Evolve Your Marketing Team with Kyle Lacy

WEBVTT 1 00:00:04.799 --> 00:00:08.390 Kyle acy, welcome in too be to be growth. It's a pleasure to 2 00:00:08.390 --> 00:00:12.349 get to chat with you to day. Many thanks for having me. Absolutely 3 00:00:12.429 --> 00:00:16.030 so many are going to be aware of you and your work, maybe your 4 00:00:16.070 --> 00:00:20.350 books. You have experience dating back to time. It sales force open view. 5 00:00:20.670 --> 00:00:24.019 You have been the CMO at lessonly for what close to five years, 6 00:00:24.420 --> 00:00:29.140 and then recently you've made a transition. Tell us a little bit about kind 7 00:00:29.140 --> 00:00:32.460 of what you're up to now. Yeah, so lessonly, we are. 8 00:00:32.780 --> 00:00:37.049 We are part of the Lucky Group of companies that were acquired last year. 9 00:00:37.450 --> 00:00:43.409 We were acquired by a much larger company called seismic in the sales enablement space 10 00:00:43.649 --> 00:00:51.079 in August of last year and that was basically acquiring a sales and coaching platform 11 00:00:51.159 --> 00:00:57.399 like lessonly and building it into the enablement platform that seismic sells. Seize mix 12 00:00:57.439 --> 00:01:00.920 around one thousand five hundred employees with lessonly. So it's just a much larger 13 00:01:00.960 --> 00:01:07.950 entity and I currently serve the marketing team at seismic. Great. Tell me 14 00:01:08.069 --> 00:01:11.750 what, what kind of excites you about this new role in this new season? 15 00:01:11.390 --> 00:01:17.030 I mean it's a different I always get excited about different opportunities, especially 16 00:01:17.150 --> 00:01:21.140 in a career. Yes, and this gives me a different opportunity. It's 17 00:01:21.180 --> 00:01:25.420 not something that I have not done in my career and it gives me a 18 00:01:25.579 --> 00:01:32.140 different view into how how a much larger entity works, how a different investment 19 00:01:32.260 --> 00:01:38.609 strategy works, in terms of it just being a different path to growth than 20 00:01:38.609 --> 00:01:42.689 lessonly was because lesslie was venture backed right BEC firms. So what makes me 21 00:01:42.810 --> 00:01:51.079 most excited is that enablement as a category is is just I mean, we've 22 00:01:51.159 --> 00:01:55.599 talked about it a lot sales there. ENABLEMENT is a title that people have 23 00:01:56.200 --> 00:02:00.000 enablements. The conversation that's been happening over, you know, size. It's 24 00:02:00.000 --> 00:02:02.310 been around for ten years, but really around the past five, four to 25 00:02:02.430 --> 00:02:08.550 five years, and it's finally starting to grow into a category creating type machine. 26 00:02:08.590 --> 00:02:12.949 Yeah, and that's what's so exciting about is that a lot more people 27 00:02:12.949 --> 00:02:17.500 are talking about the value of enablement, not just because seismiccel it sells, 28 00:02:17.539 --> 00:02:22.740 it because it's so valuable, and that's what I'm most excited about. If 29 00:02:22.780 --> 00:02:25.379 someone's like a little bit newer to enablement, give us like a broad kind 30 00:02:25.379 --> 00:02:29.460 of like definition of what you're talking about there. Yeah, I mean it 31 00:02:30.050 --> 00:02:34.969 has a lot of different components, but ultimately it's about how do you enable? 32 00:02:35.330 --> 00:02:39.289 So how do you support a frontline team, whether that's customer support, 33 00:02:39.330 --> 00:02:44.250 customer service, sales? How do you support them through the sales process, 34 00:02:44.400 --> 00:02:47.960 through the personal development process, giving them the right pieces of content, giving 35 00:02:49.000 --> 00:02:52.439 them the right coaching, giving them the right training in order to be the 36 00:02:52.560 --> 00:02:57.520 best sales reps possible. So you know, peep will experience decrease in Chern 37 00:02:58.479 --> 00:03:01.949 in terms of you know, for Reps and people, an increase in productivity 38 00:03:01.990 --> 00:03:06.509 from the reps as well. It's great. It kind of leads us right 39 00:03:06.509 --> 00:03:08.669 into where I want to start our conversation today. So want to spend the 40 00:03:08.710 --> 00:03:14.659 next twenty thirty minutes with you talking strategically. First, on something I've heard. 41 00:03:15.300 --> 00:03:19.340 Actually listen to a talk you gave on Youtube called wide. You moved 42 00:03:19.699 --> 00:03:23.819 SDRs to report to marketing and a lot of what you're experiencing, what you 43 00:03:23.860 --> 00:03:27.289 were talking about in that video is what you just mentioned. You were experiencing 44 00:03:27.289 --> 00:03:30.689 a lot of churn on your SDR team and it led to some strategic thinking 45 00:03:30.770 --> 00:03:36.169 in Studs, some strategic movement right in the ORC. So set up that 46 00:03:36.289 --> 00:03:38.090 scene for us a little bit. And what you're experiencing this is few years 47 00:03:38.129 --> 00:03:42.639 back. That kind of led to those strategic conversations. Yeah, and I 48 00:03:42.719 --> 00:03:46.719 think it's important to set the stage on what we're actually talking about in terms 49 00:03:46.719 --> 00:03:52.199 of this. The type of company. Seismic much larger organization. The SDRs 50 00:03:52.240 --> 00:03:57.030 and beat ours are the the outbound bedrs live in sales and bound strs live 51 00:03:57.069 --> 00:04:01.189 in marketing. My Org at seismic lessonly at the time. This is two 52 00:04:01.229 --> 00:04:05.110 thousand and eighteen and we continued it throughout our growth. But this was sub 53 00:04:05.229 --> 00:04:10.819 five millionaire are we were growing. We had just raised series be. It 54 00:04:10.979 --> 00:04:14.939 was definitely a much different it's a different scenario than what I'm experiencing today. 55 00:04:15.020 --> 00:04:17.420 Just yet the stage. But Yep, for us it was. It was 56 00:04:17.540 --> 00:04:21.660 mostly just around the fact that we wanted to unite the tip of the speed 57 00:04:21.740 --> 00:04:27.170 here. We wanted messaging to be similar, we wanted to make sure there 58 00:04:27.370 --> 00:04:32.730 was deep alignment between sales and marketing. So when you are a sales led 59 00:04:33.370 --> 00:04:39.160 type go to market model right where it's very much dependent on your head count 60 00:04:39.240 --> 00:04:43.680 capacity to grow revenue right, for every ae you're at account executive, you're 61 00:04:43.680 --> 00:04:46.759 adding equals a certain amount of pipeline, equals a certain amount of revenue. 62 00:04:46.800 --> 00:04:53.629 Hmm Leslie was very lucky that we had a very strong inbound strategy which kept 63 00:04:53.709 --> 00:04:58.990 US growing exponentially while we were figuring out the outbound model. So for us 64 00:04:59.029 --> 00:05:01.790 it was looking at the outbound model and saying, Hey, it makes sense 65 00:05:01.829 --> 00:05:09.660 that marketing would control and support a lot of pipeline development as well as revenue 66 00:05:09.699 --> 00:05:16.740 creation. Seismic is different. Enterprise sales motion lessonly more commercial model where you're 67 00:05:16.740 --> 00:05:21.689 experiencing like a sixteen and Ninety Day sales cycle. So it's again, I'm 68 00:05:21.730 --> 00:05:25.290 kind of all over the board right now, but it's very much dependent on 69 00:05:25.490 --> 00:05:30.089 business model. But for me it's how do you unite the message across all 70 00:05:30.209 --> 00:05:35.519 your go to market channels? Right, okay. So what starts that kind 71 00:05:35.560 --> 00:05:40.279 of conversation for you guys to go? Okay, we should bring them this 72 00:05:40.439 --> 00:05:44.480 under marketing because I think some of those strategic conversations when your hair's on fire, 73 00:05:44.720 --> 00:05:46.839 evolutions necessary. Right. So, if you were experiencing the chaos that 74 00:05:46.959 --> 00:05:49.870 we're going to just start talking about it, well, it isn't working. 75 00:05:50.189 --> 00:05:54.790 You don't when your hair is on fire, you're not looking at things that 76 00:05:54.829 --> 00:05:58.509 are working to fix right when your hair is on fire, you're looking at 77 00:05:58.550 --> 00:06:01.709 where is the fire, not the bucket of water that's down the hallway that's 78 00:06:01.709 --> 00:06:04.339 working really well. Like our in like we're not going to break our inbound 79 00:06:04.339 --> 00:06:08.860 strategy lessonly because it was working. Our organic search is very strong that type 80 00:06:08.860 --> 00:06:13.699 of stuff. So for us it was the outbound model was not working. 81 00:06:13.819 --> 00:06:17.100 I'll know beat our model and in order for us to scale at the time 82 00:06:17.379 --> 00:06:20.850 past five million, ten million, thirty million, we had to figure out 83 00:06:20.850 --> 00:06:29.009 how to while we're increasing the mbound contribution, we had to figure out different 84 00:06:29.170 --> 00:06:33.920 levers to pull to increase other revenue contribution channels, altbound bed ours or one 85 00:06:33.959 --> 00:06:39.040 of those. And it just so happened that I had an inbound strategy that 86 00:06:39.160 --> 00:06:42.480 works. So I raised my hand and said I will take them now. 87 00:06:42.920 --> 00:06:48.389 The selfish side of me at the time was thinking I want marketing should always 88 00:06:48.389 --> 00:06:53.430 have the seat at the table at the board level, and the only way 89 00:06:53.509 --> 00:06:56.430 that we can really have a true seat at the table is if we own 90 00:06:56.509 --> 00:07:00.350 a revenue number or a pipeline number in two thousand and seventeen, two thousand 91 00:07:00.389 --> 00:07:03.980 and eighteen. That was not a normal thing to discuss as marketing teams. 92 00:07:04.259 --> 00:07:09.980 It wasn't like we wanted to own the content revenue for the sales team and 93 00:07:10.100 --> 00:07:15.500 lessonly. We just had a situation where marketing had the opportunity to source seventy 94 00:07:15.579 --> 00:07:18.449 percent and that new revenue. Now sales team closed it. Got To give 95 00:07:18.490 --> 00:07:20.730 them props for that, but marketing was source of a lot of it. 96 00:07:21.449 --> 00:07:25.490 Okay. So here's the thing is, when you think about orgs where their 97 00:07:25.490 --> 00:07:27.970 hair is on fire right where it's like we have to think of a solution, 98 00:07:28.889 --> 00:07:31.480 that's when a lot of innovation, a lot of evolution within organizations happens 99 00:07:31.519 --> 00:07:36.040 because something has to give. But something strategic that you see a lot of 100 00:07:36.120 --> 00:07:42.839 those on the forefront doing is we're also thinking with vision, going okay, 101 00:07:42.959 --> 00:07:45.709 this is working right now, but we should be tweaking as we go. 102 00:07:45.990 --> 00:07:49.230 We should be looking at what could we brave up moved shift? Obviously, 103 00:07:49.269 --> 00:07:53.350 if something's working great for you, you're going to keep doing it, but 104 00:07:53.430 --> 00:07:57.509 you also want to be thinking how are we strategically evolving? And I feel 105 00:07:57.550 --> 00:07:59.939 like that's kind of where I want to go with you. is going. 106 00:08:00.139 --> 00:08:01.740 Okay, you're in a new role, you're in a new place. I 107 00:08:01.899 --> 00:08:05.379 wonder, as you see maybe scale at a different level, as you have 108 00:08:05.500 --> 00:08:09.100 a bit of a different vantage point right now. What are you looking at 109 00:08:09.180 --> 00:08:13.689 going this is short of maybe the next evolution. This is some things we 110 00:08:13.769 --> 00:08:18.370 could be trying, some questions we should be asking, and so let's go 111 00:08:18.610 --> 00:08:22.930 there a little bit. Let's look forward in marketing and I'd love to get 112 00:08:22.970 --> 00:08:26.490 your take on on some of what you see coming maybe here in the next 113 00:08:26.569 --> 00:08:28.720 the next couple years of evolution that you want to maybe be involved in. 114 00:08:30.639 --> 00:08:35.279 Yeah, I think that there's you know, I I we always love to 115 00:08:35.360 --> 00:08:41.000 talk about the next evolution and we always like to talk about trends and how 116 00:08:41.080 --> 00:08:45.750 do we shift perspective and change and all that stuff. In the reality is 117 00:08:46.389 --> 00:08:50.669 a lot of the tools that we have just need to be utilized appropriately. 118 00:08:50.710 --> 00:08:54.309 Right like I am still, I would say, I would say this, 119 00:08:54.350 --> 00:08:58.940 at exact target, and this was in two thousand and ten, where enablement 120 00:08:58.580 --> 00:09:03.299 was highly, highly, highly effective. For me as as somebody running a 121 00:09:03.340 --> 00:09:09.899 thought leadership team, I had to enable a thousand account executives, Yep, 122 00:09:09.490 --> 00:09:13.370 on what the content was. That was driving a lot of these leads that 123 00:09:13.409 --> 00:09:16.009 they were working right. So for me, looking at the future, it 124 00:09:16.210 --> 00:09:24.440 is how do you create better alignment across an org that's scaling rapidly. HMM. 125 00:09:24.679 --> 00:09:28.480 One thing that I have realized moving from a scaling from fifty employees to 126 00:09:28.559 --> 00:09:33.080 two hundred and fifty, getting acquired and then dealing with how do you move, 127 00:09:33.559 --> 00:09:37.720 how do you shift perspective from two hundred and fifty employees two thousand and 128 00:09:37.720 --> 00:09:41.110 fifteen hundred and a global entity? What I have realized is that the the 129 00:09:41.750 --> 00:09:48.269 issues and the challenges and the opportunities for improvement are the same, they're just 130 00:09:48.429 --> 00:09:54.779 different scale. Right, there's people, there's a processes and there's investment. 131 00:09:56.139 --> 00:09:58.980 Right. And so when we're thinking about the future, it really is dependent 132 00:10:00.019 --> 00:10:03.659 on are you part the questions you should be asking yourself or first what is 133 00:10:03.700 --> 00:10:07.490 your Goto market model? Are you sales let or you product led? You 134 00:10:07.570 --> 00:10:11.809 know, for speaking specifically for software? Right, if your sales led, 135 00:10:13.450 --> 00:10:16.049 you have to constantly be thinking about how do you how do you make a 136 00:10:16.250 --> 00:10:24.159 headcount capacity model more efficient so you could drive more revenue in the cheapest way 137 00:10:24.200 --> 00:10:28.720 possible for the product led. That could be a component of the future of 138 00:10:28.799 --> 00:10:31.000 demand Jin and my opinion, it is how do you make sure that the 139 00:10:31.279 --> 00:10:39.950 product is driving the growth of a company? Right, and as you get 140 00:10:39.029 --> 00:10:46.629 bigger net dollar retension or gross dollar Retenson is going to be a more important 141 00:10:46.629 --> 00:10:50.940 metric for you then maybe when lessonly was at five month, if that makes 142 00:10:50.980 --> 00:10:54.980 sense, because you got to get companies in the door. But at the 143 00:10:54.059 --> 00:11:00.820 seismic level we have huge customers and it could be that, you know, 144 00:11:00.940 --> 00:11:05.090 we focus primarily on customer up cell. So for me, if I look 145 00:11:05.129 --> 00:11:09.210 at trends, it is how do I make the current model more efficient? 146 00:11:11.049 --> 00:11:15.450 How do I still pull the levers of organic search? How do I get 147 00:11:15.490 --> 00:11:20.039 paid more efficient? But as you move up market, which all companies basically 148 00:11:20.159 --> 00:11:26.120 do, it's how do you utilize the product to drive growth and then how 149 00:11:26.240 --> 00:11:30.799 do you build, as you build the demand gend model consistently and as you 150 00:11:30.919 --> 00:11:35.669 have repeatability across different segments, how do you focus on a named account strategy 151 00:11:35.789 --> 00:11:39.750 that makes sense, and I think for me that's the future of how do 152 00:11:39.789 --> 00:11:43.669 you upsell and then how do you actually build a named account strategy that that 153 00:11:43.429 --> 00:11:48.700 makes sense and that and I'm and I'm specifically not saying ABM for a reason 154 00:11:50.100 --> 00:11:54.779 because and I won't say either. Yeah, well, that's sorry. That 155 00:11:54.899 --> 00:11:58.740 was a really long answer. To know, it's very short question. There's 156 00:11:58.779 --> 00:12:01.529 so many kind of rabbit trails we could take with that that I I'd like 157 00:12:01.769 --> 00:12:07.529 to I love the conversation piece of it and I love the thought process because 158 00:12:07.570 --> 00:12:09.289 I can I can totally track with where you're going there. I want to 159 00:12:09.330 --> 00:12:11.690 take you back to the beginning of one of the things you said and just 160 00:12:11.809 --> 00:12:16.960 say to utilize the tools that you already have. But to do that, 161 00:12:16.559 --> 00:12:20.120 I mean we geek out about our text AC, we geek out about all 162 00:12:20.159 --> 00:12:24.080 of the things that are available to us. So what are ways that you 163 00:12:24.120 --> 00:12:30.029 guys are making sure you are using your tools the most efficiently you can and 164 00:12:30.190 --> 00:12:31.950 you have the right ones? Is that I would love to hear kind of 165 00:12:33.070 --> 00:12:37.950 your thought there. So the way we think about tool usage is dependent on 166 00:12:39.149 --> 00:12:41.710 the goals that we have as a marketing team, and for us it's how 167 00:12:41.750 --> 00:12:48.019 do you expand the customer base, how do you drive pipeline in a efficient 168 00:12:48.059 --> 00:12:54.299 way, and then how do you tell the brand story more effectively? Right, 169 00:12:54.740 --> 00:12:58.649 and we aligned tools and spend across all of those different those three different 170 00:13:00.210 --> 00:13:03.330 goals. Right. So for us it's I don't care, I could care 171 00:13:03.450 --> 00:13:09.250 less what the tool is, hmm, as long as it is driving towards 172 00:13:09.330 --> 00:13:11.879 one of those main goals. So the reason I bring that up is I 173 00:13:13.039 --> 00:13:16.559 think too many times people go out and look at tools. I mean, 174 00:13:16.559 --> 00:13:20.960 let's use seismic as an example. Go look at seismic for Content Management, 175 00:13:20.320 --> 00:13:26.639 for coaching and enablement, and you're looking at the different features and functionalities and 176 00:13:26.720 --> 00:13:28.950 how cool would be to use it and a lot of times you've got to 177 00:13:30.029 --> 00:13:33.950 have a conversation on how does it aligned to the main the main company adjectives? 178 00:13:33.750 --> 00:13:37.149 Our buyers and our customers are very good at aligning that, honestly. 179 00:13:37.669 --> 00:13:41.309 But I think a lot of times marketers will go out there and just buy 180 00:13:41.460 --> 00:13:46.019 a new product because a peer was using it or because they're going to try 181 00:13:46.059 --> 00:13:50.419 to retro fit it into their strategy. But I think you need to do 182 00:13:50.620 --> 00:13:52.740 the strategy work first. That's the problem that I have with a lot of 183 00:13:52.779 --> 00:13:58.570 ABM vendors is that you go by the technology and you haven't done the word 184 00:13:58.649 --> 00:14:01.809 to try to understand the strategy around using the technology. You cannot buy the 185 00:14:01.929 --> 00:14:07.809 technology first. You have to understand the strategy behind and I can say that 186 00:14:07.009 --> 00:14:11.840 because I've failed at it three times. Tell us about one of those failures. 187 00:14:11.960 --> 00:14:16.399 Really bad tools. Well, it's all. It's all. It's mostly 188 00:14:16.440 --> 00:14:20.080 around ABM and it's exactly I finally got to the point where we got to 189 00:14:20.159 --> 00:14:24.789 define a strategy before we go buy tools. Right, and you can buy 190 00:14:24.830 --> 00:14:28.350 any tool you want, but it needs to align to the strategic direction of 191 00:14:28.389 --> 00:14:31.830 the team. And I don't care if you're one million of revenue or two 192 00:14:31.830 --> 00:14:35.110 hundred and fifty million. And if you're selling it, then you need to 193 00:14:35.190 --> 00:14:37.389 be aware of how it fits into who you're selling to. Right, like 194 00:14:39.059 --> 00:14:43.700 value selling its best, like what seismic is great at is value self and 195 00:14:43.100 --> 00:14:48.899 the prospects in the customers understanding how it fits into their objectives and their goals. 196 00:14:48.940 --> 00:14:54.769 Right, and I could say that that lessone was getting there, because 197 00:14:54.769 --> 00:14:58.169 as you move up market, that's way more important the value model. But 198 00:14:58.370 --> 00:15:01.850 again, going back to tools, I think we could talk a lot about 199 00:15:01.850 --> 00:15:07.600 tools, but usually marketers don't spend the time doing the strategic work before they 200 00:15:07.679 --> 00:15:11.159 buy the tool. 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Two feet gross all one word for 216 00:16:08.720 --> 00:16:11.600 it, twenty five percent discount. All right, let's get back to the 217 00:16:11.639 --> 00:16:17.879 show. One of the other things you mentioned was how to better create alignment 218 00:16:17.960 --> 00:16:22.710 at scale. Obviously, in any organization you want to unite the tip of 219 00:16:22.750 --> 00:16:25.950 the spear, which is something that you mentioned when back to your lessonly days. 220 00:16:26.070 --> 00:16:30.269 I wonder what you're learning because of the scale here, more people, 221 00:16:30.789 --> 00:16:33.340 right, it's more I mean it's just kind of more of everything. So 222 00:16:33.460 --> 00:16:37.220 you're going to have also more problems. So, but what is that going 223 00:16:37.259 --> 00:16:42.860 on there? Well, so early on we forced alignment when we moved BDR's 224 00:16:42.980 --> 00:16:51.490 over to marketing because the lessonly sales team seventy percent of their pipeline or their 225 00:16:51.610 --> 00:16:55.330 revenue, like their quota, had to come from marketing. So there's no 226 00:16:55.610 --> 00:16:59.610 way in hell that we would be ignoring each other, because we had to. 227 00:16:59.850 --> 00:17:03.840 We had to be lock step constantly. Now, as we grew and 228 00:17:03.000 --> 00:17:07.440 as we expanded and as we were hiring at people quarter, we had to 229 00:17:07.519 --> 00:17:14.000 rely on somebody else, and it turned into that it was operations and enablement. 230 00:17:14.519 --> 00:17:18.230 Okay, so are at Leslie, our enablement team was like the hub 231 00:17:18.829 --> 00:17:22.990 with spokes, with all the revenue spokes coming out of it. Surprisingly, 232 00:17:22.349 --> 00:17:29.829 it's the same at seismic. Honestly, they've got enablement, sales ops, 233 00:17:29.950 --> 00:17:34.140 marketing ops and there the hub to all the different revenue creating teams. And 234 00:17:36.339 --> 00:17:40.460 you, I think a lot of times, as business is scale they fail 235 00:17:40.619 --> 00:17:45.329 to think about the product marketer, the enablement people, the operations people, 236 00:17:45.529 --> 00:17:49.529 the the sales force admins. That could be that that hub and kind of 237 00:17:49.609 --> 00:17:56.410 unite all the teams together, and they just keep hiring sales and marketing people. 238 00:17:56.009 --> 00:18:00.279 But eventually I think we hit, I want to be a little bit 239 00:18:00.319 --> 00:18:07.359 more prescriptive here, at around twenty account executives. We hired an enablement person. 240 00:18:07.839 --> 00:18:11.839 Okay, we ended with forty five reps and we had for enablement people. 241 00:18:11.910 --> 00:18:18.069 So it is almost an enablement person per ten a's, because they were 242 00:18:18.230 --> 00:18:22.589 the glue we had. Product Marketing lived in enablement. Yeah, less only, 243 00:18:22.069 --> 00:18:26.910 and that's not normal at all. I've never actually seen that happen. 244 00:18:26.990 --> 00:18:29.619 It just made sense. Not such a big part of it. Right. 245 00:18:29.700 --> 00:18:33.700 It's like what makes sense for you where you are, and that's and don't 246 00:18:33.700 --> 00:18:38.019 be afraid of just doing it because and just because all the templates and playbooks 247 00:18:38.019 --> 00:18:41.609 say it's wrong doesn't mean it's wrong for you. Okay, because you're in 248 00:18:42.009 --> 00:18:48.970 a bigger Oregan. Now, does it make your internal like because you you're 249 00:18:48.009 --> 00:18:52.730 pretty prone to changing things, to evolving. I just saw the post that 250 00:18:52.809 --> 00:18:56.839 you put on linkedin where you kind of talking about some of that in the 251 00:18:56.960 --> 00:19:00.039 need to just kind of be so it's it's a personality thing, but it's 252 00:19:00.039 --> 00:19:03.359 also what makes a lot of marketers thrive, right, is this ability to 253 00:19:03.680 --> 00:19:07.200 kind of look and do new things. So is it different how fluid you 254 00:19:07.240 --> 00:19:11.269 can be? Do you feel any of that or do you still you're able 255 00:19:11.309 --> 00:19:14.910 to change pretty quick in this model? Yeah, yeah, I still feel 256 00:19:14.990 --> 00:19:19.710 the fluidity. I think it's a different type of change. At lessonly you 257 00:19:19.750 --> 00:19:25.819 would have to slack messages and you could shift an entire team sure to between 258 00:19:25.900 --> 00:19:29.619 like three people. Right, because we could move, like if we needed 259 00:19:29.700 --> 00:19:33.779 a competitive campaign rolled out, we could do it in a week because everybody 260 00:19:33.900 --> 00:19:37.980 was sitting in the same room and you could just raise your hand and say 261 00:19:37.019 --> 00:19:44.250 I approve. that. FIT lessonly that should not fit and does not fit 262 00:19:44.369 --> 00:19:48.490 a large organization, right, because you have more people that have responsibilities, 263 00:19:48.930 --> 00:19:55.000 that have opinions on what should be done, and not necessarily wrong opinions. 264 00:19:55.039 --> 00:20:00.240 Right, I want everybody to hear me. Most of the time the opinions 265 00:20:00.359 --> 00:20:03.960 and feedback that you get on strategic direction in a large organization is correct. 266 00:20:04.599 --> 00:20:08.990 Like everybody has their own opinions, but usually it's good to hear from other 267 00:20:10.069 --> 00:20:12.710 people. At smaller orgs you can move more nimbly because you don't have that 268 00:20:12.789 --> 00:20:19.829 many people to ask. So there's still fluidity because we have the ability to 269 00:20:19.950 --> 00:20:26.660 move quickly. It's just a different type of movement where I just there's more 270 00:20:26.740 --> 00:20:33.380 people that you're involving in the process, but we haven't slowed down at all. 271 00:20:33.420 --> 00:20:40.450 I experience more issues with fluidity at sales force and at the exact target 272 00:20:40.490 --> 00:20:44.450 than I did that I experiencing here at Sizwick. When you look at the 273 00:20:45.130 --> 00:20:48.609 future of marketing, is there anything I'm obviously that's pretty broad, but for 274 00:20:48.690 --> 00:20:52.400 you specifically, maybe in your role, are there any questions that you're asking 275 00:20:52.440 --> 00:20:57.359 right now as you look at two thousand and twenty two strategic things you're thinking 276 00:20:57.400 --> 00:21:02.240 through that you think could be good takeaways for us? Yeah, I mean 277 00:21:02.319 --> 00:21:07.549 there's the couple things. How can the internal team play more of a role 278 00:21:07.789 --> 00:21:12.950 in the external activation of brand? I firmly believe, because I've seen it 279 00:21:14.109 --> 00:21:17.549 twice at exact target and a lessonly, and even sales course you could argue. 280 00:21:17.589 --> 00:21:23.259 I firmly believe that an internal team has to believe in the brand message 281 00:21:23.259 --> 00:21:29.740 and positioning and mission vision values before it will ever make any sense and to 282 00:21:29.859 --> 00:21:36.089 the external market. Most brand launches and brand mission shifts or brands in general 283 00:21:36.210 --> 00:21:41.690 fail because the internal team doesn't believe it. So I'm very interested in how 284 00:21:41.369 --> 00:21:45.130 you can scale something like that, which I've seen a couple times, but 285 00:21:45.250 --> 00:21:51.559 that's from a shift, from a marketing strategic direction. I think marketers a 286 00:21:51.880 --> 00:21:55.480 need to be focused on pipeline in be focused on how do you build a 287 00:21:55.640 --> 00:22:00.630 story that's not just another regurgitation of what the market saying. You know, 288 00:22:00.710 --> 00:22:04.269 if you put up five of your competitors to pretty much all saying the same 289 00:22:04.309 --> 00:22:07.509 thing with different words, right, how do you tell a story that's a 290 00:22:07.509 --> 00:22:12.910 little bit different? So for me it's marketing. It is generate pipeline, 291 00:22:14.509 --> 00:22:21.660 generate revenue and generate a story that's different than your competitors, like, actually 292 00:22:21.779 --> 00:22:23.779 different, not like hey, I just use a different word in the headline 293 00:22:23.859 --> 00:22:27.940 of my in the h one on my website. Easier said than done. 294 00:22:29.539 --> 00:22:33.289 Yeah, and that's but that's like talking to customers. Marketers, you should 295 00:22:33.289 --> 00:22:37.210 probably talk to customers, Yep, not just ignore them. You need to 296 00:22:37.289 --> 00:22:40.410 tell a story. That's you need to you stuff like that. Okay, 297 00:22:40.450 --> 00:22:44.009 let's go back to that question. So how can the internal team played deeper 298 00:22:44.049 --> 00:22:47.759 role in external branding? What would that like perfect world? What does that 299 00:22:47.880 --> 00:22:51.759 look like to you, kyle? What would this team is operating at all 300 00:22:51.799 --> 00:22:55.720 cylinders. You're able to create it at scale. What does that look like? 301 00:22:56.559 --> 00:23:03.630 I think it's seeing employees, teammates, sharing stories about their job and 302 00:23:03.750 --> 00:23:07.910 what they love about their job and what they love about their brand, using 303 00:23:07.430 --> 00:23:14.740 the values in the mission of seismic in in their daily routine. Right. 304 00:23:15.299 --> 00:23:18.539 I think a lot of times people think of values as a word like intake, 305 00:23:18.539 --> 00:23:22.940 herity, whatever, productivity, whatever the hell everybody talks about. But 306 00:23:23.220 --> 00:23:27.009 for us it's more of a value statement, like a lessonly it was we 307 00:23:27.170 --> 00:23:33.049 share before ready. We have difficult conversations and if you're using values in a 308 00:23:33.210 --> 00:23:37.490 sentence like hey, I'm sharing before ready, you have done I saw it 309 00:23:37.609 --> 00:23:42.160 at exact target where they had something. We had something called Orange Culture, 310 00:23:42.160 --> 00:23:47.839 right, and the brand was orange, but that wasn't the reason why it 311 00:23:48.039 --> 00:23:52.799 was powerful. It's because our customers started talking about this idea of being orange 312 00:23:52.839 --> 00:23:56.029 and the orange culture. And when your customers start talking about it, you 313 00:23:56.069 --> 00:23:59.869 know your employees believe in it. Yep, same thing happened at lessonly would 314 00:23:59.910 --> 00:24:02.710 do better work, right, our customers were talking about do better work, 315 00:24:02.829 --> 00:24:07.990 is because our employees believed in it. So the internal team sharing about it, 316 00:24:08.230 --> 00:24:14.339 using it, you will know it's working when it organically spreads to the 317 00:24:14.420 --> 00:24:17.819 customer base. Yeah, and that's where you're saying too, and think this 318 00:24:17.980 --> 00:24:19.579 is really strategic. I mean I would say this for us, that's sweet 319 00:24:19.619 --> 00:24:25.089 fish our team, those that aren't in marketing, aren't in sales, them 320 00:24:25.609 --> 00:24:30.450 sharing things, whether it's on left in or whatever. That's I that's definitely 321 00:24:30.490 --> 00:24:33.210 when it's caught on in the culture enough so it's okay, this is expanding 322 00:24:33.250 --> 00:24:36.650 in it. Yeah, clearly, if you share something we are. We're 323 00:24:36.650 --> 00:24:40.000 talking a lot about commodity content right now and if you know, those that 324 00:24:40.039 --> 00:24:42.079 aren't in our org are now saying that and they're you know, they're aware 325 00:24:42.119 --> 00:24:45.400 of it. Yeah, it's caught on and obviously you can take that to 326 00:24:45.559 --> 00:24:49.240 scale in a lot of different ways and you're going to see a lot of 327 00:24:49.519 --> 00:24:53.549 sports as another example, right, where people talk about being a trailblazer. 328 00:24:53.589 --> 00:24:57.589 HMM, it's a great example, right, and they perfected it over the 329 00:24:57.630 --> 00:25:03.509 year. So, you know, I do think that there is a lot 330 00:25:03.670 --> 00:25:11.900 of conversation right now around tactical marketing place, right, ABM and search and 331 00:25:11.940 --> 00:25:18.220 organic and all these different channels. But ultimately it's it. You got to 332 00:25:18.299 --> 00:25:21.930 start with the story first, which is why the strategy before the tool. 333 00:25:21.970 --> 00:25:26.849 HMM. You know, it's why you're spend time trying to to build an 334 00:25:26.890 --> 00:25:30.369 outline before you jump on a podcast, right, like you're not just going 335 00:25:30.369 --> 00:25:32.970 to go create a podcast for the hell of it and go interview a bunch 336 00:25:33.009 --> 00:25:36.759 of people. Right. You've got to spend the time understanding the why before 337 00:25:36.799 --> 00:25:40.000 you move to the how. And I think a lot of times people, 338 00:25:40.279 --> 00:25:42.519 marketers, because I am guilty of this, moved to the how too quickly. 339 00:25:42.559 --> 00:25:47.559 HMM. Yeah, it's so much about mindset. Marketing is in the 340 00:25:47.680 --> 00:25:51.549 mindset and when you get the mindset right, and I think this is something 341 00:25:51.549 --> 00:25:53.509 I'm learning in podcasting right now. I'm not, definitely not perfect in it 342 00:25:53.630 --> 00:25:59.869 at all, but if we're asking better questions and we're focused more on the 343 00:26:00.230 --> 00:26:03.460 like what questions should we be asking, then the results follow. If our 344 00:26:03.500 --> 00:26:07.299 if our why, is locked in, then we can create a how that's 345 00:26:07.339 --> 00:26:11.660 better. But yeah, so many people for just like locked in on what 346 00:26:11.859 --> 00:26:15.380 tool how do we do it? What's the quick tip? Like how do 347 00:26:15.460 --> 00:26:18.049 we rank higher in Seo? And no one's worried about the content, no 348 00:26:18.170 --> 00:26:22.690 one's worried about the like. What's the mindset behind this? And you get, 349 00:26:22.730 --> 00:26:25.410 if you get that right, all the brands that we like, no 350 00:26:25.569 --> 00:26:29.970 like and trust that all is generated from the why behind it. So I 351 00:26:30.089 --> 00:26:33.039 love that. It's different for it. It's different for everybody and I'm not 352 00:26:33.079 --> 00:26:36.000 going to Simon cynic you like. I'm not going to be you know, 353 00:26:36.079 --> 00:26:40.039 the power of why or whatever the hell we're talking about. Everybody's different. 354 00:26:40.400 --> 00:26:44.000 You still need the revenue, but for me, what I have seen across 355 00:26:44.480 --> 00:26:48.509 exact target sales, sports lesslie now seismic. HMM. You have tactics will 356 00:26:48.630 --> 00:26:53.710 grow you, but the strategy behind the growth it will break. You've got 357 00:26:53.869 --> 00:26:59.829 to have that foundation because each growth stage you're going to break, like you're 358 00:26:59.869 --> 00:27:00.740 going to marquis. Strategy is going to break. You're going to have to 359 00:27:00.859 --> 00:27:07.299 shift and it without the foundation it's going to be really hard to shift appropriately 360 00:27:07.500 --> 00:27:11.380 to grow. HMM. That's good. There's a lot of them taken away. 361 00:27:11.500 --> 00:27:12.980 I love that. That question at the end. How can the internal 362 00:27:14.019 --> 00:27:17.329 team play deeper role in the external branding. I think that's a big one 363 00:27:17.410 --> 00:27:22.130 for me. How are we utilizing tools appropriately? Like just taking if I'm 364 00:27:22.170 --> 00:27:25.170 going, what's a good takeaway after this? If you're listening, take like 365 00:27:25.690 --> 00:27:29.130 a little bit of time to go, like, are we really utilizing all 366 00:27:29.210 --> 00:27:32.480 the tools that we have access to? And have we told everyone on our 367 00:27:32.519 --> 00:27:34.720 team if you've on board a new people here early in two thousand and twenty 368 00:27:34.720 --> 00:27:37.880 two and they don't know how to use your full set of tools, and 369 00:27:37.000 --> 00:27:41.279 like you're all not all on the same page. Man, that's a great 370 00:27:41.279 --> 00:27:42.799 place to start. Just getting up possible there, like why do you? 371 00:27:44.160 --> 00:27:45.910 Why do you have the tool? Exactly, answer that, yes, first, 372 00:27:47.269 --> 00:27:48.269 yes, and then you do the how, how to use them? 373 00:27:48.349 --> 00:27:52.029 Awesome. I love it. Cow, this is a great conversation, man, 374 00:27:52.150 --> 00:27:56.150 for those that want to stay connected with you, how can they do 375 00:27:56.430 --> 00:27:59.819 that? Where you most active and where can people reach out? A twitter, 376 00:27:59.859 --> 00:28:03.980 Kyle P lacy, or Linkedin? I'm pretty active on linked in as 377 00:28:03.019 --> 00:28:07.500 well. Thanks so much for spending time with us here on BB growth. 378 00:28:07.140 --> 00:28:11.619 Thank you for having me. Appreciate it absolutely well. We're always having insightful 379 00:28:11.930 --> 00:28:17.450 conversations here. We're trying to help you continue to grow and innovate. Subscribe 380 00:28:17.450 --> 00:28:19.329 to the show, never miss an episode, and you can do that on 381 00:28:19.410 --> 00:28:23.329 whatever your favorite subscription service kind of is. Connect with me on Linkedin to 382 00:28:23.410 --> 00:28:30.960 search Benjie box and keep doing work that matters. Talking. Gary v says 383 00:28:30.960 --> 00:28:36.920 it all the time and we agree. Every company should think of themselves as 384 00:28:36.960 --> 00:28:41.029 a media company first, then whatever it is they actually do. If you 385 00:28:41.230 --> 00:28:45.509 know this is true, but your team is already maxed out and you can't 386 00:28:45.509 --> 00:28:48.750 produce any more content in house, we can help. We produce podcast for 387 00:28:48.869 --> 00:28:52.390 some of the most innovative bb brands in the world, and we also help 388 00:28:52.470 --> 00:28:57.220 them turn the content from the podcast into blog posts, micro videos and slide 389 00:28:57.299 --> 00:29:00.180 decks that work really well on Linkedin. If you want to learn more, 390 00:29:00.259 --> 00:29:06.700 go to sweet fish Mediacom launch or email logan at sweet fish mediacom.