Why 'Best Practices' Aren't Practical (w/ Udi Ledergor)

WEBVTT 1 00:00:02.540 --> 00:00:02.740 Yeah, 2 00:00:05.640 --> 00:00:09.960 welcome back to be to be growth. I'm Leslie Cruise, the Swedish media and we 3 00:00:09.960 --> 00:00:14.140 are continuing our deep dive into demand generation. I'm very, very 4 00:00:14.140 --> 00:00:18.990 excited to be joined by the letter gore CMO at gang who obviously needs no 5 00:00:18.990 --> 00:00:22.830 introduction moody, thank you so much for coming on the show, excited to be 6 00:00:22.830 --> 00:00:26.820 here. Leslie, thanks for having me. Absolutely. I've been following you on 7 00:00:26.820 --> 00:00:30.580 linkedin for a while and listen to the interview you did a few months back 8 00:00:30.580 --> 00:00:35.230 with chris walker was so inspired by it, really focusing on that impact of brand 9 00:00:35.230 --> 00:00:38.860 for B two B is so important. It was a really valuable episode for me 10 00:00:38.860 --> 00:00:42.450 personally, like I mentioned before, I have so many things that I really want 11 00:00:42.450 --> 00:00:46.580 to talk to you about but before we get too deep you know we are focusing this 12 00:00:46.580 --> 00:00:51.770 month on demand generation here on GDP growth. So I do want to ask you how in 13 00:00:51.770 --> 00:00:56.460 your own words would you define demand generation? I think demand generation 14 00:00:56.460 --> 00:01:03.850 at the broadest level is creating awareness of a category and a product 15 00:01:04.440 --> 00:01:09.680 in a way that motivates people to come seek you out, that you don't have to 16 00:01:09.680 --> 00:01:15.300 chase them and pay a lot of money to get them and pull them in. But you 17 00:01:15.300 --> 00:01:21.930 actually create the, the infrastructure or the landscape that allows them to 18 00:01:21.930 --> 00:01:27.030 easily discover you and and want to pull themselves into you versus doing 19 00:01:27.030 --> 00:01:32.250 it the other way around. Yeah, so defining that as building your own 20 00:01:32.250 --> 00:01:36.020 brand in a way that makes people seek you out. That's really interesting to 21 00:01:36.020 --> 00:01:40.120 me, gang has been around for you know, about five years now, and of those five 22 00:01:40.120 --> 00:01:42.660 years, I think you've been there running the marketing department for, 23 00:01:42.670 --> 00:01:48.580 you know, 4.5 at least. So what are some of the earliest things that you 24 00:01:48.580 --> 00:01:54.660 were doing to implement? Demand? Jin cong great question. So I think there 25 00:01:55.040 --> 00:01:59.900 probably three parts that I would talk about to the dementia and strategy and 26 00:01:59.900 --> 00:02:05.510 how I found them when I arrived and how they've changed in the last 4.5 years. 27 00:02:05.520 --> 00:02:09.979 So the three components I I think are important to talk about our one brand 28 00:02:09.979 --> 00:02:15.330 and and and brand awareness. Second one is inbound and the third one is 29 00:02:15.330 --> 00:02:19.230 outbound, so maybe maybe let's just quickly define each of them in a 30 00:02:19.240 --> 00:02:22.420 sentence or two. So when I talk about brand brand awareness, it's like, okay, 31 00:02:22.420 --> 00:02:26.230 have you heard of gone? Uh if you have not, that's that's shame on me if 32 00:02:26.230 --> 00:02:28.780 you've heard about us, but you're not quite sure what we do, That's a little 33 00:02:28.780 --> 00:02:32.560 bit better if you've heard about us and you know what we do, but you realize 34 00:02:32.560 --> 00:02:35.940 that you're either a wrong fit or you're not quite ready. That's a little 35 00:02:35.940 --> 00:02:40.390 bit better. And if you know who we are, you know what we do and you're actively 36 00:02:40.400 --> 00:02:44.000 evaluating us because you realize that you need us. That's that's wonderful. 37 00:02:44.000 --> 00:02:48.090 So that's like the highest level of what we're trying to achieve outbound 38 00:02:48.100 --> 00:02:53.730 at the very basic level means that we have to invest resources in order to 39 00:02:53.730 --> 00:02:58.560 reach out to you to let you know about us and try and interest you in 40 00:02:58.560 --> 00:03:03.890 evaluating gone at the very practical level. That probably means having a 41 00:03:03.900 --> 00:03:07.710 sales development rep reach out to you, call you and say, hey Leslie, I'm 42 00:03:07.710 --> 00:03:10.940 calling from Gone. I'm not sure if you've heard about us, we can do so and 43 00:03:10.940 --> 00:03:15.120 so for your team and we'd love to get a chance to show you what you can do. 44 00:03:15.300 --> 00:03:18.770 That's expensive and hard to scale. It's possible, but it's expensive and 45 00:03:18.770 --> 00:03:26.340 hard to scale. What I consider inbound is in the most narrow form is that you 46 00:03:26.340 --> 00:03:30.750 Leslie have heard about us for quite a while and when you're finally in a 47 00:03:30.750 --> 00:03:34.060 position of sales, sales leadership team and you're ready to enjoy the 48 00:03:34.060 --> 00:03:38.300 benefits of gone, you will either google gone to find us or you'll know 49 00:03:38.300 --> 00:03:41.970 how to reach us somewhere else. And on our website you'll ask for a demo 50 00:03:41.970 --> 00:03:45.340 request because you want to talk to a salesperson about evaluating gone. So 51 00:03:45.340 --> 00:03:51.030 that, that to me is the narrow and and holy grail definition of inbound. So if 52 00:03:51.030 --> 00:03:54.640 we agree that those are the three main pieces, I would say that like most 53 00:03:54.650 --> 00:03:59.370 early stage startups when I arrived at gong we had zero brand awareness, 54 00:03:59.380 --> 00:04:03.670 nobody knew who gang was, we had zero inbound because to come into our 55 00:04:03.670 --> 00:04:07.250 website or to know what we're even called to find us, you've got to have 56 00:04:07.250 --> 00:04:11.970 heard about us and we were just getting started with outbound. So I think this 57 00:04:11.970 --> 00:04:15.780 is kind of typical of every early stage startup. Everybody wants to build an 58 00:04:15.780 --> 00:04:20.240 inbound machine, which you have to, but you've got to be realistic about the 59 00:04:20.250 --> 00:04:24.110 time that that takes to do if you start focusing most of your efforts are all 60 00:04:24.110 --> 00:04:27.860 of your efforts on inbound, you're gonna run out of money and your 61 00:04:27.860 --> 00:04:32.650 investors trust before you've created enough traction to be meaningful. So 62 00:04:33.240 --> 00:04:38.320 what I've done and I've seen work at multiple companies is on day one, you 63 00:04:38.320 --> 00:04:42.010 get very aggressive about outbound because the beautiful thing about ALba 64 00:04:42.010 --> 00:04:45.300 and you don't need much of a brand to make it work. You buy a list of 65 00:04:45.300 --> 00:04:49.320 accounts and contacts. If I know that Leslie is the sales leader, I sit erIC 66 00:04:49.330 --> 00:04:53.360 sTR down, I said call Leslie tell her this is what we do and this is why she 67 00:04:53.360 --> 00:04:59.250 should care and convince her to take a demo with our Ceo or salesperson or 68 00:04:59.250 --> 00:05:02.590 whoever and that can work on day one. You don't need a brand to do that. 69 00:05:02.590 --> 00:05:05.620 Right? I can say hi, I'm calling from purple elephants, I want to show you 70 00:05:05.620 --> 00:05:09.080 this new product. I know you've never heard of us, but I know who you are and 71 00:05:09.080 --> 00:05:13.670 I think this can really help you. So that's what I would do again at every 72 00:05:13.670 --> 00:05:16.960 early stage startup that hasn't yet built a brand or an inbound motion 73 00:05:17.640 --> 00:05:21.380 start with very aggressive outbound, that's going to build the pipeline that 74 00:05:21.380 --> 00:05:25.320 you need to get you to the next round and create that initial attraction. Now, 75 00:05:25.320 --> 00:05:29.400 at the same time, you do have to start thinking about building a brand and 76 00:05:29.400 --> 00:05:33.220 awareness that will drive an inbound because the problem with outbound is 77 00:05:33.220 --> 00:05:37.690 that it is really, really expensive. And if you want to build a meaningful 78 00:05:37.690 --> 00:05:42.290 company to, to bring in thousands of opportunities a month, doing that 79 00:05:42.300 --> 00:05:45.990 purely outbound is going to be really, really difficult and expensive and, and 80 00:05:46.000 --> 00:05:52.070 it's just not gonna get to a unit economics that investors or your CFO 81 00:05:52.080 --> 00:05:56.290 are gonna like, so realize it's going to take time realized that the earlier 82 00:05:56.290 --> 00:06:00.350 you start, the earlier you'll see results and then I'll, and I'll end 83 00:06:00.350 --> 00:06:04.250 this this long speech with this part. If you're doing this correctly, what 84 00:06:04.250 --> 00:06:09.020 you'll see is your brand awareness and as a result of that inbound will start 85 00:06:09.020 --> 00:06:14.560 from zero, but go up into the right over time and the outbound, you start 86 00:06:14.570 --> 00:06:20.040 very high up in the left, it will start going down to the right in the terms of 87 00:06:20.050 --> 00:06:23.980 what percentage of your total pipeline comes from outbound. So when, when I 88 00:06:23.980 --> 00:06:29.380 joined on, 100% of the pipeline was outbound, 0% was inbound today, only 89 00:06:29.380 --> 00:06:35.610 60% of our pipeline comes from outbound and 40% almost half comes in from 90 00:06:35.610 --> 00:06:39.520 inbound because we built a brand and we're driving that traffic to to come 91 00:06:39.520 --> 00:06:44.710 and seek us on their own. Wow, that's great for anyone listening, who is, you 92 00:06:44.710 --> 00:06:48.470 know, in a start up, in a small business, in a small company who wants 93 00:06:48.470 --> 00:06:52.190 to start implementing these dimension strategies and that's, that's great. Um, 94 00:06:52.190 --> 00:06:56.290 so over time, how would you say you kind of refine those things and just 95 00:06:56.290 --> 00:07:02.050 make them better over time as you go? Yeah, that's a great question. So at 96 00:07:02.050 --> 00:07:06.410 the heart of both of our inbound and outbound strategies, obviously I 97 00:07:06.410 --> 00:07:11.100 oversimplified things to make them actionable. But rather than having an 98 00:07:11.100 --> 00:07:15.850 SDR make cold calls all day, which nobody enjoys. Right, neither SDR nor 99 00:07:15.850 --> 00:07:20.620 the prospects picking up the phone, which they seem to help our Sdrs and A 100 00:07:20.620 --> 00:07:24.520 s have as many warm conversations as they can even if they are outbound 101 00:07:24.520 --> 00:07:27.900 conversations. So even if they're calling someone that wasn't expecting 102 00:07:27.900 --> 00:07:32.090 to talk to salesperson today, there's a big difference between saying, hey, I'm 103 00:07:32.090 --> 00:07:36.070 moody from Acne. You've never heard of me. I know you weren't expecting my 104 00:07:36.070 --> 00:07:39.440 call. Give me 30 seconds before you slam the phone on me. Here's what I 105 00:07:39.440 --> 00:07:44.180 want. That. That's a cold call. A warm call would be Hi Leslie judy calling 106 00:07:44.180 --> 00:07:47.830 from going here. I noticed yesterday you attended our virtual event and last 107 00:07:47.830 --> 00:07:53.130 week you downloaded Archie cheat. So I wanted to hear feedback from you. How, 108 00:07:53.130 --> 00:07:57.280 how is that going for you? What did you find valuable? And then I'll take you 109 00:07:57.280 --> 00:08:00.500 from that point in the conversation, which there's a lot of context and 110 00:08:00.500 --> 00:08:04.050 warmth because you've already seen value from my company, I'm just calling 111 00:08:04.050 --> 00:08:07.990 you about that now, so you're more inclined to give me the time of day and 112 00:08:07.990 --> 00:08:12.480 then if I can tie the value that you got from that content into what I want 113 00:08:12.480 --> 00:08:16.930 to show you in my product, you're much more likely to say, okay, I'm ready for 114 00:08:16.930 --> 00:08:21.330 that next step because I know you guys, I've been reading your content, I know 115 00:08:21.330 --> 00:08:25.410 you're legit and you've already provided me with values. So at the 116 00:08:25.410 --> 00:08:30.090 heart of that outbound strategy as well as our inbound strategy is our content 117 00:08:30.090 --> 00:08:35.549 marketing engine. And very early on we set out to create content that was 118 00:08:36.140 --> 00:08:40.690 extremely useful to our audience, gives them a lot of value without asking for 119 00:08:40.690 --> 00:08:45.510 anything in return, knowing that some people will be consuming or content for 120 00:08:45.510 --> 00:08:50.100 years before they're ready to buy from God. So that's that's what we did. And 121 00:08:50.100 --> 00:08:54.280 we looked around and we saw, well there's over 100,000 books on sales. If 122 00:08:54.280 --> 00:08:57.750 you go to amazon type books on sales you'll find over 100,000 books, 123 00:08:58.140 --> 00:09:01.390 probably a lot more. But they stopped counting them after 100,000. The 124 00:09:01.390 --> 00:09:05.690 problem is that most of those books are based on one or two people's opinions 125 00:09:05.690 --> 00:09:09.820 and experience. You know, a guy worked at Xerox carrying around a bag. So a 126 00:09:09.820 --> 00:09:13.500 few things work for him, he wrote a book about it, erin work that 127 00:09:13.500 --> 00:09:16.780 Salesforce was the first SDR did a few things that worked for him, he wrote a 128 00:09:16.780 --> 00:09:21.140 book about it. Now some of those books are are good and useful. I've I've read 129 00:09:21.140 --> 00:09:24.260 several of them. The problem is that they are based on very limited 130 00:09:24.260 --> 00:09:30.330 experience and rarely are they based on data. So we said what if we used our 131 00:09:30.330 --> 00:09:35.810 own technology to create this exclusive data that shows what actually works and 132 00:09:35.810 --> 00:09:40.390 doesn't work in sales but not in a way that's open to conjecture or opinion, 133 00:09:40.390 --> 00:09:45.440 but actually what the data says. Because many things do have an answer. 134 00:09:45.440 --> 00:09:50.090 When is the right time to call someone in the week? What is the right first 135 00:09:50.090 --> 00:09:54.780 line to use in the call? What is the best topics or subject lines using an 136 00:09:54.780 --> 00:09:59.240 email? There is a scientific answer that's backed by data. So we started 137 00:09:59.250 --> 00:10:03.810 creating this series that we call the gong lab series. We started publishing 138 00:10:03.810 --> 00:10:08.870 this on a regular basis. And uh we were right people were very, very interested 139 00:10:08.870 --> 00:10:12.670 in what we have to say. And we're consuming this state of very, very 140 00:10:12.670 --> 00:10:16.760 quickly. And that's what helped us build our initial brand as a company 141 00:10:16.760 --> 00:10:21.300 that knows their stuff around what really works and doesn't work in sales. 142 00:10:21.300 --> 00:10:25.830 And so we ended up producing more and more articles and blog posts and then 143 00:10:25.830 --> 00:10:31.430 videos and then podcasts and events and webinars all around this content 144 00:10:31.430 --> 00:10:35.760 getting more and more people in our web of information. And then they subscribe 145 00:10:35.760 --> 00:10:39.560 to our email list so we can send more emails and then they attend our events 146 00:10:39.560 --> 00:10:42.140 and they follow our social media. So we have more and more ways of 147 00:10:42.140 --> 00:10:45.530 communicating with them and informing them when when you stuff like this 148 00:10:45.530 --> 00:10:50.920 comes out. And then my my rule of thumb is that 80 or 90 of the time we're 149 00:10:50.920 --> 00:10:55.100 providing this value and not asking for anything in return. But I feel that 150 00:10:55.100 --> 00:10:59.430 that earns us the right in the remaining 10 of the time to put out an 151 00:10:59.430 --> 00:11:05.310 offer that says, Okay, maybe now you're ready to, to ask for your demo or maybe 152 00:11:05.310 --> 00:11:08.520 now you want to know about going pricing or maybe now we can talk about 153 00:11:08.530 --> 00:11:14.390 getting on for your team. So, so that is the basic, the basic structure of 154 00:11:14.390 --> 00:11:18.380 any content marketing strategy is you cast a wide web by providing valuable 155 00:11:18.380 --> 00:11:22.330 content that people want to consume for the value that it brings and in return, 156 00:11:22.330 --> 00:11:26.550 you own the right to occasionally, not too often ask for something in return. 157 00:11:27.240 --> 00:11:30.340 That's really interesting. And I think that's what's so valuable about Lincoln 158 00:11:30.340 --> 00:11:34.090 alone today because you know, you can connect with so many different people 159 00:11:34.090 --> 00:11:37.640 and you just put content out. You know, you're not asking for anything, you're 160 00:11:37.640 --> 00:11:40.690 just putting content out. People are taking it, they're reading it, they're 161 00:11:40.700 --> 00:11:43.800 finding it valuable, they're taking what they see valuable and then they 162 00:11:43.800 --> 00:11:46.710 might circle back with you and say, hey, you know, like Leslie, I see that you 163 00:11:46.710 --> 00:11:51.140 post all the time about demand gen and podcasting and this and that and love 164 00:11:51.140 --> 00:11:54.630 to start a podcast. Would love to know how and there it is and I didn't do 165 00:11:54.630 --> 00:11:57.750 anything at all. I mean I'm not a salesperson obviously, so I didn't do 166 00:11:57.750 --> 00:12:01.890 anything. All I did was post my experience um from my perspective in 167 00:12:01.890 --> 00:12:05.380 our company. So that's what I think is really valuable about that. I agree. 168 00:12:05.380 --> 00:12:09.080 And you know, companies who are making good use of social media today, they 169 00:12:09.080 --> 00:12:13.890 know how to build a healthy balance between the corporate messages they 170 00:12:13.890 --> 00:12:16.440 want to send out. I mean, yeah, occasionally you do need to promote a 171 00:12:16.440 --> 00:12:20.560 webinar to drive attendance. But if that's all you're doing on social media, 172 00:12:20.640 --> 00:12:23.520 nobody's gonna follow your brand, nobody wants to hear from you because 173 00:12:23.520 --> 00:12:27.330 your, your that boring guy, right? So if you look at companies like gong, we 174 00:12:27.330 --> 00:12:30.870 have a whole bunch of employees that are creating their own original content 175 00:12:30.880 --> 00:12:36.440 sarah brazier in sales. She started creating content when she was an SDR 176 00:12:36.450 --> 00:12:40.830 Andre Mcbride, currently an SDR gong devin read on our content team, but 177 00:12:40.830 --> 00:12:44.100 before that he was on our sales team and a whole bunch of other people, 178 00:12:44.110 --> 00:12:48.290 including myself were creating content not every single day. Sometimes I can 179 00:12:48.290 --> 00:12:54.270 go a week without posting, but we do post enough content that creates this 180 00:12:54.270 --> 00:12:57.840 excitement around what we're doing. It. It's not, it's usually not about 181 00:12:57.840 --> 00:13:01.420 promoting our next webinar, right? It's usually about something exciting that 182 00:13:01.430 --> 00:13:06.180 we wanted to share a learning something I think folks would truly find useful 183 00:13:06.190 --> 00:13:09.640 if all you're doing is boasting about, we won this award in that award, you 184 00:13:09.640 --> 00:13:12.480 become really boring. But if you want to share something about here's an 185 00:13:12.480 --> 00:13:15.960 opportunity because I'm hiring for this role that you might be looking for, 186 00:13:16.440 --> 00:13:20.280 Here's a really amazing conversation we're having with magic johnson next 187 00:13:20.280 --> 00:13:23.940 week, that we'd love you to join for free and people want to join that sort 188 00:13:23.940 --> 00:13:28.010 of stuff and and then you throw in the mix some of that corporate stuff. So 189 00:13:28.010 --> 00:13:32.080 when I do promote a webinar, it gets decent traction. Not not great traction. 190 00:13:32.080 --> 00:13:36.440 Like when I post a video of me playing the piano, which I also do, because I I 191 00:13:36.440 --> 00:13:40.750 feel that if I bring my whole self to social media, people respond better to 192 00:13:40.750 --> 00:13:43.990 all of my posts, not to just those posts because they see me as a whole 193 00:13:43.990 --> 00:13:47.900 human being and not some robot that that's you know, mindlessly posting 194 00:13:47.900 --> 00:13:52.220 webinar invites. Yeah, they respect you as a person, not just to CMO, which I 195 00:13:52.220 --> 00:13:55.930 think is really valuable for this next question. It's a relatively broad 196 00:13:55.930 --> 00:14:00.110 question. You know, marketing is constantly evolving. So I'm curious 197 00:14:00.120 --> 00:14:06.180 where do you think that demand gen as a whole is headed in the future? What's 198 00:14:06.180 --> 00:14:11.600 next? I think as companies think about building their brand and driving demand. 199 00:14:11.610 --> 00:14:16.760 The one thing that's constantly been changing in recent years and it's part 200 00:14:16.760 --> 00:14:20.690 of this, you know, information explosion and the ease in which your 201 00:14:20.690 --> 00:14:26.510 prospects can access information about your company is that you need to expect 202 00:14:26.510 --> 00:14:30.630 that your prospects are going to collect most of the information that 203 00:14:30.630 --> 00:14:34.550 they need before they ever contact the company and you have to make that 204 00:14:34.550 --> 00:14:39.570 information available to them by amplifying your customer stories and 205 00:14:39.570 --> 00:14:42.640 knowing that they're going to read reviews on sites like G two and Cap 206 00:14:42.640 --> 00:14:46.780 terra before they come to your website or even decide they want to talk to you. 207 00:14:46.790 --> 00:14:53.330 So all these partly guerilla marketing techniques and others just making sure 208 00:14:53.340 --> 00:14:57.790 you control how your brand shows up wherever you can. You've got to focus 209 00:14:57.790 --> 00:15:01.080 that a lot more than on getting the exact words right on your website. 210 00:15:01.080 --> 00:15:04.550 Because someone who have made it to your website there at a pretty advanced 211 00:15:04.550 --> 00:15:08.930 stage of deciding to buy your product, you know, you still have to have a good 212 00:15:08.930 --> 00:15:12.580 website that converts them. But uh if that's where you're putting 90% of your 213 00:15:12.580 --> 00:15:16.980 work, that that's a big big mistake because that's where a very small 214 00:15:16.980 --> 00:15:20.420 percentage of your audience is going to end up at the end of the process of 215 00:15:20.420 --> 00:15:25.220 buying, you've got to make sure that you show up at the industry events, at 216 00:15:25.220 --> 00:15:30.780 the, uh, community organizations and the reviews websites at every place 217 00:15:30.780 --> 00:15:35.320 where your audience goes to consume information and to exchange thoughts 218 00:15:35.320 --> 00:15:39.470 whether it's, uh, certain social media network, whether it's local chapters of 219 00:15:39.470 --> 00:15:43.600 the local organization, that's where you need to show up, and that's what 220 00:15:43.600 --> 00:15:47.090 creates the demand and that's what creates the awareness if people 221 00:15:47.090 --> 00:15:51.680 wherever they go. And I, we hear this a lot right people say to us, you know, 222 00:15:51.690 --> 00:15:56.730 someone mentioned going to me a few one weeks or months ago and ever since 223 00:15:56.730 --> 00:16:00.280 every day I see going popping up somewhere on social media and at an 224 00:16:00.280 --> 00:16:03.660 event and a friend told me about it and I saw someone on the train, sitting 225 00:16:03.740 --> 00:16:07.840 listening to go on calls and you just show up everywhere, that's what you 226 00:16:07.840 --> 00:16:10.660 need, that's how you're gonna drive demand. It's not about just building 227 00:16:10.660 --> 00:16:13.460 the best website in the world and and hoping that people are gonna show up. 228 00:16:14.240 --> 00:16:18.560 Absolutely, switching gears a little here James our founder here at Sweet 229 00:16:18.560 --> 00:16:23.110 Fish and I were actually talking recently about how gong made a decision 230 00:16:23.110 --> 00:16:27.670 to kind of change their category from conversational intelligence to revenue 231 00:16:27.670 --> 00:16:30.420 intelligence. That was really interesting to us because you know, you 232 00:16:30.420 --> 00:16:33.680 spend a lot of time and effort building that conversational intelligence 233 00:16:33.680 --> 00:16:37.640 category. So I would love to know a little bit about kind of what drove 234 00:16:37.640 --> 00:16:41.270 that decision to shift more of a revenue Intelligence category. 235 00:16:41.840 --> 00:16:46.970 absolutely. So that that's a decision that we made about 18 months ago, We 236 00:16:46.970 --> 00:16:53.580 launched revenue intelligence in October of 20 19 After about three 237 00:16:53.580 --> 00:17:00.450 years of belonging to the conversation intelligence category. And here's the 238 00:17:00.450 --> 00:17:04.560 timeline why we did that. So when we came out with the product, we needed to 239 00:17:04.560 --> 00:17:07.280 call it something that people would understand and we looked around, we saw 240 00:17:07.280 --> 00:17:10.180 a couple of companies that were doing something that they call conversation 241 00:17:10.180 --> 00:17:13.910 Intelligence and and our first product was close enough to what they were 242 00:17:13.910 --> 00:17:18.589 doing that we decided to pick that name. Embarking on a category. Creation 243 00:17:18.589 --> 00:17:23.650 journey is due long and difficult and expensive and it's rarely the first 244 00:17:23.650 --> 00:17:26.760 thing you want to do. If you don't absolutely have to do it, you first 245 00:17:26.760 --> 00:17:32.140 want to get customers who actually use your product and love it and then think 246 00:17:32.140 --> 00:17:36.920 about positioning it. So, so that's what we did. And it was like half of an 247 00:17:36.920 --> 00:17:41.850 afterthought to to attach ourselves to conversation intelligence fast forward. 248 00:17:41.850 --> 00:17:46.300 Three years later, we came up with two problems that made us feel that we had 249 00:17:46.300 --> 00:17:51.250 outgrown the conversation intelligence category. One of them was all of the 250 00:17:51.250 --> 00:17:57.860 other companies in that category had a very narrow scope of vision and product 251 00:17:57.860 --> 00:18:01.800 around what they do in conversation intelligence. It was mainly about 252 00:18:01.800 --> 00:18:06.760 recording calls and allowing people to use that for coaching purposes. And 253 00:18:07.140 --> 00:18:13.740 even back then, we had a much, much broader, farther out looking vision of 254 00:18:13.740 --> 00:18:17.930 what we want to provide sales team with. We wanted to provide them a complete 255 00:18:17.930 --> 00:18:23.300 view of their customer reality. We wanted to allow them to focus on deals 256 00:18:23.300 --> 00:18:26.690 that need their help. And we were talking about things that nobody else 257 00:18:26.690 --> 00:18:31.560 in the category was talking about. So we felt that a by attaching ourselves 258 00:18:31.560 --> 00:18:35.900 to conversation intelligence were belittling how people see our product 259 00:18:35.900 --> 00:18:38.810 because they're looking at other products and they're very, very narrow 260 00:18:38.810 --> 00:18:42.690 in scope. So that's one thing we want to break out of the second thing and 261 00:18:42.690 --> 00:18:46.990 this one is more strategic as the company for the last couple of years 262 00:18:46.990 --> 00:18:51.350 has been going up market and we now support, not only are thousands of 263 00:18:51.350 --> 00:18:55.360 small and medium sized customers, but now we also support hundreds of really, 264 00:18:55.360 --> 00:18:58.380 really large businesses. Some of the largest companies in the world are 265 00:18:58.380 --> 00:19:03.940 using gong and we found that to get the attention of a senior sales leader and 266 00:19:03.940 --> 00:19:07.410 keep it, we need to be talking about something strategic that she cares 267 00:19:07.410 --> 00:19:12.120 about. And when we went to a chief revenue officer and talk to her about 268 00:19:12.120 --> 00:19:17.320 conversation intelligence, we often got bumped down to sales enablement because 269 00:19:17.320 --> 00:19:21.890 she said, well that sounds like a tactical tool, go talk to so and so 270 00:19:21.890 --> 00:19:25.840 from from enablement. And we wanted to make sure we're talking about something 271 00:19:25.840 --> 00:19:29.120 that she cares about that she could not bump us down that is in her 272 00:19:29.120 --> 00:19:34.420 responsibility. And after a process that took us a few months um we landed 273 00:19:34.420 --> 00:19:39.990 on revenue intelligence and it was a very good bet because A the C. R. O. 274 00:19:39.990 --> 00:19:43.990 Cares about revenue and we've been getting a lot more time with these 275 00:19:43.990 --> 00:19:47.720 senior sales leaders since we launched revenue intelligence because now it's a 276 00:19:47.720 --> 00:19:51.670 strategic tool for the Revenue leader and not tactical tool for enablement, 277 00:19:52.140 --> 00:19:55.890 definitely help us break apart from all the small niche players and 278 00:19:55.890 --> 00:19:59.850 conversation intelligence that are still mainly focused on call recording. 279 00:20:00.640 --> 00:20:04.770 And I'll end with this. If I look at the last 18 months, 280 00:20:05.840 --> 00:20:10.350 there's so many companies that have now renamed their category or their 281 00:20:10.350 --> 00:20:16.250 products or their messaging to mirror that of gongs and talk about revenue 282 00:20:16.250 --> 00:20:19.860 intelligence. That that might be the clearest sign that what we're doing is 283 00:20:19.860 --> 00:20:24.120 working and that they're feeling how far behind they have been left by gone, 284 00:20:24.130 --> 00:20:27.660 that they want to try and catch up by by mirroring some of that messaging and 285 00:20:27.660 --> 00:20:31.090 framing there. They're categories so that that's clearly working. And 286 00:20:31.100 --> 00:20:34.800 obviously we welcome more and more players in the category. Just 287 00:20:34.810 --> 00:20:39.560 reinforces that what we've built is real has a ton of demand and there is 288 00:20:39.560 --> 00:20:43.300 room for other players. Yeah. Like you said, I mean, clearly it's working. So 289 00:20:43.300 --> 00:20:46.900 that's that's really inspiring. And it doesn't put you in that box. Like you 290 00:20:46.900 --> 00:20:51.260 said, it lets you out of that and not just in this little section. You know, 291 00:20:51.260 --> 00:20:56.480 you have more of a range. So, well, I can't into this interview without 292 00:20:56.480 --> 00:21:00.170 asking you about the Super Bowl ad, I just can't do it. So for those of you 293 00:21:00.170 --> 00:21:03.420 listening, I'm sure you've seen it. If you haven't seen it, you've definitely 294 00:21:03.420 --> 00:21:07.890 heard about it. But going actually ran an ad in the Super Bowl this past year 295 00:21:07.900 --> 00:21:11.350 and you know, this makes so much sense. And I was still really shocked and 296 00:21:11.350 --> 00:21:15.790 honestly very excited when I saw the commercial I saw, you know, live and 297 00:21:15.800 --> 00:21:20.570 you rarely see a B two B sas company doing a Super Bowl commercial if ever. 298 00:21:20.580 --> 00:21:25.640 So can you just briefly share the thought process behind that? And how 299 00:21:25.640 --> 00:21:30.450 how did that idea come about? What was the end goal there? So if you've been 300 00:21:30.450 --> 00:21:33.620 following gone for a while, it probably wasn't a huge surprise for you have 301 00:21:33.620 --> 00:21:37.380 gone did something crazy like that because there's nothing that excites me 302 00:21:37.380 --> 00:21:41.770 more than getting crazy ideas. Either myself or from team members or from 303 00:21:42.240 --> 00:21:46.940 inspiration. I get externally. Uh we love doing crazy things. It's what gets 304 00:21:46.940 --> 00:21:51.370 you crazy results. If you do what people call best practices, they're 305 00:21:51.370 --> 00:21:54.110 actually ordinary practices because everybody's doing them. So you get 306 00:21:54.110 --> 00:21:57.270 ordinary results. If you want extraordinary results, you got to do 307 00:21:57.270 --> 00:22:01.420 something extraordinary and that's never best practice because otherwise 308 00:22:01.420 --> 00:22:06.670 you go back to being an ordinary practice. So when, um, when I became 309 00:22:06.670 --> 00:22:12.280 aware of sort of the options of advertising the Super Bowl and that it 310 00:22:12.290 --> 00:22:17.280 doesn't have to cost millions of dollars like most people figure. And I 311 00:22:17.280 --> 00:22:20.210 stopped correcting people and they said, oh, gang spent $5 million on their 312 00:22:20.210 --> 00:22:23.670 Super Bowl commercial. We spend a tiny, tiny fraction of that, but I'm like, 313 00:22:23.670 --> 00:22:26.540 yeah, okay, whatever. I don't mind you thinking that I've got that sort of 314 00:22:26.540 --> 00:22:31.300 budget, but I don't, I was intrigued because a nobody has done it before, 315 00:22:31.300 --> 00:22:35.720 which is what automatically gets me excited. Like nobody in our space, no 316 00:22:35.720 --> 00:22:39.770 sales tech company that I know of in the history of the Super Bowl has ever 317 00:22:39.780 --> 00:22:44.480 advertised on the Super Bowl. So that definitely got me excited and there is 318 00:22:44.480 --> 00:22:47.770 a bit of flexing in it, right? Because you see a company like going in the 319 00:22:47.770 --> 00:22:51.350 Super Bowl, you go like wow, these guys are really super successful, so that 320 00:22:51.350 --> 00:22:55.900 was part of what we were going for. B. I knew that and and this is what I've 321 00:22:55.900 --> 00:22:59.500 been doing for every time I do something out of the normal digital 322 00:22:59.510 --> 00:23:04.020 realm of Lincoln and google, like when I do out of home advertising or I wrap 323 00:23:04.020 --> 00:23:08.510 cars or I do something like that by mirroring that and amplifying that on 324 00:23:08.510 --> 00:23:12.800 social media, I get so much bang for my buck because I know that I've got a 325 00:23:12.800 --> 00:23:17.540 really highly targeted audience on linkedin and in my email list and in my 326 00:23:17.540 --> 00:23:21.290 virtual events. So if I can do things outside of that realm and then bring 327 00:23:21.290 --> 00:23:26.290 them back into that realm by doing a simple digital campaign, amplifying our 328 00:23:26.290 --> 00:23:29.930 Super Bowl commercial on linkedin. That's where I got thousands, thousands 329 00:23:29.930 --> 00:23:34.060 of relevant views of the commercial. Even if not everyone watching the Super 330 00:23:34.060 --> 00:23:39.900 Bowl was in my target audience. I can just mirror that for almost $0 in my, 331 00:23:39.910 --> 00:23:42.770 you know, home networks where I know that that the right audience is 332 00:23:42.770 --> 00:23:46.750 watching you. So that was that was also part of it. So I think it's part of our 333 00:23:46.750 --> 00:23:50.270 category creation because, you know, once, once a company goes Super Bowl, 334 00:23:50.270 --> 00:23:53.340 you know that this is not some questionable startup that may or may 335 00:23:53.340 --> 00:23:57.710 not be there tomorrow. This is now a successful category. And this is the 336 00:23:57.710 --> 00:24:01.650 leader advertising on Super Bowl prime time, you know, that their company here 337 00:24:01.650 --> 00:24:05.690 to stay. And if you had any doubts about should I get this now or should I 338 00:24:05.700 --> 00:24:09.270 sit this out and see how it works out? We got a lot of calls the next day 339 00:24:09.270 --> 00:24:12.260 saying, hey, we saw it on the Super Bowl. We've been sitting on the fence 340 00:24:12.260 --> 00:24:16.080 first for a while now. But that sort of pushed us off to say, okay, we need to 341 00:24:16.080 --> 00:24:19.990 look at this Now. I had an interview with some candidate the couple of days 342 00:24:19.990 --> 00:24:23.430 later and she said, you know the reason I took the call from the recruiters 343 00:24:23.430 --> 00:24:27.280 because I saw the Super Bowl commercial to restore it wow. And then the last 344 00:24:27.280 --> 00:24:31.880 thing I'll say on that is that I think a lot of marketers and even more so 345 00:24:31.880 --> 00:24:37.560 their ceos and CFOs get too hung up on attribution, which is a huge, huge 346 00:24:37.560 --> 00:24:42.190 challenge that will remain unsolved for the foreseeable future for marketers. 347 00:24:42.200 --> 00:24:47.430 And had gone. We are not obsessed about attribution. My rule of thumb, which is 348 00:24:47.430 --> 00:24:53.000 supported by by my leadership team, is about 80 of my program budget. I'll put 349 00:24:53.000 --> 00:24:56.930 on things that I should be able to measure their direct impact on pipeline 350 00:24:56.930 --> 00:25:01.390 and revenue The remaining 20%. Leave me alone and let me do my crazy 351 00:25:01.390 --> 00:25:06.510 experiments. I will do things that there is no way to measure if they were 352 00:25:06.510 --> 00:25:11.160 extraordinarily well. I think we'll know and if we don't know, then they 353 00:25:11.160 --> 00:25:14.400 probably did work extraordinary well and we'll just move on and and mark 354 00:25:14.400 --> 00:25:19.690 that as a learning from that experiment, fortunately for me, Super Bowl was one 355 00:25:19.690 --> 00:25:25.260 of those things that worked really, really well. During Super Bowl week, we 356 00:25:25.260 --> 00:25:31.060 broke all records and had the biggest week of all times have gone for new 357 00:25:31.060 --> 00:25:38.540 business opportunities created. So even my skeptic CFO, we love you tim when he 358 00:25:38.540 --> 00:25:43.430 saw those numbers, he's like, okay, I guess I was wrong. So Super Bowl really 359 00:25:43.430 --> 00:25:47.320 performed well for us, even without being able to track, you know, people 360 00:25:47.320 --> 00:25:50.920 who were sitting with their Dorito chips on the couch, watching the Super 361 00:25:50.920 --> 00:25:55.710 Bowl and were those exact same people that came in the following day? Some of 362 00:25:55.710 --> 00:25:59.700 them were, some of them were not. But is it possible there was a coincidence 363 00:25:59.700 --> 00:26:04.600 that Super Bowl week during our first Super Bowl commercial coincidentally 364 00:26:04.600 --> 00:26:09.450 have the biggest week of new business created. Probably not. And everyone 365 00:26:09.460 --> 00:26:12.350 understands that even without being able to perfectly track that 366 00:26:12.350 --> 00:26:15.970 attribution, uh those things are highly correlated and there's probably 367 00:26:15.970 --> 00:26:19.500 causality there as well. So that that was an experiment that turned out very, 368 00:26:19.500 --> 00:26:23.010 very well. Many other experiments don't turn out as well, but we just learned 369 00:26:23.010 --> 00:26:27.110 from them and move on and try the next big thing. Absolutely. I love you 370 00:26:27.110 --> 00:26:30.840 talking about attribution because that's so prevalent in this topic. Even 371 00:26:30.840 --> 00:26:34.730 I feel like people are so focused on the attribution and they shouldn't be, 372 00:26:34.740 --> 00:26:39.570 You know, it's not not so important to look at. We have to measure everything 373 00:26:39.580 --> 00:26:44.020 because everything can be measured so that you've got to do right to bring 374 00:26:44.020 --> 00:26:46.750 business to the company. And that includes being creative and trying 375 00:26:46.750 --> 00:26:52.610 crazy stuff. And a lot of those edgy crazy stuff cannot be easily attributed. 376 00:26:52.620 --> 00:26:56.040 I'm so glad that most companies are so conservative that they don't even try 377 00:26:56.040 --> 00:26:59.160 doing this stuff because it leaves all that space for me to experiment with 378 00:26:59.160 --> 00:27:03.330 and grab everyone's attention. So you keep doing your attribution. I'll keep 379 00:27:03.330 --> 00:27:07.670 doing my crazy stuff. Yeah. You'll just keep doing Super bowl commercials. 380 00:27:07.740 --> 00:27:11.490 That's awesome. Well judy, thank you so much. Any final thoughts here. This has 381 00:27:11.490 --> 00:27:15.020 been so insightful for me and I know our listeners will find it so valuable 382 00:27:15.020 --> 00:27:18.430 as well. So thank you final thoughts. I guess one. If you want to connect with 383 00:27:18.430 --> 00:27:22.100 me, just look up the letter gora on linkedin. Only one letter go around 384 00:27:22.100 --> 00:27:25.480 Lincoln. So should be pretty easy to find the other letters or you'll find 385 00:27:25.480 --> 00:27:29.290 is my husband so it can confuse us. He's the doctor. He does the real work 386 00:27:29.300 --> 00:27:34.150 marketing. And finally, if if you're in sales and not yet using revenue 387 00:27:34.150 --> 00:27:37.580 intelligence, then, um, as, as one of our biggest customers recently said 388 00:27:37.590 --> 00:27:41.770 you're being highly irresponsible for not using revenue intelligence in 2021. 389 00:27:41.780 --> 00:27:45.350 So you've got to go to gone dot Io and check it out for yourself. Absolutely. 390 00:27:45.690 --> 00:27:48.190 Well, this has been great. Thank you so much for joining me for me to be growth. 391 00:27:48.200 --> 00:27:49.160 Thank you Leslie 392 00:27:51.140 --> 00:27:55.410 at Sweet Fish. We're on a mission to create the most helpful content on the 393 00:27:55.410 --> 00:27:59.980 Internet for every job function and industry on the planet for the B two B 394 00:27:59.980 --> 00:28:04.020 marketing industry. This show is how we're executing on that mission. If you 395 00:28:04.020 --> 00:28:07.510 know a marketing leader, that would be an awesome guest for this podcast, 396 00:28:07.520 --> 00:28:11.060 shoot me a text message. Don't call me because I don't answer unknown numbers. 397 00:28:11.070 --> 00:28:17.550 But text me at 4074 and I know 33 to 8. Just shoot me. Their name may be a link 398 00:28:17.550 --> 00:28:21.480 to their linkedin profile and I'd love to check them out to see if we can get 399 00:28:21.490 --> 00:28:23.170 them on the show. Thanks a lot.