Why Aligning Sales and Marketing Is the Single Biggest Unlock for Manufacturing Growth

Pat McGovern: Foreign. Welcome back, everybody. It is another edition of Over a Pint. I'm your host, Pat McGovern. We got something a little bit different today. We got a whole panel of guests, uh, and we're going to be diving deep into marketing, specifically in the manufacturing space. I got some great guests with. I'm going to let them do the introductions. I'm going to go with Mr. Walter down in the lower corner. Bo, welcome to the podcast.

Beau Walter: Yeah, thanks. I'm excited to be here. First, uh, time participant, longtime listener. So thanks, uh, for having me and pulling this together. Uh, Beau Walter. I lead marketing efforts at West Bend Company. We are, uh, one of the very few companies left in the United States that manufactures cookware. Uh, we've been doing it here since 1911 and today we're a contract manufacturer, private labeler. So all of our manufacturing, um, is done here and, uh, for brands who then sell to consumers.

Pat McGovern: Awesome.

Stephen Fong: Stephen, thank you so much for having me on. My name is Stephen Fong. I am the owner and founder of R2B Marketing. We help brands in the food and beverage, hospitality, manufacturing, insurance spaces, uh, tell their stories, think strategically about how to connect with their, with their audiences. Um, so excited to kind of bring all that expertise thinking to the table as we dive deeper into this manufacturing marketing topic.

Pat McGovern: Awesome. And Richard.

Richard: Hello everybody. Second time participating on the podcast. Big Pat, big fan. Pat. I'm, um, a fractional chief product officer and I'm working with B2B manufacturers who want to grow their top line revenue through the development and launch of new products.

Pat McGovern: Awesome. Awesome. So you've got a very interesting mix here, listeners. Um, talking about the manufacturing space, talking about marketing in that space. So, so let's bust right into this. Richard, keep the mic close because this one is going to go to you. Um, all of us have been working in marketing, in marketing, in manufacturing a long time and if we're honest about it, most of it sucks. Richard, why is that? Uh, most of it easy.

Richard: M. For me, it always comes down to how well do you know your customer and what I mean by that. Um, if you don't know what problem you're solving for them and you don't know how your solution solves those problems, your marketing message is going to be all over the place and it's going to be disappointing and people will, people will get frustrated, uh, that they're not seeing a return on investment with marketing. So for me, it all comes back to tell me about your customer. What problem are they having?

Beau Walter: Um, I'll add on to That I think there's just this tendency to think that B2B marketing is business and we forget that there's real people on the other end of it. I heard somebody say once, it's really B to H, it's business to human. And we have to remember that every person on the other side of that transaction is a consumer. They're buying things themselves, uh, from Apple or on Amazon. And I think we just tend to think of this as transactional, as just being a very kind of staid relationship. And we forget that there's actually people who have similar motivations on the other end of things.

Pat McGovern: Stephen, anything to add to that?

Stephen Fong: You know, I think what both said that was very well articulated was this idea that we are advertising, we are marketing, we are trying to solve our customers problems in a human way. I think that the framing of the question, right, is why does manufacturing marketing suck? Is really, um, an indication of if we think that other marketing doesn't suck, if it is actually indeed better. Um, and why is it better, right? Why do we, um, get persuaded by certain messages that are maybe more seen in that B2C space? Is it where they're hitting us, right? Is it the channels that are being used? It is the communication? Um, is it the, is it the way that it appeals to our motives? And I think in the B2B space we have to remember both that, you know, driving, driving the bottom line, driving our objectives from a business perspective. But we also have to drive the motivations from that human level, as Beau mentioned. Um, so I think as we think about B2B marketing, if it sucks or not, we really do have to kind of reverse engineer it and say what can we pull from, um, other marketing, other B2C or um, maybe there's another space where we're really getting persuaded by the right message at the right time to take action. How do we translate that then to our B2B marketing? So it's. So it doesn't suck, right? So, um, that's really how we need to think about uh, this question.

Pat McGovern: Uh, let me, let me throw something out at y' all and that is I m believe that a lot of it is not effective marketing because most manufacturing firms are sales driven first,

Stephen Fong: I

Pat McGovern: would say within the last 10 years. That's shifting, but not as fast as probably it should. And that's why I believe that you've got this gap. But fellas, you're in the trenches a lot. Push back on me. Does that thesis hold up or are there other factors as well?

Beau Walter: Uh, I think uh, you presented it as an either or and I guess maybe I want to challenge that a little bit. Either a sales driven or a marketing driven organization. And I think thinking about it that way identifies a problem that's really common in a lot of manufacturing organizations is just that lack of sales um, and marketing alignment. And Pat, you, given your agency background, you've seen this all over the place. It's just the lack of alignment and thinking, well, we're going to do it this way, my way, we're going to do it your way. Your team or my team is really a flawed way to approach any go to market.

Richard: Mhm. I agree 100%. I mean I've lived that world where there's always misalignment between sales and marketing and the organizations that are truly effective are where the two are 100% aligned and that relationship is really strong.

Pat McGovern: So sticking on that guys, what, how does that happen? What makes that. Because it doesn't seem like that's a natural fit. It seems like more, that's more of the, the outlier the organization. Richard, that, that um, that happens with. But again, correct me if I'm wrong,

Beau Walter: I've got ideas but I'll see if Richard or Steven wants to jump in here before I. Yeah, yeah, uh, well

Stephen Fong: I, I think that the marketing premise versus the sales premise really comes down to relationships and it comes down to understanding, going back to the beginning of this. Right. Understanding the solution that we are outputting into the marketplace against the problem that we've identified. So if the sales team is identifying uh, a different problem out in the field, they're going to come to the market with um, a way to communicate the solution that is probably misaligned to how the marketing team has developed a set of, you know, messages or is there one pager, has their, you know, website that hasn't been updated in nine months or much longer than that. And so if there's misalignment there, you've got a lot of tension between what marketing is trying to push and what the sales team is ultimately trying to push. From a relationship perspective, combining these two is really important. It's getting that feedback from the customer so that marketing can come along and understand what the sales team, the sales, uh, the folks out in the field are really feeling and experiencing with their customers. Because at the end of the day the customer is still the customer.

Richard: Right?

Stephen Fong: The customer still has those needs we're trying to solve for. And if we're not talking about it in an aligned way, we're Going to have a really, um, unaligned organization where you've got some folks racing down 1, 1 channel, 1 idea. And then you've got your sales team that, uh, have built relationships, are communicating in a certain way and they're not communicating in the same way. And now you've got, uh, you've got a lot of resources that are just getting wasted in between that, uh, you're trying to, trying to scramble and say, hey, why isn't this working? Well, the sales team has said something different than the marketing team. Or they haven't just, they just haven't caught up.

Richard: Right.

Stephen Fong: To one another.

Beau Walter: Yeah, yeah.

Richard: And I would say Steven kind of touches on, I think a bigger issue is not everybody has the same understanding of what the overall business objectives are and who you're trying to go after, um, strategically as a company. And so when you don't have that alignment, as Steven said, sometimes you have multiple messages going out that aren't aligned with each other.

Beau Walter: Yeah, yeah. Uh, I'll add on. I think we have to acknowledge that marketing plays a big role in profitability of a company. Right. Contributing to awareness, contributing to interest, somebody raising their hand, um, contributing to funnel. And so it has to be an understanding that that's a key responsibility of us as marketers. And if you're not aligned with the sales team, you're just not going to be successful in that. And I'll give an interesting example. We're a pretty small organization here, um, and a pretty small sales team. And I'm new to this industry. I've been here 14 months. And we all know it's hard to learn an industry. It's hard to learn a company. And so one of the first things I started working on was just that sales and marketing alignment. And one of the, I'm so glad that this happened is, um, when we get leads, inquiries, you know, phone call or, you know, through the form on the website, I'm the one responding to that. So I do all of our initial lead, uh, qualification. I work with our sales team to establish the qualification criteria before I can pass off a lead to our sales team. But I'm the one having that initial phone call with somebody saying, hey, I want to private label some cookware. I want to launch my own cookware line. Well, that's, that's helped me learn, uh, the industry and helped me learn the business, um, really effectively. But it also just helps me support our sales team so that I know when I'm passing something off to our sales team. It's truly Qualified. I have a real understanding of what the need and what the project opportunity is. So that's really gone a long way for alignment.

Richard: Guys.

Pat McGovern: I want to jump around to something, Richard, that you brought up and that is know your customers.

Richard: Mhm.

Pat McGovern: It seems like there are plenty of ways. Bo, you were just talking about one example of ways that we get information about the customer and get information about what they're looking for, maybe the struggles that they're having, um, things that they would like to see in general, in general is enough of that, is that enough of that information filtering into the company's that so they can turn that into actionable strategy and tactics?

Richard: I would say definitely not. And I'll give you an example. One of the clients I'm working with right now has asked me to help them actually solve that problem. And what most people do is they treat customer insight as a one off event where they'll say, oh, I need to do a survey and I'll find out some things about my customer or I'll, I'll do an interview for one or two customers and I'll call, I'll call it good, uh, that I did some customer research. So I bring that up because what I'm doing for this company is trying to create a yearly operating rhythm to collect customer uh, insight. So things they should do weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly. And it's not a one off event but as part of the regular business rhythm. So yes, I think, I think people view it as an event and not as a process.

Pat McGovern: Stephen, I see you shaking your head, agree.

Stephen Fong: Well, you know, if you don't understand how the customer is changing, you won't have the solution to meet their future need. And somebody else will. And somebody who is um, an organization that's listening to kind of the beat on the street, if you will, much better than you are, if you're getting in your own way, then you're not going to be building a platform, a message that will even get somebody to raise their hand. I know Bo had mentioned a little bit earlier, hey, I get the lead, I talk to them. I understand the problems that they have. And I think that dovetails into this, this customer, customer need and identification process. Because somebody's not going to come to your website and fill out a form to get into contact with you if you haven't exhibited a real demonstration that you understand their need, um, for them to even come to you in the first place. Right. But you wouldn't get as many leads if your website wasn't kind of exuding the solution that this customer is looking for in the first place. So much research is done, you get shortlisted. Uh, if you're an unknown entity, right, you're a new solution provider to someone, you're getting shortlisted or not. Uh, well before you potentially talk to somebody, it's all that pre research that's happening. And so as Richard said, understanding the customer's voice, how it's changing monthly, quarterly, yearly, having a plan in place so that you can then uh, adjust

Richard: all

Stephen Fong: of that work that is part of that awareness on top of the funnel piece so it matches that kind of the in the moment. I think people are looking for going back to the idea that we are marketing to people, we're not marketing always to businesses. Um, if we think about it in the way that what we really need to understand is there are opportunities and struggles that you know, a savvy insight can lead us into to then communicate that somebody else hasn't really tapped the potential of that, of that messaging, that marketing piece, um, or has brought that to bear in the marketplace. So really finding your niche through those customer insights that are real time ah, might lead into something that is much more fruitful because then you've got a stronger position uh, when they do reach out to you Beau, and then they know also how to articulate their problem to you in a way that aligns to the solution that you already know you can provide to them. Right. It's that classic um, persuasion sales technique. Right. Tell me what you think. Um, I need, give me leading answers, leading questions that I can give you everything that you want.

Beau Walter: Yeah, I love that. And I also liked Richard's comment earlier. Just about we shouldn't think about this as a one time thing. So especially as we're having conversations at scale, let's say you have I don't know, 100 customers or um, a couple hundred customers but you're also talking to prospects regularly. I would encourage people to capture those conversations. I use um, an AI notetaker, um, and I have uh, all of my conversations feed into airtable. I have all of those transcripts and summaries documented because then I can farm that for trends. I can use that to create content, I can use that to create say uh, a blog around pain points for somebody looking to us manufactured cookware. But we can also use that to identify sales um, and alignment sales uh, and marketing alignment problems or product problems. So I would just encourage people to capture those discussions and that feedback however you can and whenever you can so that you can do something with it.

Richard: I totally support that. In fact, this company I'm working with, they get a lot of service and technical calls, but they don't transcribe them, they don't record them. Um, and they're out on an insane amount of really rich insight. And so one of the recommendations I made was to actually do what both said, record them, create an AI agent, run it monthly, look for patterns, look for opportunities, things of that nature.

Pat McGovern: Guys, gold, Pure gold. I want to flip this a little bit into something and get your take on a, uh, question that, that came up when I was talking to, um, the head of marketing for Lakeside, ah, Manufacturing, Jocelyn Razor. Really interesting woman. And it has to do with awareness. Her organization is known for a very, very kind of limited product line. So they have decent brand awareness within their space, but they have, I would say, not as good product awareness. So here's my question, guys. One, is that an issue that you're seeing in your world? You know, their brand may be known for one thing, but they, they have a lot of different products that they're offering. They're trying to get more product awareness out there. And if it is and if you've run into that, what are some ways that organizations could develop better awareness under different lines?

Richard: Anybody want to look to Stephen to answer that question? Kind of in his wheelhouse.

Stephen Fong: I worked with a very large manufacturing business who was extremely well known for, for kind of their hero, their hero product for well over a hundred years. And they had a larger portfolio than just the one product. Although most of their products actually, let me think about this. I think it was, uh, majority of their other product offerings all relied on the same technology base that their hero product was, was known for and kind of their brand overall was known for a legacy brand. And so the challenge was going back to what you said, Patrick, how do you extend that brand awareness into product specific, um, offerings and driving consideration of all these other products? And at the end of the day, we really leveraged and told the story behind the hero product and we, we elevated it. How does this translate to other products that we also carry? Because they already have trust with the one product. Um, and they had trust, but they didn't really understand why they trusted the product so much behind the fact that it was a legacy brand. A legacy product and everyone's used it forever. And so what we did is we took and broke down the, the story of the company, but not just the story of the company kind of in the, you know, it wasn't like the founder story or anything. It was really about the innovation, what they brought to the table year after year. And then talking about it as a technology platform that extends to these other products. Um, so we, we decided, hey, you know, let's, let's back up, let's zoom out and decide how we pitch the story that really positions the brand as a product solution provider instead of just a hero skew. This is the most amazing one. One product we offer.

Beau Walter: Uh, I like that. And shout out to Lakeside. In my younger years, I distributed, uh, their products. So great products, great company. I'll also add, I think some of it is. It's not about Steven. You've probably experienced this. Oh, hey, uh, Mrs. Customer. We also have this. And we have this. And we also have this. And make sure to thank us for this thing. I think a lot of it is audience definition and understanding when to tell who about what. What's the right timing to tell Steven about this additional product that might be relevant to him? Or should I not even tell Stephen? Should I tell Pat or Richard instead? And just understanding how that fits and when it fits into the relationship, when it's appropriate to even raise your hand.

Richard: I think, um, some, some B2B manufacturers have an added layer of complexity when it comes to awareness because many of them will not necessarily sell directly to the person buying and using the product. Right. So either go through a distributor or reps or whatever. Well, that extra layer makes it way more challenging to create awareness and, and get to the actual person using their product.

Pat McGovern: Yeah, excellent point, Richard. Guys, I want to pivot a little bit to something that's near and dear to me, and that is websites. Steven, uh, you brought that up when you were talking about your answer and Bo, I wanted to relate this, I want to start with. This is when you give people the information. A lot of manufacturing sites seem like they are data dumps of information. Here is every single thing you want on the product, and I'm going to give it to you as soon as you hit my homepage. We all know that's not the right way to do it, but where do you, where is the, uh, where does the balance fall in? How do you determine, like, when we're going to serve up all that information? Because for some it's critical, but you have to understand when to give that. If you give it too soon, you're going to just turn people off. If you give it too late, it's just a pain in the ass.

Richard: Yeah.

Pat McGovern: Uh, guys, how do you think about that? That part of it?

Beau Walter: Well, I'll give A quick response and then hear what the other guys think. But, you know, this is. You have to understand your buyer's journey. You have to understand how your potential customers evaluate the space. You know, it's that old awareness, consideration, decision stuff. You have to understand what that flow looks like for your Personas and what they're looking for when they get to your website. Um, have they already made up their mind by the time they get to the website and now it's really just transactional, or is there a decision for them to make when they get there? What do they want to know? When do they want to know it? How much do they want to know? You just have to have an understanding of your Personas and where they are in the buying cycle and the role that your website serves.

Pat McGovern: Richard, you've done a little work with Personas.

Richard: I have. And I will tell you, one of my biggest pet peeves is when I've either worked for a company that has done this or go to websites that do this. But very few manufacturing websites actually acknowledge their customers. What I mean by that. So, for example, the company I'm working with right now, they sell through distribution and contractors buy the product from distributors. So, but when you go to the website, it's just a list of products. It doesn't acknowledge, uh, hey, you might be a distributor, go here. Hey, you might be a contractor, go here. Or hey, you might be a building architect that. Specifying the product, go here. So you don't even acknowledge the difference, the different Personas that are trying to visit and make decisions. I mean, to me, that's at, uh, that's the first layer of recognition of, I recognize who you are, and I've curated stuff just for you.

Pat McGovern: I got to ask this question, guys, because we're in 2026 now. Why is that still happening to the degree it's happening in manufacturing?

Beau Walter: It's hard.

Richard: It's hard. And it, and it's. It's not cheap.

Beau Walter: Yeah, yeah, I would push.

Stephen Fong: I would push back on a little bit on the, the cheap part. Um, because if you think about it from an opportunity cost perspective of how much you're leaving on the table, um, it probably is actually. Um, it's expensive if you don't do it. And with there's so many new tools that are at our fingertips that, you know, if you're using an antiquated way of building websites, thinking about websites, getting that journey, that flow, we have more information about how our customers navigate and find us than most midsize manufacturing businesses know. What to do with. It's not just a matter of the customer insight from the customer's voice. It is the customer insight from the behavior they take with us. Right. And that's what this website is getting. This one, that part of the conversation is getting down to is, you know, how to build the right track inside our websites, um, is not necessarily as expensive as it used to be. I think the real expensive piece of it is to get everyone agreed and on board internally to make a change like that. And that goes back to sales oriented sales leading. Uh, it goes back to, you know, if the business is more engineering led or marketing led. Um, so it's, it's not so much that it's um, the price of it in my mind. It's more, you know, if you've made a, um, cautious decision as an organization to really use the tools that you have at your advantage, focus on the data that you want to focus on and kind of leave the rest, um, out. Because it's impossible to focus on every single data point that we get every day. It is much better to think about the marketing and the website piece of it as a way of how, what behaviors do I want my customers to go through, whether they're the distributor, the contractors or whomever, how can I align so that their behavior matches what I want them to see?

Beau Walter: Yeah, I love that and I love your comment about opportunity costs. I mean, what's the opportunity cost of spending $50,000 on a website and not having done all of this work, you know, to build it to your customer journey or where you want them to go?

Pat McGovern: Guys? Yes, 100%. Amen. Well said, Stephen and Beau. Um, on that, it just strikes me as again, that in today's day and age when it's, you don't really have to make a strong case that the website is your best sales person, your best marketing channel. That this, that we're still having to struggle to like convince people that, hey, we haven't updated the site in nine years, maybe we should do something with it. I just find that, I find that just puzzling.

Beau Walter: Well, we've, we've all experienced that. Right? I mean everybody's a marketer. Unfortunately, we've got a job that everybody can do and better than us. Right? So everybody's got an opinion.

Pat McGovern: What are you talking about, Mr. M. Wal?

Richard: What do you mean?

Beau Walter: I should have been a surgeon, perhaps. But, um, you know, I think there's always, yeah, you can say, well, this website looks outdated or boy, those pictures are old. Uh, those employees don't work here anymore, you know, whatever it is. But you know, I think um, people don't always understand the strategic needs behind developing a good site or a good this or a good that and um, that. Nor should they, nor should everybody necessarily. That's part of our roles, is to demonstrate why those things are important. And as I said earlier, kind of jokingly, it's hard. I mean it can be a challenge building the cases and actually doing the work that's required to actually deliver a good product. And I just, I've seen projects fail because of that. It's not just designing a pretty looking website that you know, has a lot of white space and looks like Apple. You know what I mean?

Pat McGovern: Guys, um, let's take a step back and I want you to look From M maybe 3,000 foot view onto the landscape and think about this is, Does marketing have a seat at the table? Now are we there? Are we with the big boys? Sales certainly does. But are we by and large does marketing have a seat at the table? Richard, what do you think?

Richard: Um, yes and no. And what I mean by that is yes, marketing has a seat at the table, but it's not, it's viewed, I think it's viewed as more tactical and it's not viewed as something strategic. And so um, so you have a seat at the table but you don't. Maybe you have a half a seat. Um, and I, I speak from some point of experience here where um, especially in medium sized B2B manufacturers, there's just this thought process that marketing is just there to do the tactical stuff, the brochures, the trade show, social email blasts, lead generation. But there's, but none of that is really going to be effective if marketing is not part of the strategy discussion. New markets, new products, you know, acquisitions, whatever it might be. Marketing uh, has less of a seat at that part of the, of the table than it does on more of the tactical stuff.

Beau Walter: Yeah, yeah, I mean the seat is earned and rarely given. I mean it's uh, I don't expect a seat at the table, um, when you know, our leadership is looking for acquisitions, as Richard said, or you know, um, how to optimize a, ah, workflow, a manufacturing workflow. But I do look for a seat at the table when talking to human resources about how to hire more people and get people to stick around and deliver a good experience for new hires. I do expect a seat at the table for um, talking about our sales process, you know, and how we can support that. But as I said it's My experience, it's really just given because you have marketing manager in your title, you have to demonstrate your competencies and that you can have a positive impact on those things.

Pat McGovern: Stephen, love to get.

Stephen Fong: Yeah, yeah, I would say, you know, as we, we think about what marketing is, I think it um, has kind of a poor, a poor title. Um, and I think that's part of what Richard experiences. That's what I think we all experience to some degree. Right? We kind of get shoved into one of the P's of marketing promotion. And that kind of defines what marketing is, um, at those tables, uh, where the decisions really do make a difference. But marketing, again, that 30, that 3,000, 30,000 foot level, uh, includes price, it includes product, it includes place, not uh, just promotion. And so when we think about that marketing's function in an ideal 30,000 foot view of definitely includes what products should we be making to solve our customers problems, where should we be putting our products? Not just where should we put, be putting the marketing or the promotional pieces for our products out into the market. So when we think about the seat at the table, I completely agree with Richard that we might have a seat at the table from an executional standpoint on the promotion side of what marketing delivers against. And I think the rest of the marketing pieces sometimes get shoveled off into the engineer side. You know, when it comes to coming up with a new product or it gets um, shoveled off into another, another department and marketing sometimes loses that kind of holistic piece of what we all learn what marketing is. At the end of the day we just kind of get shoved uh, into the. Let's, let's quickly make a one sheeter because somebody's going out into the field, um, which we all get those kinds of requests. And that is indeed also part of marketing. But again at that macro level it's uh, it's much more than that.

Beau Walter: Pat, you're working with a lot of clients and the marketers at those clients. What do you think? What are you seeing?

Pat McGovern: I, I'm seeing, I'm seeing it change, I'm seeing it evolve. It seems to be a bit, um, moving slowly. I would think it would be, it would be going quicker, um, than it is, but it's still, um, it's still a concern. I often um, get frustrated because it is very executional. Here, take care of this. When a lot of the decision is already baked in, it's like here, here's what this is. You had no say in it. Now go market the hell out of this. Oh, and here's the, here's the numbers we have to hit, right?

Richard: Yeah.

Beau Walter: Uh, yeah.

Pat McGovern: Uh, okay. Okay.

Beau Walter: Yeah. Are they based in reality?

Pat McGovern: Yeah. Could you have brought me in, could you brought me in earlier now?

Richard: Yeah.

Pat McGovern: Uh, and guys, I've had a lot of people on the show, I've talked to a lot of. And I do see it changing. I do see people moving in, in, uh, in more in that direction. Richard, you know, Bo and Stephen, I mean, you guys represent that, that shift. But man, there's just a lot of places out there that are still. They focus more on, they focus more on the sales side, they focus more on the engineering side of things. And marketing, in my estimation is really kind of just a cost center. I gotta have this because I need someone to do the website. I need someone to print out, you know, I need someone to run the trade shows for sure.

Richard: Yep.

Beau Walter: Yeah, I'm sure Stephen and Richard see that a lot. Just in, in their particular roles, working with a lot of different businesses. But you know, again, I'll go back to. We have to demonstrate and advocate for what we're capable of and how we can contribute to organizations.

Pat McGovern: So this is a good, this is a good segue into, into a topic. Um, and that is AI. I want to start with this just guys, how are you thinking about it? How are you using it right now currently where it's going? But the next question that's following up on that is, is this going to be the big unlock? To answer your question, Bo, is this going to really help, you know, shave off those hours, increase revenue because you're able to do more with less. Where you could go to the CFO going, this is what marketing does here. Uh, let's start simple though. How are you thinking about it? How are you using it? Jump ball, who wants in?

Richard: I'll go. I'm, I'm, I'm using it.

Pat McGovern: Um,

Richard: I've pivoted to using it as a research tool and I've created each company I'm working with that has its own AI agent. And I'm dumping everything in there. And an example I just did, I just did an extra, a very manual, very old school exercise with a team of six product managers. Each one of them had to fill out, um, an Excel spreadsheet that talked about trend competitors, their product, where their gaps were kind of what the roadmap looks like, and they're all different products. Um, and I asked them to do trends, but they really didn't identify trends. So I threw all six spreadsheets into this AI agent and I queried, and it came back with, um, really good information. Because what I'm trying to get them to do is switch. Trying to get them to switch from talking about features and functions only and talking about problems they're solving. And it did a really, really nice job of getting, getting me there. And I used that to help me deliver a summary and an analysis and a proposal of how I would change their storytelling around their products. And it's all starting with big, mega trends, the problems that's causing that need to solve for their customers and what they should do about it.

Beau Walter: I've got ideas, but. Steven, you want to jump in?

Stephen Fong: Well, I do the same thing. Not necessarily with research, uh, but I definitely will use AI to spot trends that maybe the naked eye is not seeing or identifying, um, things that, you know, are not obvious, even if they're not trends. Right. So it's. I'm looking at this. Here's what I think. Push back on me. I use AI to kind of play devil's advocate throughout the day so that I'm thinking more holistically about a problem. Um, and I also think, you know, you've got so many different AI agents out there. Um, and because there are so many different options that you can use in almost every single, you know, maybe traditional vertical from an advertising agency perspective, which is what I run, right, You've got creative, you've got copywriting, you've got data analysis, you've got trends, you've got research, you've got all these different kind of spaces. It's, I think, even more important than ever because there are so many AIs in every single one of those verticals to determine, you know, what kind of technology stack are you going to decide you're going to run with? How do you evaluate what technology stack you're running with? What do you like? What do you dislike? You know, if everyone's using the same technology stack of different, you know, a suite of AI that makes sense for them, but everyone's kind of using the same stack, you're not really getting any, you know, pushback either. I think it's a matter of figuring out what do you like and dislike about an AI. How does it push you to think differently so that you can come in with your own, you know, human lived experiences, industry experiences, and make it better? Um, and I think that that is also changing the way that agencies are operating. Um, A.I. is taking a lot of agency overhead away. It's disrupting the market really, really quickly. And, you know, Companies that are using agencies that, you know, same price point, if not more than six years ago, if they've been with the same agency for a while, um, you know, that agency has definitely cut costs as in the process and other agencies that you might not have looked at could now compete with those larger agencies. So it's really changing the landscape, um, on that marketing support system. And you know I, I think about it a lot, think about it quite a bit. Um, but it's still the human ingenuity that, you know, a company is buying from you and if you don't protect that, if you don't keep growing naturally, you know, I think that you've got, you've got a big problem.

Beau Walter: Yeah, I'll, I'll chime in here just in from the context of an in house marketer at a smaller company who, you know, has also worked with agencies and probably understands. Stephen, what you just articulated. From my standpoint, you know, Pat, your word was unlock is unlock. And it, it certainly has been for me. That doesn't mean that I just kind of turn everything over, you know, and ask it to do everything for me. What I mean by that is it unlocks information and approaches. Um, you know, I do an awful lot of research with it. Um, you know, I talked about mining my call transcripts, customer or prospect call transcripts and mining that. Um, I use it to audit our content or our website and make recommendations. Um, I was just using it to think through, um, optimizing our contact page. I think about it as an unlock from a collaboration tool. What if I did this or why did you recommend this? Um, this is an idea I stole from somebody I can't remember where anymore. But every Monday morning I have perplexity.

Pat McGovern: Um,

Beau Walter: and ChatGPT send me a roundup. Like here's how I used it the previous week, here's how I could have done better. Um, and here are some new things I could try and then grade me, like, are you a novice or intermediate? I'll never be expert level. Yeah. And you know, that is just a good assessment. Like, oh, you know what, I really only asked it one question and maybe a follow up question. I probably should have challenged it more or um, tried this exercise. So I think it rewards the curious, you know, um, somebody who's open to asking questions and looking for perspectives. So I don't, I think that's the big unlock. Not just that it's going to do everything and make my job easier, but allow me to do my job better, more effectively.

Pat McGovern: Let me, let Me. Hang on that for, for a minute because I really like what you're doing and what you're, what you're talking about, both you and Richard. Um, super interesting. In the, in the trenches. Is it? You're using it and you're gaining, you're gaining not only efficiencies, you're gaining valuable insights at a quicker pace than you could have done this even a couple years ago. Uh, given that. Given that. Is that just elevate not only Bo. Walter, because you're a smart guy and you're using it effectively, does that elevate marketing overall? Is this going to, and that's what I'm trying to get to. Is this going to be the, is this going to be the tool that really firmly puts us in the C suite and says, hey, this is why we should have a spot at the table? I know it's a little bit future looking, you know, but I'd love to get your thoughts on it.

Beau Walter: What's that phrase? With great risk, uh, or reward comes great responsibility, or great power comes great responsibility. You know, we've all read about the slop and we've all seen LinkedIn with people using bots to uh, comment and the comment goes to the wrong post. And so, you know, I think we as marketers, this is a great opportunity to elevate our craft and get us to seat at the table. If we use it with, uh, if we use it responsibly and not just turn over our work to it, um, or ask a question and paste my answer, or paste its answer in the email to the executive team, but still look at it with a critical eye and still challenge things from a collaboration standpoint. I love it. I think it's wonderful. I think it's powerful. But Stephen talked about the human element. It's still up to me as a human to look at that with a critical eye and interpret it and decide how to use it or not use it. Uh, I think it can really elevate us if we do it cautiously and responsibly.

Richard: I think it on the flip side in playing devil's advocate, it also then may get other people who aren't marketers thinking more they can do marketing now by using, using AI and um, I feel like, like that's a, that's a risk to the profession. Um, and you know, if you, you don't have a strategic mind or you're not thinking through what you're querying and what you're getting back and adding that human touch to it, I think I personally think there's, it's going to also elevate risk to the profession.

Stephen Fong: And piggybacking off of that, I recently heard a stat that marketers, um, will have the most disruption due to AI. So our jobs are not at, I wouldn't say the most risk, but we'll have the most disruption. So I do believe that there's an important piece of the puzzle and figuring out what does that disruption really mean? How do you, how do you evolve? And I hate the word disruption, uh, in some respects because I feel like it doesn't look so, um, there's not such an optimistic tone to the word disruption. Right. But in reality there's a great opportunity with, with AI going back to what Bo, you said that the, the juxtaposition you have with the responsibility that you have to bring to it. Um, but there is still a lot of disruption that is going on in the marketplace. So it is figuring out in the, in the world of AI, what do marketers do that bring unique value to an organization beyond what AI can do? And with AI being able to do so much that we've just talked about, uh, it's really about finding that human element. Um, we're still selling to humans right now at least, and so I hope that that continues. But it's figuring out how do we show up in AI, um, as a search tool. We're using it to research and so are customers using it to research. And so figuring out, just like we did with the Internet, I didn't because I'm natively born into, but figuring out how to um, show up as a, research, as a solution, going back to, you know, that human solution, how to play with the system in order to make sure that we're shortlisted as a potential, um, you know, option for a prospect. All of those things are part of the marketing itself. It's not just using AI for the benefit of, you know, what we do on a daily basis to make us better, keeping us responsible, pushing us, but it's also how do we use AI as a new channel itself. So I think there's quite a bit of opportunity. Um, but with that that comes great disruption that we need to account for. And if we're not evolving with it, um, it's going to evolve without us.

Beau Walter: I think we've always liked change and marketers have probably advocated for change. But I tell you what, well, you better like and embrace change today.

Richard: Mhm.

Pat McGovern: Guys, as we come to a close here, I want to get everybody's take on the following. We've covered a lot of ground today. From a marketing perspective. Guys, what is the one thing most manufacturers should stop doing in terms of marketing? What's one thing they should hit the gas pedal and do more of? Think about that for a second.

Beau Walter: Uh, that is a good question.

Richard: I'm going to sound like a little bit of a broken record, but I see this. I can't believe I see as much as I see it. Today is just the whole market B2B marketing around features and functions like we talked about at the very beginning, going to the website and it's just a data dump of words and numbers and pictures of the product. There's no telling me what does it do and how would it uh, solve a problem I'm having. So I would really encourage people to transform from being led by features and functions and come from, and be led from solving problems. I think to me that's the biggest thing I see manufacturing companies still do today.

Stephen Fong: I think manufacturing companies today need to embrace a full understanding of what marketing can do for their, for their business, for their bottom line to generate revenue. Um, and we need to have this. I know again going back to our earlier conversation, we need to have a seat at the table so that we can affect change as a united front, as part of that team. Um, because that, because of what we kind of ended with. Right. The world is changing so rapidly. Marketers, um, really allow you from a business manufacturing perspective to be on the pulse of what's next, have a little bit of foresight into where we're going in this changing world. And without that insight you really lose the competitive edge. And so business manufacturer marketers really need to understand and communicate that value, um, up the chain and down the chain. I think it's got to be fully integrated into the system so you can execute high quality marketing that gets the right eyeballs at the right time on the right products that you want to um. We need a seat at the table.

Richard: Uh,

Beau Walter: I would suggest that manufacturing organizations stop treating all of their customers the same and as if their motivations are all the same. Really understand your customer, uh, so you can act accordingly and address their specific needs. And then although it sounds self serving, I wholeheartedly agree with Steven and that was gonna be my responses should start involving marketing. And I say that, uh, not in a self serving way but you know, if you've got somebody who's worked at other manufacturing organizations or has worked at agencies or is an agency who has multiple clients, think about all that experience that they bring all those perspectives they bring all the things they've tried and failed or tried and succeeded. Those are all things that they can bring to the organization. And so, um, I think organizations would do themselves, uh, uh, a big service by involving marketing teams, really embedding them, uh, into the organization.

Pat McGovern: Guys, we'll leave it there. Bo, Richard, Stephen, thanks so much for being on the pod.

Beau Walter: Thanks for having me, Pat. And great to be on with you guys. Yeah, uh, I enjoyed it.