Pipeline Meeting - Marketing Podcast About Sales

Emma was the first marketing hire at Mystery, and in her time with the company, it has evolved a lot. They've gone from only 10 people to 70 and counting and she shares what she's learned along the way.

• Measuring brand marketing: Never an easy topic, Emma shares how brand is rooted in everything they do and has been from the beginning. There are ways they measure though, like impressions, visits, and through the success of their product and growth marketing teams.
• Why now for virtual events: The company has seen a lot of growth, in part because people are more interested in virtual events than ever. Think Zoom fatigue and quiet quitting being major headlines in the press.
• Demos that don't suck: They make an experiential product. Emma talks about how they've used this to their advantage in the process of introducing new prospects to their product.
• Experience design plus data science: There's an interesting angle they're taking which is bringing principles of data science to make virtual events that scale. Emma explores this.
• Connecting sales and marketing: Sometimes the best way for your sales and marketing teams to talk to each other is for them to... Talk to each other. Mystery uses their own product to bring the two teams together. Learn how it impacts sales and marketing alignment. (Hint: It works!)

Emma Biskupiak on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ehunsaker/

Mystery on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/trymystery/

Learn more about Mystery: https://www.trymystery.com/

James' partner sales responsibilities run the gamut, from identifying partners and to co-marketing and helping them succeed. He shares his insights building this program, including:

• Ways to partner: Close offers three distinct partner programs: Affiliates, experts, and integrations. James walks through how each works and how they are incentivizing and engaging growth levers that were previously underutilized.
• Integrations: This is a hot topic and an increasingly important one in the SaaS (software as a service) world. James shares an example of their partnership with QuotaPath, how they identified the opportunity, executed on it, and how it's going. (Hint: It's going well!)
• Incentives: Several times in our conversation James talks about incentivizing partners and how financial motivation is an important part of the equation for partner sales... But it's not the only one. Sales support and training is another important consideration.
• Complementing vs. Competing: One area we explore is that it looks like to have a complementary partner sales relationship versus a competitive one. Product roadmap, customer base, and other factors come into play.
• One to Many: When it comes to integrations, if you build one, chances are you are going to build another. So how do you know where to start? And how does that affect your sales and go to market motions?

James Urie on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-urie/
Close on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/close-crm/
Learn more about Close: https://close.com/

We're joined by Tara Pawlak, head of marketing at GetAccept. For starters, this episode kicked off when Tara posted the following tactical exercise on LinkedIn, encouraging people to rethink how they do events:

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tara-pawlak_marketers-sales-salesteam-activity-6976547555996225536-uvHo/

In this episode, we cover a lot of ground.

• Sales-marketing alignment for events and trade shows. How Tara has flipped the conventional way of doing events on its head and is including the sales team with digital sales rooms. Plus the one key that is required for this to work.
• How outbound sales can complement marketing's events strategy. That's right, when coordinated appropriately, outbound sales efforts can co-exist with marketing's conventional event and trade show strategies.
• Digital sales rooms. It's an emerging category and Tara talks about GetAccept thinks about this new tool for salespeople and how they interact across the org chart. And she makes the case for how digital sales rooms can help salespeople sell more!
• Sales-marketing communication around events. If marketers often use project management software and salespeople often use CRM software, how do they meet in the middle? Hear how they do it at GetAccept.
• Revenue goals. Tara shares her personal experience that led her to become a marketer who is not only comfortable talking about sales, who wants a revenue number.

Find Tara on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tara-pawlak/
Learn more about GetAccept: https://www.getaccept.com/
Discover HubSpot INBOUND: https://www.inbound.com/

Stuart shares incredible insights into the new customer onboarding process, topics include:

• Sales-Marketing-Service Alignment: Gaps in this area aren't because of your internal teams per se, but because of not knowing your customer. And they feel it. He shares valuable advice on how to avoid this trap.
• Failed Onboarding: This has proven controversial online, but the Arrows team is opinionated about it. Onboarding can be considered either a success or a failure. What does this mean in practice? Stuart breaks it down.
• Cost of Failure: It's easy to think about new customer onboarding as a short-term concern. However, there are long-term financial ramifications of failing to retain customers. And it could cost you your business.
• Who Owns Onboarding: This is a tricky one. Stuart talks through the nuances of sales or service teams owning new customer onboarding, and in particular, what that looks like in HubSpot (in deals vs. tickets).
• Onboarding Velocity: This is the one metric that Stuart is thinking about right now. He explains what it means, how they think about this at Arrows, and why it matters.

Learn more about Arrows: https://arrows.to/
Find Stuart on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stuartbalcombe/

In this episode, Harris asks Sam to share his thoughts on a few topics:

• Understanding buyers: Sam tells the story of a lead that came in—an intern. Why this lead could have been considered disqualified, but he encouraged the client to take the meeting and it ended up in a meeting with the prospects' CEO. Hear the whole story in the show.
• Big vs. small companies: There's a difference between decision-making and buyers committees at companies with 10 vs. 10,000 employees. Sam shares how the focus on the person that literally signs the contract can be misguided.
• Defining your ICP: Refine Labs has a unique process for defining an ideal customer profile. Sam sheds a little bit of light on how they think about it, and more importantly how they consider it a living document—not a static one.
• Using the CRM: When looking back, using CRM data, you can conduct win-loss analyses and expand your understanding of who the buyer and buyer's committee are. Sam also talks about leading CRMs like HubSpot.
• Human touch: Sam and Harris talk about the balance between automation and human intervention, and how high intent vs. low intent actions should weigh into how you route and respond to leads. They touch on lead scoring and using group updates as tactics to consider.
• Following up: When you have an exciting lead come in, how do you handle the follow-up to ensure the lead doesn't fall flat?
• Defining demand generation: Lastly, as leaders in the space, Sam defines demand generation from Refine Labs' perspective.

If you found this episode interesting, learn more by visiting introcrm.com

Learn About Our Guest

Refine Labs helps companies consistently launch new revenue programs, improve the buyer experience, and build a sustainable competitive advantage with Revenue R&D.

Visit Refine Labs to learn more about their work.

As VP of Demand Generation, Sam works with Refine Labs' clients to make demand generation their competitive advantage.

Find Marc Thomas on LinkedIn.