Speaker 1: 0:00

I just find that if you front end with that really deep dive into the business goals, you know where the business has come from, where it's going to really have a good understanding of what the business needs to achieve, and then the front lines role in helping you achieve that what they need, then a lot of the story, the brand story, actually falls into place. It's like a little jigsaw and you're completely right, simon. You just ask the right questions of all of the stakeholders and then it starts to piece into place.

Speaker 2: 0:34

Welcome to Growth Pulse, a B2B sales podcast. You might be a salesperson, you could lead a sales team, maybe run a business, or you're a battle-tested entrepreneur. Then we built this podcast for you. Great salespeople are built, not bought. We learn so much from the deals we win, but we'll learn even more from the deals we lose. In each episode, we bring you some of the world's leading salespeople, sales leaders and experts in sales tech to share their best lessons from both their wins and their losses.

Speaker 2: 1:08

Before we start, please check out the screen of your phone or laptop and, if you're watching on YouTube, make sure you've clicked subscribe and press that like button down below. If you're listening on Spotify or Apple, click the plus sign to follow so we can let you know when we publish each new episode. If you liked the episode, drop us a comment with any questions about the show. We'd love to get to know our audience. Great businesses always feature world-class salespeople and the best salespeople are always learning, so let's jump in. Welcome everybody. Back to another episode of Growth Pulse, the B2B sales podcast. I'm Dan Bartels here, as always, with Simon Peterson. Mate, how are you, buddy G'day?

Speaker 3: 1:54

mate, I'm really well. It's Friday afternoon and I'm in the country. I'm up in Mudgee today looking after my sister's house. Three Weimaraners and what's the peace and quiet, nice spot, fantastic.

Speaker 2: 2:07

And, mate, look, I've just come back from a week or so in perth, which has been quite nice. That's been enjoyable, having some not quite rest and recuperation. I was over there from for a bit of water polo, so that was enjoyable to see some games. But, mate, we've got one of our good friends, callie hartfeld. Mate, welcome to the show thank you for having me you're welcome, kay Kayleigh.

Speaker 3: 2:23

Great to see you.

Speaker 1: 2:25

Yeah, good to see you too. I'm jealous of all your travel. Although I did make a trip to Sydney, I don't think that counts as travel for you guys.

Speaker 2: 2:34

No, Mate, I'm jealous of the fact that you've moved to the country. It was a number of years ago. You moved now, but I think you're permanently on holiday in the country. But no, mate, we're excited to get you on the show and talk about an area that you've been an expert in a long period of time and a little bit about your business Cornerstone Content. So I want to really talk about that. But we want to talk about the connection between marketing, which is your expertise, but also brand and salespeople. But before we jump into that, mate, it's probably worthwhile you giving a bit of a rundown into your background and how you came to running Cornerstone. Rundown into your background and how you came to running.

Speaker 1: 3:04

Cornerstone. Yeah, cornerstone Content is a brand and content marketing agency, so we help brands really show up well by helping them identify themselves, identify their strength and create cut through in the market. And then we turn all of that goodness, all of that advantage that we really clarify for them, into the content and the content strategies that help them attract their audiences. How did I end up doing this? I've worked with you guys a couple of times before it all grew out of, I guess, working for global companies like Salesforce, like DocuSign, and really working with them on their challenges for how, when they launch something new, how do they show up well. And, yeah, it just turned into a bit of a passion for mine. And then, in 2020, I launched my own agency doing just that.

Speaker 2: 3:55

How has it been running your own agency, going from working for big firms into running your own show? What's the trend, what's the transition as?

Speaker 1: 4:02

you said earlier, I live in the country, I'm permanently on holiday, so there was a learning curve, a lot of self-discipline Don't go out and jump on a horse, don't go riding a motorbike. Actually, this is your. Suddenly, this is your engine. But yeah, it's been really good because I guess it's that kind of the ability to go out and source and have conversations with really exciting companies and just grow the business your way. It really suits me.

Speaker 2: 4:33

Excellent, fantastic. So we wanted to talk about brand marketing and sales and I think, from my perspective lifelong salesperson here and I've had a lot of interactions with marketers over time and I've sold marketing services and I've sold services to marketers, I've sold software to marketers I think we as salespeople always think we understand what the role of the marketer is and we think we can do it better, and none of us ever can. I think it's common that salespeople or those who are responsible for the revenue number misunderstand what the function is and how we go about it and how we get the most out of it. Long intro to a short question how do you think about brand? How do you think about marketing when you apply it to a sales lens?

Speaker 1: 5:19

Yeah, for me, I think. Firstly, I think we've gone through some pretty unpredictable times, and whenever budgets are cut, it's marketing. And whenever the budgets of marketing survive but they are cut, it's brand. It's the top of the funnel that goes first. So people double down on lead generation, but what I've tried to show people through my agency is that brand is a demand multiplier. It's the thing that fires up lead generation and makes it exponentially more successful.

Speaker 1: 5:52

So what I found throughout being able to help companies clarify their brand is quite often they will come to me because they've got one of two problems. Firstly, they may have lead generation efforts going but they're not hitting the mark and they're I don't know what I'm doing wrong and it's because they don't have their story clearly articulated, or it's that their lead generation's working and their sales team can't get traction because nobody knows who they are or they're not trusted yet. So they need to build their brand and their reputation. You can give them all the good leads they like, but they're on the phones, they're contacting people and people are going sorry, who are you? What do you do? Again, and that's never something that you want sales teams to face.

Speaker 3: 6:37

Absolutely, and do you find that's the case probably more in smaller businesses? I think obviously we've worked together in some big ones. You've been at DocuSign and Salesforce. That brand recognition of those two engines is obviously massive. How do you go about thinking about a small business developing its story? It's what brand is. Where do you start?

Speaker 1: 6:57

It's funny you should say small businesses versus big businesses, because I think the big businesses are the ones that change most often. They need to keep their audiences up to speed with who they are and what they're doing, so they have just as big a need as the small businesses. But the small businesses, yeah, if you're going to get yourself to the point where you're pretty serious about growing, then you need to be very specific about how you're going to grow. And I think most small businesses start off with a let's test the market and see. And then it's that kind of scaling effort where they go okay, I want to get bigger, but I can't get more of the same customer.

Speaker 1: 7:35

And that's the point where brand marketing really comes into play, because you can say, okay, we're going to not say 50, 60, 70% of what you want to say. We're going to not say 50, 60, 70% of what you want to say, we're going to focus on that 30%. That really hits home with those 20% of customers who are going to be 80% of your spend ultimately. So, yeah, we get them started by getting in a room and I think you guys have both done this with me before and just really getting to the core of who it is and what they look like and what value you can give them, versus what it is that you do and what you can sell, which is how most people approach.

Speaker 3: 8:14

Absolutely. And that 50 slide first call deck you want to throw in the bin.

Speaker 1: 8:21

And that's actually a really good point, because when people have 50 slides to choose from, how many of those sales texts do you think look the same? Yeah, you've got brands everywhere, when you give people that much.

Speaker 3: 8:34

Yeah, and I guess when you're talking to a business as getting to know them, you understand this story. What do you need to get in and understand how the sales organization works and really embed yourself in what the sales cycle looks like as part of your brand and lead gen strategy?

Speaker 1: 8:49

Yeah, I do.

Speaker 1: 8:50

Look, I don't know that everybody approaches it this way, but I guess, because I have had that through the funnel marketing background, for me that's your front line.

Speaker 1: 9:00

You don't want to fall over at the last furlong, your front line, you don't want to fall over at the last furlong. So, doing that due diligence to really understand how the sales teams of specific organizations operate, what they feel fired up about sharing and talking to, because if they're not passionate about what they're selling, then you're, you could have the best campaign in the world, but if it doesn't resonate with them, then it's not going to work. I just find that if you front end with that really deep dive into the business goals, you know where the business has come from, where it's going to, really have a good understanding of what the business needs to achieve and then the front lines role in helping you achieve that, what they need, then a lot of the story, the brand story, actually falls into place. It's like a little jigsaw, and you're completely right, simon. You just ask the right questions of all of the stakeholders and then it starts to piece into place.

Speaker 3: 9:55

Absolutely Interesting and I think yeah, obviously, Dan and I are sales guys, so we're probably on the other side of that fence, and we've seen marketers come into an organization and more often than not, I see them squirreled away in a corner office busily building a strategy and magically, at some point a month or two later, as a sales leader or as a salesperson, I get given here's the strategy, et cetera. So I think what you just talked about getting to know the sales team along the way is so important because they are at the coalface. How do you find salespeople, what's their understanding of what you do, and do you find yourself having to re-explain it pretty much every organization you go to when you're talking?

Speaker 1: 10:39

to the sales team, especially when you're talking about brand marketing. I think it's a continuous change management project. So I think you're exactly right. Sales is such an important stakeholder. So you've got this organizations where marketing. You know the vision is fabulous, everyone's excited about that vision at the top level because it's a really fabulous vision. But how do you operationalize that? So the salespeople aren't on board with that. And then you talk to the salespeople and they've also got a kind of bubble view because they're working at the other end of things and they don't have that vision. So they need something that they can actually convert right. They need a proposition, some facts, some substance that they can say when they're actually talking to prospects can actually convert right. They need a proposition, some facts, some substance that they can say on when they're actually talking to prospects. And they need enough of it, not just one chance.

Speaker 1: 11:30

This is another problem of coming out with a brand for the organization then turning that into a visionary campaign. You've got to think it all the way through. So sales must be a stakeholder. So I think it's change management. I think it's bringing those two together and just saying, if this is the vision, how do we work backwards from that and create all of the steps that turn it into something actionable. Not just once, but what if that conversation needs to happen six times for a salesperson and there's only so many times that they can say, hey, this is the happy company or this is the whatever company. They can't keep repeating the same message. So I think that being able to have those sales stakeholders is essential. I think giving sales an understanding of the big vision is essential, and I think having your marketing team and your executive team on board with making sure that vision flows all the way through to long sales cycles is also essential.

Speaker 2: 12:34

Absolutely. I think, carly, one of the pieces that I've observed and I've struggled with over time as a salesperson is to understand the difference between marketing as a function, brand, as an execution, or a campaign or a strategy over a long period of time. And then you're within time period, be it a year or multiple years or quarter. You're a strategy or a go-to-market execution you're going to have, and then a tactic, and too often as salespeople we end up saying, hey, marketing haven't delivered me any leads or I haven't had any events recently and that's all that marketing. There's so much more richness to what you've got to do that you're talking about here. And I recall in our interactions in the past, one of the things that I was always quite impressed by was the way that you've talked about measuring the success of a marketing team, which typically in my experience, lots of marketers will say we need to be measured by click-throughs, we need to be measured by lead gen events, and you were probably one of the first marketers that went sorry. You're measured by revenue at the end of the day, and the rest of it's all bullshit on the journey, and that was always quite refreshing.

Speaker 2: 13:42

How do you help organizations in that transition to both understand from the execution level, because a lot of businesses have sales functions. Lots of businesses have consultants. You're now running a consultancy agency, right? So your consultants are part of that function of generating new projects and new sales events. But along the way, they're not just selling, they're're delivering as well. So how do you understand all those different elements? But then also, how do you drive the measures to what I know you're quite passionate about. It's the revenue number at the end, how do you do those two things?

Speaker 2: 14:12

that is a big question, just lots of it's in it, we break it down I'm gonna break it down.

Speaker 1: 14:20

I think you need to. So I think, okay, how do we come at this? So you talked about your brand marketing and then your strategies and then your tactics. I think the first thing to do is to make sure you've got that complete vision and you tell people where you're going. So, brand has brand. Having a clear brand has the power to shorten your sales cycle and boost your conversions. We know that, but it doesn't happen on day one. So the way I look at it is first of all, you need to tell people very clearly where you're going in this marketing journey, so the brand sets.

Speaker 1: 14:57

That kind of this is how, no matter what strategy you implement, no matter what tactic you implement, this is how we behave, what we want people to know about us, and we're never deviating from that. So it's a really important foundation to set at first. When you come tactic first, you're just trying this thing, then that thing, then this thing, and they're not cohesive and they won't work collectively over time. So give people the vision over time and then hedge. We're like investors, right, if you're going to ask people to wait. Do this work. Build this brand foundation.

Speaker 1: 15:35

That is going to get you to really good places in the long run. Don't just ask them to wait, just don't go. Hey, it's fine, you can survive without any new revenue for this year because we're building your brand. Hedge, do something that will generate leads in the short term, which is brand consistent, but you're deliberately creating the leads that you can work on as you're nurturing this whole kind of brand and strategy towards this vision. Yeah, know where you're going and make sure that you diversify across marketing to allow you the space to build a brand that, ultimately, is going to see you stand out much further than your competitors and it's going to have that accelerating effect where revenue just comes to you because your brand's strong and people know you accelerating effect where revenue just comes to you because your brand's strong and people know you.

Speaker 3: 16:27

Kayleigh, just I mean interested. I think a brand story is obviously fundamental, right? What's your organization? What does it stand for? Where's it going? As a salesperson, I often see engagements where we build a brand story. I've got a really good understanding, but it's almost 100% about me rather than about my client, and as a salesperson, I want to see a brand story that is reflective of the impact I have to my customers and it might be aspirational, et cetera. Tell me about your thoughts on that. When you go and build a brand story, you're often confronted with either a founder or an executive that all they want to do is talk about themselves, and I think a really good brand story is not necessarily just about yourself. It's about the impact you have and the influence you have on your clients.

Speaker 1: 17:12

Yeah, 100% yeah, and being able to, I think, remember that and keep your eye on it. As somebody who has founded a company and grown in it, and it's only natural to get super excited about the things that you've built and the different mechanisms that you've put in place and the technology that's supporting it. It's really hard Everybody does it. It's really hard not to get immersed in that. Having somebody keep you facing north on that brand journey, I think, is critical and bringing you back to exactly what you said, simon. People buy from companies because they trust them. They buy from companies because they have a good feeling about them, and that really operates at a different level to you explaining to people what you do and why this widget is better than that widget and why this new function that you've introduced is better. Because the first interaction someone's going to have with your company is going to be an emotional one. It's watching a film. You don't get to the end of that and then he said and then she said and wait till you hear the words that he said. After that, you just remember big moments and that's what brands are. You have a reaction, a chemical reaction, an emotional reaction, to big moments like Disney. I don't know if it still is, but at one point its vision was to make people happy, and we spoke about this the other day. Dan, it's simple as that. They want to bring joy to people. They don't say we want to make really good films, it's that we want to make people happy. And guess what? The way we're best qualified to do that is through media and production.

Speaker 1: 18:50

Yeah, I think that's what you're getting at. So I'm looking at what business leaders, as you said, quite rightly need to remember. What is that end outcome that we're looking for from our customers? And when they have that reaction, then we're winning. So we've got to remember, to put that before the explanation as to how we gave them that A hundred percent.

Speaker 3: 19:11

Yeah, it's interesting because, look, I reflect on the last couple of businesses that I've worked in as a salesperson and the best salespeople, when they're in front of a client, can tell a compelling story about the organization they work for and the business impact it's going to have for the people you're trying to sell your software to. In our case, I often see on slide three of those decks, the graph that shows the massive revenue growth of the company I'm working for. I've got 10,000 employees, I've got 60,000 employees, et cetera. And to me that's a knee slide and I hate that sort of brand setting to say, aren't I clever? My revenue is growing at 30% year on year. We both work for companies that do that. We've all worked for those.

Speaker 3: 19:54

What I do with my sales team is I really talk to them around. I talk to them about why does anybody care about that slide or that message? And it's only relevant if you catch it in a way that says I'm a large organization, so I can invest in R&D, so I can deliver the X, Y, Z outcome. Do you still see that in organizations you go into that? Aren't we great slide?

Speaker 1: 20:15

Yeah, and I think you do, and I think it's part of knowing where it's got its place. Once somebody is bought in, then they want to know that you're the real deal.

Speaker 1: 20:25

So, they want to know that they haven't bought into an illusion. So then you can say, no, we're credible, this is what we've got. But, like you say, so many people lead with that Talk to us, we've got this, we've got that, we're amazing, we've got this tech, and that's just not how you. I love it when you get a salesperson that's like okay, hear me out what it. And then you're like, yeah, I. And then you're like, yeah, I just leaned in. How do you get that? And this is why marketing needs to be closer to sales, because we don't know this. How do you amplify that across an entire team and not just go oh, there's one really talented salesperson, he tells a good story. How do you get that story happening across an entire team? I think that's the challenge that marketing and sales have to solve together.

Speaker 2: 21:15

I think to your point, simon, and what Kayleigh was saying before. It's every organization does a thing right. They sell a product, they sell a service, they sell an outcome, they sell an increase of your investment, whatever it may be right, but there's nothing worse than a salesperson or a marketing message that tells a customer something that they don't want or sets the wrong expectation of what they can't deliver. I think of your example of and the big organizations. That slide you're mentioning is a feature of almost everybody's slide deck and first call deck. But that also becomes not necessarily a reason to bring some customers in. Sometimes that's an exclusion element for those customers.

Speaker 2: 21:58

I don't want an organization that just sees me as another number.

Speaker 2: 22:03

I want an organization of 10 people who see me as 25% of their revenue and actually see me as being critically important to their business, and when I ring they answer the phone.

Speaker 2: 22:13

If I have a problem at one in the morning, the CEO of that company is going to answer the phone call, whereas hold on or alternatively. No, I don't want to be first, I want to copy what everybody else does. I need you to have a hundred people behind the scenes who can just make all this happen for me and I'll pay for that, or I want it cheaper because scale will provide me the ability for this to be. I can buy it cheaper because you've done this 400 times before, or no. I'm wanting to build something uniquely special for the market that my customers will care about, and I want you to help me get there. So it's how do you use these tools on the way to make your? As, kelly, you mentioned before, like your right customer, you're not trying to capture 80% of the market, you're trying to just capture the next singular customer Importantly know what it is.

Speaker 1: 23:00

You want to capture 100%. It all starts with your audience, and I think that's what you've both been saying. It starts with your audience, not with yourself, and if you do not know that audience deeply and what they're going to react to, you're probably starting from a really weak position. Nobody goes looking for flights and then goes onto Qantas' website and says, oh, this plane's got this many seats. These are the engines. This is how many they've got in the fleet. Oh, I think I'll book with this.

Speaker 3: 23:27

Unless you're Rain man, and then you definitely do I probably shamed myself for that comment.

Speaker 2: 23:36

Some of us older ones get it. Look, Kate, I think there's another one. I think it's probably worthwhile for our audience to talk about some of the horror stories. What do people do when you've experienced and you shake your head, or we've experienced getting it wrong even though you plan to get it right? Does anyone have some horror stories you want to share? It's?

Speaker 1: 23:52

dangerous ground.

Speaker 3: 23:53

I'll take that as a yes, that was an unknowing grimace.

Speaker 1: 23:58

I'm not going to name any companies.

Speaker 2: 24:01

Don't name any, Of course not. No, no, no Name share.

Speaker 1: 24:03

Everybody comes out with it, and I think one of the things about especially creating a brand identity is that you take the information that you want, but a lot of it is ideation, and then you do need to test it. I've certainly worked for a company that chose a very confronting color that could have worked really well as a secondary palette color in their visual identity, but was very intense as a primary color.

Speaker 1: 24:34

And I think that rollout of that color was very short-lived because, luckily, the company was smart enough to listen to the feedback from the market and hear that people had a sort of visceral reaction to this being hit in the face with this color, and so it was very short-lived. They redesigned, but kudos to them, they actually invested in redesigning. They didn't go, oh we've paid for this, we're going to stick with it and make it work. Yeah, know when to course correct, know when to turn around and walk back through the door you just opened.

Speaker 3: 25:06

Okay, so picking the wrong colour. It's interesting and a delicate comment here, but I work for a software company that sells software to accountants and that's just one division. It's a global organisation based in the UK and their corporate colour is red. I scratch my head putting red in presentations for accountants, because clearly red means something to an accountant that you see of red et cetera. So it's an interesting one colour. What?

Speaker 1: 25:35

other things other than colour.

Speaker 3: 25:37

What can?

Speaker 1: 25:37

you think of. Where can you go wrong with brand? Oh, a million ways, a million ways. It's a minefield. I think the biggest risk to brand is not having people along on the journey. I know that's not as meaty and exciting, but I've seen great brand ideas fall over because people haven't come along on the journey. Everyone knows about the kind of brand bloopers that happen out there. I just want to be really careful not to name companies, but we all know about campaigns that have gone out there and absolutely fallen over because the messaging's just not good. But yeah, I think bringing people along on the journey can mitigate a lot of that. I think there's enough smart people in your organization to say we can't say that it doesn't come along to come across well. So don't have brand with your agency and your brand person and, as you said earlier, simon, don't go ta-da here. It is everyone. We're rolling this out.

Speaker 1: 26:35

Because, I think that's when the big mistakes Absolutely Good point.

Speaker 2: 26:38

I think there's so many stories that you've heard. I can think of some great, really global stories. New Coke is a perfect example of back in the day an execution from a sales perspective. That let's go and change our recipe because we're being, we want to be, the competitor and not understanding the fact that your recipe is what your recipe is, was your brand differentiator and it was a multi.

Speaker 2: 27:01

I think it was like $150 million absolute disaster of brand exercise just to say new. I can't believe someone spent so much money just to say new but they had to roll back and it's still talked about almost 40 years later as a complete, abject failure of what you need to do. But I'm also reminded, in the time that we all spend at Salesforce, the number of times the brand changed in its graphical representation and then the sub-brand changed and it almost became a joke over a period of time as to how often these brands will stay and hang around and when is the next one coming. But I think the lesson that I said about, as I look back in hindsight, that wasn't necessarily by design, but it was an acknowledgement of the fact that brand is a continual evolution, just as sales cycles are a continual evolution of where your customers are at and where your product's at and where the market's at.

Speaker 2: 27:55

We were talking around the evolution of Zoom as an organization and if it wasn't for the COVID pandemic, their explosion wouldn't have been what it is. But neither would the market for teams have exploded the way that it did had it not been all the collaboration technology, had it not been for that experience. I saw some statistics that talked about EMC's growth of virtualization in the first six months of COVID was like 9,000%. That's a growth that nobody can plan for. And then the growth of COVID tech that came out of solving a particular problem, and organizations that pivoted and changed their entire brand ethos just to address this time period, who are now struggling to reinvent themselves again because the things that they built no one cares about anymore and all that's changed right.

Speaker 1: 28:48

I think Zoom's a really good example, because I think you can, as environments change whether that's you growing or, like COVID happening your brand's going to change more often because you're adapting. But I think it's like you say, no one saw that coming. So you can either be have a look at all that new and go, goodness, this is really working well for me, but then not plan the next stage. What does this mean for my brand identity? Where could I take this? And Zoom's a really good example of using that to innovate.

Speaker 1: 29:19

So let me just get rid of this cat platform, which I think the popularity and the familiarity that it gained during COVID has allowed it to do that, because then everybody knew Zoom, everyone knew how to use it. So everything you launch on top of that has that familiar interface that you're used to. So they've done a really good job of capitalizing on that unforeseen surge. But then you see other companies that believe that's going to last forever and, yeah, they just don't plan their next stage. So I'd say always be looking at your next brand move, and that next move, hopefully, might be just growing and sustaining the current brand, but always be ready to react to the market and your environment.

Speaker 2: 30:06

Yeah, and a salespeople plan for that. If you're a salesperson, you're building your ongoing evolution of what your accounts look like, of what your account plan or your territory plan looks like. I don't know that a lot of salespeople understand that process of change because a lot of them haven't been in leadership even those who've been around for many years because they're not part of the conversation at either a product level, at a leadership level, at a marketing level. How can a salesperson start to own that change with their customers or own that change in their own go-to-market? That, I think, is a big gap and a challenge that I haven't seen anybody do really well, including myself, do really well.

Speaker 1: 30:46

It's such a gap and it is such a challenge because essentially we're asking marketers to become the master salespeople and sell that vision to sales. Do what sales do well and sell them the vision and bring them along on the journey. But I think the point that you both made earlier about having sales as a really key stakeholder and I've always said that I don't think people see brand and content strategy as so a campaign creative campaigns are so far away from sales that they don't connect the two. But, as with, I've always believed that sales must be a key stakeholder. But then I think that we owe it to sales to be a very early stakeholder, like a really early stakeholder, if not a shaper, because giving them the ability to look down the line and see where we're going with this is very different to giving somebody a campaign and asking them to convert from it, have conversations to convert from it.

Speaker 1: 31:44

Like not knowing where you're going next is a little bit disabling in a sales capacity. But knowing that when I this campaign to engage you but also I can tell you where we're going and I'm personally excited about that, I'm going to get excited about it Then you're going to buy the thing because it's the thing that happens before the bigger thing, and there's great days to come. So I think that's what we have to get better at how do we give sales a much earlier view, vision into where we're going and then continue to give early line of sight to what's next? What's next? What's next not just what they're currently, what the current, what we're focusing on this quarter, where sales need to come from what you know. How are we going to make our target this particular quarter? Let's look much further ahead.

Speaker 3: 32:34

You're quite right. You allude there to the journey, because we've all been in organizations where the marketing plan changes every three months. You're doing this, then you're doing this. It doesn't seem to be anything that ties it all together in terms of where you started, where you are now and where you're actually going. And I think from a seller's perspective, if you see that or you sense that chaos, it doesn't give you the confidence to actually go tell a story to your client. So I think marketers and the marketing strategy needs to be absolutely aware of there needs to be a really clear direction, because if I, as a salesperson can't follow that.

Speaker 1: 33:14

I absolutely can't articulate it to my client. Yeah, I think the most important question for marketing to answer to sales every time there is a campaign or initiative is how does this support our brand and our brand journey and where we're going? As you say, if it doesn't look connected, if it feels like we're just throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping some of it sticks, then it is very hard to sell within that environment. Because you have the trusted relationship with your customers, you want to be able to be consistent and give them guarantees that we're not going to flip.

Speaker 2: 33:47

So how do you think about the percentage effort breakup between campaign, brand and maybe tactical execution? Is there a framework that you look at and say over a 12-month period? And the reason I'm asking this question is I think that rolls down to how you talk about it as a salesperson as well, where you put an execution arm from a sales side for the marketing team and their conversations and what they're putting into market. So how do you then talk to your customers about it in that same kind of percentage? Is there anything along those lines? You would look at a good campaign, a good program and say this is how it's broken up.

Speaker 1: 34:27

I think that I spoke about hedging earlier. So I think that having a very clear brand identity, messaging and direction, it's just. You can't forego that effort. So that budget should be carved out in organizations because it's going to come back once those campaigns are all consistent and they're working and people trust you for who you say you are and you don't change.

Speaker 1: 34:56

I think what you were outlining before, simon, is when people do this campaign and that campaign is because that piece is not necessarily it's either missing or it's not understood throughout the entire organization. So I would say, just as you might say, reputationally, I need to have a really nice office because I'm dealing with really prestigious customers so they can't walk into a shed with chickens out the back. That's a spend that you need to invest to make sure that you show up well in the market. Brand marketing and creating your brand identity. That should be carved out. It should be an operational must, that spend, and then, when you've done that, every campaign, every tactic should support that brand vision and then it just works. I've seen it a million times you're not seen as trying one thing, trying another thing, changing your mind. So, yeah, I'm floating the idea of brand as an operational spend.

Speaker 3: 35:54

Absolutely, of course you are. So tell me, you're building brands for organizations. Have you ever been asked to build a brand for a sales team? Because we all know certain organizations have a terrible seller's reputation they're pushy, they're all the wrong things you don't want about sales. And then you have other sales organizations that have reputation that they're very, very much value-based, they're very much in front of the clients. There's a big difference, right, and it's typically not at an individual level. It's the organization has a reputation or a brand of the way they sell. Have you ever been asked to help with the brand of the personnel? Because they obviously represent the organization.

Speaker 1: 36:36

Yeah, I've certainly been asked to come in and support sales teams in. I guess it would be more, enabling them to have the right conversation so they are showing up consistently and they are well respected. So rather than brand a team that maybe is not functioning in the way that the market appreciates, it would be more, and I certainly had some insightful organizations have me come in and run things like workshops on how to take the brand that the organization has and tell a story with it how to tell the most powerful story when to talk about what?

Speaker 1: 37:16

to your point earlier, how to not walk in a room and go we're amazing, I hope we all know that and then continue from there. So, yeah, I think it's more, more. How do we, how do we raise the reputation at this team? We do it by giving that team the time and the effort they deserve to enable them to actually tell the story for you. I think organizations create their story and then they forget that actually, somebody's got to run with that and that's where they need to put their energy.

Speaker 3: 37:46

Outside the town hall. Somebody needs to tell the story.

Speaker 1: 37:49

You can't just hear it for five minutes and go got it.

Speaker 2: 37:52

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 37:52

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 37:54

And it is a message you've got to as a salesperson, as a sales leader and a sales coach in the past. I'm always reminded that, even though you've told someone a message in the past, the frequency which you need to repeat that same message to them to make sure that they get it, and on a continual basis. And and I use the example for sales people to say this, if you're playing in the masters and you might be playing in the final round, but guess what, those golfers still walk out and will hit a thousand balls before they hit off the first tee. They know how to play golf, they had a putt, they had a drive and had chip, but they still hit a thousand balls before they start that day's golf. And it's the same piece.

Speaker 2: 38:34

As a marketer, you're refreshing those messages. You are re-engaging your sales people, that same simplistic message on a consistent, continual basis and refining it and refining it and refining it the same as you do as a golfer. That chip, you make sure you understand what's happening. It's a little bit wet today, right? How's the green? How are the green rolling, and all those things change over time, but it's this continual practice of it's not brand new. Often it's going back to the same things that you did three years ago, and you've got to refresh them and do them again because your custom changed again.

Speaker 1: 39:11

I think there's a world of difference as well between enabling somebody to do something and building having them believe it and be passionate about it. I've seen you guys present and I know that you wouldn't present anything you wouldn't believe in, and you wouldn't just read someone else's words and expect it to come along. But that's often what we're asking salespeople to do. We're asking them to work to a script.

Speaker 1: 39:37

You have to believe it, and when you believe it, you grow it yourself. You don't even need someone to say and then do this when you believe it. That's how you turn a simple engagement into something much bigger.

Speaker 3: 39:48

And that's the fun part right A salesperson, you get the corporate message. The fun part is when you're out in front of the client and you make it your own. You're passionate, you think of things that the marketing team hadn't quite thought of, that might relate to that particular client. So you're constantly building the story and, honestly, that's one of the biggest buzz moments for me anyway, when I'm presenting to clients and you're just really involved and passionate and excited about what you're saying because you've actually related it to something that's going to solve a problem for them. It's great.

Speaker 1: 40:16

And you just said something really important there. You say you think of something the marketing team haven't even thought of yet. I think that's another big break. It's like having the information go one way but then having that feedback it has to be a loop and having someone get out of a meeting and go oh my goodness, I took this in this direction and the room just fired up. I think we have to get better at asking for feedback between sales and marketing, as well you know what's really interesting.

Speaker 3: 40:50

We tend to pigeonhole marketers into marketing and sellers into sellers. I've met a lot of really good salespeople that are excellent marketers and a lot of good marketers that are excellent sellers. And we shouldn't think, just because you've got marketing written on your business card, you don't know how to sell, and just because you've got sales written on your business card, you haven't got ideas for marketing. And I think when you encourage that to allow people to be more than just the title on their business card not that we have business cards anymore, but you allow them to be more than that that collaboration really pops.

Speaker 3: 41:16

When I talk to a couple of my sales leaders and ask them about marketing, the first time I did it they were saying I'm not in marketing and you just have to break that boundary and say look, I really don't care which department you're in, you're talking to clients all the time. You've got really good ideas about the types of messages that resonate. Flip side is you've got I talk to marketers and I work with one at the moment. She's absolutely outstanding and I'll talk to her about selling and she'll give me really interesting things about selling that I just hadn't thought of. And I think that's where the magic happens.

Speaker 1: 41:48

Yeah, I agree.

Speaker 3: 41:49

Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 2: 41:51

Kylie, we're kind of getting to the top of the hour and I thought what we'd wrap up the podcast asking everybody for a key suggestion or takeaway or piece of advice for our listeners, and I think in particular how to work as a salesperson, work with marketing. What's your number one tip that you give to people for a salesperson to work with a marketer, you've been successful. You want to get better or there's a bit of friction there. What's the best way to work with them?

Speaker 1: 42:17

I think it's to take that to have a conversational approach about audiences, to have a conversational approach about customers and what you're really seeing, and ask lots and lots of questions. I think there's a tendency to receive information from marketing, but I think there's an opportunity and even this conversation has reminded me how important it is to get in a room and actually talk, try and not just in general terms but say I had a customer, this came up, could that be relevant? Could that be something that impacts this campaign? So I'd say, bring that customer conversation right up front and get right down into it.

Speaker 2: 42:58

Awesome, perfect, fantastic. Well, simon Kayleigh, thank you so much for your time today. I know that's been a super interesting topic that we get in the weeds from a sales perspective way too often and don't think about how do we find our customers and how do we work out what we're going to sell to them, so I think this has been a super valuable conversation for all of our listeners.

Speaker 3: 43:17

The stuff comes in. The magic comes at the top of the funnel, because we're at the other end and we're in the machine. It's good to understand what influences it and I think, from a seller's perspective, the more we know, the better 100%, 100% For all our listeners.

Speaker 2: 43:33

Kylie, thank you so much for joining. We do appreciate it. If you want to know more about brand and marketing, check out Cornerstone Content. They come highly recommended for a release, man and for some. There we go. And Kylie, what's the best way we can get a hold of you? Is it via LinkedIn, the website? What's the best way?

Speaker 1: 43:46

Yeah, via LinkedIn. Kayleigh Carlefeld or Cornerstone Content Australia.

Speaker 2: 43:51

Perfect. If you're listening to the podcast on Spotify or Apple, click the plus sign to make sure we can tell you about the next episode. If you're watching on YouTube down below, click subscribe and like. We'd appreciate any or all of your comments and please share it with your friends on LinkedIn or Instagram, et cetera. So thank you, instagram, et cetera. So thank you everyone for listening and we look forward to talk to you on the next podcast.

Speaker 1: 44:11

Thanks, scott, thanks guys, you're. Welcome.