of a risk of, of it kind of becoming a little too pitchy or a little too technical? I mean, it sounds like you're, you're, you're kind of trying to, you know, in your sales process, you, it sounds like you're trying to uncover, um, you know, pain points and trying to, um, deal with, you know, deal with it from kind of a bigger picture layer, you know, whereas a lot of times we hear, you know, don't get too technical, don't pitch your product too much, you know, in the, in the, in these discovery calls. But is that a concern for you or is it more like you said, just kind of a, like the, um, you know, the walking encyclopedia on the product that can, you know, answer, you know, and clarify when needed, uh, more

Aaron Walker: so, especially as you have larger transactions. It should be more of a conversation, executive to executive. We're having a conversation to understand and to best, uh, address the concerns in your business. Why are we even talking today? Right. It doesn't necessarily have to do with the widget or software solution. It really has to do with what you're trying to address in your business. And so bringing someone from the product marketing side, what they get to hear is two different things. They get to hear exactly what the problems are in the, in the customer's environment. And very first and foremost, they also have a big influence on. Has our marketing been addressing that, have we actually been addressing those pain points in our last few strategies? Because if it's been a complete miss, they're hearing it directly from the customer. So from a, from a employee standpoint, uh, my field marketing team, they get that insight right away from a customer standpoint. And then from my sales team's perspective, I have an added resource that's having conversations that maybe my AE or myself, maybe we haven't been into in front of a customer. Let's say this is in construction. We haven't been in front of a construction customer in the last six months. That's specific to this particular use Case. But my product marketer knows exactly what's happening, has seen two or three of these issues and we've onboarded them and they've been a part of that. They add that instant credibility of um, what it is that's in that industry now. I could, I could regurgitate that. My sales team could absolutely do that. And we are still seen as trusted advisors. But what's really impactful is to have someone else that has nothing to do with sales really give that point of clarity as to how we differentiate. So the way to I utilize anyone in the marketing piece, especially when we're face to face it, is to establish and build credibility and relationships, not necessarily to push product or to push the company.

Paul Clinton: Yeah. And you know, you mentioned something that I love right there is, is um, you know, kind of this targeted approach to like industry verticals. You know, taking a look at some of the industry verticals that, that you're selling into or marketing into and really trying to better understand that. And um, you know, like we've worked with um, clients where we've helped them build these targeted landing pages for different industry verticals. And they've been pretty helpful, kind of, you know, high intent, um, kind of landing pages for certain things like that. But, but how important is that to really, um, do some of that more, um. I don't know, I guess you could call it audience segmentation, but to kind of get into the weeds a little bit more into um, the different industries and the different um, M niches that the company is kind of selling into and really understanding that and speaking to that in a more detailed way.

Aaron Walker: Yeah, that 100%, that is, that is definitely an area looking at the segmentation of an industry and what's happening within the industry. And when you walk in, oftentimes my sales team will say, how is it that you were able to build a relationship so quickly? And it's not because of the product and it's not because of uh, who necessarily I am. It's more I did the research to understand the industry and I understood the pain points and I did maybe some additional review as to how I should best lead with whether it's the customer segmentation. And that gives me instant credibility walking in the room. Never should we have to pitch, especially now in this, in this current economy. We're truly pitching the way we did five years ago, let alone two years ago. It really comes down to understanding me as a client, understanding what's the problem in my environment and how are you best going to address it. Because really the reality of everything is whether I'm selling software, um, I'm selling hardware, I'm selling anything to you as a customer, I need to understand that after that point of sale, I can still trust that we have the same level of engagement and support that is the most critical piece on the back end. Because again, they're doing 70 to 75% of their research online. They're making the determination about pricing, industry leader, product, all of the things that we use to spend a significant amount of time in concepts on. They're doing a lot of that research so that they can accelerate and actually show impact to their business after that sale. They want to continue to have that reliable, trusted relationship with you.

Paul Clinton: And what does that look like? You know, kind of going back to the messaging part which, which I care a lot about is, is, you know, talking to these different industry verticals. I mean is that something that is kind of up to marketing to, to kind of figure out or you know, where can sales collaborate, you know, with marketing on the messaging piece? Does marketing do the product marketing people or the growth marketing people? Do they, you know, like in your experience, you know like fully understand these industry verticals as well as the sales team does, or is that ah, you know, how do you collaborate like a little bit more specifically in kind, um, of getting messaging that isn't just sort of surface level and generic and broad, um, that talks about, you know, I see a lot of messaging on websites that's just too broad. You know, it just talks about big picture stuff. Um, but when you get into the messaging on some of these specific verticals, you have to be more specific. So, so how do you, how do you um, how do you do that? I guess, um, do you have some thoughts on how you, how you pull something like that off?

Aaron Walker: Yes. And so let me get a little bit more specific for you, um, in how I have been very effective in it. I believe, I truly believe from a sales perspective and my teams, my sales teams would all tell you marketing always has a seat at the table. Uh, it is a collaboration between the sales team, marketing team, products. I put them together and I'll always put them together. They've always had a seat at the table. In a weekly team meeting, they always have a seat at the table. If we're going to go on customer on site, they've always had a seat at the table with qprs and M. The reason being is marketing is putting the, a lot of great campaigns together in the go to market strategy and what we need to go do, to drive, to hit a certain revenue target. So that marketing sales plan, the msp is critical, but they also need to understand what's really happening in the real world. And so giving them that opportunity in, in a lot of companies that, that relationship between the two, sometimes it's very friction. There's a lot of friction between the two. It's incumbent on the sales leader to make sure that in my job, no matter what company I'm with, no matter what solution I'm putting into the market, I need to be able to bring everyone to the table. And that relationship needs to be very collaborative. So specifically, let's talk about transportation most recently. So having something like a fleet solution, being very closely aligned with my field marketing team, we're going out on um, to conferences, we're going out, we're doing CIO level dinners. We're, you're getting that Facebook engagement. The great thing about that is there are metrics behind the scenes that my field marketing team is looking at to say are these very effective? Are we hitting the mark? Are we having the right conversation? Are we giving the right messaging? Because that should then correlate to the pipeline that's being attributed back to the business on a much more broader scale. I bring in my product team not only to say, hey, we're going out to meet with these partners, right? So we have some very large partners that actually attribute to a lot of our deals and opportunities that are net new. Are we hitting the mark in the, in the actual resale ecosystem? Do the resale partners understand exactly what we're giving to the end customer? And so that relationship 100% is incumbent on the sales leader to ensure that marketing has that voice because otherwise what will happen is we will go to market with a campaign. We will anticipate, we're going to get XYZ increase in pipeline generation. It falls flat and ultimately responsibility falls to the market team. I own that. My perspective, it's a 50, 50. We should be doing this together so they always have a seat at the table. And I think that's the most powerful piece that I want to convey is that it's our responsibility as sales leaders to bring them.

Paul Clinton: Yeah. And you know, we just did actually our last podcast was just um, marketing in the partner channel and messaging in the partner channel. And that's a very interesting, interesting kind of dynamic where m. You have to, you have to approach it and look at the diff, uh, the messaging differently. Uh, because you're, you're not talking as much to like an end user, you're talking more to another business that needs to see the value in bundling what they do and what you do and going to market is kind of a bundle. Uh, so that's kind of different, different messaging. And that's a whole other conversation which we'll, we'll let there, we'll let the listeners listen to the last one I did for that. Um, but talk a little bit about. I want to just kind of move you back to the um, sales funnel. Um, you know the way we kind of look at it as three stages. We look at it as like traffic to mql, MQL to SQL and SQL to opportunity. And we kind of see you know, um, messaging opportunities at each of those points and each of those handoffs or conversions. Uh, and we talk a lot about you know, um, the messaging that marketing does. But I kind of wanted to get your thoughts on kind of that last stage of the pipeline when we're going from uh, an SQL to opportunities. So maybe it's like a presentation call or something or follow ups or um, looking at your sales decks and how they're framing um, the problems. But what opportunities do you see um there um, to kind of refine the messaging, um, where sales is um, you know, really directing, directly impacting, you know that with, with the messaging do you, do you involve marketing, the marketing, um, you know folks at all at that point or um, how do you make sure that um, that kind of what you're saying is not only aligned with what you said before but, but is, is working.

Aaron Walker: So your, your topic is a great topic because you see that maturation of the pipeline and then all of a sudden it gets to a point where, and it doesn't necessarily, it seems to be a clip, right? It either stays and eventually is closed, lost or it does move through the next natural stages. Um, about two companies ago, my company. I'll go ahead and I'll tell you with sitecore we did a phenomenal job of uh, actually looking at the maturation of the pipeline. And so I think sales is extremely important. So as I'm doing forecast reviews with my sales team I follow a cadence. So in weeks 3, 6, 9 and 12 throughout the course of a quarter, you're always looking at your existing pipeline to ensure that you're hitting what was committed to the business in weeks. Um, three and nine are probably the most important on pipeline generation. And this is exactly where marketing comes to the table. Um, I have them a part of these calls because um, no matter the size of Company, you typically have a bdr, a business development rep that's gone through the motions, handed a dealer opportunity off to a, uh, sales account executive to take it to the next level. And so I start to look at age of deals and the maturation by stage as we have those leads come through. And so together as a team, what I absolutely am very purposeful on is I have BDR on those particular weeks. Let's really talk about why these deals were opportunities, how you uncovered them, and then the handoff and then the next is then I talk with the sales team. I have the sales team. Give us a quick readout. If you think about the size of it doesn't matter the size of company, your teams are scaled appropriately. You're only doing this two to three times throughout the course of a quarter. One, it's giving marketing insight as to what's coming in those MQLs that are coming through as they're being handed off what is next stage. And so more often than not, because what I was finding as a sales leader is that pipeline was filling up, but then it was dropping off by quarter. And what I wanted to do was mitigate that risk. So throughout the course of your quarter, you should absolutely be closing deals. But most importantly, we are looking to fill the funnel and maturing that pipeline along. So that's what I found, is that you have to put the visibility on those MQLs and the SQLs have to make sure that you're very diligent in making sure that teams are talking, we're talking to the customer. We're not leaving things until the customer's ready. Um, now to give you a great example, what marketing may be hearing or the BDR sales leader might hear as we go through those calls is, you know what, we're maybe a little too early. That's not really a sales qualified lead yet. This customer is only looking for questions to be answered. They're not necessarily ready to make an investment. That's not a sales opportunity. And then from a sales perspective, we have to then be okay with. But there's still a need. Do we go ahead and move this into a pipeline phase and then start nurturing that? Um, from a business standpoint, you have to be very cognizant of how you want that defined because you never want to lose those opportunities. And that's probably the most critical is understanding what's a marketing qualified lead, what's a sales qualified lead. And sales now has accepted it. Do you want them, do you want the sales sales leader to uh, sales account executive to do it. Because nine times out of ten you do, and then it's the responsibility. What are we going to do as we nurture that along Again, every step of the way, Marketing has a seat at the table in those conversations.

Paul Clinton: You know, it's interesting because we hear some from time to time that um, you know, um, with MQL is like, okay, they might be interested, uh, in what we're, what we're doing and what we're talking about, but maybe they're not in a buying cycle right now, or maybe they don't have budget right now. So I mean, is that uh, even though they are interested or maybe they will, um, at one point be. I mean, is that a factor for you trying to, trying to figure that out.

Aaron Walker: So two different. I'm going to give you two different answers. Um, first and foremost, I don't want to lose sight of that opportunity because obviously someone was interested, they were doing their due diligence. They're probably, uh, doing a lot of data gathering. And that is what is, from my perspective, that is a critical lead for the business development team to continue to nurture, put it into a cadence in the business development side, continue to send information out. But the reality may be this is an analyst or this is someone that doesn't have any authority to really make an investment. So it's important to ensure that we empower the BDR team to understand what are the critical questions that need to be asked and at the same time put it on a drip campaign, keep us at the forefront of their mind. If the customer does absolutely have an overarching need, they know that we're going for budget. We are absolutely looking to make an investment. We don't have all of those things now at that point it is um, an opportunity to then engage with the sales team and depends on, on the company. Oftentimes we'll go ahead and convert that to an opportunity, park it out two quarters, and then it's incumbent on the sales team to continue to nurture that and own it from a sales perspective because we know there is a potential for sale here and we don't want to want it to be lost in, in that drip campaign with the Dr.

Paul Clinton: Might just be kind of a timing thing. So, you know, 100% and that's extremely

Aaron Walker: important in the bank qualification.

Paul Clinton: Yeah. And last question. I mean, give me your thoughts, you know, like just on the messing messaging itself. And this is, I guess what we kind of deal with, you know, day in, day out is, you know, Companies seem to have data in different places, but maybe the data isn't all kind of coming together on a dashboard. I, um, mean, like, how do you know? You know, like I have ways of kind of, you know, helping companies um, gain clarity on like where their messaging may not be working or what stage it may, it may be failing or breaking. Um, you know, like for example, you know, you just alluded to a minute ago, you know, hey, we're getting all this traffic from like our paid ads or organic, even on our website. But then, um, we're not getting enough demo calls or we're not getting, uh, people are ghosting us or getting like a high no show rate or something. So you can kind of see there like, oh, maybe the messaging on the website isn't, is off or, or what have you. But I mean, do you have ways where you can kind of look at whether, what, whatever stage it's at or, or hey, let's take a look a, uh, closer look at the sales decks and make sure that we're, you know, like there's some, uh, some, some, some pain points in there and some outcomes in there versus just kind of cheerleading testimonials. But I mean, is there a way for you to kind of see like, were you, did you ever try to diagnose like, you know what, that you know, the messaging could not be working at this point and how do we know at what point the messaging isn't working? Was there a way for you to kind of figure that out directionally?

Aaron Walker: And to be fair, Paul, I think everyone probably has a little bit of a hodgepodge of how they, they look at some of this. Right. Because it's not, uh, 100 exactly where you're losing pipeline. Um, but the way that I, I have chosen in the last few, few companies I've been at, we've invested in a wonderful tool called gong. Yeah. And so Gong, I can very clearly, whether you're on site or whether you are doing just a regular call, um, I can clearly go in and see where I'm losing deals and opportunities. And the great thing about it is can that give me insight for marketing? Yes. For me as a sales leader, it gives me great insight. Are you using the tools that are being provided to you? Right. Oftentimes, are you using the first call deck? Are you leading with who we are, what we are and what differentiates us? Or are we jumping straight into the conversation and answering everything for the customer, but really leaving our message and value to the side? That's a great coaching Opportunity.

Paul Clinton: Yeah.

Aaron Walker: But more importantly if we are, if we are delivering the message, what it does also offer me, especially whether it is a conference room and you always have one person that's always dialed in. So that's the glory with, with Gong is it also gives me great insight. Where am I losing the customer? Right. So even if it's a five page first call deck and I'm going through the, the messaging or I'm getting rebuttals from a customer, I'm able to now capture that in aggregate that scales no matter the size. And I can see exactly where we might have a gap. Whether it's going through pricing exercise, whether it's going through a product exercise and going through the differentiation. We're going through a roadmap review. I can see what lands and what doesn't. But that's, that's the way I have um, I've been able to really look at, especially when someone's not hitting some of their targets, to go back and really take, take a look. Is it the messaging, is it the product? And what can I do to help fine tune some of that?

Paul Clinton: And you know, you're right about the positioning and the differentiators being really important and you know, you're at the enterprise level and um, I see this as well. You know, it's, it's pretty important. You know, I feel like there are even, you know, companies, even at the SMB level or mid market companies that, that should at least be doing some type of, at least look, you know, look at the, you know, websites of your three to five competitors. Just look and see what they're saying. Um, you don't have to do uh, extensive, you know, battle cards or competitive intelligence. But um, you know, I don't know if you would have any advice for even, you know, smaller companies to at least, at least look at what the competitors are saying. I mean that, that does help you um, you know, with, with some of this positioning work, doesn't it?

Aaron Walker: Absolutely. So your, your example is, is perfect. Um, about 10 years ago it was a small middleware company and it was very, very, very small. And we didn't have a marketing, we had a marketing team and we were building that marketing team up. But the number one thing is there were three major competitors that were in the Gartner magic quadrant. And so from the sales team, very quickly I stepped into a role and I had a sales team and they were like, but we don't know exactly how we differentiate. This is an API tool. We're a uh, uh data integration tool. And very quickly, it took me maybe 30 minutes, and I went out and I did research on, here's the competitors, here's where we are. I went and I sat down with one of our chief technology officers and said, okay, here's what they're saying. What's our value add? So if I hear this from a customer, what's my positioning statement? And I had to create and craft my own battle card. It wasn't hard, but it was absolutely the right thing to do. Is just to understand as you're going in and talking to a customer and leading off, you never put the competitor down, but you're clearly differentiating how my solution and ease of use is different in the market. And that's all customers really want to hear.

Paul Clinton: And that's nice. At least you, you had a resource that you could, you could refer to. But, you know, um, you know, before the calls, and that was probably wasn't too complicated to put together or something like that.

Aaron Walker: Thank you very much, uh, for the time and opportunity. Uh, this was great.

Paul Clinton: Thank you so much for your time, Aaron. Really, really great to talk to you.