166: Better Together: Aligning Sales and Marketing to Drive Revenue Growth w/ Jeff Davis (Author)

Speaker A: Hello, this is Tom Passello, the ROI guy and welcome to the Evolvers podcast sponsored by sales enablement platform provider MediaFly. Our mission is to provide you with the independent insights, community advice and tools to guide your sales content and value enablement journeys and fuel your professional evolution. My guest today, he is a returning Evolvers podcast guest, sales and marketing alignment expert, author and international keynote speaker. He is Jeff Davis. His book Creating Togetherness. Ah. Aligning sales and marketing to drive Revenue growth. It provides a great roadmap that you all can follow to overcome one of the biggest challenges organizations are facing today. And it's going to be the topic of our discussion all about alignment, sales, marketing and why don't we throw in customer success now to boot. Welcome Jeff Davis.

Speaker B: Tom, thank you for having me on the show. Really excited to talk about one of my favorite topics which is sales and marketing alignment or dysfunctional being with each other, with whatever you want to call it, but I like to call it alignment.

Speaker A: We've got a lot to talk about there. You know, I think this is coming to light today more than ever because B2B buyers, the way that they purchase, the way that they go about things, you know, they don't think about a vendor as having, uh, okay, here's the sales group and here's the marketing group and here's the customer success group. Um, you know, they don't see these internal silos that we've created. They expect an informed, cohesive, uh, kind of experience. But a lot of times that's not what they get. Um, what are you seeing out there? Is it still a big problem?

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean we've made significant progress I think overall. Right. I think there's still some industries, um, that struggle with this switch to kind of a digital first world. I uh, typically see those in what I call legacy industries. So we're thinking like manufacturing and uh, some of those and it'll just take time. A lot of those organizations uh, are a little bit laggard, so to say in adopting to new ways of working. And of course it's not indicative of every single company but I think as a, as a B2B group we are making significant progress. I think the thing that's challenging. Right to your point, we have this digital transformation, digital acceleration that is causing the buyer to demand something different, uh, a different experience, a different interaction. And the way that we communicate with them is also different. And so I think what continues to be challenging from all organizations, and I have it kind of written in the title of the book, is that you have two transformations for an organization going on at the same time. So you have an issue where sales and marketing need to be aligned in order to really engage the B2B buyer. Because to your point, they don't care if it's sales, marketing, customer success, customer, whatever. They don't care. Just give me the information I need. But you also have functional transformations within sales and marketing. Right. And so marketing's leveling up, leveling up their tech stack. Sales is also on, um, this kind of like almost renaissance of sales tech, uh, which is for them a lot newer than their marketing counterparts. Uh, so you have a lot of things going on at the same time. You have to convince people of change. So this is why it is hard for a lot of organizations to really tackle this. Because it is meaty, it is a big business transformation. So it's not easy.

Speaker A: What is it costing organizations by not getting this right? I think this is one of the curious things that I've read that you've written on. And I don't think people act unless they know really what it's costing them by not getting this right. So what have you seen as the cost of misalignment?

Speaker B: Yeah, so in the book I actually. So chapter two, I specifically focused just on this because I noticed this as well. As I was working with clients and keynote speaking and talking to revenue leaders and CEOs, there was always that like, oh, this is great, we're going to go back to office and do what we were doing before. And until I started really doing the research and having the conversations about what you're missing out on and the cost of inaction, that is the point in which I found people's attention really changed and it's like, oh, now I understand. And so what I found and having those conversations and my experiences and doing research is so Marketo and reedsforce did a study a while ago and they estimated that the loss of sales productivity and wasted marketing budget. Right. Wasted marketing spend actually cost companies up to $1 trillion a year. And initially when I read that, I was like, this is completely outrageous. Like, what are you talking about? But when you dig down a layer deeper and you realize that majority of the leads. I'm gonna say leads, which is, I'm gonna have a little bit of a contention with that word, but we'll call it a marketing lead. Whatever. Uh, a majority of the work they're doing spending on these really large scale campaigns. 80 to 90% of that, if not more sales is ignoring. And they're Ignoring because historically they haven't provided value, they haven't converted, they haven't been the people that they need to get in contact with. So when you look at it that way, I'm like, okay, this is more realistic. You know, you do all this abm, you do all this stuff and it just doesn't convert. And then the, the other side of that was in sales. Uh, well, at the time it was inside sales.com uh, did a study where they showed that I think was 36.6% of a salesperson's time actually goes to selling. Right. And so that's a huge impact on productivity. Right. Majority of the activities you're doing may be updating CRM, whatever stuff that is not going to lead to actual revenue. So you put those two concepts and then it becomes much easier to see that we are wasting a lot of money on things that aren't converting and then we're spending a lot of time on non sales generating activities. And that to me makes much more sense of like the cost of this to your organization is much bigger than what you think it is. And the thing that is the issue, it's like, it's like being in a rowboat with like a little small hole at the bottom. It's slow and insidious. And it's not until it gets to a point where it's a cancerous part of your business that you have to like quote unquote do surgery. Do you really actually recognize how, how big of an issue it is. And then by that time it's really like it's a lot of work to fix and turn the ship. So to say.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think there's this whole kind of pray and spray m marketing that's still going on.

Speaker B: Totally.

Speaker A: And then it gets leads that don't even get acted on. So why even have them? Um, why even spend the money to get them? Then when you do have those leads and opportunities, are they being nurtured? Right, right. Or are you still marketing to them with early stage marketing messages and spending money on that when they're much later on in their journey? So I think there's some journey misalignment in there that I'd love to explore with you as well.

Speaker B: Absolutely.

Speaker A: And then sales time prioritization I think is a big key too because I see a lot of times salespeople only have so much time in the day that they do spend selling. And as you said, it's taken a lot with overhead and forecasting, meetings and data entry and all of these Other elements, um, if we could get them to prioritize on the right deals at the right time, where they can actually facilitate as opposed to marketing taking that, is there a benefit there as well? So I agree with you that it is a big waste in the organization, but it's this hidden kind of, uh, below the waterline cost of the iceberg that I think fools a lot of people. So they tend to still have their organizations siloed. How do you know you have an alignment issue? I think, you know, that's the first way that you get to start working on a problem is recognizing that there's a cost that's costing every day and then recognizing, you know, that you actually have a problem.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's true. Um, the kind of the telltale signs that I see repeatedly, uh, and I also talk about this in the book, the first one, it depends obviously on the industry, but, uh, high volume leads with low conversion. Right. So, you know, a lot of that comes from the fact that historically marketing has been looked at as a cost center. And, uh, it's interesting when I talk to sales, uh, leaders that they didn't recognize that, um, probably telling an inside secret now that I'm a marketer. But, ah, so with that, your incentives are aligned to look at volume. Right? So I'm like, I'm going to get you 100,000 leads, and if none of them convert, that's your issue, not mine, your sales. Figure it out. And so if you look at your entire revenue engine, so you have, you know, 100,000 plus leads, whatever your number is, you know, and 0.01% of them converting, there's probably a misalignment issue because it means that marketing is focused on getting in front of and engaging with potentially the wrong people. Right. Um, I also look at the fact that, like, do sales and marketing tell the same story? I had a CEO on the, on my podcast, and one of the reasons that he became an entrepreneur is because they would do QBRs or quarterly business reviews. Marketing would come in, oh, my God, we've gotten 10,000 leads. Everything's amazing. We have engagement. The all the vanity metrics look great. And then sales would come in, like, literally right afterwards. And then we're like, these leads are terrible. Nothing's converting. We can't get in front of people. We can't get engagement. And he was like, how do you have two parts of organization that arguably are the most interdependent and they have two completely different stories? Um, so I say that is another one that is top of the list. And then also too, like, you gotta look at your data. If, uh, sales and marketing are using different data sets or using different data in order to see the customer, then do you a, have the right view, the complete view of the customer, and are you operating in a way that really is aligned with the customer? If you can only see half of it. See half of what? They're, how they're engaging with the organization. So those are some that I think are at the top of the list. And I have a more exhaustive list in the book. Um, but those are the ones that I stereotypically see across the board. And then the other one, which is more of a kind of soft skill, uh, kind of telltale, ah, sign is the relationship between sales and marketing as an organization. Do sales and marketing see themselves as partners? Do they collaborate? Um, is there a contentious relationship? Is there no relationship? I talk about it, uh, as having a dysfunctional relationship and people think that that means that sales and marketing are fighting. Right. But I was at a keynote and this sales leader came up and he said, hey, I love the way that you're thinking about how I should engage with marketing. We have a great relationship, we get along. But I didn't realize until you talked about the business relationship that our business relationship is terrible and that we're not engaging with each other in a way that helps us achieve our functional goals. That's very different than getting along, saying hi, having, uh, a cocktail or a drink at the Christmas party, then sitting down and talking about how our two organizations can work together in order for us both to win. It's very different. So those are kind of. I would. I get. I got to four, um, that I think are really important to, to look out for.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I'll just revisit them real quick. High volume leads with low conversion rate. Tell the same story to leadership and, and the reporting. So are you coming in saying everything's great, and then the sales leader coming in and saying things are broken? The data set and metrics making sure those are the same, that the foundation of what's being reported is similar, and then the relationship tells. And whether that's, uh, indicating a dysfunctional relationship that's not moving the ball forward down the field.

Speaker B: You got it. You got it.

Speaker A: Absolutely agree on those. Now, one other one struck me when you said that tell the same story. I thought you were going to go to say tell the same story to the customer because one of the other alignment issues that I've seen is not only telling the internal Story of success, but, uh, being able to actually tell the customer the same story. So marketing is going, portraying the business one way and then sales goes in and portrays the business or has a completely different approach the other way.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: Talk ah, about that a little bit. Is that a tell that you've seen and is it something that is indicative of an alignment issue as well?

Speaker B: I would agree 200%. And I actually wrote a post recently on LinkedIn about this is that, you know, in our digital first world, we are all distracted. I mean, it is insidious, it is everywhere. And the worst thing that you can do is cause confusion in the mind of the target buyer. And when you don't have a cohesive, frictionless, uh, buying process, that's exactly what you do. And what I talk about in the article is I was like, really, as B2B revenue leaders, we are really in the business of, uh, engagement and getting attention. That's the first stage because everybody's looking everywhere and, and people are overloaded with information. There's, there's, there's not a short supply of information. There's a, there's a short supply in people providing value in a way that helps buyers buy. Right. And so when you tell two different stories, it's confusing. I don't know what's going on. And we all know confused minds don't buy. And so, you know, it's important that, you know, sales leaders recognize. And I love the pushback. I go with this. Sometimes you, um, need marketing as much as marketing needs you. I don't care how good your sellers are. I don't care how many sales you have. When marketing is done right, they can create a billboard that sells 24, 7. And I also can push a button and extend my reach much wider than you can. Right. That's just the truth of the matter. Um, so from that standpoint, we need each other. So as a sales leader, my role is to get my sellers in the right conversations with the right people. That's fundamentally how I believe the sales. There's fundamentally, I believe, the number one priority of a sales leader. Right. You know, obviously, besides making revenue. Da, da da da. But if you don't know the story that marketing is telling out to the marketplace, you are missing the mark. Like, you've got to influence what is being said to your target customers before they get in front of your sellers. And if you don't know or you don't have an influence on that one, you are really crippling your sellers to be able to sell. So that is to your point. I agree 200%. We've got to tell a consistent story. We have to understand what the buyer's journey is. Because the minute that people feel friction or becomes difficult to buy, guess What? There's like 3, 4, 5, 10 different options that they can go to and they're going to go to those that make the buying experience as easy as possible, period.

Speaker A: Simpler. And you know, Gartner has been talking a lot about how you have to help the buyer to make sense of everything. Right. Because there's so much noise out there. And if you're just adding to that noise because you have a misalignment issue, that's a problem. Yeah.

Speaker B: And what I also talk about too, and it's an important concept that we all as B2B practitioners need to understand, is that we are in the middle of information inequality, but it's going the other way. And so what I talk about in my keynote is the car buying industry is a great example of information inequality. It always existed. It just stereotypically what's the flow? So back in the day, and I'm probably aging myself, when you turn 16, you go to the used car dealer, right? And you buy a car, you have kind of a budget, you have an idea, your parents like, this is what we're going to spend on your car. Da, da. Uh, but back in the day, the, the, the salesperson would probably guide you to a car that like was, you know, around your budget probably a little bit higher. And he made the, he or she made the best commission. And you kind of like unless like you had like Uncle, Uncle Jeff to tell you like what kind of car you were at the whim of the salesperson, fast forward Consumer Reports, all of a sudden you have all this information. And so if you go to the lot and they're still talking about features and benefits and you're like, dude, I already read the thing, I have all that information. What are you going to provide me differently to help me make a decision? So that's where we are with a lot of folks, is that if you're still talking about features and benefits and that we've been around since 1927 and we're the number one, no one cares. Help me make a decision that's the best decision for my business and help me better understand what my true business issues are and really become a trusted advisor. And if we're not doing that and you're still coming in with this whole 19, we were the number one and it self centered and no one cares.

Speaker A: Yeah, there's a democratization of information. So the Carfax is available. Right. That didn't exist when I bought my first, you know.

Speaker B: Right. It changes the game.

Speaker A: Yeah, it, uh, totally changes the game. So that information is all out there. You know, buyers are going to go and they're going to read the reviews and they're going to go on G2. And, you know, it's. It's really. All of that information is out there, but therein lies the opportunity, because much information. So all of a sudden you get lost in the amount of choices. So the choices attract, but then the amygdala gets overloaded in your brain and all of a sudden you get shut down from all the information and then you stop. So duration and guidance and that trusted advisor then become the secret.

Speaker B: Yeah, I agree. I think early in my career as a salesperson, when I was actually, as they say, carrying the bag, I think one of the things that made me successful with my customers was, and, you know, I didn't tell my manager this per se, but, uh, I really went in with a consult approach. Right. I didn't always talk about my product. And especially in the beginning in a new relationship, I wanted to be seen as someone that was trying to help them. And I was in healthcare sales. I was trying to help them make the best decision for their patient and wanted to give them all the information so that we could think through, you know, what was the best decision. And obviously I wanted to carve out those. Those patients that were the best for my therapies and my offers. But it wasn't always a branded conversation. And I think over time they really appreciated that because they didn't come off as like, I want to sit down and talk about this and why you should do this and da, da, da, da. And I'm like, last time I checked, I don't have an MD behind my name. But what I can help you do is understand the science and make sure that you're educated with all. Educated and empowered with all the information you need to make the right decisions. Yeah.

Speaker A: Uh, I almost never have a branded conversation or don't think of it as branded. Um, so I think that's a really good way to think about it. You have to balance it, especially in the beginning. Yeah. You don't want to be maybe totally the way I am, which is I come in as more of an industry expert, thought leader, author, all of those things. You know, every salesperson doesn't have that walking in the door. Right. But the more you can kind of put that hat on, that consultative hat and leverage the knowledge you have about other people that have made choices just like this and the experiences that they have and those stories and how you learned about the solution, your personal journey of even why you're working for the company. Really good. So think about those stories you can tell as opposed to talking about the product, the stories of other customer journeys, of other customer successes, of your personal journey and your personal experience. I think that helps a lot.

Speaker B: Yeah, I agree.

Speaker A: Absolutely. So I know we went a little bit in terms of value storytelling, which is passion of mine, Jeff. So thank you for, um, going down that path.

Speaker B: I love it.

Speaker A: I love to get back to the alignment, though. And I know you've got. Now that we know that there's a misalignment issue in the organization, we look and there's high volume leads, low conversion rates, uh, telling the same story, mismatches, data sets and metrics, relationship dysfunction. Okay, now what do you do? Uh, we recognize that there's an issue. Uh, do we send the, uh, sales leader, the chief sales officer, and the chief marketing officer to therapy? Therapy sessions?

Speaker B: Uh, I mean, we could. It's. It's funny. I had somebody. What did they call me? I was talking to them about the work that I do, and they were like, oh, you're like a marriage counselor for sales and marketing? And I was like, well, I don't know that I would call myself that. And there's something about that that, like, just doesn't quite resonate with me personally. Right. But it completely makes sense to other people of, like. Oh, yeah, it makes complete sense. So, um, yeah, there's probably some therapy that needs to happen in that relationship. Uh, and, you know, at the end of the day. Right. Like, I don't believe in beating up sales leaders and marketing leaders. We have been entrenched in the way that these organizations have worked for decades. Right. Like, this is not something that is going to turn the corner overnight. Um, so we do have to learn how to have a different, uh, relationship. And, you know, it starts with having a conversation of how we can help each other win. Um, because at the end of the day, the customer is demanding it, and we it. And we can't sales leader, marketing leader, do it on our own anymore. You just can't. It's not possible.

Speaker A: Yeah. So practical ways to do it. One could be, you know, the big one that comes to mind is we talked about data, and we know the importance of data. Right?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: If there were common measures between the Teams. But what I see a lot of times is, you know, the marketing organization, it's how many leads, how many appointments, how many, um, what pipeline got built, whether the quality of that pipeline and quality leads or quality meetings, you know, none of that kind of seems to. To matter. Their. Their part of the report is done, and then like you said, sales comes in and sales is missing the number. So.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Um, could common measures be one way to get that alignment?

Speaker B: Yeah, 200%. I think there's. There's really kind of. And I talk about this in the book as well. There's the kind of three pillars that especially as you explore working together differently, that you want to be focused on. And I actually would probably add a fourth as we talk, talk about this that is a little bit upstream. So first and foremost, I think it's understanding the mindset of a digital first buyer. Um, until you can really understand that buyers buy differently, I can't convince you that these other things are important. If you believe that people are fundamentally buying like they did in 1970, 1980, then you're a lost cause. I'm sorry. It's just what it is. So let's first start there and understand that today it's not B2B. B2C. It's really HH. And I totally sold it from somebody. I forgot who coined it first, but it's human to human. Um, now I think there are intrinsic things that as B2B practitioners that we have to be focused on. We're not B2C. There's. Our businesses are different, but we are selling to people. And for some reason, we have this idea that when I come into the door of Corporation X, I'm a robot and I want you to feed me information so I can make calculations. And that's just not how we as humans buy. We have these amaz experiences outside of work, Amazon, Zappos, Netflix, that make it easy to buy. And then I get to work, I'm just like, why is this process so hard? Like, you suck, dude. And I'm giving you a lot of this is multimillion dollar contract, and Netflix was like 30 bucks. So how can they get it and you can't get it? So let's start with the digital first mindset. We got to get that. We got to agree as revenue leaders that fundamentally we need to show up in a different way. Then I would say we go to the three pillars that I talk about in the book, which are data, process, and communication. And so data is really, you know, data is the backbone of how all organizations are going to have to operate in the future if you don't have control of your data. And I don't mean just having data like really owning it and making sure that it's clean up to date and really leveraging it in a meaningful way to turn into insights. Because that is the way you're really going to create a sense of intimacy with your customer and really understand who they are, what they need, where they are on their journey. It is the backbone to all the decisions you make as a business process goes back to understanding the buyer's journey. They have a journey. Most companies I think, take a very superficial look at the buyer's journey, if they do it at all. One of the key things I look at when I'm talking to organization is have you asked customers about their internal buying process? Because it is the one factor that is the hardest to get information about. Because guess what, we're not in the room. Uh, secondly, most companies are super secretive about it. And thirdly, we have little to no influence about the internal politics that are happening. But the more we can understand how that process gets done, we can start to make assumptions about lookalike customers. So if they did it this way at company Y and they did it this way at company Z and they're similar, there probably is a similar process. So how do we provide them with the resources and conversations they need to make those internal conversations? We're not in the room and advocate for us, uh, as being the right solution for the business. So the second one would be that process and really mapping out that buyer's journey collectively between sales and marketing and determining. And I also present this in the book too because we many times have a self centered way of approaching the buyer's journey of like what we need them to do to get to the next stage, especially sales.

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker B: Oh, especially it's like uh, checkbox, checkbox. I need you to do this and then do this. Like so I, I flipped that on his head to say we have to start thinking about what the buyer needs to have the confidence to move to the next stage. Right. What are the questions they're asking? What are the questions that they're going to be asked internally that they need information about? Like how do we give them all that stuff to then feel comfortable? Like, okay, I got this, you know, we've made all the considerations, we're going to move to the next stage. So. And uh, what I, what I help organizations think about is mapping that out in a very high level way. So that we all agree, like these are the key milestones. And then what are the key questions those customers are asking, what kind of information they need. And then orchestrating between sales and marketing and customer success or whoever's involved in that customer facing role of what are those touch points we're going to have with them? What make the most sense? And it could be a collection of sales and marketing, especially as you kind of get toward the middle of the buyer's journey. Uh, but not just thinking like marketing owns this one and this one and sales owns this, this and this. That's not reality. We got to think more holistically about the type of interaction so that we can pivot depending on what the customer needs. And then thirdly it was communication, so it was data process and then the third one's communication. Um, and it goes back to the relationship. So, uh, sales and marketing historically have been super terrible at collaborating. I don't care what anybody tells you, just don't do it very well. We still don't do it very well. Uh, and uh, we had a great uh, guest on the podcast, Deb Mashek. So she's uh, psychologist and she focuses on close relationships and collaboration. I learned a ton from her. And so what she, what she said in her, her model, it's called the collaboration continuum, which I totally stole from her with her permission. So it's totally cool. Uh, she said you don't get true collaboration until both parties are learning from each other in an effort to improve their outcomes. And that really struck with me because we feel like we go to meetings and we're talking to each other, that we're collaborating. Right. A lot of times what happens is we come to meeting, we put on the show, the dog and pony show, and then we go off and do our own thing irregardless of what happened in that meeting. And that's not really collaborating. So you've got to have a communication style and communication framework that allows you truly to collaborate on a consistent basis so you can have consistent outcomes. So data process, communication.

Speaker A: There's perhaps another one that I know is becoming really popular right now and that's a combined leadership at the C level. Talk about kind of the role of the chief revenue officer or in some organizations called the chief customer officer, where you've got kind of sales, marketing, customer success kind of being joined. Yamini Rangan. I got opportunity, uh, to interview her. She's now has moved to the CEO of HubSpot. But at the the time she was uh, in that kind of Combined role and you know, because there's one person in control, you kind of have that almost forced alignment. Do you think that's a good way to approach this as well?

Speaker B: I think when done right, it can, it can be really uh, beneficial to the business. I think the watch out that I have shared with organizations is to make sure that that CRO or chief Commercial officer, however you, you, you phrase it, really truly understand sales and marketing. What I'm seeing a lot of organizations do that are approaching this model is they're just basically promoting sales leaders. Right. And sales leaders don't always have the right perspective on how to leverage marketing. Especially if they run up in an organization where marketing is sales support. And what I mean by that is that they're you know, creating website, they're doing like you know, uh, you know, one pagers and like. But they're not doing true strategy development, they're not doing true marketing. So as long as that person understands how to leverage marketing, how to leverage sales in a meaningful way and in the right way, I'm all for it because I think it's a great idea. It's just the devil's in the details of getting the right person that has that perspective on how to use both organizations and how to bring them together. So that's my only watch out. But I think it's uh, a m. Great idea when done right.

Speaker A: Yeah, Jeff, I think that's great insight on it. You have to be careful with the sales leader that gets promoted, that they want to learn and go to school if they don't have the skills already or have somehow been in some kind of a product marketing or marketing role where they understand the art and the science and the combination of those two things and in particular how important the science is today in marketing as well as that art part. But I see it very often where that chief sales officer will come in and have the very process driven, almost transactional uh, attitude because they've grown up in that kind of a world and they're not in the human to human digital first world that we're in today. And they haven't grown up with you know, the marketing and the nurturing capabilities that are needed.

Speaker B: Well and I also see too, right, like if you know, the look, I don't want to say old school, but the kind of traditional sales leader also in a CSA minus doesn't appreciate the power of brand and the importance of brand, especially in B2B right. They're like brand doesn't drive uh, revenue. And I'm like, well, brand drives choice, which drives revenue. So now I'm not saying that building brand is an excuse for not selling. Right. Because let's be really transparent. I started my career in sales so I would tell people, uh, you know, I'm a marketer with the soul of a salesperson. I don't let marketers get away with fluff. Uh, I try to keep myself honest all the time. But there are inherent things that brand affords your sellers. And so again, that's why I say it's important for that sales leader if you're going to promote he or she, that they understand how to use, how to leverage, I should say marketing in a way that uh, enables sellers to sell more effectively and more efficiently.

Speaker A: Hear, hear. What's the one piece of advice you'd like to leave our Revolvers community with today, Jeff?

Speaker B: Sit down and have a conversation with each other and figure out how you can help each other achieve your functional goals. Um, it is, you know, what I find more often than not, you know, sales and marketing alignment. I don't pretend like it's easy, right? Like I always start any conversations like, this is a true business transformation. It's not going to happen overnight. If you think that I'm going to write a book or write an article and you'd be like, Jeff Davis, six hour sales and marketing misalignment issue. Yeah, right, I wish. Um, but more often than not, the core of what I find is that these two parts of the organization just don't understand each other. They don't communicate, they don't have any sort of empathy because they don't understand what it takes to do the role. They don't understand what goals are trying to achieve. And I think when they sit down and have a conversation, an honest, transparent conversation about we need each other more than ever and really humble themselves, I need you to win. How can we support each other? I think that that cascades into all the other things about approaching data. Looking at how we uh, co create a, um, process, a buyer's journey, all that stuff happens fundamentally once we understand that we need each other in this digital first world and things have changed and the buyer's just like, look, I'm not dealing with it, so you gotta, you gotta collectively as a team figure something out to do different.

Speaker A: If they don't feel like they need each other, those barriers and those walls go up and then the customer can kind of see that in messaging, in the uh, breakdown of process and all of those things. Right?

Speaker B: Yeah, there's a couple Times where I've opened up my keynote with, uh, I always get a chuckle. Uh, salespeople are prideful and marketers are arrogant, and I've been on both sides of the fence, so I have firsthand knowledge, and I think I was probably in both of those spots. Right. And what I mean is just like, you know, you've been a seller for a long time, you've been successful. You know, you may not always recognize that you need marketing in the way that you need it, because things have changed. And then marketers, let's be honest, you're not pulling through the actual conversations with the customer. So, you know, you might be building the strategy and doing all this work and whatever, but at the end of the day, you're not boots to the ground. So it just. It takes a bit of humbleness on both parts in order to, like, back down a little bit and say, like, you know, how can we work together better?

Speaker A: So completely agree. And let me reiterate, you know, the, the way to kind of go about it, which you indicated, once you have that understanding that we need each other, there's the why understanding buyers have changed and create that human, Human experience at scale. Then there's data, process, and communications. And Jeff, you've laid it out perfectly. And I know you go into this deeply in the book. Yes, folks, about the book and how they can potentially reach you online, because I know you're into making, uh, connections. And that's how we ultimately met was just via LinkedIn.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I love LinkedIn.

Speaker A: Um, so the book, that's a whole other discussion.

Speaker B: That's a whole nother B2B opportunity. That. That's another podcast, uh, which I've been trying to convince people about that too, but that's like, again, another. Another conversation. Um, so the book, uh, both the, the paperback as well as the audiobook are Both available@createtogethernessbook.com uh, I encourage you to check out both or buy both. Um, they are different experiences. So the paperback book, obviously, is just the book. And then what we did is we actually tried to make the audiobook an immersive experience. And so what you'll find in the audiobook version, uh, we've also included, um, parts of, uh, snippets of the podcast that I've had on certain, certain topics to help pull through the messaging and help you understand in a deeper way from subject matter experts and what that means. So I didn't just want to read the book. Um, I wanted to make it a little bit something A little bit different. Um, so you will find, um, you will find additional content in the audiobook. So you can check that out. Um, but really the book was born out of. I found that there wasn't really a roadmap to how you make this transformation to a highly aligned, high performing revenue engine. There were a lot of conversations about the things you needed to do. But I put myself in the shoes of a CRO or a CEO or somebody to say, I just need high level. What's the roadmap? What are the steps? I can get my people to do them, but where are we going? And I just found it difficult even for myself to really sit down and be able to articulate that. And so, uh, part of the reason I wrote the book is to force myself to really be, to be astute and articulate that really crystal clear and succinctly. Um, and so my attempt in the book is to really give folks the understanding and the mindset of how things have shifted and why you should shift the way you go about your business, but to also lay out a roadmap of how you get from where you are to where you want to be and where you want to go, so that even if you don't have all the answers, you can start a conversation with your revenue leaders in your organization to say, let's map this out for our organization. We have this framework that just provided us. Now let's figure out how we make it real for our business. So that is attempt, uh, again, createtogetherness, book.com, both the paperback as well. Se audio. Audio experience. I think that's what we'll start calling it. The Audio Experience. I'm going to steal that from Gary V. I think that's what he calls this podcast. Um, and then obviously you can always find more information about me@meet jeffdavis.com as well as LinkedIn. I'm also Meet Jason, meet Jeff Davis across all social media handles. So they would be Twitter, LinkedIn as well as Instagram.

Speaker A: Jeff, thank you so much for joining us.

Speaker B: Uh, always a pleasure. Tom, always a pleasure. Great conversation. Learn, always learn a lot from you as well. So, uh, I appreciate the opportunity to talk about one of these subjects that, you know, I never get tired of talking about.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I don't address it enough in the podcast, so having you on and kind of taking it up a level so we can talk about the alignment, I think we really helps a lot. So hopefully everyone got as much as I did out of it. I always get, ah, a ton of notes out of our conversation. I'm holding up the page just filled with notes and tidbits and guides, and definitely I have not done the Audible book, um, and the Immersive Experience. I can't wait to, uh, listen to that. I'm going to go grab it today.

Speaker B: Yeah. Awesome. Well, again, thank you for having me on the show. Always enjoy talking to you and hope people got a lot of value out of our conversation. Awesome.

Speaker A: Until next time. Evolvers keep evolving.