Aug. 9, 2021

Stop Trying to Take Credit for Everything w/ Nate Skinner

In this episode, we talk with Nate Skinner , Global SVP of Marketing for Oracle Advertising and CX.

Check out this recent article from Nate:

Celebrating the Contributions of Women in the Workplace Every Day of the Year

Transcript
WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.040 --> 00:00:00.250 Mhm. 2 00:00:05.940 --> 00:00:10.590 Welcome back to be to be growth. We are joined today by Nate Skinner. He is the 3 00:00:10.590 --> 00:00:15.720 global S. VP of marketing at oracle advertising in C. X. Nate. I'm really, 4 00:00:15.720 --> 00:00:18.870 really excited to chat with you today. Yeah. Thanks James. Thanks for having 5 00:00:18.870 --> 00:00:23.570 me. Yeah, this is gonna be a fun conversation as we were talking right 6 00:00:23.570 --> 00:00:27.000 before we hit record. I tossed a question to you that I like to ask in a 7 00:00:27.000 --> 00:00:30.290 lot of our pre interviews and it was you know, what's something around B two 8 00:00:30.290 --> 00:00:34.920 B marketing that you've evolved your thinking on or even changed your mind 9 00:00:34.920 --> 00:00:38.380 about over the course of your career. And your answer was really interesting 10 00:00:38.380 --> 00:00:43.520 to me. You said there's all this talk around marketing really being a servant 11 00:00:43.530 --> 00:00:47.830 to sales. But you said, I think the thing that I've changed my mind about 12 00:00:47.840 --> 00:00:51.870 is around this idea that marketing actually needs to truly, truly partner 13 00:00:51.880 --> 00:00:56.030 with sales. Can you elaborate on that idea a little bit and tell us how you 14 00:00:56.030 --> 00:01:01.830 landed there? Yeah. I spent the 1st 10 years of my life in sales. In my 15 00:01:01.830 --> 00:01:06.960 software life, I should say. Uh and the last kind of 12 or 13 in marketing and 16 00:01:06.960 --> 00:01:10.960 the evolved thinking was around what the definition of a partnership, like 17 00:01:10.970 --> 00:01:16.460 if anybody who has a significant other knows a partnership is equals both 18 00:01:16.470 --> 00:01:21.750 people respect and care about the others opinion, they debate and argue 19 00:01:21.750 --> 00:01:26.410 things, but they keep it respectful and like look for the best path forward. 20 00:01:26.420 --> 00:01:30.500 And when I was a seller, I thought marketing's job was to give me leads, 21 00:01:30.500 --> 00:01:34.100 that's their job. So I don't think any more leads and I'm sure there's sales 22 00:01:34.100 --> 00:01:37.270 out there, the sellers out there that feel that way. And as I got into 23 00:01:37.280 --> 00:01:41.930 marketing, I realized that although I take that background with me and I'm 24 00:01:41.930 --> 00:01:47.100 very empathetic to my sales peers and counterparts on sales teams, there's a 25 00:01:47.100 --> 00:01:51.640 tendency to have it be almost like a servant relationship where marketing is 26 00:01:51.640 --> 00:01:57.240 in service of sales. Actually, we're both in service of customer success and 27 00:01:57.250 --> 00:02:01.790 we're both in service of generating awareness for our business, such that 28 00:02:01.790 --> 00:02:06.360 customers can find value in what we offer and that means we have to do this 29 00:02:06.360 --> 00:02:10.500 together. They have the end of the funnel to kind of deal with right, 30 00:02:10.500 --> 00:02:14.700 getting customers over the hump on. Yes, I think that solution will work and yes, 31 00:02:14.700 --> 00:02:18.390 I'd like to buy it of course, that's hard and that's a job that they have to 32 00:02:18.400 --> 00:02:22.800 do and our job is to go find those people that will engage with us to have 33 00:02:22.800 --> 00:02:26.970 that conversation and move them through what we would call the funnel and you 34 00:02:26.970 --> 00:02:31.780 can't do one of those and not the other. You can't do one better than the other. 35 00:02:31.780 --> 00:02:37.600 They are literally a partnership. And I find it, you know, my my thinking has 36 00:02:37.600 --> 00:02:41.570 evolved over time because there's a little bit of a legacy, at least in 37 00:02:41.580 --> 00:02:46.580 enterprise software of, you know, sales kind of demanding marketing doing this 38 00:02:46.580 --> 00:02:50.870 or doing that. And I don't never hear marketing demanding sales to do this or 39 00:02:50.870 --> 00:02:54.700 that. And that's not partnership. And so that's, that's where I I tend to 40 00:02:54.700 --> 00:02:58.950 advocate on behalf of sales with marketing teams. Hey, look, their jobs 41 00:02:58.950 --> 00:03:02.870 hard. Let's pump the brakes and think about the challenges they're facing. 42 00:03:02.880 --> 00:03:06.550 And I advocate with sellers on behalf of marketing to say, look there, 43 00:03:06.550 --> 00:03:09.660 working as hard as they can. Clearly we have more to do, Let's solve the 44 00:03:09.670 --> 00:03:14.210 problem together and stay aligned. What are some of the things you've been able 45 00:03:14.210 --> 00:03:20.860 to do, either in your team at oracle or in previous company is to really broker 46 00:03:20.860 --> 00:03:24.990 that partnership, create a true partnership there? Yes. I mean there's 47 00:03:24.990 --> 00:03:29.180 two really major ones that I think of when that question. One is field 48 00:03:29.180 --> 00:03:33.360 marketing. I mean, I know more than maybe the average marketer who hasn't 49 00:03:33.360 --> 00:03:37.310 spent as much time as I did in sales. How valuable it is to connect the 50 00:03:37.310 --> 00:03:42.970 marketing activity down on the ground to the sellers. And so at Oracle, for 51 00:03:42.970 --> 00:03:47.750 instance, on my team, we've invested a lot of our energy and our money, our 52 00:03:47.750 --> 00:03:52.110 headcount kind of resource capacity to field marketing, literally putting in 53 00:03:52.110 --> 00:03:57.310 place the marketers that take the marketing effort and translate that 54 00:03:57.310 --> 00:04:02.640 into sales programs on the ground, kind of rubber hitting the road. Um, that's, 55 00:04:02.670 --> 00:04:06.230 that's one very specific way. We've invested a lot of time and making sure 56 00:04:06.230 --> 00:04:11.530 we put marketers in region, in country in state and city to support those 57 00:04:11.530 --> 00:04:15.410 sellers on the ground. And we've seen tremendous results from that. The other 58 00:04:15.410 --> 00:04:19.990 is we launched an innovation program at Oracle's. Since I've been here every 59 00:04:19.990 --> 00:04:24.500 quarter, we do releases. It became clear to us that our customers weren't 60 00:04:24.500 --> 00:04:28.590 necessarily hearing about them in a holistic way. And so in partnership 61 00:04:28.590 --> 00:04:33.420 with our product team and are selling team, we created a regular scheduled 62 00:04:33.430 --> 00:04:40.210 innovation summit that every quarter we update the web page, record demos, kind 63 00:04:40.210 --> 00:04:43.770 of list out the innovation that we're releasing and launching and then share 64 00:04:43.770 --> 00:04:48.780 it with the world. And actually what's happened is analysts and customers and 65 00:04:48.790 --> 00:04:52.600 the press have started to expect that from us every quarter and we only 66 00:04:52.600 --> 00:04:58.080 started last february. So, um, that's, that's one of those ways where it's, 67 00:04:58.090 --> 00:05:02.300 look, we can't do this on our own right. We need marketing, marketing needs to 68 00:05:02.300 --> 00:05:05.970 drive the programming and put together the show flow and get the web page bill. 69 00:05:05.980 --> 00:05:09.320 But we need product teams to participate. We need the sellers to 70 00:05:09.320 --> 00:05:13.130 send their customers to it and it's a symbiotic relationship that's driving 71 00:05:13.140 --> 00:05:17.760 great value for us on behalf of our customers. Another thing we were 72 00:05:17.760 --> 00:05:20.800 talking about a few minutes before we hit record, you you mentioned that 73 00:05:20.800 --> 00:05:26.430 there's still a lot of people in B. Two B marketing that somehow think that B 74 00:05:26.430 --> 00:05:34.050 two B marketing is grossly different than B two C. And what you said, you 75 00:05:34.050 --> 00:05:40.250 said they really kind of downplay the emotional connection that both BTV 76 00:05:40.250 --> 00:05:45.600 brands and B to C. Brands have to create between their brand and the 77 00:05:45.600 --> 00:05:49.750 buyer, whether it's a buying committee. You know whether it's you know how many 78 00:05:49.750 --> 00:05:52.310 decision makers that are involved in the purchase decision at the end of the 79 00:05:52.310 --> 00:05:55.970 day. Like you need to create an emotional connection. Nike has 80 00:05:55.970 --> 00:05:59.510 obviously done that masterfully well, you see, you know, all these PV brands 81 00:05:59.510 --> 00:06:05.080 that do that masterfully well, but It hasn't really translated to a lot of 82 00:06:05.080 --> 00:06:11.600 B2B brands. Why do you think that is? What's the disconnect, what's keeping 83 00:06:11.600 --> 00:06:17.600 B2B brands from embracing this idea? That brand actually matters a lot. I 84 00:06:17.610 --> 00:06:22.770 think it's a few things that contribute to one is just in the nature of 85 00:06:22.780 --> 00:06:27.490 attribution. I mean, of course, B two C. Marketers need to attribute the expense 86 00:06:27.490 --> 00:06:31.320 for the campaign, the programs they run to revenue direct to consumer revenue. 87 00:06:31.330 --> 00:06:37.090 You know, those Nike ads need to result in surging sales of shoes or where or 88 00:06:37.090 --> 00:06:41.250 whatever. And in B two B marketing, we're all trying to attribute credit or 89 00:06:41.260 --> 00:06:44.500 find attribution for the funnel at the very top, because it's not a direct to 90 00:06:44.500 --> 00:06:47.850 consumer purchase. So we have this concept of the funnel, everybody on 91 00:06:47.850 --> 00:06:52.740 your program understands and getting traffic in and turning it into SQL and 92 00:06:52.740 --> 00:06:57.100 SQL and sales. And that I think contributes to the problem because 93 00:06:57.100 --> 00:06:59.750 somewhere along the line, we've forgotten that at the other end of that 94 00:06:59.940 --> 00:07:05.500 marketing offer a human being is engaging with our company. And that 95 00:07:05.500 --> 00:07:09.810 doesn't change in B two B. Right? But yes, we're selling to accounts 96 00:07:09.810 --> 00:07:14.360 oftentimes. And so there's more people to engage with, you know, the buying 97 00:07:14.360 --> 00:07:18.540 committee, but there's still people. And so if you're not creating an 98 00:07:18.540 --> 00:07:22.580 emotional connection, if you're not kind of aligning using their language, 99 00:07:22.580 --> 00:07:26.580 what I what I call internally, my team hears me say this all the time doing 100 00:07:26.590 --> 00:07:32.730 outside in marketing, not inside out where, you know, we tend to have this 101 00:07:32.730 --> 00:07:36.720 and be to be land. For some reason we start to talk like everybody knows what 102 00:07:36.720 --> 00:07:41.460 we mean and they don't. So we got to go outside and say, well, what what are 103 00:07:41.460 --> 00:07:44.080 the problems customers are trying to solve? How do they describe those 104 00:07:44.080 --> 00:07:47.210 problems? How do they search for the solution to those problems and then 105 00:07:47.210 --> 00:07:52.200 translate that into an experience that a human being will engage in? And 106 00:07:52.200 --> 00:07:55.320 that's the most important thing that I think we lose sight of. And it's a big 107 00:07:55.320 --> 00:08:00.040 contributor to because it becomes this amorphous account thing is supposed to 108 00:08:00.050 --> 00:08:04.560 those are all just people. You're you're also telling me earlier that 109 00:08:04.740 --> 00:08:08.750 marketers B two B. Marketers have to start thinking beyond the funnel, which 110 00:08:08.750 --> 00:08:11.970 is what, you know what you're getting out there. Uh you have to start 111 00:08:11.970 --> 00:08:17.770 thinking about post sale experience as being equally uh important, at least 112 00:08:17.770 --> 00:08:22.170 equally important to the top of funnel activity that you're focused on. You 113 00:08:22.170 --> 00:08:25.000 told me something that, that your team has been doing an oracle that I thought 114 00:08:25.000 --> 00:08:29.020 was really interesting. You know, you, you guys have an integrated demand jin 115 00:08:29.020 --> 00:08:33.900 team now that is solely focused on customers. People that are already have 116 00:08:33.909 --> 00:08:37.880 already bought a product from oracle. Can you tell us a little bit about 117 00:08:37.890 --> 00:08:43.500 about that team and what they're doing? Yeah, for sure. And like, just to set 118 00:08:43.500 --> 00:08:47.780 that up, I think that everyone would agree and I'd be happy to debate this 119 00:08:47.780 --> 00:08:52.860 with folks at any company, but marketing needs to be the driving force 120 00:08:53.140 --> 00:08:57.170 of the customer experience at your company. You know, HR is not going to 121 00:08:57.170 --> 00:09:00.840 do that. The sales team is not gonna do that. Product is not gonna do that. 122 00:09:00.850 --> 00:09:03.900 Marketing has to be the kind of quarterback of the customer experience 123 00:09:03.900 --> 00:09:08.520 from the very top of the funnel to even the sales interaction and the 124 00:09:08.520 --> 00:09:13.260 conclusion of a sale and post sale. And we have the ability to kind of look 125 00:09:13.260 --> 00:09:16.840 across that experience and say where are their opportunities to increase 126 00:09:16.840 --> 00:09:20.410 engagement, to increase stickiness of our solution, to increase awareness of 127 00:09:20.410 --> 00:09:25.290 the customer with what they just bought. And in service of that, we set up this 128 00:09:25.290 --> 00:09:32.130 installed based campaign team. Their entire remit is helping educate and 129 00:09:32.130 --> 00:09:36.300 inform customers who are already in the building about what it is they own and 130 00:09:36.300 --> 00:09:40.960 how to get more value from it so that they can feel great about their renewal 131 00:09:40.960 --> 00:09:44.160 so they can feel great about the engagement they have with us as a 132 00:09:44.170 --> 00:09:49.480 company and that that marketing is not awareness marketing, it's education, 133 00:09:49.480 --> 00:09:53.420 it's often it's more about, you know, did you know, heavy tried, you know, 134 00:09:53.420 --> 00:09:57.460 some examples and we don't have to go do that out in the broad based 135 00:09:57.460 --> 00:10:00.280 marketing effort. We can do that. We know who these customers are, we can do 136 00:10:00.280 --> 00:10:05.660 it at an account based level and um, that is bearing a lot of fruit, not 137 00:10:05.660 --> 00:10:09.320 just for us when it comes to retention and churn reduction, but with our 138 00:10:09.320 --> 00:10:14.020 customers who are saying, wow, this is actually valuable and your users out 139 00:10:14.020 --> 00:10:16.750 there and probably had this experience in their own lives, right? You and I 140 00:10:16.750 --> 00:10:21.090 talked about, I have nest thermostat in my house, you buy the nest, you put on 141 00:10:21.090 --> 00:10:24.440 the wall and then what happens? Well, mess, send you monthly, you know how 142 00:10:24.440 --> 00:10:27.530 many leaves you one or how you compare with your community and your 143 00:10:27.530 --> 00:10:31.810 neighborhood or your zip code. And then it becomes kind of a challenge to me to 144 00:10:31.820 --> 00:10:35.960 kind of get more leaves than everybody else. But guess what? You could. You 145 00:10:35.960 --> 00:10:39.600 know, you're not crying my nest out of my cold hands, right? I mean, it's like 146 00:10:39.610 --> 00:10:45.870 a really valuable thing that I love. That same emotional connection can be 147 00:10:45.870 --> 00:10:49.390 created for customers in the BB landscape. But they have to feel like, 148 00:10:49.390 --> 00:10:52.680 you know what they're dealing with beyond just you bought it and then you 149 00:10:52.680 --> 00:10:57.010 go away. Marketing can't just be about getting the SQL handed over and then 150 00:10:57.020 --> 00:11:02.930 clearly, you know, walk away. We can do a lot to help at scale. Automate the 151 00:11:02.930 --> 00:11:06.570 education and information for our customers on their behalf. And the 152 00:11:06.570 --> 00:11:10.430 downstream effects are dramatic and lifetime value customers improved the 153 00:11:10.430 --> 00:11:15.220 customer's experience is better. It's just a virtuous cycle. And what I love 154 00:11:15.220 --> 00:11:19.970 about what you've done is you're actually putting people in a position 155 00:11:19.980 --> 00:11:25.570 to do this instead of what we hear so many. We just did it some research and 156 00:11:25.580 --> 00:11:29.400 we interviewed 100 B two B marketers. And all of them are saying that they're 157 00:11:29.410 --> 00:11:33.510 they feel like they're having to juggle 18 different things all the time. And 158 00:11:33.510 --> 00:11:37.720 what I like about this is you have a dedicated team that is solely focused 159 00:11:37.720 --> 00:11:44.800 on existing customers. Can you speak to some like Maybe the structure of your 160 00:11:44.800 --> 00:11:50.340 marketing team and what are some other either bets that you're making or some 161 00:11:50.340 --> 00:11:54.490 things that you've done as you structured your team to focus on the 162 00:11:54.490 --> 00:11:57.950 areas of marketing that you think really need to be focused on in a 20, 163 00:11:58.120 --> 00:12:01.620 landscape. Yeah, I mean look, I think that's a really important question 164 00:12:01.620 --> 00:12:06.100 because for many companies that are mid market and kind of below or mid market 165 00:12:06.100 --> 00:12:11.430 and above even large companies, marketing budgets are no uh infinite. 166 00:12:11.440 --> 00:12:15.410 And so you can't just throw bodies at the problem. Right? And I think what 167 00:12:15.410 --> 00:12:18.680 I'd say to answer that question first is when we thought about this and 168 00:12:18.680 --> 00:12:23.380 consider the creation of this installed based campaign team, we knew that that 169 00:12:23.380 --> 00:12:27.040 was going to mean that something else was going to go away, right? Because we 170 00:12:27.040 --> 00:12:29.810 don't, we didn't just say, oh, well let's just add 10 people. Like we just 171 00:12:29.810 --> 00:12:34.430 don't have the ability to do that. So we have a philosophy that is ruthless 172 00:12:34.430 --> 00:12:39.410 prioritization. We know exactly what our top five or six strategy kind of 173 00:12:39.420 --> 00:12:42.380 pillars of our strategy are. What are the most important principles that 174 00:12:42.380 --> 00:12:48.390 we're trying to achieve. And one of those is customer retention and 175 00:12:48.400 --> 00:12:52.730 increase customer lifetime value and ultimately the experience customers 176 00:12:52.730 --> 00:12:57.360 have with us and the products we sell them. And so that meant this is 177 00:12:57.360 --> 00:13:01.650 important. It was important enough to say this group, you should go do that 178 00:13:01.660 --> 00:13:04.690 and that alone and nothing else. And your metrics are different and how were 179 00:13:04.690 --> 00:13:08.920 measured are different. And it's not about funnel and you know, it's about 180 00:13:08.930 --> 00:13:12.640 this customer metrics. Uh, but that man, we have to stop doing other things. And 181 00:13:12.640 --> 00:13:16.910 so in some cases we had to make hard decisions about what we were not going 182 00:13:16.910 --> 00:13:20.830 to find. We'd love to do all kinds of stuff, right? I'd love to fly balloon 183 00:13:20.830 --> 00:13:25.890 over the top of Times Square and do all that. We can't do all those things 184 00:13:25.890 --> 00:13:28.890 because we're focused on the things that matter the most. And so that's I 185 00:13:28.890 --> 00:13:32.490 think an important thing. It's not, I'd hate for someone in the audience on 186 00:13:32.490 --> 00:13:36.210 your show to say, oh well that's oracle. You know, they just threw a bunch more 187 00:13:36.210 --> 00:13:41.070 bodies. That actually that's not at all true. We have just as much fiscal 188 00:13:41.070 --> 00:13:45.550 responsibility and awareness of the need to be frugal as we do what we're 189 00:13:45.550 --> 00:13:50.010 doing in a product engineering organization, right? This is a product 190 00:13:50.010 --> 00:13:53.340 lead company that we need to do everything we do within the constraints 191 00:13:53.340 --> 00:13:56.510 of some type bounds. And so I don't know if that answers the question, but 192 00:13:56.510 --> 00:14:00.840 to say for us it was a priority and we made it a priority and we definitely 193 00:14:00.850 --> 00:14:04.100 gave people the space to focus on that. And I think that's the last thing I'll 194 00:14:04.100 --> 00:14:08.830 say, I'm a big believer in ownership. So who is the human being that is 195 00:14:08.830 --> 00:14:14.260 responsible for that thing? And carving out the team to say that's your thing 196 00:14:14.270 --> 00:14:19.290 and this person is responsible for it makes it clear that they own it and 197 00:14:19.290 --> 00:14:23.190 that others don't and that's okay, right? Like I'm gonna participate, but 198 00:14:23.190 --> 00:14:28.370 I don't know. And so that makes things move much faster. Are there some things 199 00:14:28.370 --> 00:14:33.310 that are top of mind that you can think of that you have ratcheted back and 200 00:14:33.310 --> 00:14:37.760 dialed down because you know, in the process of ruthless prioritization. 201 00:14:38.140 --> 00:14:42.950 Yeah, I mean big kind of awareness things, right? Uh you know, we're not 202 00:14:42.950 --> 00:14:48.320 buying tv ads. Um we're not doing out of home buys in major cities. You know, 203 00:14:48.330 --> 00:14:52.310 our team doesn't have a bunch of Patagonia jackets with a logo on them. 204 00:14:52.320 --> 00:14:55.140 I mean like those are the things we don't do those things. We use those 205 00:14:55.140 --> 00:14:59.840 dollars to invest in the things that we know we need to invest in and knowing 206 00:14:59.840 --> 00:15:04.310 that we are constrained. Um, we're not, you know, infinitely resourced and I 207 00:15:04.310 --> 00:15:09.670 don't think anybody is. And so, um, yeah, we've done a lot less events. Uh 208 00:15:09.680 --> 00:15:14.110 you know, I think about obviously Covid and the pandemic have reduced in person 209 00:15:14.110 --> 00:15:18.770 events whether you wanted to or not, but you can still do virtual events. 210 00:15:18.770 --> 00:15:23.040 You can turn those out overnight all the time. We actually decided we were 211 00:15:23.040 --> 00:15:27.180 going to focus on some very specific events and investments in those and not 212 00:15:27.190 --> 00:15:31.270 do the quantity game, do more of a quality game. And so that freed up 213 00:15:31.280 --> 00:15:36.380 capacity. So those are some examples introducing the safety management show 214 00:15:36.390 --> 00:15:40.070 the podcast that shares the inside stories on safety management from 215 00:15:40.070 --> 00:15:43.900 experts in the trenches. On this show, you'll hear interviews with safety 216 00:15:43.900 --> 00:15:48.590 directors from the podcast hosts at safety services company. We talked with 217 00:15:48.590 --> 00:15:52.090 veteran safety professionals working in all sorts of industries from 218 00:15:52.090 --> 00:15:56.500 construction to manufacturing to telecom and transportation, even some 219 00:15:56.500 --> 00:15:59.570 who manage safety and unique environments like amusement parks and 220 00:15:59.570 --> 00:16:03.590 zoos. You'll hear engaging stories about their safety management journey, 221 00:16:03.600 --> 00:16:07.050 the lessons they've learned along the way and actionable safety management 222 00:16:07.050 --> 00:16:11.500 tips that you can implement today. Don't believe me here for yourself. Do 223 00:16:11.500 --> 00:16:15.470 you want to be compliant or you're really looking out for? I understand 224 00:16:15.470 --> 00:16:18.510 you're looking out for the well being of your employees and what the 225 00:16:18.510 --> 00:16:23.650 expectation is of the type of tradesmen you want on your project. But 226 00:16:23.660 --> 00:16:27.300 unfortunately you're right. It just checks. The compliance box. Doesn't 227 00:16:27.300 --> 00:16:30.950 check anything else for more subscribe to the show wherever you listen to 228 00:16:30.950 --> 00:16:35.110 podcasts. Let's get back into the show. You're really passionate about 229 00:16:35.120 --> 00:16:40.500 diversity, diversity, about equality. And as we were talking off line, you 230 00:16:40.500 --> 00:16:45.070 mentioned, you've actually written an article about this on linkedin. Um, 231 00:16:45.740 --> 00:16:50.720 there are some very specific things that we can do specifically as men um, 232 00:16:50.730 --> 00:16:57.080 to really be allies to our female colleagues. Can you share, uh, some 233 00:16:57.080 --> 00:17:00.410 things from that article, some things that you've seen that have been really 234 00:17:00.410 --> 00:17:07.839 effective um as as we as men attempt to be more, more allies to everybody on 235 00:17:07.839 --> 00:17:14.800 our team. Yeah, yeah, very, very important to me and to our team. 236 00:17:14.810 --> 00:17:18.990 Generally speaking, I would say that everyone on my team is super passionate 237 00:17:18.990 --> 00:17:24.030 about this subject. It's interesting to I've been invited to participate in 238 00:17:24.040 --> 00:17:28.990 oracle women leadership seminar, which is an oracle network of women leaders 239 00:17:29.000 --> 00:17:34.140 as an ally because of the stuff that I've done to kind of educate and share 240 00:17:34.140 --> 00:17:37.510 on what it means to be an ally. That's the article you're referring to. And a 241 00:17:37.510 --> 00:17:40.950 couple of things that I remember and would focus people's attention on a 242 00:17:40.960 --> 00:17:47.110 literal takeaways. One is being proactive, proactive in meaning even in 243 00:17:47.110 --> 00:17:51.030 a zoom world, you can tell when someone's trying to talk, you can see 244 00:17:51.030 --> 00:17:55.800 their body language change or you can see they kind of a mute themselves and 245 00:17:55.800 --> 00:17:59.900 if you're actively participating, especially as a leader and you see 246 00:17:59.900 --> 00:18:04.760 those nuances be the person that says, hey, did you have something you'd like 247 00:18:04.760 --> 00:18:11.020 to add and make the space for people? Because too often in business it's 248 00:18:11.020 --> 00:18:15.340 dominated by the overly aggressive kind of a type personality which oftentimes 249 00:18:15.340 --> 00:18:21.080 is a man. And so men take the time to realize that you're being overbearing 250 00:18:21.080 --> 00:18:26.400 and missing out on the opportunity to hear a much more diverse point of view. 251 00:18:26.410 --> 00:18:30.960 If you open up the floor and hear from from everyone, a very specific one that 252 00:18:30.960 --> 00:18:36.370 I I talk about all the time is in representation of the opportunities to 253 00:18:36.370 --> 00:18:40.930 help others shine. So in the article I wrote, the number five was step aside 254 00:18:40.930 --> 00:18:45.340 and create opportunities for women to, to shine. And it's and B two B 255 00:18:45.340 --> 00:18:48.550 marketers are all familiar with events. I'm doing this one right now with you, 256 00:18:48.560 --> 00:18:51.810 Jason James. Sorry, There are lots of opportunities to have people show up 257 00:18:51.820 --> 00:18:57.350 and do demos or do keynotes or do video vignettes of like ads or whatever. And 258 00:18:57.350 --> 00:19:02.680 oftentimes because it's a male dominated world so far, those people 259 00:19:02.680 --> 00:19:07.490 tend to be met and what we can do is man and say, hold on, you want to do 260 00:19:07.490 --> 00:19:10.660 what now you want to do this or that or whatever. Well, there's three other 261 00:19:10.660 --> 00:19:15.980 people that are perfectly qualified to do that that are not me and invite them 262 00:19:15.980 --> 00:19:20.500 to do it. And I said this to you in the pre show is like oftentimes, the 263 00:19:20.510 --> 00:19:23.710 feedback I get is, well, the title, you know, they don't have the title. When 264 00:19:23.710 --> 00:19:27.780 was the last time anybody on your show went to go to an event and said, oh, 265 00:19:27.780 --> 00:19:31.170 I'm not going to attend that session because that person's title is not 266 00:19:31.170 --> 00:19:35.270 sufficient. Like that doesn't happen. What you care about is what they have 267 00:19:35.270 --> 00:19:38.710 to say. Can they say it in a way that gets you to think differently? 268 00:19:38.720 --> 00:19:42.570 Hopefully take away some lessons learned and go be a better person and 269 00:19:42.570 --> 00:19:47.770 that can come from anywhere. And so that's a very specific one. I've gone 270 00:19:47.770 --> 00:19:51.170 as far as making up people's titles because I just don't care about that, 271 00:19:51.540 --> 00:19:55.380 what people want. And by the way, it's not even about what I care about what 272 00:19:55.380 --> 00:20:00.060 is best for the audience they want to hear from the most qualified people 273 00:20:00.060 --> 00:20:02.840 with the most energy and the most enthusiasm for the subject, whatever 274 00:20:02.840 --> 00:20:06.620 that might be. And those people exist in your organization, all over the 275 00:20:06.630 --> 00:20:11.690 place up and down the order chart, find them and pull them up and give them 276 00:20:11.690 --> 00:20:17.290 these opportunities. It'll change there career, potentially. And why do you 277 00:20:17.290 --> 00:20:20.080 need to be on the thing? You know, I mean, honestly, James, if I could have 278 00:20:20.080 --> 00:20:23.220 had somebody else do this, I would have and you did actually, what's funny is 279 00:20:23.220 --> 00:20:27.190 like you're, you're not just preaching about this when we reached out to you, 280 00:20:27.190 --> 00:20:31.760 you actually said, hey, uh, you should also talk to Heidi Eisenstein who leads 281 00:20:31.760 --> 00:20:36.400 field marketing in oracle. So we do that episode is uh, will have gone live 282 00:20:36.400 --> 00:20:40.010 before this one because I talk to Heidi a couple weeks ago and that came 283 00:20:40.010 --> 00:20:45.220 because you're not just a talking head saying this is what you should do. Your 284 00:20:45.220 --> 00:20:48.680 actually walking this out and you do it so often that you didn't even remember 285 00:20:48.680 --> 00:20:54.620 that you did that, which I think is awesome. Um, so, so I, I am uh, yeah, I 286 00:20:54.620 --> 00:20:57.910 am completely on board with this thinking it's something I'm trying to 287 00:20:57.910 --> 00:21:01.440 do more and more of people, You know, ask me to talk about what we're doing 288 00:21:01.440 --> 00:21:05.340 on linkedin or like what we're doing with podcasting, whatever. Hey, there. 289 00:21:05.350 --> 00:21:09.870 Are there other people on the team that can speak to this? Uh, and inevitably 290 00:21:09.870 --> 00:21:15.130 there are, I mean, uh, so do people want to hear from the founder of the 291 00:21:15.130 --> 00:21:19.880 thing? Like there's some element to that, like, okay, but but you probably 292 00:21:19.880 --> 00:21:23.680 actually will get more value hearing from the person who actually leads are 293 00:21:23.680 --> 00:21:27.630 linked and evangelist program. She can speak much more intelligently to it 294 00:21:27.630 --> 00:21:31.830 than I can. And it gives it gives her an opportunity to your point, uh, 295 00:21:31.840 --> 00:21:35.220 advance her career. Give her a piece of content that she can put on her 296 00:21:35.220 --> 00:21:38.550 linkedin profile. It's helpful to her and it's more beneficial to the 297 00:21:38.550 --> 00:21:44.700 audience as well. So I think we're very aligned in our thinking there Nate. Um 298 00:21:44.710 --> 00:21:48.510 Hey, I've got another question. I was listening to an interview that you did 299 00:21:48.510 --> 00:21:54.010 on another podcast and you were talking about how demand gen leaders don't 300 00:21:54.010 --> 00:22:00.960 spend enough time with messaging. And I resonated with that so much. Um just 301 00:22:00.960 --> 00:22:06.490 because I've seen as, you know, as a founder that is very passionate about 302 00:22:06.490 --> 00:22:10.740 marketing. I I sometimes maybe get a little bit too romantic about the 303 00:22:10.740 --> 00:22:15.000 messaging and probably bottleneck some of the things that campaigns and stuff 304 00:22:15.000 --> 00:22:18.210 that we're trying to run because I care so deeply about it. But can you speak 305 00:22:18.210 --> 00:22:21.090 to either how this has played out at oracle or maybe it's some other 306 00:22:21.090 --> 00:22:26.860 companies where you've led marketing, How do you get demanding leaders to 307 00:22:27.240 --> 00:22:32.640 inject themselves more into messaging? Pay attention more to messaging? Why is 308 00:22:32.650 --> 00:22:35.780 I I think our listeners honestly understand why that's so important. But 309 00:22:35.780 --> 00:22:40.770 how do you how do you actually do that? Yeah, I mean 111 exercise I've run 310 00:22:40.770 --> 00:22:45.960 before and I've run it. Um more than one place is it's almost like a 311 00:22:45.960 --> 00:22:49.800 homework assignment around your favorite movie or your favorite book. 312 00:22:49.810 --> 00:22:53.450 Everybody said, you know, I love this show, I love Shits Creek, right? I love 313 00:22:53.450 --> 00:22:58.370 Shits Creek. What is it my work, Home work is what is it about that that you 314 00:22:58.370 --> 00:23:03.130 love? And if you get people to write down, like literally pause and say 315 00:23:03.140 --> 00:23:06.920 right here, they created a new narrative for, you know, I forget their 316 00:23:06.920 --> 00:23:12.250 names now. But on the spot for David, right, the narrative is shifted. He was 317 00:23:12.250 --> 00:23:16.080 here and now he shipped, we'll write that down. Right, okay. Well, this one 318 00:23:16.080 --> 00:23:22.150 moment where David's soon to be fiance is serenading him in their show floor. 319 00:23:22.160 --> 00:23:25.850 Why is that so touching? Why do you find yourself fighting bacteria? What 320 00:23:25.850 --> 00:23:29.980 is it about it? It's the words of the song. It's the setting is where he's 321 00:23:29.980 --> 00:23:35.220 standing. Well, what you realize is that all of that is messaging. It's all 322 00:23:35.230 --> 00:23:40.880 storytelling in a narrative format that people can identify with without you 323 00:23:40.880 --> 00:23:43.760 explaining it to them, right? You don't have to explain who these characters 324 00:23:43.760 --> 00:23:48.240 are for you to know that that's meaningful and that's an exercise. I've 325 00:23:48.240 --> 00:23:51.820 done what I tell the same with the book. Like what makes a great book, great 326 00:23:51.820 --> 00:23:55.680 book. You know, what makes it great for you may not make it great for me. Why? 327 00:23:55.690 --> 00:23:59.570 And what you find is that people get to the point where what they're really 328 00:23:59.570 --> 00:24:04.640 saying is that message resonated with me. And then you can start to tease out, 329 00:24:04.640 --> 00:24:08.330 well, what about what, Why, what was that? And what did they say? How did 330 00:24:08.330 --> 00:24:12.560 they say it? When did they say it? And so you start to back up to what is 331 00:24:12.560 --> 00:24:16.360 basically blocking and tackling fundamentals of effective marketing, 332 00:24:16.740 --> 00:24:20.810 concise, clear language that people can understand without you having to 333 00:24:20.810 --> 00:24:24.860 explain it to them, right? We're not what is marketing ultimate value? It is 334 00:24:24.860 --> 00:24:30.890 scale its mass reach. You know, I I use this not not a great metaphor, but in a 335 00:24:30.890 --> 00:24:35.960 military context. The marketing is the Air Force, right? It's like out in 336 00:24:35.960 --> 00:24:40.240 front, way over the top, kind of creating opportunities in space for 337 00:24:40.240 --> 00:24:45.890 everyone else to do their job and you do that better if you get people to 338 00:24:45.900 --> 00:24:50.000 understand what you're saying without explaining it to them. And that usually 339 00:24:50.000 --> 00:24:56.240 means very simple language. Very clear language don't use don't use fancy 340 00:24:56.240 --> 00:25:02.310 words and fluffy words and things that people don't really understand. Yeah. I 341 00:25:02.310 --> 00:25:06.300 I think touching on that point, there's another note that I took when I was 342 00:25:06.300 --> 00:25:09.490 listening to your other interview. We talked a lot about voice of the 343 00:25:09.490 --> 00:25:15.010 customer and how marketers need to either. Like they need to understand 344 00:25:15.010 --> 00:25:20.310 the customer's voice better than what a lot of them do. Um How do you go about 345 00:25:20.310 --> 00:25:23.550 doing that? Is it as simple as just talking to sales on a more regular 346 00:25:23.550 --> 00:25:28.000 basis? Do marketers need to actually direct directly speak to customers? 347 00:25:28.000 --> 00:25:33.350 Like how do how do you lead this with marketers? Yeah. I mean I think there's 348 00:25:33.350 --> 00:25:37.520 nothing that substitutes for actually talking to a human being that is the 349 00:25:37.520 --> 00:25:40.970 customer. But even more nuanced than that. James don't just talk to 350 00:25:40.970 --> 00:25:45.710 customers. Customers are already biased. Like you as a marketer, you're talking 351 00:25:45.710 --> 00:25:49.400 to someone who's already got the kool Aid or they get the vision, talk to 352 00:25:49.400 --> 00:25:53.850 someone who doesn't know anything like my neighbor is actually an orkin uh, 353 00:25:53.860 --> 00:25:59.050 guy like the organ truck, you know the terminator, the bug bug exterminators. 354 00:25:59.540 --> 00:26:02.560 I have literally had so many conversations with him about where I 355 00:26:02.560 --> 00:26:06.440 work what I do. And it's fascinating how quickly he'll say, I don't know 356 00:26:06.440 --> 00:26:10.870 what that is and I'll be like, okay, well I'll try to kind of say and I'm 357 00:26:10.870 --> 00:26:13.490 like, oh, you mean like, and that's what people do, right? They say, oh, 358 00:26:13.490 --> 00:26:18.480 you mean like they do association so that there's nothing that is better 359 00:26:18.480 --> 00:26:22.020 than that. And I would, I would say even create goals around it for your 360 00:26:22.020 --> 00:26:26.190 team, especially product marketers, if you're not actually talking to people 361 00:26:26.190 --> 00:26:30.940 who are your audience that you want to convince to buy your product about how 362 00:26:30.940 --> 00:26:34.870 they describe the problem, How they describe the ideal solution to that 363 00:26:34.870 --> 00:26:39.030 problem. How they describe where that problem fits in their priority list. If 364 00:26:39.030 --> 00:26:42.980 you're not having those conversations, you're not doing your job. And I think 365 00:26:42.990 --> 00:26:46.870 you got to find those opportunities, whether it's your neighbor or at shows 366 00:26:46.870 --> 00:26:50.700 events, even user groups. Although I encourage people not to just go get a 367 00:26:50.700 --> 00:26:54.450 bunch of customers to go to them because there's bias get actual users 368 00:26:54.460 --> 00:26:57.790 with people that are doing the profession of the thing. You're selling 369 00:26:57.790 --> 00:27:01.510 them, but aren't customers don't have no awareness of you and you'd be 370 00:27:01.520 --> 00:27:05.730 surprised. I always found, sorry I'm gonna tangent Now one of the funniest 371 00:27:05.730 --> 00:27:09.250 things I discovered in my career was like research about customers. We 372 00:27:09.250 --> 00:27:12.790 talked to 1000 customers and they all said this, Well, those may be the 373 00:27:12.790 --> 00:27:17.650 customers that we've had for years or for months or for decades. But are they 374 00:27:17.650 --> 00:27:22.840 the customer we want next year or next five years and maybe we're pivoting. 375 00:27:22.850 --> 00:27:26.480 Maybe we're changing. Maybe our future customer is slightly different. And so 376 00:27:26.480 --> 00:27:29.340 if all you're doing is talking to customers who are in the door, you're 377 00:27:29.340 --> 00:27:32.450 missing an opportunity to re imagine what the next customer might need. 378 00:27:32.460 --> 00:27:36.610 That's different. This has been incredible. I want to I want to close 379 00:27:36.610 --> 00:27:39.930 with a question that I like to ask, ask a lot of our guests. What's something 380 00:27:39.930 --> 00:27:44.940 that B. Two B. Marketers should start or stop doing? Uh That's a good one. Um 381 00:27:44.950 --> 00:27:51.060 Stop trying to take credit for everything. Uh I think that we have 382 00:27:51.070 --> 00:27:55.010 grown up in a world where B2B. Marketing, we need to show attribution 383 00:27:55.010 --> 00:27:59.870 and marketing generated pipe versus sales generated pipe. And that's all 384 00:27:59.870 --> 00:28:03.280 important. I'm not suggesting it's not if you're if you have entire teams of 385 00:28:03.290 --> 00:28:06.340 people that are doing nothing but churning through data to try to create 386 00:28:06.340 --> 00:28:11.780 a vision of marketing contribution, you got to move further upstream than that. 387 00:28:11.790 --> 00:28:14.470 You've got a different problem. The problem is like your systems aren't 388 00:28:14.470 --> 00:28:18.640 working or your dashboard isn't right? Or there's a there's a much further 389 00:28:18.640 --> 00:28:23.110 upstream issue than than that. Uh And and honestly, if you're spending that 390 00:28:23.110 --> 00:28:27.370 much time energy focused on taking credit, how much time and energy are 391 00:28:27.370 --> 00:28:31.040 you actually able to dedicate to the experience of your customer through 392 00:28:31.040 --> 00:28:36.400 that journey? Like we said earlier, even through post sale, you can't, it's 393 00:28:36.400 --> 00:28:39.610 the bucket has water that goes out of it on both sides, Right? So I think 394 00:28:39.610 --> 00:28:43.620 that's one. You should definitely stop, stop trying to create credit or take 395 00:28:43.620 --> 00:28:48.690 credit. Remember the partnership comment we made and like line up around 396 00:28:48.700 --> 00:28:52.230 the objectives you have for the company and your customers and rest usually 397 00:28:52.230 --> 00:28:55.690 takes care of itself. This has been awesome. Thank you so much for your 398 00:28:55.690 --> 00:28:58.050 time today. If there's anybody listening, I want to stay connected 399 00:28:58.050 --> 00:29:00.550 with you. What's the best way for them to go about doing that? 400 00:29:01.810 --> 00:29:08.390 That's good. My email is Nate dot skinner at oracle and on twitter, I'm 401 00:29:08.400 --> 00:29:13.900 at Rennes my last name in reverse, uh rednecks and I think it's at six and I 402 00:29:13.900 --> 00:29:18.960 just realized I didn't know that one by my heart. Let's see. Yeah, at Lenox. 403 00:29:18.960 --> 00:29:23.200 And so it's my last name reverse with my first initial awesome. Thank you so 404 00:29:23.200 --> 00:29:25.900 much for your time today. This has been incredible. Yeah. Thanks James. It's 405 00:29:25.900 --> 00:29:27.360 great to be here, appreciate you having me. 406 00:29:30.440 --> 00:29:30.670 Yeah. 407 00:29:31.840 --> 00:29:36.040 Is the decision maker for your product or service of BB marketer. Are you 408 00:29:36.040 --> 00:29:40.250 looking to reach those buyers through the medium of podcasting? Considered 409 00:29:40.250 --> 00:29:45.460 becoming a co host of GDP growth. This show is consistently ranked as a top 410 00:29:45.460 --> 00:29:49.610 100 podcast in the marketing category of apple podcasts, And the show gets 411 00:29:49.610 --> 00:29:55.200 more than 130,000 downloads each month. We've already done the work of building 412 00:29:55.200 --> 00:29:59.230 the audience so you can focus on delivering incredible content to our 413 00:29:59.230 --> 00:30:03.670 listeners if you're interested, email Logan at Sweet Fish Media dot com? 414 00:30:07.340 --> 00:30:09.040 Yeah.