B2B Lead Roundtable

Are you applying empathy as part of your sales and marketing approach? Why? Because according to Brent Adamson, “empathy” is the one word that matters most to sales [and marketing] success. It’s tough to buy. B2B customers are overwhelmed with too much information and too many choices, trying to get their colleagues to agree, not to mention second-guessing. This is part two of my interview with Brent Adamson (@brentadamson), Principal Executive Advisor at Gartner, and the co-author of The Challenger Sale and The Challenger Customer. You’ll learn ways to apply empathy and how to solve buying problems. Writers note: You can view part of our interview here: New research: Boost organic growth from current customers. Does empathy capture everything your book, The Challenger Customer, is about? Brent: The idea that empathy is the core principle of the entire book The Challenger Customer, I admit, is more of a personal opinion based on all of our research. You’ll notice the word doesn’t appear anywhere in the proper book. It’s only in the acknowledgments where I made just a little blurb at the very back (a short note to my daughters). And I used the word empathy there. But in many ways, for me personally, one word captures everything that the book is about. I know this is a topic not only near and dear to your heart. But your expertise here is far deeper than mine. But when I think of empathy, I think of two components to it, but it’s almost a right-brain, left-brain, or the rational versus the emotional. I don’t know what the right way to think about it is. But from my perspective, empathy is, at a fundamental level, your ability to place yourself in someone else’s shoes and see the world from their perspective. And that might be logical (how they view the world from their perspective), or it might be emotionally (what the world feels like from their perspective). I find both of those attributes of empathy to be potentially hugely powerful for anyone in sales or marketing. How customers think For example, whenever we’re talking about Customer Improvement or even the broader work in Challenger, is this idea of mental modeling. The whole idea being, if you’re going to change the way a customer thinks about their business, what’s the first thing you must understand more than anything else? How would you answer that, Brian? Brian: If I were to do that, I’d need to understand their experience and how they see things. Brent: You got it. This is where I have fun talking to you because you get this stuff. And I say this with great, hopefully, empathy and respect for anyone out there. What I find when I ask most leaders, sales, and commercial marketing leaders that question is: “If you’re going to change the way a customer thinks about their business, what’s the first thing you have to understand?” Virtually everyone will say, “Their business.” So, then they start reading 10K’s and the annual reports and the financials and all that kind of stuff. We saw in our research closer to where you are, which is, if you’re going to change the way a customer thinks about their business, the first thing you must understand is how they think about their business. That’s the thing you’ve got to change. Map customer thinking   We find it can be very productive to draw a “map” on a piece of paper. A map of their thinking.

Are you applying empathy as part of your sales and marketing approach? Why? Because according to Brent Adamson, “empathy” is the one word that matters most to sales [and marketing] success. It’s tough to buy. B2B customers are overwhelmed with too much information, too many choices, trying to getting their colleagues to agree, not to mention second-guessing. This is part two of my interview with Brent Adamson (@brentadamson), Principal Executive Advisor at Gartner, and the co-author of The Challenger Sale and The Challenger Customer. You’ll learn ways to apply empathy and how to solve buying problems. Writers note: You can view part of our interview here: New research: Boost organic growth from current customers Does empathy capture everything your book, The Challenger Customer, is about? Brent: The idea that empathy is the core principle of the entire book The Challenger Customer, I admit, is more of a personal opinion based on all of our research. You’ll notice the word doesn’t appear anywhere in the proper book. It’s only in the acknowledgments where I made just a little blurb at the very back (a short note to my daughters). And I used the word empathy there. But in many ways, for me personally, that one word captures everything that the book is about. I know this is a topic not only near and dear to your heart. But your expertise here is far deeper than mine. But when I think of empathy, I think of two components to it, but it’s almost a right-brain, left-brain, or the rational versus the emotional. I don’t know what the right way to think about it is. But from my perspective empathy is, at a fundamental level, your ability to place yourself in someone else’s shoes and see the world from their perspective. And that might be logically (how they view the world from their perspective), or it might be emotionally (what the world feels like from their perspective). I find both of those attributes of empathy to be potentially hugely powerful for anyone in sales or marketing. How customers think For example, whenever we’re talking about Customer Improvement or even the broader work in Challenger, is this idea of mental modeling. The whole idea being, if you’re going to change the way a customer thinks about their business, what’s the first thing you must understand more than anything else? How would you answer that, Brian? Brian: If I were to do that I’d need to understand what their experience is and how they see things. Brent: You got it. This is where I have fun talking to you because you get this stuff. And I say this with great, hopefully, empathy and respect for anyone out there. What I find when I ask most leaders, sales, and commercial marketing leaders, that question is: “If you’re going to change the way a customer thinks about their business, what’s the first thing you have to understand?” Virtually everyone will say, “Their business.” So, then they start reading 10K’s and the annual reports and the financials and all that kind of stuff. What we saw in our research is closer to where you are, which is, if you’re going to change the way a customer thinks about their business, the first thing you must understand is how they think about their business. That’s the thing you’ve got to change. Map customer thinking  

CEOs and sales leaders have long wondered: how can we drive organic growth and increase sales from existing customers? But it’s elusive. In fact, the traditional approach is no longer working. According to CEB, now Gartner, “Only 28% of sales leaders report that account management channels regularly meet their cross-selling and account growth targets.” That’s why I interviewed Brent Adamson (@brentadamson), Principal Executive Advisor at Gartner, and the co-author of The Challenger Sale and The Challenger Customer. Writers note: You can view part two of our interview here: New research: Empathy and how to solve buying problems  Can you tell our listeners a little bit about you and your background? Brent Adamson:  I work with an organization formerly known as CEB and has now been acquired by Gartner. I work with the Sales & Service and Marketing & Communications practices here at the company. And it’s sort of our mission in life, at least in the business to business space where I spend most of my time, trying to understand with data, with research, with analytics, what does world-class B2B selling and marketing look like? We get after that, again, with all sorts of analysis and research. It’s funny, we’re actually industry agnostic. We work across industries, go to market models, geographies, and try to understand (across all of the different kinds of companies out there) what do we all have in common? What’s the recipe for success that’s going to help us all move the dial, do a little bit better, in sales, in marketing and ideally in sales and marketing? How can sellers drive account growth?   Well, sure. This is brand new research for us. In some way or another, we always study growth, right? Because that’s what sales and marketing are all about. There’s a certain almost urgency, or we like to call the “Why Now?”, of this growth question, especially in sales, which is especially relevant for us today. And that is simply the journey that we’ve all been on over the last five years, five months, 10 years, 20 years of building out broader capabilities across our organization to offer our customers, if you will, solutions as opposed to individual products and/or services. The idea that if you can offer your customer broader solutions, that’s going to allow you to stand out, to differentiate yourself, to command price premiums in the marketplace. All good things to do and good reasons to do it. The thing that’s interesting though, Brian, as you add all those capabilities to your portfolio that you can now bring to your customer to add that additional value. The actual value they create for you as a supplier is of course directly contingent on your ability to actually sell them, to get your customer actually to buy those incremental capabilities. Not surprisingly, companies all around the world, in their efforts to grow, are looking to existing customers to buy into more of the cart, as we all like to say, to penetrate that account more deeply and get them to buy into more of the value that we can offer. It turns out this is a huge challenge for B2B organizations around the world, which is, simply put, to get existing customers to buy more of what we have to sell; to essentially drive growth with existing customers. That is the challenge or the terrain, as we like to say, that we dove into this year. What can sales do better? What can we, as sales organizations, do to do a better job of driving growth with those existing customers?

CEOs and sales leaders have long wondered: how can we drive organic growth and increase sales from existing customers? But it’s elusive. In fact, the traditional approach is no longer working. According to CEB, now Gartner, “Only 28% of sales leaders report that account management channels regularly meet their cross-selling and account growth targets.” That’s why I interviewed Brent Adamson (@brentadamson), Principal Executive Advisor at Gartner, and the co-author of The Challenger Sale and The Challenger Customer. Writers note: You can view part two of our interview here: New research: Empathy and how to solve buying problems  Can you tell our listeners a little bit about you and your background? Brent Adamson:  I work with an organization formerly known as CEB and has now been acquired by Gartner. I work with the Sales & Service and Marketing & Communications practices here at the company. And it’s sort of our mission in life, at least in the business to business space where I spend most of my time, trying to understand with data, with research, with analytics, what does world-class B2B selling and marketing look like? We get after that, again, with all sorts of analysis and research. It’s funny, we’re actually industry agnostic. We work across industries, go to market models, geographies, and try to understand (across all of the different kinds of companies out there) what do we all have in common? What’s the recipe for success that’s going to help us all move the dial, do a little bit better, in sales, in marketing and ideally in sales and marketing? How can sellers drive account growth?   Well, sure. This is brand new research for us. In some way or another, we always study growth, right? Because that’s what sales and marketing are all about. There’s a certain almost urgency, or we like to call the “Why Now?”, of this growth question, especially in sales, which is especially relevant for us today. And that is simply the journey that we’ve all been on over the last five years, five months, 10 years, 20 years of building out broader capabilities across our organization to offer our customers, if you will, solutions as opposed to individual products and/or services. The idea that if you can offer your customer broader solutions, that’s going to allow you to stand out, to differentiate yourself, to command price premiums in the marketplace. All good things to do and good reasons to do it. The thing that’s interesting though, Brian, as you add all those capabilities to your portfolio that you can now bring to your customer to add that additional value. The actual value they create for you as a supplier is of course directly contingent on your ability to actually sell them, to get your customer actually to buy those incremental capabilities. Not surprisingly, companies all around the world, in their efforts to grow, are looking to existing customers to buy into more of the cart, as we all like to say, to penetrate that account more deeply and get them to buy into more of the value that we can offer. It turns out this is a huge challenge for B2B organizations around the world, which is, simply put, to get existing customers to buy more of what we have to sell; to essentially drive growth with existing customers. That is the challenge or the terrain, as we like to say, that we dove into this year. What can sales do better? What can we, as sales organizations, do to do a better job of driving growth with those existin...

Sales enablement is intended to help raise performance, but many efforts have backfired due to departmental silos. And now there’s a growing gap between what salespeople need and what they’re getting to improve performance. For example, Corporate Visions recently surveyed 500 B2B marketers and sales professionals that 20% of organization content creators “just do what they think is best” with no overarching structure at all. And just 27% of organizations are content that focuses squarely on customers and rather than their own story. And all the tools and technologies meant to help boost sales productivity are now are slowing things down. What’s the bottom line? Salespeople are getting overwhelmed and slowed down with increased complexity, just like the customers they’re selling to. That’s why I interviewed Dave Brock (@davidabrock), author of the Sales Manager Survival Guide, also CEO of Partners in EXCELLENCE. Dave’s brilliance is his focus on practical simplification. And I’m excited to bring his thinking on sales enablement and what can be done to raise sales team performance. Can you tell us a little bit about your background? Dave: Brian, thanks so much. I really appreciate the chance to continue the conversation we started in Washington, and I appreciate you inviting me to this. By background, I actually started as a physicist in my career and ended up going to the dark side of selling and sold mainframe computers for IBM for some years. Went up the food chain to more senior management roles, then left to become EVP of sales for a technology company as part of a turnaround, later held VP of Sales or CEO roles in several technology companies. And now run the consulting company – we help our clients solve some of the most challenging problems in sales and marketing and deal with the new buyers. We have a highly collaborative approach in helping really outstanding people solve really, really difficult problems. What is the biggest trend you see affecting your work and sellers today? Well, clearly, it’s the convergence of some things that we see in the marketplace. It’s the new buyer. Everybody’s changing the way they buy, and learning how we engage these new buyers through marketing, sales, and customer experience is critical. At the same time, we see tremendous transformations in business and business models, whether it’s the digital transformation that virtually every company is undertaking or just older business models being displaced with new business models. We have some of the classics of Airbnb, turning the hotel and lodging market upside down or Uber turning the taxi and limo business upside down. We see that the new business models occurring are driving real stress on customers. And then the final thing is just overwhelming complexity, just between the rate of change, the amount of information we’re deluged with every day. Most of the people I’m meeting are really struggling with at least one of those three things. I see it impacting virtually everybody. Brian: I can relate to those challenges. I think just in talking about complexity for sellers and marketers, I was having a conversation with someone earlier, and it’s just an overwhelming number of tools an average salesperson uses or a marketer uses. It also creates challenges around collaboration, that internal collaboration. How do you get internal collaboration to improve sales performance? Dave: The easy answer is to break down the silos and start talking to each other. It’s easier said than done. We see a lot of the issues we face regarding internal complexity, and internal collaboration is just people being wel...

Sales enablement is intended to help raise performance, but a lot of efforts have backfired due to departmental silos. And now there’s growing gap between what salespeople need and what they’re getting to improve performance. For example, Corporate Visions recently surveyed 500 B2B marketers and sales professionals that 20% of organization content creators “just do what they think is best” with no overarching structure at all. And just 27% of organizations are content that focuses squarely on customers and rather than their own story. And all the tools and technologies meant to help boost sales productivity are now are slowing things down. What’s the bottom line? Salespeople are getting overwhelmed and slowed down with increased complexity just like the customers they’re selling too. That’s why I interviewed Dave Brock (@davidabrock), author of the Sales Manager Survival Guide, also CEO of Partners in EXCELLENCE. Dave’s brilliance is his focus on practical simplification. And I’m excited to bring his thinking on sales enablement and what can be done to raise sales team performance. Can you tell us a little bit about your background? Dave: Brian, thanks so much. I really appreciate the chance to continue the conversation we started in Washington, and appreciate you inviting me to this. By background, I actually started out as a physicist in my career, and ended up going to the dark side of selling, and sold mainframe computers for IBM a number of years. Went up the food chain to more senior management roles, then left to become EVP of sales for a technology company as part of a turnaround, later held VP of Sales or CEO roles in several technology companies. And now run the consulting company – we help our clients actually solve some of the most challenging problems in sales and marketing, and dealing with the new buyers that there are. We have a highly collaborative approach in helping really outstanding people, solve really, really difficult problems. What is the biggest trend you see affecting your work and sellers today? Well, clearly, it’s the convergence of some things that we see in the marketplace. It’s the new buyer. Everybody’s changing the way they buy, and learning how we engage these new buyers, both through marketing, sales, and customer experience is critical. At the same time, we see tremendous transformations in business and business models, whether it’s the digital transformation that virtually every company is undertaking, or just older business models being displaced with new business models. We have some of the classics of Airbnb, turning the hotel and lodging market upside down or Uber turning the taxi and limo business upside down. We see that the new business models occurring are driving real stress on customers. And then the final thing is just overwhelming complexity, just between the rate of change, the amount of information we’re deluged with every day. Most of the people I’m meeting are really struggling with at least one of those three things. I see it impacting virtually everybody. Brian: I can relate to those challenges. I think just in talking about complexity for sellers and marketers, I was having a conversation with someone earlier and it’s just an overwhelming number of tools an average salesperson uses, or a marketer uses. It also creates challenges around collaboration, that internal collaboration. How do you get internal collaboration to improve sales performance? Dave: The easy answer is to break down the silos and start talking to each other. It’s easier said than done.

Are you connecting with and empowering your customer advocates? If not, you should. Here’s why. Customer advocacy marketing programs help you increase revenue by improving customer acquisition and retention (and they’re also your best source of leads). How? Because you’re helping to motivate happy customers to speak about you positively to others. And delighted customers are your most powerful hidden sales force. For example, in 2016, IDC research found that only 10% B2B companies surveyed had a customer advocacy program in place. This year, “The Role of Marketing in Customer Advocacy” report found that has increased to 67% which is a 570% increase. That’s why I interviewed Mark Organ (@markorgan). Mark is the Founder and CEO of Influitive and he’s been a thought leader in the space of sales and marketing technology; a real innovator. I’m excited to bring his thinking to you on customer advocacy. Tell us a little bit about your background and what inspired you to start Influitive? Mark: Yeah, thanks. I’m really excited to be here, Brian. I think this is an amazing podcast and I’m excited to share my story. I’ve lived a number of lives already. One of them, before I started Eloqua in 2000, was as a research scientist. I was actually a Ph.D. candidate in neuroscience at Northwestern University in Chicago. I was really fascinated by how the brain works and what were the biological bases of behavior. It was fascinating for me. Although research, while fascinating, has some challenges concerning it, especially getting paid well. I also wanted to spend more time with my wife, so I left the research world to get in the business world and joined a Bain & Company as a management consultant; from there I started Eloqua. The other big thread in my life other than being a scientist was being an entrepreneur. I started companies even as a teenager, as far back as age 13. I’ve always been really fascinated with working for myself and satisfying customers. Really, I think now I’m bringing both of those together in my company where I still feel like I’m a scientist. I still feel like I’m trying to discover what makes human beings really work and tick, but also being an entrepreneur, building software for marketers and leveraging the understanding of people and what drives them. Regarding what motivated me to start Influitive – we’re an advocate marketing software company. So we believe that the future belongs to companies who, as opposed to marketing directly, they do a better job of discovering and nurturing and mobilizing their customers to do the marketing for them. We think the future is for companies to get their customers to do the sales and marketing for them. We built some software for discovering, nurturing and mobilizing advocates. I got the idea while I was at Eloqua. It was 2005, and great VC convinced me to spend a couple of weeks out in the field to understand how and why people bought my software. What I learned was when we sold software efficiently it was because there was tons of this advocacy involved. There were multiple referrals on the way in. There were lots of case studies that were relevant on the website, the best references and those prospects went very quickly. At the time, Eloqua was a bootstrap startup, so selling our software quickly was super important. I got really excited about this idea of advocacy, but it turns it was way harder than I thought to generate consistent advocacy. That’s because we didn’t actually understand what motivated the advocates. I really wanted to understand better what motivated the advocates. Through some interviews and lots of other things like that,

Are you connecting with and empowering your customer advocates? If not, you should. Here’s why. Customer advocacy marketing programs help you increase revenue by improving customer acquisition and retention (and they’re also your best source of leads). How? Because you’re helping to motivate happy customers to speak about you positively to others. And delighted customers are your most powerful hidden sales force. For example, in 2016, IDC research found that only 10% B2B companies surveyed had a customer advocacy program in place. This year, “The Role of Marketing in Customer Advocacy” report found that has increased to 67%, which is a 570% increase. That’s why I interviewed Mark Organ (@markorgan). Mark is the Founder and CEO of Influitive, and he’s been a thought leader in the space of sales and marketing technology, a real innovator. I’m excited to bring his thinking to you on customer advocacy. Tell us a little bit about your background and what inspired you to start Influitive? Mark: Yeah, thanks. I’m really excited to be here, Brian. I think this is an amazing podcast, and I’m excited to share my story. I’ve lived several lives already. One of them, before I started Eloqua in 2000, was as a research scientist. I was actually a Ph.D. candidate in neuroscience at Northwestern University in Chicago. I was really fascinated by how the brain works and what were the biological bases of behavior. It was fascinating for me. Although research, while fascinating, has some challenges concerning it, especially getting paid well. I also wanted to spend more time with my wife, so I left the research world to get into the business world and joined Bain & Company as a management consultant; from there, I started Eloqua. The other big thread in my life other than being a scientist was being an entrepreneur. I started companies even as a teenager, as far back as age 13. I’ve always been really fascinated with working for myself and satisfying customers. Really, I think now I’m bringing both of those together in my company where I still feel like I’m a scientist. I still feel like I’m trying to discover what makes human beings really work and tick, but also being an entrepreneur, building software for marketers, and leveraging the understanding of people and what drives them. Regarding what motivated me to start Influitive – we’re an advocate marketing software company. So we believe that the future belongs to companies who, as opposed to marketing directly, do a better job of discovering and nurturing, and mobilizing their customers to do the marketing for them. We think the future is for companies to get their customers to do the sales and marketing. We built some software for discovering, nurturing, and mobilizing advocates. I got the idea while I was at Eloqua. It was 2005, and great VC convinced me to spend a couple of weeks out in the field to understand how and why people bought my software. What I learned was when we sold software efficiently, it was because there was tons of this advocacy involved. There were multiple referrals on the way in. Many case studies were relevant on the website, the best references, and those prospects went very quickly. At the time, Eloqua was a bootstrap startup, so selling our software quickly was super important. I got really excited about this idea of advocacy, but it turns it was way harder than I thought to generate consistent advocacy. That’s because we didn’t actually understand what motivated the advocates. I really wanted to understand better what motivated the advocates. Through some interviews and lots of other things like that, I began to figure out what drove advocacy. Unfortunately, I couldn’t work on that when I was at Eloqua,

Do you focus on capturing product stories or customer-hero stories? The answer can make a huge difference in your sales and marketing results. Let me explain. Despite all the time, money, resources spent on improving sales productivity, just 13% of sales people produce 87% of revenue in a typical organization according to the Sales Benchmark Index. So, what do the 13% high achievers have that others don’t? They connect emotionally with their buyers. That’s why I interviewed Mike Bosworth. If you don’t know Mike Bosworth already, he is a thought leader in the sales space. And he’s had a profound influence on how we sell and market, especially those who are in B2B. In this interview, we talk about the power of customer-hero stories to connect emotionally with buyers to facilitate their buying journey. Author’s Note: The transcript was edited for publication. Can you tell us a little bit more about your background? Mike: Well, it’s interesting because, I think today, it’s incredible how cloud technology is forcing companies to be more empathic in their sales and marketing. It’s forcing them to. Because with the cloud, the conversation has to shift from the old “our-solution” marketing: our solution will do this, and our solution will do that. So, making that shift from that to how-the-customer-uses-our-stuff marketing: customer usage marketing or what we in Story Seekers call customer hero marketing. I want marketing to think about what are we really doing marketing for– I’m hoping we’re trying to create customers and sales is also trying to create customers. If we’re going to sell empathically then, ideally, we won’t even be “selling”. We’ll be facilitating the buying journey of our customer and facilitating their customer experience because human beings love to buy, and they hate to feel sold. What inspired you to talk about integrating with marketing and sales? Well, for my whole career as a sales productivity consultant and sales trainer, my stated mission was to help my client lift the bottom 80% of their sales force. The top 20%, the ones who bring in 80% of the revenue, they’ve been doing well for years and continue to. I figured I want to help my customers bump up at least the next 50% because if you could get a 10% increase in productivity from that next 50%. Do the math on that for most companies: it’s a lot of money. Brian: It is. As you’ve been working with companies and clients, there’s something that’s existed longer than probably both of us have been doing our work. Tell us the things most important for marketing and sales to agree on? In most companies I deal with, they’re really two different silos and they’re pointing fingers at each other.  Marketing thinks they’re sending these great leads to sales, and sales, they go into a black hole and then there’s no follow-up. Sales thinks that the leads from marketing are coming from the janitorial staff of the company that they’re selling to. Quite a while ago, it occurred to me that if we can find the touch point in integrating sales and marketing, we could really help things out and so Tim Riester and I, we dove into it, and we’ve made the touchpoint, the definition of a lead. If both the chief sales officer and the chief marketing officer can specifically agree on the definition of a qualified lead then the “integration” really starts getting a lot easier. That word integration is messing people up in this day and age, and, if you think about it, it gets most people thinking about IT issues. APIs, and what plugs into this and what feeds into that, and that’s disabling true integration.

Do you focus on capturing product stories or customer-hero stories? The answer can make a huge difference in your sales and marketing results. Let me explain. Despite all the time, money, resources spent on improving sales productivity, just 13% of salespeople produce 87% of revenue in a typical organization, according to the Sales Benchmark Index. So, what do the 13% high achievers have that others don’t? They connect emotionally with their buyers. That’s why I interviewed Mike Bosworth. If you don’t know Mike Bosworth already, he is a thought leader in the sales space. And he’s had a profound influence on how we sell and market, especially those in B2B. In this interview, we talk about the power of customer-hero stories to connect emotionally with buyers to facilitate their buying journey. Author’s Note: The transcript was edited for publication. Can you tell us a little bit more about your background? Mike: Well, it’s interesting because, I think today, it’s incredible how cloud technology is forcing companies to be more empathic in their sales and marketing. It’s forcing them to. Because with the cloud, the conversation has to shift from the old “our-solution” marketing: our solution will do this, and our solution will do that. So, making that shift from that to how-the-customer-uses-our-stuff marketing: customer usage marketing or what we in Story Seekers call customer hero marketing. I want marketing to think about what we are really doing marketing for– I’m hoping we’re trying to create customers, and sales are also trying to create customers. If we’re going to sell empathically, then, ideally, we won’t even be “selling.” We’ll be facilitating the buying journey of our customers and facilitating their customer experience because human beings love to buy, and they hate to feel sold. What inspired you to talk about integrating with marketing and sales? For my whole career as a sales productivity consultant and sales trainer, my stated mission was to help my client lift the bottom 80% of their sales force. The top 20%, the ones who bring in 80% of the revenue, they’ve been doing well for years and continue to. I figured I want to help my customers bump up at least the next 50% because you could get a 10% increase in productivity from that next 50%. Please do the math on that for most companies: it’s a lot of money. Brian: It is. As you’ve been working with companies and clients, there’s something that’s existed longer than probably both of us have been doing our work. Tell us the things most important for marketing and sales to agree on? In most companies I deal with, they’re really two different silos, and they’re pointing fingers at each other.  Marketing thinks they’re sending these great leads to sales, and sales, they go into a black hole, and then there’s no follow-up. Sales think that the leads from marketing come from the janitorial staff of the company they’re selling to. Quite a while ago, it occurred to me that if we can find the touchpoint in integrating sales and marketing, we could really help things out, and so Tim Riester and I, we dove into it, and we’ve made the touchpoint, the definition of a lead. If both the chief sales officer and the chief marketing officer can specifically agree on the definition of a qualified lead, then the “integration” really starts getting a lot easier. That word integration is messing people up in this day and age, and, if you think about it, it gets most people thinking about IT issues. APIs, and what plugs into this and what feeds into that, disable true integration. A couple of weeks ago, I just swapped out the word integration for agreement. Golly,

When was the last time you looked at the quality and accuracy of your B2B persona and contact data? Getting the right content to the right people continues to be a challenge in B2B marketing and lead generation. Starting in the fall of 2014, Salesforce started to analyze more than 15 million data points, spanning a four-year period, from two of the largest B2B databases: Data.com and LinkedIn. The goal? To do a detailed audience analysis to help marketers understand how they can improve marketing accuracy. That’s why I interviewed Mathew Sweezey (@msweezey). Mathew works with Salesforce and is the Principal of Marketing Insights to discuss the just-released report, B2B Personas: Targeting Audiences. I wanted to talk with Mat and bring this vital information to B2B marketers. Author’s Note: The transcript was edited for publication. Mat, can you tell us more about your background? Mathew Sweezey: Yeah, thanks, Brian, for having me; I love being on here. My background’s interesting. I think what’s relevant to this conversation is that I was one of the really early employees at a small startup back in the day called Pardot, a marketing automation platform. From there, we grew that, sold that to Exact Target, which Salesforce.com then acquired. Along with that way, I wrote a book called Marketing Automation for Dummies. I write for lots of different publications, and now I head up the forward-looking marketing ideas and theories as Principal of Marketing Insight at Salesforce.com. What motivated you or inspired you to do this research? These are fundamental marketing questions, and what bothers me is that no one else was trying to ask these questions or whether they actually knew they should even be asking these questions in the first place. Let me explain. As a marketer, we have metrics. We’re all right, so we got 10,000 email addresses this year. That would be a metric that we may give to somebody to validate our efforts. But that’s like saying, I’ve got 10. Ten out of how many? That’s the question. It’s not a “what did you get,” it’s a “how effective were you.” So these were effectiveness measures. Without really detailed information into our audiences, and exactly their size, growth, and churn, we really have no way to answer any of those questions, which should be key fundamental questions that we should answer to answer about our job. That’s what really sparked this. This idea started a couple of years ago.  I wanted to understand the value of email better and how do we value our email addresses. When you look at the average number that it costs a B2B business to obtain an email address, that is about $150. And when you then look at the typical size of a B2B email database, the average size is 50,000 names. That’s what a marketer has. Not their addressable market. Let me be clear on that. So if you multiply those two things together, the marketer has a seven and a half million dollar asset under their control, their email database. And to be clear, that is the largest asset that a marketer owns, point-blank. Now when you then say that’s the biggest asset, you start to ask some fundamental questions on how do we evaluate it, how often does it churn – anything like that. And there is no data that we can give you. The only measure that we have of the health of our email database is, did the email bounce: yes or no? Horrible metric.

When was the last time you looked at the quality and accuracy of your B2B persona and contact data? Getting the right content to the right people continues to be a challenge in B2B marketing and lead generation. Starting in the fall of 2014, Salesforce started to analyze more than 15 million data points, spanning a four-year period, from two of the largest B2B databases: Data.com and LinkedIn. The goal? To do a detailed audience analysis to help marketers understand how they can improve marketing accuracy. That’s why I interviewed Mathew Sweezey (@msweezey). Mathew works with Salesforce and is the Principal of Marketing Insights to talk about the just-released report, B2B Personas: Targeting Audiences. I wanted to talk with Mat and bring this vital information to B2B marketers. Author’s Note: The transcript was edited for publication. Mat, can you tell us more about your background? Mathew Sweezey: Yeah, thanks Brian for having me; love being on here. My background’s kind of interesting. I think what’s relevant to this conversation is I was one of the really early employees at a small startup back in the day called Pardot, which is a marketing automation platform. From there, we grew that, sold that to Exact Target which was then acquired by Salesforce.com. Along with that way, I wrote a book called Marketing Automation for Dummies. I write for lots of different publications, and now I head up the forward-looking marketing ideas and theories as Principal of Marketing Insight at Salesforce.com. What motivated you or inspired you to do this research? To me, these are fundamental marketing questions, and what bothers me is the fact that no one else was trying to ask these questions, or whether they actually knew they should even be asking these questions in the first place. Let me explain. As a marketer, we have metrics. We’re like all right, so we got 10,000 email addresses this year. That would be a metric that we may give to somebody to validate our efforts. But that’s like saying, I’ve got 10. Ten out of how many? That’s the question. It’s not a “what did you get,” it’s a “how effective were you.” So these were effectiveness measures, and without really detailed information into our audiences, and exactly their size, their growth, their churn, we really have no way to answer any of those questions, which should be key fundamental questions that we should be able to answer about our job. That’s what really sparked this. This idea started a couple of years ago.  I wanted to understand the value of email better, and how do we value our email addresses. When you look at about the average number that it costs a B2B business to obtain an email address, that is about $150. And when you then look at the typical size of a B2B email database, the average size is 50,000 names. That’s what a marketer has. Not their addressable market, let me be clear on that. So if you multiply those two things together, the marketer has a seven and a half million dollar asset under their control, which is their email database. And to be clear, that is the largest asset that a marketer owns, point blank. Now when you then say, that’s the biggest asset, then you start to ask some fundamental questions on how do we evaluate it, how often does it churn – anything like that. And there is no data that we can give you.

Does your purpose currently impact your marketing, revenue growth, and profit? If not, it should. Here’s why: According to research curated by Mack Fogelson, consider the following: * 73% of people care about the company, not just the product, when making a purchase. (BBMG) * 50% of purchases are made because of word-of-mouth (Brains on Fire) * 85% of purpose-led companies showed positive growth (Harvard Business Review/EY) In sum, purpose matters because it impacts your growth, revenue, and profit. That’s why I interviewed Mack Fogelson (@mackfogelson), the CEO of Genuinely, a consulting and training company. I met Mack through a mutual friend, and we’ve developed a friendship too. I’ve learned a lot about marketing with purpose and why it’s important to revenue growth and profit, and I’m excited to share her thinking with you. You’ll also learn four steps to articulate your purpose. Author’s Note: The transcript was edited for publication. Mack, can you tell us a little bit more about your background? Way long ago, I was a teacher and did that for a while. Then over the last fourteen years, I’ve been in the marketing space, so everything from building and coding websites to optimizing with search engine optimization and SEM to building community and brands and the full, integrated approach to marketing a company. All of those layers have brought us to where we are now, primarily teaching companies how to use these concepts, frameworks, and the processes that we’ve tested and know really work to grow their companies. We do this to ultimately help businesses in the digital age compete, contend, and build really great, meaningful, and sustainable businesses. What inspired you to focus on purpose and humanize marketing? Around the time I started having my family, I just realized that if I was taking that time away from my kids, I really needed to make it count. I’ve built a business around something significant to me and for my employees. We started by helping companies be better. I started getting into the conversation about community many years back. When many marketers were talking about how to rank #1 in Google, I talked a lot about the benefit of the community and businesses building a community to help their companies. What I didn’t realize at the time, but unfolded many years later, was that purpose was really at the heart of all of that: helping companies understand how you bring people together through purpose and drive the organization’s growth. You said that it’s not about what you spend on marketing; it’s the purpose that helps you get focused. Why is that? Because there is so much that has changed, the world isn’t the same. Businesses aren’t the same, and the way the business community works. Customers are not the same. So, we cannot expect marketing to be the same. Mainly we’re looking at consumers now. We expect authentic and authentic and human experiences. And not only that, but employees are looking for more meaning in their work just like I was many years ago. It really comes down to the fact that it’s not about what your company sells or solves anymore, and certainly, you need to be incredibly stellar at what you sell and what you make, but it’s about who your business is. And really, it’s about the three components of purpose, people, and promise, and having those pieces work together for any given company so that they can reap all the benefits that purpose brings,

Does your purpose currently impact your marketing, revenue growth, and profit? If not, it should. Here’s why: According to research, curated by Mack Fogelson, consider the following: * 73% of people care about the company, not just the product when making a purchase. (BBMG) * 50% of purchases are made because of word-of-mouth (Brains on Fire) * 85% of purpose-led companies showed positive growth (Harvard Business Review/EY) In sum, purpose matter because it impacts your growth, revenue, and profit. That’s why I interviewed Mack Fogelson (@mackfogelson), the CEO of Genuinely, a consulting and training company. I met Mack through a mutual friend and we’ve developed a friendship too. I’ve learned a lot about marketing with purpose and why it’s important to revenue growth and profit and I’m excited to share her thinking with you. You’ll also learn four steps to articulate your purpose. Author’s Note: The transcript was edited for publication. Mack, can you tell us a little bit more about your background? Way long ago, I was a teacher and did that for a while. Then over the last fourteen years, I’ve been in the marketing space, so everything from building and coding websites to optimizing with search engine optimization and SEM to building community and brands and the full, integrated approach to marketing a company. All of those layers have brought us to where we are now which is primarily teaching companies how to use these concepts, frameworks, and the processes that we’ve tested and know really work to grow their companies. We do this to ultimately help businesses in the digital age compete, contend, and build really great, meaningful and sustainable businesses. What inspired you to focus on purpose and humanize marketing? Around the time I started having my family, I just realized that if I was taking that time away from my kids that I really needed to make it count. I’ve built a business around something that has been very meaningful to me and for my employees. We started by helping companies be better. I started getting in the conversation about community many years back. When many marketers were talking about how to rank #1 in Google, I was talking a lot about the benefit of community and of businesses building a community to help their companies. What I didn’t realize at the time, but unfolded many years later, was that purpose was really at the heart of all of that: helping companies to understand how you bring people together through purpose and drive the organization’s growth. You said that it’s not about what you spend on marketing; it’s purpose that helps you get focused. Why is that? Because there is so much that has changed. The world isn’t the same. Businesses aren’t the same, and the way the business community works. Customers are not the same. So, we cannot expect marketing to be the same. Mainly we’re looking at consumers now. We expect authentic and very real and human experiences. And not only that but employees are looking for more meaning in their work just like I was many years ago. It really comes down to the fact that it’s not about what your company sells or solves anymore, and certainly, you need to be incredibly stellar at what you sell and what you make, but it’s about who your business is. And really, it’s about the three components of purpose, people, and promise,

Have you made empathetic marketing part of your strategy in 2017? If not, you should. Let me explain. I interviewed Michael Brenner (@BrennerMichael) the CEO of MarketingInsiderGroup.com. Michael has received recognition across the Internet for his knowledge and role in shaping content marketing as we know it today. He’s a sought-after keynote speaker and co-author of The Content Formula. I’m excited to bring his thoughts on empathy to you. Author’s Note: The transcript was edited for publication. Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself and your background? Michael: Yeah, sure. Thanks, Brian. It’s a pleasure to be with you today and looking forward to talking about empathy, which I think is so important in today’s landscape. As we get older,  I’ve needed to summarize my career much more quickly than I used to. But a 20 plus year career in sales and marketing, and leadership roles in various kinds of companies, large and small. Most recently, about ten years ago, was hired by SAP as their first head of digital marketing.  I became their first VP of Global Content Marketing, and mainly helped them modernize the digital marketing approaches that they were taking. Very much taking an empathetic approach like we’re going to discuss. There’s such a need, I think, for brands to understand.  They want to do it I think but struggle with how to get it done and how to change the culture inside their organizations. That’s where I’m focused now. I built Marketing Insider Group, primarily, as kind of a one-man agency for now, but with the point that I’ve been there, I’ve done that, I’ve been inside corporate marketing departments. I understand the politics and the culture challenge that marketers face today, and now I’m dedicating my life to trying to help as many companies, as many brands, as many marketers as I can, to understand how to put themselves in a leadership position by helping their customers. Brian: That’s fantastic. I came across your article on LinkedIn, and several people forwarded it to me and said, “Brian you should check this out for your book.” What inspired you to start writing and talking about empathy recently? What I’ve found is as I talk to senior executives – I have a good story I think we could maybe get to it a little bit later on – but a typical conversation for me might involve, “Hey. This digital world and content marketing, and creating content for customers – we think we get it. Now we need to figure out how to do it.” Often, I find someone in a position of power (with their arms folded) asking challenging questions like, “Well, how’s this going to help us sell more stuff?” I co-authored a book called The Content Formula, to specifically address this sort of results-based question, which was, how do you show ROI from this approach? In the book, I talk about how you can show a better return on investment with marketing that focuses on delivering content people want. Even after all those sorts of financial objections are removed, I still found that there was resistance inside a lot of companies. I think we can talk about this in a little bit more depth as well, but there’s a natural instinct inside a business to want to promote itself. That’s counter-intuitive. That’s why I came to this kind of realization that the missing element, and you’ve been talking about this for a long time, is empathy. It’s missing inside corporate cultures and structures. Empathy is the most counter-intuitive secret to success....