September 17, 2024 • 22 mins
James Carbary (founder of Sweet Fish Media) sits down with Lexi Croisdale, Tyler Lessard, and Kellie Davis to discuss if Hubspot has any chance of catching SalesForce. Weigh in, DM James on LinkedIn with your thoughts.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I think there is a world where outbound can be
incredibly effective, but you have to completely change what it
looks like from what the stuff that's hitting my inbox.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
I mean particular with it service providers.
Speaker 3 (00:11):
My god, Cio is like, you can HubSpot beat Salesforce
as the king of CRM?
Speaker 1 (00:24):
LEXI, we were talking about this last night. You've got
some thoughts take it away?
Speaker 4 (00:29):
Yeah, I think for me, like truly, I think Hubspots
already beat Salesforce in some ways. And maybe that's just
the way that I've come about them because for myself,
you know, I was journalist turned marketer, so I didn't
really you know, have an understanding of a CRM and
what that meant when I was going through college and
becoming who I am as a professional today. But I
(00:50):
was able to instantly relate to HubSpot's material by the
way that they positioned their content online and it never
once felt to me branded, you know, specifically going to HubSpot.
And I have to get hubspots CRM to know how
to do these things on the flip side. You know,
I've heard of Salesforce, I've used it. It's a big CRM.
(01:10):
But I can't like draw any comparison or relatable fact
like of what I've done in my career or how
I've learned and upskilled some of my professional qualities from Salesforce.
And I think that's the biggest thing there. As we
start to head into the future and there's new marketers
that are coming, I don't really see Salesforce making that
play of we're thought leaders in the space here too,
(01:33):
kind of you know, pick our brains, here's what we
have to share with you. When I look at their
social media or any of their content, it's very much
them Salesforce focused, whereas HubSpot is very much you like,
here's how you can build your skills, Here's how you
can become a great content marketer that you know gives me,
it inspires me, And I think that that's kind of
missing from Salesforce. But you know, at the same time,
(01:56):
Salesforce is a huge company, and I think the question
that we can kind of came to last night was like, well,
do they have to be relatable to keep their spot
on the crown? Is that something that they have to
invest in? And for me, I think it is because
you know, ultimately, if they don't make this play to
build an audience around them. Outside of the events and
(02:17):
the product itself, they're going to lose steam. You know,
somebody can come in and maybe there's a newsrem It's
not even HubSpot that we have to worry about that's
going to shake things up for them.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Tyler, what are your thoughts?
Speaker 5 (02:28):
Well, here's a big question that could shape this. What
is going to be more important in the future, sales
or marketing like in general for businesses? And the reason
I asked that is clearly HubSpot came from marketing roots
and expanded into CRM. But you asked nine out of
ten marketers out there, would you rather use HubSpot or
(02:51):
Salesforce one of sales products? Yeah, nine point eight out
of ten would choose HubSpot as their marketing automation platform.
If you ask, you know, CROs, what would you like
for your CRM, the majority today would still say Salesforce
for a lot of good reasons. Right, those two will
(03:11):
continue to collide more and more and fast forward five, ten,
thirty years whatever it happens to be. To say, it
doesn't make sense to have disparate sales and marketing solutions anymore.
It only makes sense to have an integrated platform they're
two of the big front runners to be that. If
marketing becomes more important to businesses than sales, HubSpot wins.
(03:34):
If sales continues to be and I'll say continues to
be because today it is more important than marketing, Salesforce wins.
So let's see what happens. I don't know I was
going to say, I wanted I want to say, James,
I want to say. I want to say that you know,
as the years go by, five, ten years from now,
(03:54):
businesses are much more going to be marketing led than
sales led. And I think there's a lot of good
argument for that based on, you know, the evolution of
like how products even like get to market, and how
audience is engaged with companies, the fact that AI is
just going to take out salespeople entirely.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Yes, I said it, I'm just kidding, but.
Speaker 5 (04:15):
I think that's a really good like, it's really good framing, right, Like,
if marketing becomes the engine of a company, they're going
to double down on HubSpot, and Salesforce is in big trouble.
And I think if Salesforce doesn't get their act together
around being a platform for marketers long term, I think
that is a mistake.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Yeah, Kelly, what are your thoughts here? Yeah, and I agree.
Speaker 6 (04:35):
I think we've all battled like the tech stack bloat, right,
and so we're starting to see more and more how
these companies are trying to integrate multiple tools, which is
a great selling point not just to sales teams and marketers,
but also your CFO and you know, the financial team
of like selling them on the fact that you get
one invoice every month and one contract that you have
(04:57):
to negotiate every year, which is very, very enticing for
a business, especially since we're all dialing into this efficiency
play of how can we do more with less, less people,
less resources, less budget. But again, you look at the
current B to B marketing play right now, what are
all of our goals attached to? Right? I don't know
about you, but pipeline and bookings. I think that's pretty
(05:19):
common in the B to B space. And so if
marketing goals are still attached to revenue goals and sales goals,
then you know, it's obvious that sales is always going
to be like the biggest lever that we have to pull.
And as we were discussing last night, is like salesforce
(05:39):
is so deeply integrated into the businesses that are their clients.
It's almost like, how do you win, how do you
capture and steal that audience, or like you said, do
you go after a newer audience? And like you and
I have both discussed when we were up and coming
marketers or you know, all business owners, they captured us
(06:02):
when we were fresh and new and we were bought
in very young.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
I don't know if Salesforce.
Speaker 6 (06:07):
Has to do that. I mean, they don't necessarily have
to go after BDRs as they're coming out of college
and being like selling them on the software. They're just
automatically like this is now part of your job. Whereas HubSpot,
like we had it top of minds and not necessarily
every marketer that learned from HubSpot uses HubSpot. But you
still have this affinity for the brand because it shaped
(06:28):
who you became as a marketer. And I don't think
Salesforce necessarily has to do that.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
The thing we talked about last night that I want
to elaborate on here is the brand of those two companies.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
It seems like HubSpot.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
Has very much captivated the affinity of gen Z with
the people earlier in their career have a tribute HubSpot
to being instrumental in how they learned and grew in
their business acumen and the way they've executed their podcast network,
I've said multiple times was absolute masterclass. Then you've got
(07:05):
Salesforce who launched Salesforce Plus. They attribute six hundred and
fifty million dollars in pipeline to Salesforce Plus.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
From last year, which I don't know.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
That seems pretty generous to tie that much pipeline to content.
That is from what I saw, very very top of funnel,
but who knows what's going on behind the scenes there.
They are taking a stab. Salesforce is taking a stab
at owned media. It just doesn't seem that Salesforce Plus
is a drop in the bucket of what they need
(07:38):
to be doing to change the brand's perception in the market.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Now.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
Salesforce, to your point and what we were talking about
last night, they're so embedded in. That's just that they're
embedded in the companies that they're currently their clients, but
their clients are mega, mega, mega corporations.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
That it's when you're as embedded.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
In these massive organizations, it's very hard to rip something out.
So I loved your point Tyler about like a lot
of them are just using both and is sales going
to be more important or is marketing going to be more.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Important you alluded to, like, okay, pipeline.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
And bookings are the thing that is everybody's an horse star.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
What I'm not sure that I believe that.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
The current sales motions that I'm experiencing, at least on
being on the receiving end of a lot of sales motions,
I don't believe that that go to market motion of
just putting BDRs and pounding you know called emails LinkedIn dms,
like it doesn't work today. Nonetheless, three years from now,
(08:52):
ten years from now, especially your experience is fascinating to
me Tyler. And that you built a media brand for
Vidyard called sales feed, So you have been inundated in
like the life of a seller. Now you're a technology
advice you sell to marketers.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
You've got this.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
You are a marketer yourself, so you understand both positions
very well. Elaborate a little bit on like tell me,
I guess Steelman, you said, I want to believe that
marketing will win out, Like if we look at ten years,
marketing will be more more important to businesses than sales.
Steal man that argument and tell me why sales could
potentially win out because yeah, what I'm seeing from sales,
(09:29):
I'm like, this can't win three years from now and
none the less ten years from now.
Speaker 5 (09:34):
Yeah, I don't know that that's the case though, because
I bet three years ago you would have said the
same thing. I don't think this is going to work
three years from now, and it does still work. It
does still work outbound sales. Companies would not continue to
invest in it if it doesn't work. So as much
as we all think, and probably all of us here say,
I don't answer the phone when somebody cold calls me,
Like who would in their right mind? And in reality,
(09:56):
companies are generating tons of pipeline from cold calling. Right,
It's still work despite the fact that you know, many
of us can't believe that it does. And will it
keep working, you know, three five years from now, ten
years from now, I don't know, but I would not
say it's not going to work. And I think there's
you know, part of I think what does always work
(10:18):
in sales, which is the same thing that will always
work in marketing, is that human to human connection and
sales is such a critical part of that. Whether it's
cold outbound warm inbound relationships we have today that will
always be say always, because the bots will start selling
to the bots, right, we made a fun video about that,
(10:40):
but the AI seller and the AI buyer and it
just gets into an infinite loop and it could never
close a deal because but you know, until we get
to that point, the the like real and it's it's
not just the like the connection, like the relationship like
that's part of it, but the ability for us to
have these like meaningful conversations, for people to act as
trusted advisors. That word trust comes into play a lot.
(11:02):
Sales has a massive role to play in that, and
I think it always will. And so I think what
we're seeing is the evolution of what great B to
B sales is. Right, It's moved in many cases from
being much more. We've gone through waves of like consultative selling,
more transactional selling, and challenger selling, and that ebbs and
flows with the needs of the market and sort of
the state of things. And so I think we'll continue
(11:24):
to see these evolutions of like what does sales look like?
Speaker 2 (11:26):
What is it?
Speaker 5 (11:27):
But I don't see a time at any point in
our lives where that person to person connection, that trusted relationship,
the ability for a salesperson to truly dig in and
help understand, like what's going on with you and your
business where it is that I might be able to
help let me figure out and be kind of a
solutions provider to you. That's going to continue to be important.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
And I believe that. I guess my question is to
get to that. The pathway to someone trusting another individual
that they no don't know from Adam to become a
trusted advisor to them requires great marketing. Yes, it requires
great brand. Trust requires authority and thought leadership, and I
(12:12):
mean it's why we're so big on owned media and this.
Speaker 5 (12:15):
Like yeah, it often does, but I wouldn't say always,
because I'll tell you what. Sometimes I've got like a
problem that's top of mind. I'm like, you know what,
like frick, we really need to launch a great customer
community this quarter or later this year, and like I
just we haven't figured it out yet. It's kind of
like sitting in the back of my mind and then
(12:36):
somebody drops into my inbox just the right time, right,
they probably already emailed me thirty times I didn't even
see it. But then they drop in at just the
right time of like trying to figure out how to
build a customer community, and I'm like, oh, actually, okay, cool,
I'm going to forward this at this person on my
team who I was talking to about that yesterday, right,
and they started into a conversation. I have no idea
who this company is, but I check out their website.
(12:58):
I'm like, this actually looks pretty darn great. We get
into a conversation. They were first to market to be
in my mind, as a solution provider for this. We
get into a conversation, there's a pretty good chance I'm
going to buy that solution, even if there's others that
have been in market talking about it, because I haven't
been out there listening. So to me, like it reinforces
that all of these tactics are important for businesses. It's
(13:19):
not going to be like it's going to be one
or the other, right, So there's scenarios where that's the
case and that outbound motion hits the right person at
the right time. It's still a numbers game, right. It's
not the most efficient thing, but it can bear real fruit.
But at the same time, more and more like how
we scale is this, Okay, we need to be top
of mind with these people through our marketing efforts, so
(13:41):
we're not just rolling the dice every quarter, and we
have this evergreen foundation that we're building. So I think
these two things are always going to work in concert.
I think there are ways that things like outbound still
really work, but they are absolutely amplified when you have
that strong brand, that strong reputation, and it becomes more
a warm outreach even if it's cold, when that person
(14:04):
has a positive affiliation with your brand.
Speaker 4 (14:06):
So absolutely, I was gonna say I couldn't agree more
with that because, as you were explaining, you know how
you got that email at the right time, I'm kind
of the opposite, where like, if I get those cold outrages,
I'll remember your brand and I'll know not to go
to you right based on how you've kind of messaged me.
So I think that's where marketing will hopefully have a
big impact in sales, and hopefully marketing can be the
(14:27):
winner is because you really do even if it is
outbound and cold outreach, you still have to think about
the long game with it. It's not just that what
email how is this going to reflect on my brand?
Is this going to make someone totally unsubscribe from everything
and never hear from me again? Or is it going
to make them curious enough to at least go follow
me online so that when they are ready to buy,
(14:48):
they know to come to me first.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
And that could look like outbound weirdly enough, becoming sitting
under the brand umbrella. I've heard somebody make that argument before,
and in our EXPERI I mean, we've done outbound. We've
been around for nine years, and we've had different spurts
where it's like, Okay, let's maybe there's something to this
and we'll try it. And one of our recent new
(15:10):
clients came to us because we did cold outbound a
year ago. They weren't in market, but they started following
us we launched the Creator House.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
They liked what we were doing at the Creator House.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
They came back around inbound and now they're a customer
paying us money. But that fundamentally changes what the outbound
looks like when you're thinking about this as a as
a brand play, this is a touch point that we
are going to have if we're going to blast out
messaging to our entire total addressable market. We need to
be really thoughtful about is this US centered? To your
(15:44):
point about Salesforce seems to be very US centered, where
HubSpot seems.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
To be very you centered.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
And I think there is a world where outbound can
be incredibly effective, but you have to completely change what
it looks like from what the stuff that's hitting my
inbox with it service providers.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
My god, CIO is like you, yeah, well.
Speaker 6 (16:08):
And that that's the thing is like personalization is becoming
more and more prevalent, Like you have to understand who
you're talking to, and you know, you have these like
sales intelligence companies popping up like six cents where they
provide you with that intent data and you can dial
into specific companies that you want to target or markets
that you want to target, and really understand who your
(16:31):
target is and what tapping into, like what those pain
points are?
Speaker 2 (16:35):
Are they using a different solution?
Speaker 6 (16:37):
Are they struggling with these specific pain points that you
can address directly and you're talking to the right person
at the right time about the right thing versus like
you say, like I get those emails all the time,
Like I'm not a cro Why am I getting this
email right? Rather than like the shotgun approach is like
I got to name in an email for this company,
I'm going to send them this blanket message that I
(16:59):
send everyone on versus having that personalized conversation that makes
them understand you know who I am on the other
end and you get me. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
And that's where I think so much of the opportunity
is with media because now if we fundamentally change how
we think about outbound and it's no longer this transactional
Are you in market? Are you a part of the
three percent that's ready to buy my product right now? Okay,
let's take that off the table. That's no longer going
to be our first touch with somebody that has no
idea who we are.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Our first touch can now become, Hey, we've got this.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Really interesting premise for our newsletter where we break down,
you know, insights from the top cmos in your category
and we distill you know, want the biggest insight each
week from you whatever these thirty publicly traded companies that
we're tracking that you we thought you might also be
interested in. Well, that's a newsletter I would actually want
(17:54):
to get value from creative premise?
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Its interesting? Oh like yeah, that's that's valuable to me.
I'm into that.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Well, now you've you've got me opted in to something
that I'm going to now go back to your point.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Tyler, continuous engagement.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
You were talking about how you preach that to You
just stepped into technology advice as a CMO, and you've
already been like pounding your team with this idea of
a continuous engagement. How can we embed our brand into
a regular rhythm of this market, whether it's a newsletter
that they look forward to every week, a podcast they
listen to three days a week, whatever, a social account
(18:34):
that they always laugh at the memes when they come
across the page. And I think that muscle is going,
like as marketing teams figure out how to do that stuff, well,
the continuous engagement, I think it gives marketing a fighting
chance at actually winning that battle of what becomes more
important to it.
Speaker 5 (18:50):
And when you connect that back to the sort of
the outbound conversation, you know what we're like, Really, what
we're talking about here is a lot of traditional like
strong out bound was based on leveraging great content from
the marketing team, right, so the outbound wasn't always just
like hey can we talk because I want to sell you.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
It's there'd be all these like.
Speaker 5 (19:08):
Sort of value give touches of like, hey, we just
you know, I thought you might be interested in this
pretty cool new research that just dropped, you know, curious
for your perspective, right, and those things can work well
and I think what we're you know, to your point
an advantage of starting to think more holistically about your
media strategy, it actually does dovetail into being resources for
your sales team or for those more cold outreach where
(19:31):
you're no longer just like, hey, check out this ebook
wrote and people are like, I've been done with.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
Ebooks for thirty years.
Speaker 5 (19:36):
Yeah, we honest, But it's like, hey, this like really
cool new podcast episode just dropped about ABC, or like
did you see this meme over here?
Speaker 2 (19:44):
Like, oh my gosh, does it? Like can you relate
to it?
Speaker 5 (19:47):
And as you all know, I was up late last
night on the hammock outside here writing one of our
first email nurtures at Technology Buys. Some funny should say
about the newsletter. Literally the subject line of the second
email and that nurture is not another snooze letter.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
Yes, right, that's the subject line. And then it's the
same thing.
Speaker 5 (20:07):
It says like, you know, hey, it should be top
of mind, but I was up late.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
I'm like, what the hell does it get? But it's
it's that same mind, yeah, right, and that same nurture.
Speaker 5 (20:17):
Like that nurture email is all about like actually it
goes something like you know, what do you get when
you mix like you know, buyer insights, amazing memes, this
and that, and it's like, find out for yourself in
the next edition of the Marketing Insider's newsletter because there
we talk about all these great things. Plus you get
this exclusive access to this checklist in the scorecard, right
(20:38):
like if that sounds cool, like go check it out.
We'd love your feedback on it. And now if they
do bite on that, now we're in their inbox every
week or two and we're not talking about us.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
We're talking about stuff they care about.
Speaker 5 (20:50):
And it's like, now that's my new nurture, right Like
my pre nurture is the traditional nurture. That's to get
them into my real nurture, which is my ongoing newsletter.
My ongoing newsletters.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
You can weave in technology advice.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
You can weave in more bottom up funnel like content
into that newsletter if you can make that newsletter compelling
enough where someone wants it in their inbox. And that's
where I just think there's enormous opportunities for marketers to.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
Get really creative. The marketers.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
I mean, I've talked to marketers every week that like
they want to be doing this more creative work.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
It's like, this is the stuff that's actually going to
move the needle.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
Now you've got to have executive buy in, and you've
got there's got to be some patience to actually start
to see the fruits of it. But man, yeah, I
really like that framing of whether will HubSpot or Salesforce
win depends on will marketing become more critical to the
business or will sales be seen as more critical to
the business.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
And that's that's.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
Going to be a really fun thing to follow over
the next three, five, ten years. So thanks for having
this conversation with it, James.
Speaker 5 (21:55):
Before we end this segment, I do want to let
viewers know I have trademark the words newsletter.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
So so if anybody tried, that's my subject. Lilo artists
come in from the moss
I think there is a world where outbound can be
incredibly effective, but you have to completely change what it
looks like from what the stuff that's hitting my inbox.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
I mean particular with it service providers.
Speaker 3 (00:11):
My god, Cio is like, you can HubSpot beat Salesforce
as the king of CRM?
Speaker 1 (00:24):
LEXI, we were talking about this last night. You've got
some thoughts take it away?
Speaker 4 (00:29):
Yeah, I think for me, like truly, I think Hubspots
already beat Salesforce in some ways. And maybe that's just
the way that I've come about them because for myself,
you know, I was journalist turned marketer, so I didn't
really you know, have an understanding of a CRM and
what that meant when I was going through college and
becoming who I am as a professional today. But I
(00:50):
was able to instantly relate to HubSpot's material by the
way that they positioned their content online and it never
once felt to me branded, you know, specifically going to HubSpot.
And I have to get hubspots CRM to know how
to do these things on the flip side. You know,
I've heard of Salesforce, I've used it. It's a big CRM.
(01:10):
But I can't like draw any comparison or relatable fact
like of what I've done in my career or how
I've learned and upskilled some of my professional qualities from Salesforce.
And I think that's the biggest thing there. As we
start to head into the future and there's new marketers
that are coming, I don't really see Salesforce making that
play of we're thought leaders in the space here too,
(01:33):
kind of you know, pick our brains, here's what we
have to share with you. When I look at their
social media or any of their content, it's very much
them Salesforce focused, whereas HubSpot is very much you like,
here's how you can build your skills, Here's how you
can become a great content marketer that you know gives me,
it inspires me, And I think that that's kind of
missing from Salesforce. But you know, at the same time,
(01:56):
Salesforce is a huge company, and I think the question
that we can kind of came to last night was like, well,
do they have to be relatable to keep their spot
on the crown? Is that something that they have to
invest in? And for me, I think it is because
you know, ultimately, if they don't make this play to
build an audience around them. Outside of the events and
(02:17):
the product itself, they're going to lose steam. You know,
somebody can come in and maybe there's a newsrem It's
not even HubSpot that we have to worry about that's
going to shake things up for them.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Tyler, what are your thoughts?
Speaker 5 (02:28):
Well, here's a big question that could shape this. What
is going to be more important in the future, sales
or marketing like in general for businesses? And the reason
I asked that is clearly HubSpot came from marketing roots
and expanded into CRM. But you asked nine out of
ten marketers out there, would you rather use HubSpot or
(02:51):
Salesforce one of sales products? Yeah, nine point eight out
of ten would choose HubSpot as their marketing automation platform.
If you ask, you know, CROs, what would you like
for your CRM, the majority today would still say Salesforce
for a lot of good reasons. Right, those two will
(03:11):
continue to collide more and more and fast forward five, ten,
thirty years whatever it happens to be. To say, it
doesn't make sense to have disparate sales and marketing solutions anymore.
It only makes sense to have an integrated platform they're
two of the big front runners to be that. If
marketing becomes more important to businesses than sales, HubSpot wins.
(03:34):
If sales continues to be and I'll say continues to
be because today it is more important than marketing, Salesforce wins.
So let's see what happens. I don't know I was
going to say, I wanted I want to say, James,
I want to say. I want to say that you know,
as the years go by, five, ten years from now,
(03:54):
businesses are much more going to be marketing led than
sales led. And I think there's a lot of good
argument for that based on, you know, the evolution of
like how products even like get to market, and how
audience is engaged with companies, the fact that AI is
just going to take out salespeople entirely.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Yes, I said it, I'm just kidding, but.
Speaker 5 (04:15):
I think that's a really good like, it's really good framing, right, Like,
if marketing becomes the engine of a company, they're going
to double down on HubSpot, and Salesforce is in big trouble.
And I think if Salesforce doesn't get their act together
around being a platform for marketers long term, I think
that is a mistake.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Yeah, Kelly, what are your thoughts here? Yeah, and I agree.
Speaker 6 (04:35):
I think we've all battled like the tech stack bloat, right,
and so we're starting to see more and more how
these companies are trying to integrate multiple tools, which is
a great selling point not just to sales teams and marketers,
but also your CFO and you know, the financial team
of like selling them on the fact that you get
one invoice every month and one contract that you have
(04:57):
to negotiate every year, which is very, very enticing for
a business, especially since we're all dialing into this efficiency
play of how can we do more with less, less people,
less resources, less budget. But again, you look at the
current B to B marketing play right now, what are
all of our goals attached to? Right? I don't know
about you, but pipeline and bookings. I think that's pretty
(05:19):
common in the B to B space. And so if
marketing goals are still attached to revenue goals and sales goals,
then you know, it's obvious that sales is always going
to be like the biggest lever that we have to pull.
And as we were discussing last night, is like salesforce
(05:39):
is so deeply integrated into the businesses that are their clients.
It's almost like, how do you win, how do you
capture and steal that audience, or like you said, do
you go after a newer audience? And like you and
I have both discussed when we were up and coming
marketers or you know, all business owners, they captured us
(06:02):
when we were fresh and new and we were bought
in very young.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
I don't know if Salesforce.
Speaker 6 (06:07):
Has to do that. I mean, they don't necessarily have
to go after BDRs as they're coming out of college
and being like selling them on the software. They're just
automatically like this is now part of your job. Whereas HubSpot,
like we had it top of minds and not necessarily
every marketer that learned from HubSpot uses HubSpot. But you
still have this affinity for the brand because it shaped
(06:28):
who you became as a marketer. And I don't think
Salesforce necessarily has to do that.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
The thing we talked about last night that I want
to elaborate on here is the brand of those two companies.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
It seems like HubSpot.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
Has very much captivated the affinity of gen Z with
the people earlier in their career have a tribute HubSpot
to being instrumental in how they learned and grew in
their business acumen and the way they've executed their podcast network,
I've said multiple times was absolute masterclass. Then you've got
(07:05):
Salesforce who launched Salesforce Plus. They attribute six hundred and
fifty million dollars in pipeline to Salesforce Plus.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
From last year, which I don't know.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
That seems pretty generous to tie that much pipeline to content.
That is from what I saw, very very top of funnel,
but who knows what's going on behind the scenes there.
They are taking a stab. Salesforce is taking a stab
at owned media. It just doesn't seem that Salesforce Plus
is a drop in the bucket of what they need
(07:38):
to be doing to change the brand's perception in the market.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Now.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
Salesforce, to your point and what we were talking about
last night, they're so embedded in. That's just that they're
embedded in the companies that they're currently their clients, but
their clients are mega, mega, mega corporations.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
That it's when you're as embedded.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
In these massive organizations, it's very hard to rip something out.
So I loved your point Tyler about like a lot
of them are just using both and is sales going
to be more important or is marketing going to be more.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Important you alluded to, like, okay, pipeline.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
And bookings are the thing that is everybody's an horse star.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
What I'm not sure that I believe that.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
The current sales motions that I'm experiencing, at least on
being on the receiving end of a lot of sales motions,
I don't believe that that go to market motion of
just putting BDRs and pounding you know called emails LinkedIn dms,
like it doesn't work today. Nonetheless, three years from now,
(08:52):
ten years from now, especially your experience is fascinating to
me Tyler. And that you built a media brand for
Vidyard called sales feed, So you have been inundated in
like the life of a seller. Now you're a technology
advice you sell to marketers.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
You've got this.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
You are a marketer yourself, so you understand both positions
very well. Elaborate a little bit on like tell me,
I guess Steelman, you said, I want to believe that
marketing will win out, Like if we look at ten years,
marketing will be more more important to businesses than sales.
Steal man that argument and tell me why sales could
potentially win out because yeah, what I'm seeing from sales,
(09:29):
I'm like, this can't win three years from now and
none the less ten years from now.
Speaker 5 (09:34):
Yeah, I don't know that that's the case though, because
I bet three years ago you would have said the
same thing. I don't think this is going to work
three years from now, and it does still work. It
does still work outbound sales. Companies would not continue to
invest in it if it doesn't work. So as much
as we all think, and probably all of us here say,
I don't answer the phone when somebody cold calls me,
Like who would in their right mind? And in reality,
(09:56):
companies are generating tons of pipeline from cold calling. Right,
It's still work despite the fact that you know, many
of us can't believe that it does. And will it
keep working, you know, three five years from now, ten
years from now, I don't know, but I would not
say it's not going to work. And I think there's
you know, part of I think what does always work
(10:18):
in sales, which is the same thing that will always
work in marketing, is that human to human connection and
sales is such a critical part of that. Whether it's
cold outbound warm inbound relationships we have today that will
always be say always, because the bots will start selling
to the bots, right, we made a fun video about that,
(10:40):
but the AI seller and the AI buyer and it
just gets into an infinite loop and it could never
close a deal because but you know, until we get
to that point, the the like real and it's it's
not just the like the connection, like the relationship like
that's part of it, but the ability for us to
have these like meaningful conversations, for people to act as
trusted advisors. That word trust comes into play a lot.
(11:02):
Sales has a massive role to play in that, and
I think it always will. And so I think what
we're seeing is the evolution of what great B to
B sales is. Right, It's moved in many cases from
being much more. We've gone through waves of like consultative selling,
more transactional selling, and challenger selling, and that ebbs and
flows with the needs of the market and sort of
the state of things. And so I think we'll continue
(11:24):
to see these evolutions of like what does sales look like?
Speaker 2 (11:26):
What is it?
Speaker 5 (11:27):
But I don't see a time at any point in
our lives where that person to person connection, that trusted relationship,
the ability for a salesperson to truly dig in and
help understand, like what's going on with you and your
business where it is that I might be able to
help let me figure out and be kind of a
solutions provider to you. That's going to continue to be important.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
And I believe that. I guess my question is to
get to that. The pathway to someone trusting another individual
that they no don't know from Adam to become a
trusted advisor to them requires great marketing. Yes, it requires
great brand. Trust requires authority and thought leadership, and I
(12:12):
mean it's why we're so big on owned media and this.
Speaker 5 (12:15):
Like yeah, it often does, but I wouldn't say always,
because I'll tell you what. Sometimes I've got like a
problem that's top of mind. I'm like, you know what,
like frick, we really need to launch a great customer
community this quarter or later this year, and like I
just we haven't figured it out yet. It's kind of
like sitting in the back of my mind and then
(12:36):
somebody drops into my inbox just the right time, right,
they probably already emailed me thirty times I didn't even
see it. But then they drop in at just the
right time of like trying to figure out how to
build a customer community, and I'm like, oh, actually, okay, cool,
I'm going to forward this at this person on my
team who I was talking to about that yesterday, right,
and they started into a conversation. I have no idea
who this company is, but I check out their website.
(12:58):
I'm like, this actually looks pretty darn great. We get
into a conversation. They were first to market to be
in my mind, as a solution provider for this. We
get into a conversation, there's a pretty good chance I'm
going to buy that solution, even if there's others that
have been in market talking about it, because I haven't
been out there listening. So to me, like it reinforces
that all of these tactics are important for businesses. It's
(13:19):
not going to be like it's going to be one
or the other, right, So there's scenarios where that's the
case and that outbound motion hits the right person at
the right time. It's still a numbers game, right. It's
not the most efficient thing, but it can bear real fruit.
But at the same time, more and more like how
we scale is this, Okay, we need to be top
of mind with these people through our marketing efforts, so
(13:41):
we're not just rolling the dice every quarter, and we
have this evergreen foundation that we're building. So I think
these two things are always going to work in concert.
I think there are ways that things like outbound still
really work, but they are absolutely amplified when you have
that strong brand, that strong reputation, and it becomes more
a warm outreach even if it's cold, when that person
(14:04):
has a positive affiliation with your brand.
Speaker 4 (14:06):
So absolutely, I was gonna say I couldn't agree more
with that because, as you were explaining, you know how
you got that email at the right time, I'm kind
of the opposite, where like, if I get those cold outrages,
I'll remember your brand and I'll know not to go
to you right based on how you've kind of messaged me.
So I think that's where marketing will hopefully have a
big impact in sales, and hopefully marketing can be the
(14:27):
winner is because you really do even if it is
outbound and cold outreach, you still have to think about
the long game with it. It's not just that what
email how is this going to reflect on my brand?
Is this going to make someone totally unsubscribe from everything
and never hear from me again? Or is it going
to make them curious enough to at least go follow
me online so that when they are ready to buy,
(14:48):
they know to come to me first.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
And that could look like outbound weirdly enough, becoming sitting
under the brand umbrella. I've heard somebody make that argument before,
and in our EXPERI I mean, we've done outbound. We've
been around for nine years, and we've had different spurts
where it's like, Okay, let's maybe there's something to this
and we'll try it. And one of our recent new
(15:10):
clients came to us because we did cold outbound a
year ago. They weren't in market, but they started following
us we launched the Creator House.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
They liked what we were doing at the Creator House.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
They came back around inbound and now they're a customer
paying us money. But that fundamentally changes what the outbound
looks like when you're thinking about this as a as
a brand play, this is a touch point that we
are going to have if we're going to blast out
messaging to our entire total addressable market. We need to
be really thoughtful about is this US centered? To your
(15:44):
point about Salesforce seems to be very US centered, where
HubSpot seems.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
To be very you centered.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
And I think there is a world where outbound can
be incredibly effective, but you have to completely change what
it looks like from what the stuff that's hitting my
inbox with it service providers.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
My god, CIO is like you, yeah, well.
Speaker 6 (16:08):
And that that's the thing is like personalization is becoming
more and more prevalent, Like you have to understand who
you're talking to, and you know, you have these like
sales intelligence companies popping up like six cents where they
provide you with that intent data and you can dial
into specific companies that you want to target or markets
that you want to target, and really understand who your
(16:31):
target is and what tapping into, like what those pain
points are?
Speaker 2 (16:35):
Are they using a different solution?
Speaker 6 (16:37):
Are they struggling with these specific pain points that you
can address directly and you're talking to the right person
at the right time about the right thing versus like
you say, like I get those emails all the time,
Like I'm not a cro Why am I getting this
email right? Rather than like the shotgun approach is like
I got to name in an email for this company,
I'm going to send them this blanket message that I
(16:59):
send everyone on versus having that personalized conversation that makes
them understand you know who I am on the other
end and you get me. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
And that's where I think so much of the opportunity
is with media because now if we fundamentally change how
we think about outbound and it's no longer this transactional
Are you in market? Are you a part of the
three percent that's ready to buy my product right now? Okay,
let's take that off the table. That's no longer going
to be our first touch with somebody that has no
idea who we are.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Our first touch can now become, Hey, we've got this.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Really interesting premise for our newsletter where we break down,
you know, insights from the top cmos in your category
and we distill you know, want the biggest insight each
week from you whatever these thirty publicly traded companies that
we're tracking that you we thought you might also be
interested in. Well, that's a newsletter I would actually want
(17:54):
to get value from creative premise?
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Its interesting? Oh like yeah, that's that's valuable to me.
I'm into that.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Well, now you've you've got me opted in to something
that I'm going to now go back to your point.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Tyler, continuous engagement.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
You were talking about how you preach that to You
just stepped into technology advice as a CMO, and you've
already been like pounding your team with this idea of
a continuous engagement. How can we embed our brand into
a regular rhythm of this market, whether it's a newsletter
that they look forward to every week, a podcast they
listen to three days a week, whatever, a social account
(18:34):
that they always laugh at the memes when they come
across the page. And I think that muscle is going,
like as marketing teams figure out how to do that stuff, well,
the continuous engagement, I think it gives marketing a fighting
chance at actually winning that battle of what becomes more
important to it.
Speaker 5 (18:50):
And when you connect that back to the sort of
the outbound conversation, you know what we're like, Really, what
we're talking about here is a lot of traditional like
strong out bound was based on leveraging great content from
the marketing team, right, so the outbound wasn't always just
like hey can we talk because I want to sell you.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
It's there'd be all these like.
Speaker 5 (19:08):
Sort of value give touches of like, hey, we just
you know, I thought you might be interested in this
pretty cool new research that just dropped, you know, curious
for your perspective, right, and those things can work well
and I think what we're you know, to your point
an advantage of starting to think more holistically about your
media strategy, it actually does dovetail into being resources for
your sales team or for those more cold outreach where
(19:31):
you're no longer just like, hey, check out this ebook
wrote and people are like, I've been done with.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
Ebooks for thirty years.
Speaker 5 (19:36):
Yeah, we honest, But it's like, hey, this like really
cool new podcast episode just dropped about ABC, or like
did you see this meme over here?
Speaker 2 (19:44):
Like, oh my gosh, does it? Like can you relate
to it?
Speaker 5 (19:47):
And as you all know, I was up late last
night on the hammock outside here writing one of our
first email nurtures at Technology Buys. Some funny should say
about the newsletter. Literally the subject line of the second
email and that nurture is not another snooze letter.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
Yes, right, that's the subject line. And then it's the
same thing.
Speaker 5 (20:07):
It says like, you know, hey, it should be top
of mind, but I was up late.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
I'm like, what the hell does it get? But it's
it's that same mind, yeah, right, and that same nurture.
Speaker 5 (20:17):
Like that nurture email is all about like actually it
goes something like you know, what do you get when
you mix like you know, buyer insights, amazing memes, this
and that, and it's like, find out for yourself in
the next edition of the Marketing Insider's newsletter because there
we talk about all these great things. Plus you get
this exclusive access to this checklist in the scorecard, right
(20:38):
like if that sounds cool, like go check it out.
We'd love your feedback on it. And now if they
do bite on that, now we're in their inbox every
week or two and we're not talking about us.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
We're talking about stuff they care about.
Speaker 5 (20:50):
And it's like, now that's my new nurture, right Like
my pre nurture is the traditional nurture. That's to get
them into my real nurture, which is my ongoing newsletter.
My ongoing newsletters.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
You can weave in technology advice.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
You can weave in more bottom up funnel like content
into that newsletter if you can make that newsletter compelling
enough where someone wants it in their inbox. And that's
where I just think there's enormous opportunities for marketers to.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
Get really creative. The marketers.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
I mean, I've talked to marketers every week that like
they want to be doing this more creative work.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
It's like, this is the stuff that's actually going to
move the needle.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
Now you've got to have executive buy in, and you've
got there's got to be some patience to actually start
to see the fruits of it. But man, yeah, I
really like that framing of whether will HubSpot or Salesforce
win depends on will marketing become more critical to the
business or will sales be seen as more critical to
the business.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
And that's that's.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
Going to be a really fun thing to follow over
the next three, five, ten years. So thanks for having
this conversation with it, James.
Speaker 5 (21:55):
Before we end this segment, I do want to let
viewers know I have trademark the words newsletter.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
So so if anybody tried, that's my subject. Lilo artists
come in from the moss
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