June 11, 2025 • 39 mins
Raja Walia (CEO & Founder, GNW Consulting) who shared some proven strategies on how to optimize your martech implementation for marketing success. Raja emphasized the importance of aligning technology with business goals to set your team up for long-term success. He also shared some common pitfalls that teams should avoid and stressed the need for proper planning, accountability, and enablement.
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(00:00):
Failed implementations can putB2B marketers at risk of losing
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credibility and budget. Theyneed to plan properly, take
calculated risks and always havea backup plan. So how can
marketing teams ensure theirmartech implementation is geared
up for success? Welcome to thisepisode of the B2B Marketers on
a Mission podcast, and I'm yourhost, Christian Klepp. Today,
I'll be talking to Raja Walia,who'll be answering this
question. He's the founder andCEO of GNW Consulting, a
(00:27):
strategic marketing operationsagency that specializes in
helping companies navigate thecomplexities of marketing
technology. Tune in to find outmore about what this B2B
marketers mission is. You Mr.Raja Walia, welcome to the show,
Sir.
Hey. Thank you for having me,Christian.
(00:48):
Great to have you on the show,Raja. And I'm really looking
forward to this conversation,because I think a part of this
is going to be a little bit of atougher discussion, and that's
just a bit of a hint of what'sto come. That said, I think it's
an extremely importantconversation to have. And B2B,
marketers really need to bepaying attention to this stuff.
(01:08):
So let's dive right in. Raja,you're on a mission to provide
companies with the strategicguidance needed to adapt to the
ever evolving martech landscape.So for this conversation, I want
to focus on the following topic,how marketing teams can ensure
their martech implementation isgeared up for success. So just
to provide the audience with abit of context, your company so
(01:32):
GNW consulting, in partnershipwith demand metric, you recently
launched the state of martechimplementation report, and that
was based on insights from morethan 200 marketing leaders. So I
want to kick off theconversation with this question,
how do failed implementationsput marketing teams at risk of
losing credibility and budget?
(01:54):
No, it's a good question, andone of the reasons that we
generated the report is, I thinkit's very crucial, especially in
today's economy where, you know,budgets are kind of being hit as
much as possible, and marketingis always under the gun. Because
you got to realize thatexecutive level outcomes are all
realistically that matter. Sowhen we think about the idea of
a failed implementation, whatwe're really thinking about is
(02:17):
what was promised and whatdidn't occur. And that's how at
the executive board level,generally, we look at it. So
it's not only that the CMO takesa hit, you know, it's the
finance gets involved and startsquestioning whether marketing
should really be trusted withbudget at all at that point,
right? What execs and generallywhat marketing teams kind of get
(02:39):
is that failure usually kind ofstarts from an implementation
perspective by not having it'snot bad tech. It's the idea of
what the business goals andoutcomes are. And we tend to
fall down this rabbit hole of akind of like a traditional
motion of implementation,whereas in the current state of
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things, it's a technicalimplementation aligned with what
the business is set toaccomplish, and we don't, as
marketers, we don't reallyconvey that like, we don't
really like, emphasize how it'sgoing to solve bigger problems.
So I think the idea behind thereport, realistically, was that
we lose credibility becausewe're so focused on the
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technical that we don't reallyoperate and say this is what the
business is doing better nowthan they were doing before. And
that's generally, I think we'renot, we're not factoring those
we're not factoring those ideaswell enough, and we're just
focusing on the tech and howwell the tech is implemented.
(03:43):
Absolutely, absolutely. Maybethis is stated in the report.
But I'd also like to get yourperspective, just from your
experience, right like, and Iknow, I know that this can go
down several different paths,but just Why do you think fail
like, implementations fail likefrom a general perspective,
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like, where do marketing teamsget it wrong generally?
So I think, from a if you thinklogistically about
implementations, it's the ideaof what you're doing and how
it's going to help the businessgrow. Once again, executives
don't really look at Tech thesame way that we look at Tech,
they see it as kind of an end toa means (means to an end). The
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means (ends) is one of thethings, either grow the
business, expand the business,or market the business. So
realistically, what when wetreat implementations, just like
a system implementation or asystem greater enhancement? I
think that's like step one.That's where generally that
operational mindset starts,starts down the path of, okay,
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now we are now we are focusingon just the technical outcome,
but not how it relates to whatthe goal of the business is. So
I think in. And it's a veryclear fix, like we worked with a
lot of companies, and the ideais like, what is the ownership
across functions and how is itgoing to relate to overall
business goals? That's aconversation that, generally, as
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marketers, we need to have a lotmore of to say, what are we
solving for the business, ratherthan what are we implementing
for the business? And, you know,honestly, too many times we kind
of buy software, and they said,and we asked, well, what can it
do, which is completely oppositeof what we should be doing. We
should be going in with the ideaof, this is what the business is
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trying to do. How does yoursoftware make our life easier or
fulfill this task? Right? And Ithink it's just a switch, and
it's just a switch, and thoughtprocess on when we how we look
at marketing technology.
Absolutely, absolutely. I'mgoing to move us on to the next
question about what are some ofthe key pitfalls that you think
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marketing teams should beavoiding, and what should they
be doing instead?
So I think the reality of thisis that most what we outlined in
the report is that mostimplementations actually fail
before even the kickoff of theimplementation that happens,
right? So we assume thatimplementations are a checklist
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of things that need to be done.Milestone. You know, we base
everything off on milestones,cut overs, and we treat it like
kind of an operational shift,more of a changing of the
guards, kind of, so to speak,right? But we don't clarify
roles. We don't clarifyoutcomes. We don't map out
processes. We don't even kind ofreally, teams are brought in as
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implementation is happening,rather than essentially aligning
with all these differentdepartments on where their goals
are and how technology is goingto fill those gaps. Right? It
doesn't matter how good the toolis. It all depends on how each
department sometimes is going touse it.
So when we talk about teams who,you know, generally buy
software, that's, that's whatthe pitfall of it, right? The
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biggest hole is kind of a doubleedged knife like the state of
martech report shows thatmarketing software has increased
by a ridiculous amount over thelast 10 years. So it's more
we're buying software and we'renot solving business problems,
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and that's one of it really. Wehave to treat implementations
like it's a business change, notan upgrade, right? We have to
budget for enablement. Andhere's the and that's the kick.
Thing about enablement is thatpeople tend to implement a
product and it's kind of like aI win button, right? Like you
hit the button and it's justgoing to run. And the reality
is, there's an entire changemanagement there's an adoption
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process that we fail to kind oftake. We just think the software
is going to get set up. We'regoing to hire someone, and
they're just going to take itover. And the reality is they
when we don't have conversationsabout who owns what and what the
business is attempting to dowith a product, then at that
point, it just becomes anothersoftware solution that someone
is operating out of which doesnot relate, which just does not
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trickle upstream. It does nothave any relationship to what
the business goals is, whetherwhat the business goal is or
what the outcome that'sexpected. So if no one owns that
kind of the results, and noone's accountable for the
failure, it's going to go backto whoever started that
initiative, which in this caseis going to be the marketing
team. So, yeah.
You brought up a really greatpoint, and I've seen that go
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awry sometimes, like it's thatcomplete lack of ownership, that
lack of clarity from the get goof who is owning this, who is
responsible for whatever task itis and whichever milestones, and
even even that, even thatchecking in process so called,
right? Like, as you're as you'removing along in the
implementation, right?
Yeah. I mean, we're so focusedon milestones of data points of
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when implementation has to besuccessful. There's no
milestones on, hey, are we? Arewe close to hitting what the
business intended to do? Are weclose to addressing all of the
reasons why we need software.The milestones are always just
very heavily focused on, we needto have this much data, or this
needs to be set up by this date.And that's, once again, that's
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not, in my opinion, that's notworth investing in, like, you
know, as the owner of a company,I'm not investing in, when all
our data is going to be movedfrom one location to the other
location. It's, do we need allthe data, or are we trying to do
something better with it? That'sthe goal, right? When we're
trying to make things easier,more efficient, you know, we're
trying to scale things. We'retrying to onboard, like, there
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has to be an end result, notjust a product to product shift,
which honestly is not reallyworth investing in and that's
when we talk about, like,budgets getting cut. That's when
budgets getting get cut. That'swhen we lose, you know, the
quote, unquote seat at the tableis because you're not trusted to
understand how business impactis being applied to software.
(09:54):
Absolutely, absolutely, um,based on the report and also
your experience. Of course, whatdo you believe is the hidden
revenue impact of misalignedtechnology investments?
So based on the report, I thinkthere's a kind of a clear
understanding that revenuemarkers, and whether it's in the
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in the capacity ofopportunities, in the capacity
of going up to bat, so to speak,getting enough data, getting
enough leads to Century pitch tothat there is a equivalency of
that in relationship to what thecost of what the cost of
implementing this, right? So ifwe just look at from a revenue
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like, there isn't a hard number,however, it's the efficiency of
delaying campaigns, not having astaff appropriated and
understanding how to how to workinside the environment that lead
to downstream effects. Right?The short term revenue is the
cost of the products that you'reimplementing. Right? It's the
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cost of the resources that arethat you've been staffed with.
It's the cost of partners thatyou've kind of partnered with.
That's a short term goal, butreally the emphasis is, where
does revenue impact? And it'sit's co it's a compounding value
over time. It's a slow system.It, you know, leads to campaign
launches being, not going, notbeing, essentially set on time,
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routing sales follow ups.
I mean, the number one, thefirst complaint of a mismanaged
implementation, is the salesteam raising their hand and
saying, Hey, we don't see asingle lead, or we don't see a
single prospect that we can workwith. Like, there's pipeline
inconsistencies that arehappening, right? And that's
where the first complaints starthappening. Well, now if you
think about what a sales team issupposed to be doing, is now
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they're more spending more timeworking outside of the system,
rather than within the system.So the delay in, I mean, they
still have to hit their theystill have to hit their quotas.
So the delay in understandingwhat that system is really
providing goes away. Well, nowyou have, you might have bad
data issues, right? But from aleadership takeaway perspective,
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it's the long term revenueimpact of and I'm trying to
think of the exact number that'sessentially that they provided,
but it's, it's upwards independing on the size of the
business. A small size businesswill see impact in hundreds and
$1,000 of revenue, and anenterprise will see million
dollars of impact based off onthe report, over over time, over
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the compounding of just thingsnot working as they intended,
over a period of time.
I mean, the the part where youbrought up the issue with sales,
where they're talking about,like pipeline inconsistencies, I
think was the word that you usedthat in itself would already be
a bit of a red flag, because ifthe sales already start
complaining about that, thatcan, that can have a snowball
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effect on the entireimplementation.
Yeah, and you know, a lot ofthat isn't uncovered prior to
implementation happening, and alot of is uncovered post
implementation, where the budgethas already been spent. So at
that point, you're kind ofcreating a band aid solution,
right? The idea behind thisreport is that there's different
out of the executives that wekind of interviewed for the
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report. There's a varying degreeof what the revenue impact is,
because each business modelworks different. Each sales
pipeline, sales stages and salesfunnels work differently. But
the idea is that no matter howyou dissect it, you know, we
could give some arbitrarynumber, like, hey, you know, you
have millions of dollars and $2million of impact, you know, per
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quarter. The reality is due tothe inefficiencies of
implementation and themisalignment. There is a bleed
effect of revenue quarter overquarter, because it's an end in
two aspects. One is justreaching out to appropriate
people to read another at theright time, and two, just
missing opportunities that salesis either not taking the
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consideration or have glazedover. It could be 100% of a very
valued opportunity. Andmarketing could be right, that
this person is qualified andthey want to do business with
us, but the precedence hasalready been set that there is
no trust there, so the saleswill move off of their own move.
It will work on their own kindof basis, right? And I think
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there's an idea of that, isthat, yes, there is a revenue
impact long term. Everyone inthe report has said there is
revenue impact. If you want toconcrete dollar value, that's a
little bit tough based onbusiness development.
Absolutely, absolutely. And youbrought you brought up one
topic, Raja, which I thought wasa great segue to the next
question about the importanceof, you know, preventing this
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implementation failure. What'sthe importance of conducting the
right research, having the rightplan in place before any of this
When we usually start, and whenand when we usually start and we
happens.
have these conversations, thegoal is to build a build a
system based off on data andfacts. If you build a system or
migrate to a system becauseyou've used it before, it's
around assumption, that's a verydangerous game to play, right?
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So you don't want to just launchsomething. You want to scale
intelligently and effectively,and that can only kind of happen
when you have a really goodblueprint and understanding of
what the business use cases. Youhave to know where the process
gaps are. You have to know ifyour data is even ready for it,
right? There's a lot of times,and you've ran into this too,
Christian, as well. We'restarting implementation, not
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knowing what the datalimitations are, not connecting
with the data team. And thenyou're, you're in the thick of
it, and you're implementing, andthe data is like, hey, the data,
data is not going to be readyfor three months. Boom. What is
that going to cost the company? Right?
What is the cost of the company?And here's one thing before I
get into like, what we can do tosolve it, is that the what the
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report showed is that there'sdata and revenue, and let's just
say, Let's not talk aboutrevenue. Let's just say money,
right? There's money being loston both ends, the cost of
implementation, and delayingimplementation of a product
because you're already spendingmoney to do it. And two, the
downstream effects of all ofthat. So not only is your budget
getting hit that you're losingmoney in your investment that
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could have been, you know, whoknows? You could have spent it
on hard works and generated, youknow, maybe a couple leads, or
whatever it is that you couldhave attributed to and two the
downstream effects of actuallyhaving an improper
implementation. So really, whatthat said is, like, if you're a
leader in the space, what youreally have to push for, then
you really have to push againstis the idea of doing something
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quickly and fast, and say, whatare we trying to solve? Like
that is the number one question,regardless of what a platform
does. You know at this point,you know, we're a pretty we're
pretty tech agnostic company.I've been inside all of these
platforms for the last 15 years,and the reality is, like, what
are you trying to solve as abusiness? What is your goal? And
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if you don't know that yourimplementation is already off to
the wrong foot, second, who'sinvolved? What are the teams
that it's going to impact,right, in our you know, and I
can kind of generally answerthat question, since we're, you
know, it's, we're in a B2Bmarketing podcast, it's
generally going to be marketing,it's generally going to be
sales, it's generally going tobe customer success, right?
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Like, those are the teams thatare going to be involved.
And one follow up question islike, what are you trying to do
better, right? What? What arethe data points that you're
trying to hit that make is goingto make this entire
implementation shift worth it,which is a question that rarely
gets asked, right? It's we'reimplementing this project or
product fix it into what you do.And I think the kind of the main
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thing is like, what does successmean and how does it show up to
each of these teams? Sales willanswer. I need to know when to
contact someone. I need thosesignals because that's very
crucial to me, customer successand the customer customer
success teams would be like Ineed to know when people are up
for renewals if you're in alicensing subscription model. I
need to know if they're havingan issue with product
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onboarding. I need to know, youknow, financially, how the
business is doing, what arebecause they need to know all of
these things from a renewalperspective, are they even using
the platform? You know, so thattype of like, if you were to
take, like, those three thingsbefore you even start investing
into what technologies thatstrategy is going to protect
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your budget from being frombeing spent twice. One to do it,
once, to implement it, another,to fix it, right? And if this,
those are very, three, very goodquestions before you even go
down the rabbit hole of lookingat 15,000 pieces of technology
that you may or may not need.
Fantastic, fantastic. Yeah,absolutely. And I think, I
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think, with that, you alreadyanswered the next question about
the actionable tips, becausethat's, that's pretty much what
it is, right?
Yeah. So I'll say this thoughI'll expand on to it. Those are
three high level items, butlet's expand on to the idea of,
like, real world scenarios thatleaders have to expect, right?
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And this is, this is somethingthat you take away and you write
it down on a sticky note, andyou just stick it there, and
you're saying, Hey, I'm going toimplement something for sales,
or I'm gonna implement somethingfrom marketing. And it's
universal, no matter whatbusiness you work at, right? You
want to audit and execution yourbottlenecks. Where are the
handoffs or campaigns, slowingdown tech at that point should
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be a lever to move them, not ablocker, if it's a blocker, or
if it's not needed, or ifthere's a workaround, then you
really have to look at, am Iinvesting something to fix a
process, or am I investingsomething because of tech? And
this is one of the most crucialthings, especially if you're in
the C-suite, and you're amarketer, so CMO, CROs, you have
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to tie you have to speak thelanguage of the board, the
committee, the CEO, whoever itis, you have to speak their
language. You have to say thisproduct and this feature is
going to help us achieve thisbusiness goal. If. Can't map it
to sales efficiency, pipelinehealth, customer retention.
Question is, why did we pay forit?
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Number one question that getsasked, why did we pay for it, if
it's not going to increase salesefficiency, if we're not
impacting our pipeline health ormoving people, and if it's not
retaining customers, what is thepurpose behind the product?
Right? And people will argue onthat argue on that point. There
are certain things written.There are certain things that
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people will say, Well, whatabout PR (Public Relations) for
example, what about brandrecognition? We can't really tie
that to a revenue. And onceagain, I clarify. It's not
revenue. It's a goal. Brand isthe perception of your company.
It makes sales more efficient assellers, if you're a recognized
business, sales can leverage it,right? So I want to make sure I
understand and make sure Idifferentiate between tying
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everything to businessinitiatives. Does not mean tying
it to revenue. It's tying it towhat the outcomes are, right?
And while also you got toinvolve your go to market
stakeholders. This is, you know,personally, I've been inside the
space for long enough, and evenin the implementation report,
sales, customer success,marketing operations usually get
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involved after a decision ismade. They actually, you should
really be aligning them withthat before launch, because
that's what hub that helps andavoid rebuilds or restructures.
And the number one thing thatgets skipped when I'm gonna
throw it out to you, Christian,what do you think the number one
thing that gets skipped in allof implementations is.
Oof.
(21:34):
That's, let's forget technology.Let's forget everything else.
That's all of the stuff. But thenumber one thing that really
kind of impacts how your systemis going to be used over time.
Well, what about auditing what'scurrently working?
So auditing what's currentlyworking, but also enablement of
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your team that's going to bemanaging the platform. No one
budgets for it. No one says,Hey, we've implemented this.
We're going to have some sort ofongoing training. So as you
know, here's the crazy part.People might be surprised to
learn this, but softwareproducts have updates, and they
have quarterly updates, monthlyupdates, right? They have they
have biannually updates.Sometimes there's hot fixes that
(22:17):
completely breaks it. No onetakes into account what the cost
of investing and budgeting foractual hands on training really
means? It's not a training thatis post implementation support.
It's what is your internal teamgoing to need in order to
operate the system withoutconstant external help. And I
(22:38):
know that sounds really funny,coming from an agency that is
really built a model aroundexternal help. But the reality
is, things are going to productis going to change. An update
could come up, come across, andcompletely bypass a flow or a
workflow or some sort oftechnical thing that you set up
right? And then that's thereality of software.
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But no one invests in thatconstant update of products.
People invest in implementation,and they may, they don't invest
in internal team. And the lastthing, because I like to doing
things in five. So feel five isa lucky number. Start with a
narrow MVP right now. Let'sprove an impact with a small use
case, and then let's expand it.Once the system earns trust in
internally farming far too manytimes a leadership team sits
(23:22):
there and paints this picture ofa beautiful, utopian view of a
system that is so cohesive onceimplementation is done. And, you
know, implementation, to me, isjust the starting point, right?
So narrow your MVP (MinimumViable Product) into what you
can solve a it'll save youmoney, because you won't need a
bunch of features. Remember, youknow, features can always be
added on, on later in time. ButI think if you take those like
(23:45):
five things when it comes to belike as a B2B marketer and as a
leader, and you take those intoconsideration, it's really hard
to make sure, it's really hardto have a failed implementation
when all those things are along.
Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely,absolutely. And you know that
point you said about updates, Iwould even throw in, and this
may or may not be completelyoff, but also anticipating that
(24:08):
sometimes with software, withtechnology, things can go wrong,
and you need to have a backupplan for that, right? And
perhaps this is a bit farfetched, but I think we all
remember the CrowdStrike outage.
Yeah.
Right?
Or even, or even a domainoutage, or even even, I should
even, even necessarily asomething with it was the most
recent one. We received anotification one of the
(24:30):
platforms that we said thatthere was an outage to the cloud
server that hosted everythingyou couldn't get access to a
product. Remember this slack?How did, yes, people even know
what to do, right? Like, I'm notsure you have to implement
slide, but these things happeneven at the highest tier of
companies that own theseproducts and people. And I'll
tell you, because you're like,people do not budget for it.
(24:51):
Companies do not budget fortheir internal teams to make
sure that they're, you know,understanding what the system
updates are and what they'repushing. So when something.
Happens. You know, it's like,Oh, I'll get a coffee until
systems are back. And then theexecutive team's like, wait,
wait, wait, wait, wait, we needto figure out what's going on
here.
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely,okay. Metrics, so in terms of
(25:17):
what we've been talking aboutnow, what metrics do you think
marketing teams should be payingattention to, and why?
I'm gonna say revenue, andthat's all I'm gonna say about
it, because that is the ultimategoal. If you're a for profit
business, the end goal ofmetrics is a no brainer, that
you have to be contributing,attributing, influencing some
(25:38):
sort of revenue statistics. Ifthat is, that is mandatory, that
is the baseline minimum that youhave to be doing, right for if
you're a for profitorganization. Now let's talk
about, let's forget vanitymetrics. No one cares about open
clicks and conversion rates andstuff like. Let's focus on the
tactical and operational onesthat impact a business rhythm,
(26:02):
like a business flow. Let's justsay, time to campaign. How fast
are you prepared to get acampaign out the door? How fast
are you able to pivot with astrategy, assuming that there's
a fluctuation in the market? Andyou know, I can tell you a
couple of examples, veryspecifically, of a product
launch that fell on the same dayas a outage. How fast can you
(26:28):
pivot to not have a productlaunch on that day? Right? And
can you convey that informationeffectively enough to the
leadership to say, hey, it wouldbe it would not impact us. We're
not going to get good resultsout of this, right? So what is
your time to campaign? What isyour time to pivot and change
based off sales response tohandoff? Right? I think it's
(26:51):
very clear to say that we don'tlive in 2018 anymore, or 2015 or
2013 when marketing and saleshad at least 24 hours, maybe 48
hours to respond.
I don't want to say it'sinstantaneous. However, it's
sales response times. If youhaven't view as your you know
your listeners and yourselfhaven't realized she'll be fine.
(27:12):
Go in, yeah, yeah. You fill outa form, you get a call almost
immediately, right? I'm notsaying that's the best way to do
it, depending on the productthat you're selling, but what is
your response? What is your postlead handoff, when sales call
someone, when something isidentified, and if you can tell
at the executive level, oursales response time is this fast
or this this clarified. That's avery good metric. And if you
(27:35):
don't know it, and you'relistening and you don't know
that metric, that would be avery good starting point,
because that's what tells you asa business how fast we're going
to mark, how fast our salesteams are reaching out
conversion from lead. And here'sthe kicker, not marketing
qualified. You can have aseparate conversation on my
whole stance on marketingqualified leads, but from when a
(27:57):
person is created to a qualifiedopportunity.
Now I've jumped, if youprobably, if you're, if you're
in the traditional sense of theworld. I probably jumped lead to
contact conversion to, you know,I jumped the anonymous to known,
to engage, to qualify to sales,accepted to sales, qualified to
(28:21):
opportunity. I've jumped all ofthat from lead to qualified op.
The reason being, everythingelse in the middle is fluff.
Right from an executivestandpoint, you can tell me, I
have 1000 marketing qualifiedleads at the end of the day.
Qualified Ops is what you'remeasuring against, no matter
what. That's just the day, andthen also your influence and
attribute like what youattributed to those qualified
(28:42):
ops. Seven years ago, eightyears ago, those conversion
metrics were all over the place,right? Oh, we generated, you
know, 1000 marketing qualifiers.We sales accepted this much, and
sales qualified this andnowadays it's okay, cool. All of
that stuff doesn't matter howmany qualified opportunities.
What is their percentage ofclothes? That's what they care
about. So I bypass the otherstuff. It's not and once again,
(29:05):
I want to clarify once again,I'm not saying that it's not
important. I'm not saying thatwe have to do all of those
things, but to answer thequestion, what are the key
metrics that marketers should bepaying attention to? We should
be paying attention to how fastleads are getting converted into
qualified opportunities.
Everything else that we do wehave to do, it's part of the
business, right? No matter what.And then probably some marketers
(29:31):
are probably not going to hearlike me saying this, one go, but
sales, sales, sales cyclevelocity, because everyone says,
Well, hey, you know onemarketing hands off to sales.
It's not really, no, it 1,000%is still your until that becomes
a qualified opportunity. If weare being attributed as
marketers, and we are being heldaccountable for our association
(29:54):
to revenue, then we really haveto understand the, you know,
this is a what is the salescycle velocity of this, right?
We and if we don't understandthat metric, we're going to go
to the board, and we're going tobe like, we generated X amount
of leads and turned into, youknow, 50 opportunities. And if
we don't, if we cannot answer,by the way, you're not going to
see the revenue and return onthis in six months, because
(30:15):
that's a sales cycle. That's thestandard sales cycle as a
company that we're hitting, thenyou're going to be held
accountable for, well, okay, howmany of those are? And you're
gonna have to answer thosequestions on the fly. So sales
cycle, you know, I describe thisas marketing, is that one person
in school, on the team projectthat has to just make sure
(30:36):
everything and everyone is doingtheir job. That's I get it. I
get it. I get people don't wantto hear that, but that's it.
We're that person, right? Wherethat person that says, Did the
sales following up with thesepeople? Because we're not a we
marketing qualified people. Andyou go do what you got to do
now, yeah, hence the rise of theCRO and revenue operation,
(31:00):
people who can consistently seeit over it, and that's where
CMOs and marketing teams aregetting bumped down, and we're
losing credibility. They'relike, Okay, well, we're just
gonna hire someone to do it. Soyou have to be able to you have
to understand that you are theteam lead, the group lead, part
of the person that's making surethe team project is on time. You
got to make sure that the salesis that you just have to do it
(31:21):
in this day and range.
That's it. I told you that thiswas going to be a hard
conversation for the audience,but hey, here, here we are
right. Like, okay, fantastic. Imean, stay up on your soapbox a
little bit longer, Raja, becausefor this next question, man,
like a status quo in your areaof expertise that you
passionately disagree with, andwhy?
(31:46):
I think I actually just kind ofcovered a little bit of that on
the last so, yeah, it's, youknow, if we're talking
specifically to marketers,right? So if your sales cover
years, right? A sales job isvery simple, in my opinion. You
know, you sell deals, you have aquota. You don't meet that
quota, you're not working atthat company anymore, right? As
(32:06):
marketers, the reason the riseof what we consider revenue
operations. And if you Googlerevenue operations, the idea is
to see everything marketing,sales and customer success. And
then, if you like, really godown to the second page, they
add on like seven other thingsthat's, you know, finances and
also stuff. But the reality is,that's what revenue operations
(32:28):
as a revenue operations leaderis supposed to do.
The what I passionately disagreewith is that CMOs can't do the
same thing. A chief marketingofficer has to be able to see
all of those components in orderto ensure marketing is being
success like marketing issuccessful. And I think the this
(32:51):
obsession with handoffs right isjust so ludicrous that when you
do the handoff, you don't knowhow revenue is being impacted.
And if you don't know if revenueis being impacted, and the
executives don't know how yourcontribution to revenue is being
impacted, then you are, youknow, for lack of better world,
(33:13):
a resource that is tangible andjust kind of spending their days
spinning the wheels, right? Sorevenue matters, and this is why
I say that when we talk aboutKPIs, it's these things that you
want to measure, and revenue,and revenue sits alone, and you
have to not focus on it, andyou're not attributed to it like
sales is. But you have tounderstand what revenue is being
(33:37):
generated of your marketinginitiatives, and if that means
you're the one doing it, thatmeans you're the one doing
right? So it's not like you haveto measure a quarter, like, you
know, there's like I talkedabout, like, brand equity
market, market Trust, thecustomer education, those are
strategic assets that involveyou and increase your brand
(33:57):
presence. And marketing ownsthat. But for the longest time,
we owned a lot more. Now we justown those because we are not
seen as people that understandit. And I think that's the
biggest thing, is that ifleadership cuts Those in favor
of what's immediatelyattributed, you end up with a
short term pipeline. And I thinkthe reason we look at short term
(34:19):
pipeline is because we'veremoved ourselves by ourselves,
like we've removed ourselvesfrom the conversation of being a
strategic support to thecompany, and, as you know, like,
just kind of fluff type, kind ofconcepts. So I think, like, you
know, if I disagree with theidea that marketing has to back
off, I disagree with the ideathat there is handoff like no if
(34:42):
you're if you're a CMO, andyou're in marketing, you need to
understand the customer, youneed to understand the prospect,
and you need to understand endto end, what's going on in order
to better structure yourmarketing campaigns, which, by
the way, not a lot of people, Iguess. Get that tape. But hey,
that is what it is.
There you are, man, there youare. You know, that's also part
(35:05):
of the reason why a lot ofpeople internally within the
organization view marketing as acost center versus a profit
center, right?
And that term of marketing is acost center is, I wouldn't say
it's necessarily new. It's newin the age of martech.
Yes.
During the martech boom, I thinkwhat it exposed was the
(35:27):
inability for marketers toinvolve themselves into a
broader conversation than justmarketing. And I think that's
where the idea is like, well,you're going to be looked as a
cost center, if you cannotattribute, if you cannot show,
and you don't understand thesales side of things, I'm not
saying you have to sell. Youjust have to understand what the
(35:49):
sales, velocity, volume,everything that we mentioned
before is. And if you don'tunderstand how long it takes you
to close an opportunity, thenyou don't know how many leads
someone needs. How manymarketing qualified I'm using
air quotes here. How manymarketing qualified leads you
need to generate to fit intoyour sales velocity? And if you
don't know that metric, thenyou're just going to be, once
again, you're going to be lookedat as someone that is costing
(36:11):
the company money.
Absolutely, absolutely. Okay.Raja, two more questions. I'm
gonna let you go, all right. Sohere comes the bonus question.
So, if you were to, if you wereto go back and learn a new
skill, what would it be and why?
Well, not as, yeah, I got like,three follow up questions that
call that question, okay, whattime period are we talking
(36:35):
about, right? If we were to goback, like, doing the martech
boom, are we talking about priorto martech? Like, give me a
little bit.
All right. Like, maybe I'llsimplify it. Like, go back
maybe, maybe 10 years ago.
Stock investments. No, I'm justkidding. I would really want to
(36:55):
focus more on, like.
I'm not sure if this is a skillor a tech, but the outcomes, I
think, a lot of in my life, Ilearned what I'm talking about
now. I learned very later inlife, I was a very I was a
solutions architect and adeveloper my entire life, right?
Okay? And I didn't understandall of these reasons. I just
(37:16):
wanted to finish what I neededto finish. And I think
understanding the businessdetails, I'm not sure if this is
directly asking, answering yourquestion, but understanding how
everything that I've donerelates to some sort of
business.
Okay.
Outcome.
Yeah.
Would actually probably havehelped me sell myself even a
little bit better, as I was kindof like, coming up and up.
Yeah, yeah. Well, I think...
(37:37):
And if you're looking for moreof like, Yeah, and if they're
looking for more technicalunderstanding that I would
probably say, definitely morecoding, definitely a little bit
more hands on coding from apersonal perspective.
Okay, okay, yeah, that wouldhave been the thing that I would
have gone back and learned too,because, um, I can't, I can't
(37:58):
write a line of code to save mylife, but...
I know how to hack and slash it,but, like, raw code is a little
bit, yes, it's especially alittle bit different, which is
kind of weird when you say that,Oh, you have a solutions
architect and a dev devbackground, but it's definitely
inside products from a devperspective, not like a true
Dev.
Yeah, yeah. Absolutely,absolutely. Raja, this has been
(38:19):
a great conversation, so thanksagain for your time and for
sharing your experience with thelisteners. Quick introduction
yourself and how folks out therecan give in touch with you.
Yeah, so my name is Raja. I'vebeen inside marketing as kind of
like I've been in marketingprior to the tech boom, back
since about 2011 when productstarted rolling out, I was
(38:39):
essentially there at theepicenter of it, and learned all
the products. Failed a lot aswell. A lot of my experience
actually comes from failures asmuch as successes. To tell you
the truth, because when peoplewere learning technology, you
were just kind of figuring stuffout. So I've been doing it. I've
been in the strategic side ofthings. I've been in the dev
side of things I've done, youknow, I've worked for
(39:01):
corporations. I've worked for,you know, mid size businesses,
to startups, and then I startedmy own agency here by come about
2018 people can reach out to medirectly by, you know, just
going to the website, my emails,Raja,
https://gnwconsulting.com/. Butif any questions on what we do
and what we how we help, or howwe operate, you know, with all
of our clients in this capacity,which is, which are very
(39:23):
passionate about, is that we'renot a marketing agency where,
you know our operations agency,we're a martech driven strategic
agency. And it's, it's, it'sfilling in these gaps, because
that's what we're being asked todo.
Right, right. Fantastic,fantastic. Thanks again for your
time. Um, take care, stay safeand talk to you soon.
Awesome. Thank you, Christian.Take care.
Failed implementations can putB2B marketers at risk of losing
(00:03):
credibility and budget. Theyneed to plan properly, take
calculated risks and always havea backup plan. So how can
marketing teams ensure theirmartech implementation is geared
up for success? Welcome to thisepisode of the B2B Marketers on
a Mission podcast, and I'm yourhost, Christian Klepp. Today,
I'll be talking to Raja Walia,who'll be answering this
question. He's the founder andCEO of GNW Consulting, a
(00:27):
strategic marketing operationsagency that specializes in
helping companies navigate thecomplexities of marketing
technology. Tune in to find outmore about what this B2B
marketers mission is. You Mr.Raja Walia, welcome to the show,
Sir.
Hey. Thank you for having me,Christian.
(00:48):
Great to have you on the show,Raja. And I'm really looking
forward to this conversation,because I think a part of this
is going to be a little bit of atougher discussion, and that's
just a bit of a hint of what'sto come. That said, I think it's
an extremely importantconversation to have. And B2B,
marketers really need to bepaying attention to this stuff.
(01:08):
So let's dive right in. Raja,you're on a mission to provide
companies with the strategicguidance needed to adapt to the
ever evolving martech landscape.So for this conversation, I want
to focus on the following topic,how marketing teams can ensure
their martech implementation isgeared up for success. So just
to provide the audience with abit of context, your company so
(01:32):
GNW consulting, in partnershipwith demand metric, you recently
launched the state of martechimplementation report, and that
was based on insights from morethan 200 marketing leaders. So I
want to kick off theconversation with this question,
how do failed implementationsput marketing teams at risk of
losing credibility and budget?
(01:54):
No, it's a good question, andone of the reasons that we
generated the report is, I thinkit's very crucial, especially in
today's economy where, you know,budgets are kind of being hit as
much as possible, and marketingis always under the gun. Because
you got to realize thatexecutive level outcomes are all
realistically that matter. Sowhen we think about the idea of
a failed implementation, whatwe're really thinking about is
(02:17):
what was promised and whatdidn't occur. And that's how at
the executive board level,generally, we look at it. So
it's not only that the CMO takesa hit, you know, it's the
finance gets involved and startsquestioning whether marketing
should really be trusted withbudget at all at that point,
right? What execs and generallywhat marketing teams kind of get
(02:39):
is that failure usually kind ofstarts from an implementation
perspective by not having it'snot bad tech. It's the idea of
what the business goals andoutcomes are. And we tend to
fall down this rabbit hole of akind of like a traditional
motion of implementation,whereas in the current state of
(02:59):
things, it's a technicalimplementation aligned with what
the business is set toaccomplish, and we don't, as
marketers, we don't reallyconvey that like, we don't
really like, emphasize how it'sgoing to solve bigger problems.
So I think the idea behind thereport, realistically, was that
we lose credibility becausewe're so focused on the
(03:21):
technical that we don't reallyoperate and say this is what the
business is doing better nowthan they were doing before. And
that's generally, I think we'renot, we're not factoring those
we're not factoring those ideaswell enough, and we're just
focusing on the tech and howwell the tech is implemented.
(03:43):
Absolutely, absolutely. Maybethis is stated in the report.
But I'd also like to get yourperspective, just from your
experience, right like, and Iknow, I know that this can go
down several different paths,but just Why do you think fail
like, implementations fail likefrom a general perspective,
(04:04):
like, where do marketing teamsget it wrong generally?
So I think, from a if you thinklogistically about
implementations, it's the ideaof what you're doing and how
it's going to help the businessgrow. Once again, executives
don't really look at Tech thesame way that we look at Tech,
they see it as kind of an end toa means (means to an end). The
(04:25):
means (ends) is one of thethings, either grow the
business, expand the business,or market the business. So
realistically, what when wetreat implementations, just like
a system implementation or asystem greater enhancement? I
think that's like step one.That's where generally that
operational mindset starts,starts down the path of, okay,
(04:49):
now we are now we are focusingon just the technical outcome,
but not how it relates to whatthe goal of the business is. So
I think in. And it's a veryclear fix, like we worked with a
lot of companies, and the ideais like, what is the ownership
across functions and how is itgoing to relate to overall
business goals? That's aconversation that, generally, as
(05:12):
marketers, we need to have a lotmore of to say, what are we
solving for the business, ratherthan what are we implementing
for the business? And, you know,honestly, too many times we kind
of buy software, and they said,and we asked, well, what can it
do, which is completely oppositeof what we should be doing. We
should be going in with the ideaof, this is what the business is
(05:33):
trying to do. How does yoursoftware make our life easier or
fulfill this task? Right? And Ithink it's just a switch, and
it's just a switch, and thoughtprocess on when we how we look
at marketing technology.
Absolutely, absolutely. I'mgoing to move us on to the next
question about what are some ofthe key pitfalls that you think
(05:55):
marketing teams should beavoiding, and what should they
be doing instead?
So I think the reality of thisis that most what we outlined in
the report is that mostimplementations actually fail
before even the kickoff of theimplementation that happens,
right? So we assume thatimplementations are a checklist
(06:15):
of things that need to be done.Milestone. You know, we base
everything off on milestones,cut overs, and we treat it like
kind of an operational shift,more of a changing of the
guards, kind of, so to speak,right? But we don't clarify
roles. We don't clarifyoutcomes. We don't map out
processes. We don't even kind ofreally, teams are brought in as
(06:37):
implementation is happening,rather than essentially aligning
with all these differentdepartments on where their goals
are and how technology is goingto fill those gaps. Right? It
doesn't matter how good the toolis. It all depends on how each
department sometimes is going touse it.
So when we talk about teams who,you know, generally buy
software, that's, that's whatthe pitfall of it, right? The
(06:59):
biggest hole is kind of a doubleedged knife like the state of
martech report shows thatmarketing software has increased
by a ridiculous amount over thelast 10 years. So it's more
we're buying software and we'renot solving business problems,
(07:19):
and that's one of it really. Wehave to treat implementations
like it's a business change, notan upgrade, right? We have to
budget for enablement. Andhere's the and that's the kick.
Thing about enablement is thatpeople tend to implement a
product and it's kind of like aI win button, right? Like you
hit the button and it's justgoing to run. And the reality
is, there's an entire changemanagement there's an adoption
(07:42):
process that we fail to kind oftake. We just think the software
is going to get set up. We'regoing to hire someone, and
they're just going to take itover. And the reality is they
when we don't have conversationsabout who owns what and what the
business is attempting to dowith a product, then at that
point, it just becomes anothersoftware solution that someone
is operating out of which doesnot relate, which just does not
(08:03):
trickle upstream. It does nothave any relationship to what
the business goals is, whetherwhat the business goal is or
what the outcome that'sexpected. So if no one owns that
kind of the results, and noone's accountable for the
failure, it's going to go backto whoever started that
initiative, which in this caseis going to be the marketing
team. So, yeah.
You brought up a really greatpoint, and I've seen that go
(08:26):
awry sometimes, like it's thatcomplete lack of ownership, that
lack of clarity from the get goof who is owning this, who is
responsible for whatever task itis and whichever milestones, and
even even that, even thatchecking in process so called,
right? Like, as you're as you'removing along in the
implementation, right?
Yeah. I mean, we're so focusedon milestones of data points of
(08:49):
when implementation has to besuccessful. There's no
milestones on, hey, are we? Arewe close to hitting what the
business intended to do? Are weclose to addressing all of the
reasons why we need software.The milestones are always just
very heavily focused on, we needto have this much data, or this
needs to be set up by this date.And that's, once again, that's
(09:12):
not, in my opinion, that's notworth investing in, like, you
know, as the owner of a company,I'm not investing in, when all
our data is going to be movedfrom one location to the other
location. It's, do we need allthe data, or are we trying to do
something better with it? That'sthe goal, right? When we're
trying to make things easier,more efficient, you know, we're
trying to scale things. We'retrying to onboard, like, there
(09:33):
has to be an end result, notjust a product to product shift,
which honestly is not reallyworth investing in and that's
when we talk about, like,budgets getting cut. That's when
budgets getting get cut. That'swhen we lose, you know, the
quote, unquote seat at the tableis because you're not trusted to
understand how business impactis being applied to software.
(09:54):
Absolutely, absolutely, um,based on the report and also
your experience. Of course, whatdo you believe is the hidden
revenue impact of misalignedtechnology investments?
So based on the report, I thinkthere's a kind of a clear
understanding that revenuemarkers, and whether it's in the
(10:14):
in the capacity ofopportunities, in the capacity
of going up to bat, so to speak,getting enough data, getting
enough leads to Century pitch tothat there is a equivalency of
that in relationship to what thecost of what the cost of
implementing this, right? So ifwe just look at from a revenue
(10:35):
like, there isn't a hard number,however, it's the efficiency of
delaying campaigns, not having astaff appropriated and
understanding how to how to workinside the environment that lead
to downstream effects. Right?The short term revenue is the
cost of the products that you'reimplementing. Right? It's the
(10:56):
cost of the resources that arethat you've been staffed with.
It's the cost of partners thatyou've kind of partnered with.
That's a short term goal, butreally the emphasis is, where
does revenue impact? And it'sit's co it's a compounding value
over time. It's a slow system.It, you know, leads to campaign
launches being, not going, notbeing, essentially set on time,
(11:21):
routing sales follow ups.
I mean, the number one, thefirst complaint of a mismanaged
implementation, is the salesteam raising their hand and
saying, Hey, we don't see asingle lead, or we don't see a
single prospect that we can workwith. Like, there's pipeline
inconsistencies that arehappening, right? And that's
where the first complaints starthappening. Well, now if you
think about what a sales team issupposed to be doing, is now
(11:44):
they're more spending more timeworking outside of the system,
rather than within the system.So the delay in, I mean, they
still have to hit their theystill have to hit their quotas.
So the delay in understandingwhat that system is really
providing goes away. Well, nowyou have, you might have bad
data issues, right? But from aleadership takeaway perspective,
(12:05):
it's the long term revenueimpact of and I'm trying to
think of the exact number that'sessentially that they provided,
but it's, it's upwards independing on the size of the
business. A small size businesswill see impact in hundreds and
$1,000 of revenue, and anenterprise will see million
dollars of impact based off onthe report, over over time, over
(12:28):
the compounding of just thingsnot working as they intended,
over a period of time.
I mean, the the part where youbrought up the issue with sales,
where they're talking about,like pipeline inconsistencies, I
think was the word that you usedthat in itself would already be
a bit of a red flag, because ifthe sales already start
complaining about that, thatcan, that can have a snowball
(12:52):
effect on the entireimplementation.
Yeah, and you know, a lot ofthat isn't uncovered prior to
implementation happening, and alot of is uncovered post
implementation, where the budgethas already been spent. So at
that point, you're kind ofcreating a band aid solution,
right? The idea behind thisreport is that there's different
out of the executives that wekind of interviewed for the
(13:13):
report. There's a varying degreeof what the revenue impact is,
because each business modelworks different. Each sales
pipeline, sales stages and salesfunnels work differently. But
the idea is that no matter howyou dissect it, you know, we
could give some arbitrarynumber, like, hey, you know, you
have millions of dollars and $2million of impact, you know, per
(13:34):
quarter. The reality is due tothe inefficiencies of
implementation and themisalignment. There is a bleed
effect of revenue quarter overquarter, because it's an end in
two aspects. One is justreaching out to appropriate
people to read another at theright time, and two, just
missing opportunities that salesis either not taking the
(13:57):
consideration or have glazedover. It could be 100% of a very
valued opportunity. Andmarketing could be right, that
this person is qualified andthey want to do business with
us, but the precedence hasalready been set that there is
no trust there, so the saleswill move off of their own move.
It will work on their own kindof basis, right? And I think
(14:17):
there's an idea of that, isthat, yes, there is a revenue
impact long term. Everyone inthe report has said there is
revenue impact. If you want toconcrete dollar value, that's a
little bit tough based onbusiness development.
Absolutely, absolutely. And youbrought you brought up one
topic, Raja, which I thought wasa great segue to the next
question about the importanceof, you know, preventing this
(14:39):
implementation failure. What'sthe importance of conducting the
right research, having the rightplan in place before any of this
When we usually start, and whenand when we usually start and we
happens.
have these conversations, thegoal is to build a build a
system based off on data andfacts. If you build a system or
migrate to a system becauseyou've used it before, it's
around assumption, that's a verydangerous game to play, right?
(15:02):
So you don't want to just launchsomething. You want to scale
intelligently and effectively,and that can only kind of happen
when you have a really goodblueprint and understanding of
what the business use cases. Youhave to know where the process
gaps are. You have to know ifyour data is even ready for it,
right? There's a lot of times,and you've ran into this too,
Christian, as well. We'restarting implementation, not
(15:25):
knowing what the datalimitations are, not connecting
with the data team. And thenyou're, you're in the thick of
it, and you're implementing, andthe data is like, hey, the data,
data is not going to be readyfor three months. Boom. What is
that going to cost the company? Right?
What is the cost of the company?And here's one thing before I
get into like, what we can do tosolve it, is that the what the
(15:47):
report showed is that there'sdata and revenue, and let's just
say, Let's not talk aboutrevenue. Let's just say money,
right? There's money being loston both ends, the cost of
implementation, and delayingimplementation of a product
because you're already spendingmoney to do it. And two, the
downstream effects of all ofthat. So not only is your budget
getting hit that you're losingmoney in your investment that
(16:10):
could have been, you know, whoknows? You could have spent it
on hard works and generated, youknow, maybe a couple leads, or
whatever it is that you couldhave attributed to and two the
downstream effects of actuallyhaving an improper
implementation. So really, whatthat said is, like, if you're a
leader in the space, what youreally have to push for, then
you really have to push againstis the idea of doing something
(16:33):
quickly and fast, and say, whatare we trying to solve? Like
that is the number one question,regardless of what a platform
does. You know at this point,you know, we're a pretty we're
pretty tech agnostic company.I've been inside all of these
platforms for the last 15 years,and the reality is, like, what
are you trying to solve as abusiness? What is your goal? And
(16:53):
if you don't know that yourimplementation is already off to
the wrong foot, second, who'sinvolved? What are the teams
that it's going to impact,right, in our you know, and I
can kind of generally answerthat question, since we're, you
know, it's, we're in a B2Bmarketing podcast, it's
generally going to be marketing,it's generally going to be
sales, it's generally going tobe customer success, right?
(17:15):
Like, those are the teams thatare going to be involved.
And one follow up question islike, what are you trying to do
better, right? What? What arethe data points that you're
trying to hit that make is goingto make this entire
implementation shift worth it,which is a question that rarely
gets asked, right? It's we'reimplementing this project or
product fix it into what you do.And I think the kind of the main
(17:39):
thing is like, what does successmean and how does it show up to
each of these teams? Sales willanswer. I need to know when to
contact someone. I need thosesignals because that's very
crucial to me, customer successand the customer customer
success teams would be like Ineed to know when people are up
for renewals if you're in alicensing subscription model. I
need to know if they're havingan issue with product
(18:01):
onboarding. I need to know, youknow, financially, how the
business is doing, what arebecause they need to know all of
these things from a renewalperspective, are they even using
the platform? You know, so thattype of like, if you were to
take, like, those three thingsbefore you even start investing
into what technologies thatstrategy is going to protect
(18:22):
your budget from being frombeing spent twice. One to do it,
once, to implement it, another,to fix it, right? And if this,
those are very, three, very goodquestions before you even go
down the rabbit hole of lookingat 15,000 pieces of technology
that you may or may not need.
Fantastic, fantastic. Yeah,absolutely. And I think, I
(18:42):
think, with that, you alreadyanswered the next question about
the actionable tips, becausethat's, that's pretty much what
it is, right?
Yeah. So I'll say this thoughI'll expand on to it. Those are
three high level items, butlet's expand on to the idea of,
like, real world scenarios thatleaders have to expect, right?
(19:03):
And this is, this is somethingthat you take away and you write
it down on a sticky note, andyou just stick it there, and
you're saying, Hey, I'm going toimplement something for sales,
or I'm gonna implement somethingfrom marketing. And it's
universal, no matter whatbusiness you work at, right? You
want to audit and execution yourbottlenecks. Where are the
handoffs or campaigns, slowingdown tech at that point should
(19:24):
be a lever to move them, not ablocker, if it's a blocker, or
if it's not needed, or ifthere's a workaround, then you
really have to look at, am Iinvesting something to fix a
process, or am I investingsomething because of tech? And
this is one of the most crucialthings, especially if you're in
the C-suite, and you're amarketer, so CMO, CROs, you have
(19:46):
to tie you have to speak thelanguage of the board, the
committee, the CEO, whoever itis, you have to speak their
language. You have to say thisproduct and this feature is
going to help us achieve thisbusiness goal. If. Can't map it
to sales efficiency, pipelinehealth, customer retention.
Question is, why did we pay forit?
(20:06):
Number one question that getsasked, why did we pay for it, if
it's not going to increase salesefficiency, if we're not
impacting our pipeline health ormoving people, and if it's not
retaining customers, what is thepurpose behind the product?
Right? And people will argue onthat argue on that point. There
are certain things written.There are certain things that
(20:27):
people will say, Well, whatabout PR (Public Relations) for
example, what about brandrecognition? We can't really tie
that to a revenue. And onceagain, I clarify. It's not
revenue. It's a goal. Brand isthe perception of your company.
It makes sales more efficient assellers, if you're a recognized
business, sales can leverage it,right? So I want to make sure I
understand and make sure Idifferentiate between tying
(20:50):
everything to businessinitiatives. Does not mean tying
it to revenue. It's tying it towhat the outcomes are, right?
And while also you got toinvolve your go to market
stakeholders. This is, you know,personally, I've been inside the
space for long enough, and evenin the implementation report,
sales, customer success,marketing operations usually get
(21:14):
involved after a decision ismade. They actually, you should
really be aligning them withthat before launch, because
that's what hub that helps andavoid rebuilds or restructures.
And the number one thing thatgets skipped when I'm gonna
throw it out to you, Christian,what do you think the number one
thing that gets skipped in allof implementations is.
Oof.
(21:34):
That's, let's forget technology.Let's forget everything else.
That's all of the stuff. But thenumber one thing that really
kind of impacts how your systemis going to be used over time.
Well, what about auditing what'scurrently working?
So auditing what's currentlyworking, but also enablement of
(21:54):
your team that's going to bemanaging the platform. No one
budgets for it. No one says,Hey, we've implemented this.
We're going to have some sort ofongoing training. So as you
know, here's the crazy part.People might be surprised to
learn this, but softwareproducts have updates, and they
have quarterly updates, monthlyupdates, right? They have they
have biannually updates.Sometimes there's hot fixes that
(22:17):
completely breaks it. No onetakes into account what the cost
of investing and budgeting foractual hands on training really
means? It's not a training thatis post implementation support.
It's what is your internal teamgoing to need in order to
operate the system withoutconstant external help. And I
(22:38):
know that sounds really funny,coming from an agency that is
really built a model aroundexternal help. But the reality
is, things are going to productis going to change. An update
could come up, come across, andcompletely bypass a flow or a
workflow or some sort oftechnical thing that you set up
right? And then that's thereality of software.
(22:58):
But no one invests in thatconstant update of products.
People invest in implementation,and they may, they don't invest
in internal team. And the lastthing, because I like to doing
things in five. So feel five isa lucky number. Start with a
narrow MVP right now. Let'sprove an impact with a small use
case, and then let's expand it.Once the system earns trust in
internally farming far too manytimes a leadership team sits
(23:22):
there and paints this picture ofa beautiful, utopian view of a
system that is so cohesive onceimplementation is done. And, you
know, implementation, to me, isjust the starting point, right?
So narrow your MVP (MinimumViable Product) into what you
can solve a it'll save youmoney, because you won't need a
bunch of features. Remember, youknow, features can always be
added on, on later in time. ButI think if you take those like
(23:45):
five things when it comes to belike as a B2B marketer and as a
leader, and you take those intoconsideration, it's really hard
to make sure, it's really hardto have a failed implementation
when all those things are along.
Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely,absolutely. And you know that
point you said about updates, Iwould even throw in, and this
may or may not be completelyoff, but also anticipating that
(24:08):
sometimes with software, withtechnology, things can go wrong,
and you need to have a backupplan for that, right? And
perhaps this is a bit farfetched, but I think we all
remember the CrowdStrike outage.
Yeah.
Right?
Or even, or even a domainoutage, or even even, I should
even, even necessarily asomething with it was the most
recent one. We received anotification one of the
(24:30):
platforms that we said thatthere was an outage to the cloud
server that hosted everythingyou couldn't get access to a
product. Remember this slack?How did, yes, people even know
what to do, right? Like, I'm notsure you have to implement
slide, but these things happeneven at the highest tier of
companies that own theseproducts and people. And I'll
tell you, because you're like,people do not budget for it.
(24:51):
Companies do not budget fortheir internal teams to make
sure that they're, you know,understanding what the system
updates are and what they'repushing. So when something.
Happens. You know, it's like,Oh, I'll get a coffee until
systems are back. And then theexecutive team's like, wait,
wait, wait, wait, wait, we needto figure out what's going on
here.
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely,okay. Metrics, so in terms of
(25:17):
what we've been talking aboutnow, what metrics do you think
marketing teams should be payingattention to, and why?
I'm gonna say revenue, andthat's all I'm gonna say about
it, because that is the ultimategoal. If you're a for profit
business, the end goal ofmetrics is a no brainer, that
you have to be contributing,attributing, influencing some
(25:38):
sort of revenue statistics. Ifthat is, that is mandatory, that
is the baseline minimum that youhave to be doing, right for if
you're a for profitorganization. Now let's talk
about, let's forget vanitymetrics. No one cares about open
clicks and conversion rates andstuff like. Let's focus on the
tactical and operational onesthat impact a business rhythm,
(26:02):
like a business flow. Let's justsay, time to campaign. How fast
are you prepared to get acampaign out the door? How fast
are you able to pivot with astrategy, assuming that there's
a fluctuation in the market? Andyou know, I can tell you a
couple of examples, veryspecifically, of a product
launch that fell on the same dayas a outage. How fast can you
(26:28):
pivot to not have a productlaunch on that day? Right? And
can you convey that informationeffectively enough to the
leadership to say, hey, it wouldbe it would not impact us. We're
not going to get good resultsout of this, right? So what is
your time to campaign? What isyour time to pivot and change
based off sales response tohandoff? Right? I think it's
(26:51):
very clear to say that we don'tlive in 2018 anymore, or 2015 or
2013 when marketing and saleshad at least 24 hours, maybe 48
hours to respond.
I don't want to say it'sinstantaneous. However, it's
sales response times. If youhaven't view as your you know
your listeners and yourselfhaven't realized she'll be fine.
(27:12):
Go in, yeah, yeah. You fill outa form, you get a call almost
immediately, right? I'm notsaying that's the best way to do
it, depending on the productthat you're selling, but what is
your response? What is your postlead handoff, when sales call
someone, when something isidentified, and if you can tell
at the executive level, oursales response time is this fast
or this this clarified. That's avery good metric. And if you
(27:35):
don't know it, and you'relistening and you don't know
that metric, that would be avery good starting point,
because that's what tells you asa business how fast we're going
to mark, how fast our salesteams are reaching out
conversion from lead. And here'sthe kicker, not marketing
qualified. You can have aseparate conversation on my
whole stance on marketingqualified leads, but from when a
(27:57):
person is created to a qualifiedopportunity.
Now I've jumped, if youprobably, if you're, if you're
in the traditional sense of theworld. I probably jumped lead to
contact conversion to, you know,I jumped the anonymous to known,
to engage, to qualify to sales,accepted to sales, qualified to
(28:21):
opportunity. I've jumped all ofthat from lead to qualified op.
The reason being, everythingelse in the middle is fluff.
Right from an executivestandpoint, you can tell me, I
have 1000 marketing qualifiedleads at the end of the day.
Qualified Ops is what you'remeasuring against, no matter
what. That's just the day, andthen also your influence and
attribute like what youattributed to those qualified
(28:42):
ops. Seven years ago, eightyears ago, those conversion
metrics were all over the place,right? Oh, we generated, you
know, 1000 marketing qualifiers.We sales accepted this much, and
sales qualified this andnowadays it's okay, cool. All of
that stuff doesn't matter howmany qualified opportunities.
What is their percentage ofclothes? That's what they care
about. So I bypass the otherstuff. It's not and once again,
(29:05):
I want to clarify once again,I'm not saying that it's not
important. I'm not saying thatwe have to do all of those
things, but to answer thequestion, what are the key
metrics that marketers should bepaying attention to? We should
be paying attention to how fastleads are getting converted into
qualified opportunities.
Everything else that we do wehave to do, it's part of the
business, right? No matter what.And then probably some marketers
(29:31):
are probably not going to hearlike me saying this, one go, but
sales, sales, sales cyclevelocity, because everyone says,
Well, hey, you know onemarketing hands off to sales.
It's not really, no, it 1,000%is still your until that becomes
a qualified opportunity. If weare being attributed as
marketers, and we are being heldaccountable for our association
(29:54):
to revenue, then we really haveto understand the, you know,
this is a what is the salescycle velocity of this, right?
We and if we don't understandthat metric, we're going to go
to the board, and we're going tobe like, we generated X amount
of leads and turned into, youknow, 50 opportunities. And if
we don't, if we cannot answer,by the way, you're not going to
see the revenue and return onthis in six months, because
(30:15):
that's a sales cycle. That's thestandard sales cycle as a
company that we're hitting, thenyou're going to be held
accountable for, well, okay, howmany of those are? And you're
gonna have to answer thosequestions on the fly. So sales
cycle, you know, I describe thisas marketing, is that one person
in school, on the team projectthat has to just make sure
(30:36):
everything and everyone is doingtheir job. That's I get it. I
get it. I get people don't wantto hear that, but that's it.
We're that person, right? Wherethat person that says, Did the
sales following up with thesepeople? Because we're not a we
marketing qualified people. Andyou go do what you got to do
now, yeah, hence the rise of theCRO and revenue operation,
(31:00):
people who can consistently seeit over it, and that's where
CMOs and marketing teams aregetting bumped down, and we're
losing credibility. They'relike, Okay, well, we're just
gonna hire someone to do it. Soyou have to be able to you have
to understand that you are theteam lead, the group lead, part
of the person that's making surethe team project is on time. You
got to make sure that the salesis that you just have to do it
(31:21):
in this day and range.
That's it. I told you that thiswas going to be a hard
conversation for the audience,but hey, here, here we are
right. Like, okay, fantastic. Imean, stay up on your soapbox a
little bit longer, Raja, becausefor this next question, man,
like a status quo in your areaof expertise that you
passionately disagree with, andwhy?
(31:46):
I think I actually just kind ofcovered a little bit of that on
the last so, yeah, it's, youknow, if we're talking
specifically to marketers,right? So if your sales cover
years, right? A sales job isvery simple, in my opinion. You
know, you sell deals, you have aquota. You don't meet that
quota, you're not working atthat company anymore, right? As
(32:06):
marketers, the reason the riseof what we consider revenue
operations. And if you Googlerevenue operations, the idea is
to see everything marketing,sales and customer success. And
then, if you like, really godown to the second page, they
add on like seven other thingsthat's, you know, finances and
also stuff. But the reality is,that's what revenue operations
(32:28):
as a revenue operations leaderis supposed to do.
The what I passionately disagreewith is that CMOs can't do the
same thing. A chief marketingofficer has to be able to see
all of those components in orderto ensure marketing is being
success like marketing issuccessful. And I think the this
(32:51):
obsession with handoffs right isjust so ludicrous that when you
do the handoff, you don't knowhow revenue is being impacted.
And if you don't know if revenueis being impacted, and the
executives don't know how yourcontribution to revenue is being
impacted, then you are, youknow, for lack of better world,
(33:13):
a resource that is tangible andjust kind of spending their days
spinning the wheels, right? Sorevenue matters, and this is why
I say that when we talk aboutKPIs, it's these things that you
want to measure, and revenue,and revenue sits alone, and you
have to not focus on it, andyou're not attributed to it like
sales is. But you have tounderstand what revenue is being
(33:37):
generated of your marketinginitiatives, and if that means
you're the one doing it, thatmeans you're the one doing
right? So it's not like you haveto measure a quarter, like, you
know, there's like I talkedabout, like, brand equity
market, market Trust, thecustomer education, those are
strategic assets that involveyou and increase your brand
(33:57):
presence. And marketing ownsthat. But for the longest time,
we owned a lot more. Now we justown those because we are not
seen as people that understandit. And I think that's the
biggest thing, is that ifleadership cuts Those in favor
of what's immediatelyattributed, you end up with a
short term pipeline. And I thinkthe reason we look at short term
(34:19):
pipeline is because we'veremoved ourselves by ourselves,
like we've removed ourselvesfrom the conversation of being a
strategic support to thecompany, and, as you know, like,
just kind of fluff type, kind ofconcepts. So I think, like, you
know, if I disagree with theidea that marketing has to back
off, I disagree with the ideathat there is handoff like no if
(34:42):
you're if you're a CMO, andyou're in marketing, you need to
understand the customer, youneed to understand the prospect,
and you need to understand endto end, what's going on in order
to better structure yourmarketing campaigns, which, by
the way, not a lot of people, Iguess. Get that tape. But hey,
that is what it is.
There you are, man, there youare. You know, that's also part
(35:05):
of the reason why a lot ofpeople internally within the
organization view marketing as acost center versus a profit
center, right?
And that term of marketing is acost center is, I wouldn't say
it's necessarily new. It's newin the age of martech.
Yes.
During the martech boom, I thinkwhat it exposed was the
(35:27):
inability for marketers toinvolve themselves into a
broader conversation than justmarketing. And I think that's
where the idea is like, well,you're going to be looked as a
cost center, if you cannotattribute, if you cannot show,
and you don't understand thesales side of things, I'm not
saying you have to sell. Youjust have to understand what the
(35:49):
sales, velocity, volume,everything that we mentioned
before is. And if you don'tunderstand how long it takes you
to close an opportunity, thenyou don't know how many leads
someone needs. How manymarketing qualified I'm using
air quotes here. How manymarketing qualified leads you
need to generate to fit intoyour sales velocity? And if you
don't know that metric, thenyou're just going to be, once
again, you're going to be lookedat as someone that is costing
(36:11):
the company money.
Absolutely, absolutely. Okay.Raja, two more questions. I'm
gonna let you go, all right. Sohere comes the bonus question.
So, if you were to, if you wereto go back and learn a new
skill, what would it be and why?
Well, not as, yeah, I got like,three follow up questions that
call that question, okay, whattime period are we talking
(36:35):
about, right? If we were to goback, like, doing the martech
boom, are we talking about priorto martech? Like, give me a
little bit.
All right. Like, maybe I'llsimplify it. Like, go back
maybe, maybe 10 years ago.
Stock investments. No, I'm justkidding. I would really want to
(36:55):
focus more on, like.
I'm not sure if this is a skillor a tech, but the outcomes, I
think, a lot of in my life, Ilearned what I'm talking about
now. I learned very later inlife, I was a very I was a
solutions architect and adeveloper my entire life, right?
Okay? And I didn't understandall of these reasons. I just
(37:16):
wanted to finish what I neededto finish. And I think
understanding the businessdetails, I'm not sure if this is
directly asking, answering yourquestion, but understanding how
everything that I've donerelates to some sort of
business.
Okay.
Outcome.
Yeah.
Would actually probably havehelped me sell myself even a
little bit better, as I was kindof like, coming up and up.
Yeah, yeah. Well, I think...
(37:37):
And if you're looking for moreof like, Yeah, and if they're
looking for more technicalunderstanding that I would
probably say, definitely morecoding, definitely a little bit
more hands on coding from apersonal perspective.
Okay, okay, yeah, that wouldhave been the thing that I would
have gone back and learned too,because, um, I can't, I can't
(37:58):
write a line of code to save mylife, but...
I know how to hack and slash it,but, like, raw code is a little
bit, yes, it's especially alittle bit different, which is
kind of weird when you say that,Oh, you have a solutions
architect and a dev devbackground, but it's definitely
inside products from a devperspective, not like a true
Dev.
Yeah, yeah. Absolutely,absolutely. Raja, this has been
(38:19):
a great conversation, so thanksagain for your time and for
sharing your experience with thelisteners. Quick introduction
yourself and how folks out therecan give in touch with you.
Yeah, so my name is Raja. I'vebeen inside marketing as kind of
like I've been in marketingprior to the tech boom, back
since about 2011 when productstarted rolling out, I was
(38:39):
essentially there at theepicenter of it, and learned all
the products. Failed a lot aswell. A lot of my experience
actually comes from failures asmuch as successes. To tell you
the truth, because when peoplewere learning technology, you
were just kind of figuring stuffout. So I've been doing it. I've
been in the strategic side ofthings. I've been in the dev
side of things I've done, youknow, I've worked for
(39:01):
corporations. I've worked for,you know, mid size businesses,
to startups, and then I startedmy own agency here by come about
2018 people can reach out to medirectly by, you know, just
going to the website, my emails,Raja,
https://gnwconsulting.com/. Butif any questions on what we do
and what we how we help, or howwe operate, you know, with all
of our clients in this capacity,which is, which are very
(39:23):
passionate about, is that we'renot a marketing agency where,
you know our operations agency,we're a martech driven strategic
agency. And it's, it's, it'sfilling in these gaps, because
that's what we're being asked todo.
Right, right. Fantastic,fantastic. Thanks again for your
time. Um, take care, stay safeand talk to you soon.
Awesome. Thank you, Christian.Take care.
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