October 27, 2025 • 30 mins
Join host Adam Larson for a lively conversation with entrepreneur, speaker, author, and president of VisionEdge Marketing, Laura Paterson. Drawing on decades of experience, Laura shares her practical wisdom on building stronger partnerships between marketing and finance in today’s data-driven organizations. Discover why learning to speak each other’s language and focusing on real business outcomes rather than budget line items leads to smarter decisions and meaningful growth.
Laura breaks down common traps like “random acts” of marketing, reveals how aligning around purpose improves performance, and gives actionable advice for CFOs and finance leaders who want to genuinely connect with their marketing counterparts. With real-world stories and plenty of energy, Laura discusses the transformative power of customer-centric strategies and outcome-based budgeting, all while highlighting the importance of using data for insight, not just information.
Perfect for anyone in marketing, finance, or leadership, this episode is packed with fresh ideas and relatable anecdotes that will inspire collaboration and drive success. If you’re ready to move from transaction to strategy and make a real impact. Don’t miss this engaging conversation.
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Episode Transcript
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Adam Larson (00:06):
Welcome back to Count Me In. I'm Adam Larson,
and today I have the pleasure ofspeaking with Laura Paterson, an
entrepreneur, author, speaker,and the president of VisionEdge
Marketing. Laura has spentdecades at the intersection of
marketing and finance, and she'shere to share her expert
perspective on what makes anideal partnership between the
teams in today's data drivenworld. We'll talk through common
(00:26):
pitfalls organizations face, howto move beyond traditional
budgeting to focus on strategicoutcomes, and why customer
centric strategies are socrucial for sustainable growth.
Laura's approach is packed withpractical advice, real world
stories, and innovative toolsthat any team, from the c suite
to the accounting and marketing,can put into action right away.
So are you eager to improvecollaboration and accountability
(00:48):
across your organization? Youwon't want to miss this
conversation, and let's getstarted. Well, Laura, I'm
excited to have you on thepodcast today. And you've worked
a lot with CFOs throughout yourcareer. And so I wanted to ask
you, you know, how would youdescribe the ideal partnership
between marketing and finance intoday's data driven environment?
Laura Paterson (01:13):
Well, Adam, thank you for having me, and I
am delighted to talk about thisis one of my favorite topics
having spent a huge part of myown career, you know, decades,
in this conversation betweenmarketing and finance. So,
obviously, know, like in anybusiness relationship, you gotta
have some mutual respect. But Ithink one of the things that
(01:34):
gets in the way oftentimesbetween marketing and finance is
language. So as marketers, wehave a language around all the
things that we create and do,and we like to speak in that
language. But finances speaks awhole different language.
So Mhmm. The best thing to buildthat relationship, and I believe
it falls on the shoulders ofthose of us in marketing, is to
(01:57):
be business people first andlearn and speak the language of
business when we're talking withfinance people. And the best
partnerships when they'reworking together, they are able
to eliminate a lot of randomacts. Those are those fragmented
sort of reactive things that popup in the marketer's world
almost every day because we haveso many new ideas and new
(02:19):
opportunities, but they canreally drain our resources and
dilute our impact. By having astrong and solid relationship
and partnership with finance, wecan make sure that we are
picking the right things thatmake the most sense for the
business.
Because, for example,segmentation, which takes a lot
of data to do really good, it'scustomer segmentation or market
(02:41):
segmentation. Gartner did someresearch and found that when you
have poor segmentation, youknow, it can cost your company,
like, 30% in revenue. So it's apretty we're not talking about a
small amount of money. So ifmarketing and finance can use
data, which we both are verycomfortable doing or should be
at this point in time in theworld, very comfortable with
(03:02):
data, we can use that as abridge. And by working together,
we can actually move beyond thatidea of just budgeting as a
relationship to actually a cocollaborative relationship
around growth andaccountability, making sure that
every investment that marketingis making on behalf of the
company is purposeful andmeasurable.
Adam Larson (03:23):
So I like that data driven, you know, is a huge
thing, especially, you know, inthe in our world with so much
data that's out there, andthere's so much to to sort
through, which means having gooddata analytics and a good team
looking at that is hugelyimportant. But I think I wanted
to start with, before we diginto that too much is, you know,
how do you break down that like,how do you how do you how do you
break down the communicationwalls? Because a lot of times in
(03:44):
the larger your organization is,the more silos are put up. The
smaller organizations, the kindof the more connected people
are. But how do you break thatsilo down and and kind of really
work on that language differenceand and connecting everybody?
Laura Paterson (03:56):
That's a good question too. And one of the
things I think that's importantthat you said is we have a lot
of data. Mhmm. But the realchallenge is to have insights
from that data. So oftentimes,the way to begin is to be have a
conversation about here's thedata I have.
Here's the data you have. Whatis it we can what are the
(04:17):
insights we're getting from thisdata? And how can we translate
that into something that it canenable us to grow our the
company or offset thecompetition or create a better
experience for the customer,whatever those conversations
might be. And if you can speakin those terms from the
perspective of the insights fromthe data, you can build a much
(04:40):
stronger relationship becausefinance can talk up in those
terms. They can talk about, Isee that we have this issue,
this challenge that's creatingmore friction or more in the in
the relationship with customersand our ability to serve them or
creating a greater effort in ourability to engage with them.
That's what the data is tellingus, which is why in marketing we
(05:01):
wanna do X, which is going tocost high. But if we do that, it
will affect have this result. Wecan speak like that. Finance
gets that. They can relate tothat.
So it doesn't have to be we'renot talking about things that
are just really difficult foranybody to do, whether you're a
small company, a big company, amarketing team of one or a large
(05:23):
organization, this is the kindof conversation we should have
every time. And when we areengaged or asked to do something
by some entity or person in theorganization, right, we're
always asked for something,whether I need a new white paper
or a new piece of content or I'dlike to make a new video or get
a new customer testimonial orwhatever it might be. Right?
(05:48):
Then what we should be thinkingup through is which that could
turn into a random act if we'renot careful is really what
business outcome is that goingto support and how will it move
the ball down the field so tospeak for that outcome given the
investment and the investment iseven if it's not hard cash. It's
(06:09):
still time.
It's still energy.
Adam Larson (06:11):
Yeah. And and maybe we can talk a little, when
you're take talking about thoseinvestments because there's a
lot of investment when you'remarketing. You have to pour a
lot of money in there to getyour name out there to show to
show your presence in whateverindustry you're working in. And,
you know, how do you kind of arethere are there pitfalls that
you have to kinda look out forwhen you're trying to put those
investments against that valuethat you're trying to show? Hey,
(06:32):
team.
This is what I need to I needthis because this is the value
we bring.
Laura Paterson (06:36):
Yeah. So this is probably one of the biggest
pitfalls that marketers have atendency to make is that we jump
straight into a conversationaround tactics.
Adam Larson (06:45):
Okay.
Laura Paterson (06:45):
And that is a pitfall. And we don't have it.
We aren't clear about how thistactic or activity, which is an
investment because it's going totake money. And, you know,
everything we do is aninvestment on behalf of the
organization. And if it was ourpersonal money, we would be
asking what would be the valueof doing this tactic, whatever
(07:07):
it might be.
An investment could be going ona vacation. Investment could be
buying a new car. An investmentcould be a new appliance.
Whatever those things might be,we would justify that personally
on how why we're doing that andwhat the cost benefit is. That's
the same way we need to approachthe money we invest on behalf of
the company and marketing.
And so rather than jumping intothat tactic, which would be
(07:29):
going out and rashly doingsomething with our personal
money, we should step back andbe able to talk to the
leadership team, not justfinance, everybody else on the
leadership team on how thistactic or activity connects to
what is going to be beneficial,the benefit to the organization.
Otherwise, we end up in thiswhat we call cart before the
(07:50):
horse type of situation. Andwhen you end up with cart before
the horse, that's where thoserandom acts can can bite us in
the butt. So random act could belaunching a campaign or a
program, but don't have reallyclear measurable objectives that
are tied to some kind of resultfor the company. And I think I
(08:12):
read that MIT Sloan says thatrandom non customer centric
initiatives cost b to bcompanies.
I don't know about b to chundreds of thousands of dollars
a year. So the antidote, how doyou overcome this pitfall? Be
disciplined. Be customercentric. Think about the
investment in terms of thepurpose and result it's going to
produce for the company.
Adam Larson (08:33):
Mhmm. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. So when
we're looking at, you know,accounting and finance
professionals kind of being thebeing support for the marketing
team because, you know, they'rethey deal with the budgets and
they're helping them connect tostuff, and we're talking about
that we've talked about the dataa bit. Are there are there
different ways that that thatteam can help identify and track
the right the right indicatorsfor the campaign success with
(08:55):
marketing team?
Laura Paterson (08:56):
Okay. So we're talking about are we talking
about what I wanna be clear inour mind what we're looking at
here. So accounting, you know,when when when marketing was
first asked to be accountable,we looked way back when, Adam,
and you and I can relate to wayback when we looked up the word
(09:16):
accountable and was says, oh, toaccount. And so we said, oh, to
account means we just need tocount things. And so we started
thinking about what we couldcount.
But Yeah. But what the financialpeople want isn't just counting.
They want us to be able totranslate the measures into
something that has financialvalue. Like, how is this gonna
(09:39):
improve product adoption?Because if we can increase the
product adoption rate, it'sworth this.
How how will this help usimprove our penetration into a
segment? Because everypenetration, you know, share is
worth this. How will can wetranslate this measure into
increasing customer lifetimevalue or reducing cost to
(10:00):
acquisition. So everything we'redoing in marketing is beyond
just counting if we wanna beaccountable. And the finance
people can really help ustranslate changes in those
numbers to dollars for thecompany.
So that's where they can helpus. So when they worked we work
together. When we, marketing andaccountability, work together
(10:23):
and cocreate the measures, it'llbe a lot easier to track and
prove the value of marketing.And it'll be a lot easier for
marketing, a, to ensure thattheir activities are accountable
and aligned to business value,and, b, get the money, which is
really important.
Adam Larson (10:41):
It is hugely important. So I think we've
we've had a great conversationso far just kinda covering how,
you know, how the marketing teamand the accounting team kinda
work together. They cantranslate things so they can use
data together. But then a lot oftimes, it's easy for the you
know, somebody in the marketingteam and the finance team to
kind of work together and dothose things. But then then we
need to kind of resonate thatwith our leader with the
(11:02):
leadership team and make surethe c suite is is comfortable
with everything that'shappening.
What are some ways you've workedwith the the c suite and and
help the different teamstranslate those things so that
way everybody's on the samepage?
Laura Paterson (11:13):
Yeah. And you're exactly right. It we need to be
able to translate things thatare relevant to the leadership
team. And accounting teams andespecially the CFO teams, they
can help us tell a better storywhen it's time for us to report
to the board or do that, youknow, quarterly business review
(11:36):
or monthly operations review,whatever it is, however the
company's got their reportingset up so that when marketing is
talking about what they'redoing, it isn't a story about
the stuff they're doing, whichis what we have a tendency to
do. We did these events thislast quarter, and we had these
number of people come throughour event, or we are attend our
(11:58):
event or register for our event,or we publish X number of blogs
this quarter, and this is howmany people read the blog or
shared the blog.
Right? That's what we tend to doin our reporting. Mhmm.
Accounting can help us convertthose stories into financial
terms so that the stories willresonate with the leadership
(12:18):
board, like saying, we were ableto drive x number of new
conversations, which will wentinto the pipeline that represent
x potential new appointments forsalespeople as a result of this
these events or things alongthose lines so we can tell a
better story for the leadershipteam on how what we're doing and
(12:39):
how it ripples beyond what wedid in marketing to the rest of
the business. So it's relaterelatable.
So, oh, I see how what you'redoing is having an impact on the
sales team. I can see whatyou're doing is having an impact
on the strategic account team. Isee what you're doing is having
an impact on accelerating thenumber of conversations that we
(13:01):
might have or any number ofdifferent things. That's what we
wanted them to be able to do,not just see all the great
things we are producing and beseen as producers of stuff. And
that's what we end up becomingif we're not careful producers
of stuff.
Adam Larson (13:17):
Yeah. And what and those conversations you're
talking about, a lot of times,those are connected to the
budget. And when you and I firsttalked, you're very passionate
about, let's move away frombudget conversation, from line
items to to strategy. And somaybe we could talk a little
about that because I know everyorganization has their own
budget, has their own way ofbudgeting. But I think I think
you're right that we need tomove away from just focusing on
(13:37):
individual line items and kindof what is this what is the
outcome that we wanna get to?
Laura Paterson (13:41):
Yes. And that is that's a really important
perspective of that I have. I II feel really strongly about
this, so strongly that when Iwas in the corporate world and
working with all my financecolleagues, we did something
really innovative. And as aresult, we try to help other
(14:02):
companies do this. We stoppedbudgeting by subaccount, and we
started budgeting by outcome.
If you can just do that to thatone small step, it's huge
because you've changed theconversation. So what do I mean
by that? Well, the for for thoseof you listening that are on the
(14:22):
marketing side, it may not be asclear as it is to the people on
the finance side who understandsubaccounts. But in marketing,
the subaccounts are those lineitems that say PR or advertising
or social media or contentmarketing, whatever those line
items are in the budget that youhave allocated x number of
dollars for by month or byquarter. And then that rolls up
(14:46):
into the marketing budget.
But when we think like that,everything that we're doing, the
stuff, the activity is isdistributed across those
subaccounts, but they're but nottied to any business outcome. So
what I did in my career and whatwe try to do for our customers
(15:07):
is think about budgeting byoutcome. This is a pretty
innovative idea. So everythingthat you are spending is
connected to an outcome. So nowyou can see exactly what you're
investing in that outcome.
And if you make changes to thestrategy or the programs or the
tactics or the activities or thedollars, you can now see what
(15:31):
that might do as a to the resultyou're trying to produce, the
financial result you're tryingto do to do produce for the
outcome. So let me make see if Ican make it kind of real. Let's
say that one of the things acompany wants to do is acquire x
number of net new customers intheir existing top three custom,
(15:53):
market segments. So they wantwhatever next number in each of
their three existing marketsegments. So now they know
exactly how many customers,which what kind, and they're new
and in what markets.
And that's gonna be worth xnumber on an average order value
of y that's worth x number ofdollars. And marketing's job is
to create some x number ofconversations specifically with
(16:17):
customers who match thatcriteria in those segments. And
everything marketing is gonna dois gonna be tied to that. So
that's marketing's outcome, andit's gonna be x number of
dollars. And everything belowthat is what they're gonna spend
to do it.
And if we achieve it, thenwithin the parameters of the
dollars, now we can measure thatagainst what the financial value
(16:38):
of the outcome was. So itbecomes very real way of looking
at marketing in a in a muchdifferent and more meaningful
way than just talking ROIbecause now we can really
connect it to a business result.And it forces a different kind
of alignment than what we oftensee. So LSA Global did a report
that said that, you know, highlyaligned companies grow revenue
(17:02):
5858% faster, and they're 72%more profitable than less
aligned companies. And aligningaround outcomes is one of the
easiest things to begin to thinkabout doing.
It's I'm not saying it's an easything to do, but visually, it's
something that every company canget, and you can use visual
(17:23):
tools to help you do it. Right?So your performance management
dashboards can help you, andthat helps everyone see what the
direct connections are. And nowthe conversation is less again
about the budget and more aboutthe strategy that we're going to
do to achieve the outcome. So itbecomes less transactional in
your relationship with finance.
Adam Larson (17:44):
Yeah. It becomes less transactional. I would it
would be interesting to have youon a panel with a bunch of
people who do budgets for a fora living and to to, like, really
get into the nitty gritty of howthat would all would work
because I'm sure that they wouldhave opinions on what you're
saying, and it would be reallyinteresting. I I wonder, have
you had those conversations withpeople who are really into their
budgets? And how do thoseconversations go?
Laura Paterson (18:06):
Well, listen. So it does create some challenges
for the finance organizationbecause they're reporting like,
if you're a really, really bigcompany and you're in one of the
biz lines of business and youstart this thing and change,
like, what this so what we did,you know, I was, you know, I was
really fortunate to have afinancial partner, a finance
(18:29):
partner who was open to thisidea. And so we just arbitrarily
called the PR subaccount lineoutcome one and advertising
subaccount line outcome two and,you know, whatever the event
subaccount line outcome three.We just labeled them that for
our purposes. But he knew,Enrique knew, that that was
(18:52):
gonna create roll up challengesbecause, really, it wasn't
advertising dollars or PRdollars or event dollars.
It was these outcomes. So he wasdoing probably some other kind
of tracking just to keep things,you know, legit for the roll up,
but it'll definitely helped usget a understanding of what we
(19:12):
were spending by outcome when wewere spending it and what those
total expenditures ended upbeing compared to what the
results were.
Adam Larson (19:22):
That's really cool. Yeah.
Laura Paterson (19:24):
It was cool. So we have a we have a tool. We
have an application calledexcellence that allows our
customers to do exactly that. Sothey don't have to get their
finance people to change the subaccount charts, which could you
know, that you're gonna getpushback from. It's just inside
the application and it createsan outcome based budget for you.
Adam Larson (19:42):
Wow. So let's talk a little bit about, you know,
VisionEdge marketing, your yourorganization. So you've been
around for over twenty fiveyears, you know, and you focus
on data measurements,performance, and all those
things. You know, how is how iskind of your approach changed?
Because real time analytics,digital transformation, you
know, the raise of the rise ofAI and AgenTik AI, which you and
I were just talking about.
You know, how has that kindachanged your approach as, you
(20:04):
know, as technology isconstantly changing?
Laura Paterson (20:06):
Well, it has changed our approach in some
ways, but in other ways, not somuch. Because our whole
philosophy is that customersthat a customer centric
strategies are the only way togrow. And getting you and
thinking about growth incustomer centric terms is not
(20:29):
going to be impacted by AI ortechnology. It may you may use
AI and technology to help youachieve them, maybe achieve them
faster or achieve them moreaffordably. But the real
strategy, like making a decisionthat these are our x number of
(20:50):
best customers and they are theones that we wanna invest in and
help and figure out how they canhelp us and how we can help them
with the product road map.
So we want our next innovationsto support these top 50
companies, for example. Right?That would be something you
would do as a result of lookingat your data, that they're the
(21:11):
ones who typically are drivingyour innovation. They're the
ones who are making the requestsfor, you know, additional
capabilities, or they're theones that are are sharing their
innovation road map and you'rebuilding your road map to them.
So that would wouldn't besomething you would do
differently as a result of AI,but your data might inform you
of that.
And then you would build outwhat is the strategy for doing
(21:33):
that, and is that what we wannado kind of conversation. So that
would be an example potentiallythat isn't really any different
than what we've been doing forthe last twenty five years. But
how we go about getting the dataor how we go about analyzing the
data or how we go about puttingstrategies and tactics to get or
tactic programs and tacticstogether, that might change.
(21:55):
There may be more online thingsand less virtual in person
things, potentially. There maybe different kinds I mean, more
podcasts, you know, potentiallyas a as a activity depending on
what that might look like.
So I would say thatimplementation may have changed
some in terms of approach, butwhat we do has really changed
(22:16):
and because companies still havea long way to go to get more
customer centric out there,particularly b to b companies.
Adam Larson (22:23):
So when you say customer centric, what do you
mean by being more customercentric?
Laura Paterson (22:28):
So customer centric is about I'm glad you
asked this, Adam, because peoplesay, oh, you so you just want us
to do whatever customers want.That's not really what customer
centricity is. Customercentricity is not about catering
to every whim of every customer.Customer centricity is about
keeping your customer's successrequirements in mind in the
(22:50):
decisions that you're going tomake for your business. That if
you can improve customer value,then you will improve business
and shareholder value becausecustomers are what pay the
bills.
Right? So by being customercentric, what you're saying is
do we understand what success isfor the customers we serve and
(23:12):
how we can help them achievethat? What are the products and
services that we can bring tothe market that they will most
likely adopt and pay more for,buy more of so that we are
growing and they're being moresuccessful?
Adam Larson (23:27):
Yeah. That makes sense. And you would think that
most companies are customercentric, but the way you're
listing that, I'm like, it seemslike that not a like, it's not
everybody's top of mind. Becausea lot of times, it's like their
bottom line is their is their istheir main, source of, like,
motivation.
Laura Paterson (23:42):
Well, there's different models for out there.
And just kinda quickly justmaybe to make help people,
understand what those differentmodels are. There are product
centric companies. These youknow these companies? Because
when you look at their r and dinvestments, they're massive.
They're a huge portion of thecompany. They're doing a lot in
r and d, and they're betting onthe future. They're trying to
(24:05):
make the future, and there'snothing necessarily wrong with
that because we need those kindsof companies. And if we build
it, they will come kind ofcompanies. And sometimes, you
know, people don't even knowthat they want people don't even
know they want autonomousvehicles.
Somebody figured out thatautonomous vehicles are
something that people are gonnawant, and they made huge
investments to get that. So asan I mean, I'm using that as an
(24:26):
example because you and I werewe're talking about the influx
of autonomous vehicles for Uberand Waymo and companies like
that and how they're growing,rapidly growing. And certainly
five years ago, none of us wouldhave been thinking that we would
be getting in driverlessvehicles to take us but then and
then there's sales centriccompanies. And you kinda know
(24:48):
these companies becausesalespeople are pretty much
running the show, and they sellthings you may not even make
yet. They set pricing that youmay or may not be profitable.
They might do delivery datesthat are almost impossible to
meet. So they're, you know,they're making a lot of
decisions in order to get thedeal. And so that's, that's a
(25:11):
very common model. Right? Soit's just all about selling and
getting salespeople out there tosell as much as they possibly
can and make a number.
I've been in those companies. Iimagine you have too. There's
lots of those and they're veryopportunistic. There's, you
know, oftentimes you see that inmore early stage companies, but
they don't grow out of it.They're still stuck there even
(25:32):
when it's time to make a shift.
And oftentimes, they end upgetting customers in the long
down the road that they need tojettison because they're really
not gonna be the best customersfor future growth. And then
there's market centriccompanies, and I I know you've
been in some of those too. Thoseare companies that look a lot
like product centric companies.But unlike product centric
(25:53):
companies who are creating thewave that are the first to
market, market centric companiesare more about drafting the
wave. So we can see thathappening.
We were talking about AIearlier. We can see that
happening in the AI landscape.Look at all the companies that
have emerged in that space justin the course of the last couple
of years. So those are allmarket centric companies who are
(26:16):
seeing this is a hugeopportunity, new new area of
growth. Where can we go?
And there's a lot of, you know,a lot of clutter and a lot of
noise in the space and lot ofoverlap between companies, and
eventually that will weed itselfout. So those are some examples
of other ways that people haveoperating models that aren't
(26:36):
necessarily customer centric.
Adam Larson (26:38):
Mhmm. That's helpful. I think that's it's
good to kind of establish thedifferences, especially when
somebody might not even knowwhat what is my organization?
What is our what what what arewe on? And it kind of gets you
thinking about that for sure.
Laura Paterson (26:52):
I can usually tell, by when I start asking
them what their measures aregoing to be for of success. And
I usually tell if when I startasking the question, do you know
what success is for yourcustomer? And do you know what
success is for their customers?And if they don't know that
begin to know some of theanswers to those kinds of
questions, then odds are theyprobably have some things they
(27:12):
need to revisit.
Adam Larson (27:14):
Now, you know, with all the tools and the strategies
that we talked about today, arethere certain types of companies
that work better with thesestrategies, or can we can this
be applied no matter what yourfocus of your organization is?
Laura Paterson (27:27):
This can be applied to any company. Mhmm.
Being customer centric is notdependent on what kind of market
you're in.
Adam Larson (27:35):
Mhmm.
Laura Paterson (27:37):
I would say that companies who have complex
products that require aconsultative sell, which is
often the case in b to bmanufacturing or technology,
life sciences, medical devices,logistics, those kinds of
companies, that they they shouldbe at the forefront of embracing
customer centricity because thatthey they'll they'll have the
(28:01):
they'll reap the bet greatestbenefits compared to a a company
that's, you know, maybe sellingI always use this because I sold
chocolate when I was young, theworld's finest chocolate. So
selling a chocolate bar, it's alittle bit more transactional.
Adam Larson (28:15):
Yeah.
Laura Paterson (28:15):
It doesn't require a consultative sell
typically. And, there's not alot of buyer's remorse if you
buy it. You might have remorseover the calories, but not
necessarily over the money.
Adam Larson (28:25):
Definitely. You know, Laura, this has been a
great conversation, and I wannakinda end with, you know, for
CFOs or even just finance andaccounting leaders within
organizations, what's, like,maybe one thing they can do
today to build help build astronger, more strategic
relationship with theirmarketing counterparts?
Laura Paterson (28:40):
Sit down and take a look at the marketing
plan and see if you can draw astraight line from a business
outcome all the way down throughthe activities and tactics for
that outcome in the marketingplan. And if you can't, that
would be the place I wouldbegin.
Adam Larson (29:01):
That's powerful because it's it's it's such a
simple thing, but if you can'tdo that, then it creates a whole
world of a road map almost ofhow you can how you can start
working together better in asense.
Laura Paterson (29:12):
Yes. And it will help the finance people and the
marketing people see where whatdo we need to do to get the
right things lined up and in theright buckets.
Adam Larson (29:20):
Mhmm.
Laura Paterson (29:21):
And it will improve that alignment and to
change the conversation. It willcompletely change the
conversation with your financeorganization.
Adam Larson (29:30):
Definitely. Well, Laura, I again, I appreciate you
coming on the podcast. Thank youso much for sharing your
expertise with our audiencetoday.
Laura Paterson (29:37):
It's my pleasure. Thank you for having
me, Adam.
Announcer (29:41):
This has been Count Me In, IMA's podcast providing
you with the latest perspectivesof thought leaders from
accounting and financeprofession. If you like what you
heard and you'd like to becounted in for more relevant
accounting and financeeducation, visit IMA's website
at www.imanet.org.
Welcome back to Count Me In. I'm Adam Larson,
and today I have the pleasure ofspeaking with Laura Paterson, an
entrepreneur, author, speaker,and the president of VisionEdge
Marketing. Laura has spentdecades at the intersection of
marketing and finance, and she'shere to share her expert
perspective on what makes anideal partnership between the
teams in today's data drivenworld. We'll talk through common
(00:26):
pitfalls organizations face, howto move beyond traditional
budgeting to focus on strategicoutcomes, and why customer
centric strategies are socrucial for sustainable growth.
Laura's approach is packed withpractical advice, real world
stories, and innovative toolsthat any team, from the c suite
to the accounting and marketing,can put into action right away.
So are you eager to improvecollaboration and accountability
(00:48):
across your organization? Youwon't want to miss this
conversation, and let's getstarted. Well, Laura, I'm
excited to have you on thepodcast today. And you've worked
a lot with CFOs throughout yourcareer. And so I wanted to ask
you, you know, how would youdescribe the ideal partnership
between marketing and finance intoday's data driven environment?
Laura Paterson (01:13):
Well, Adam, thank you for having me, and I
am delighted to talk about thisis one of my favorite topics
having spent a huge part of myown career, you know, decades,
in this conversation betweenmarketing and finance. So,
obviously, know, like in anybusiness relationship, you gotta
have some mutual respect. But Ithink one of the things that
(01:34):
gets in the way oftentimesbetween marketing and finance is
language. So as marketers, wehave a language around all the
things that we create and do,and we like to speak in that
language. But finances speaks awhole different language.
So Mhmm. The best thing to buildthat relationship, and I believe
it falls on the shoulders ofthose of us in marketing, is to
(01:57):
be business people first andlearn and speak the language of
business when we're talking withfinance people. And the best
partnerships when they'reworking together, they are able
to eliminate a lot of randomacts. Those are those fragmented
sort of reactive things that popup in the marketer's world
almost every day because we haveso many new ideas and new
(02:19):
opportunities, but they canreally drain our resources and
dilute our impact. By having astrong and solid relationship
and partnership with finance, wecan make sure that we are
picking the right things thatmake the most sense for the
business.
Because, for example,segmentation, which takes a lot
of data to do really good, it'scustomer segmentation or market
(02:41):
segmentation. Gartner did someresearch and found that when you
have poor segmentation, youknow, it can cost your company,
like, 30% in revenue. So it's apretty we're not talking about a
small amount of money. So ifmarketing and finance can use
data, which we both are verycomfortable doing or should be
at this point in time in theworld, very comfortable with
(03:02):
data, we can use that as abridge. And by working together,
we can actually move beyond thatidea of just budgeting as a
relationship to actually a cocollaborative relationship
around growth andaccountability, making sure that
every investment that marketingis making on behalf of the
company is purposeful andmeasurable.
Adam Larson (03:23):
So I like that data driven, you know, is a huge
thing, especially, you know, inthe in our world with so much
data that's out there, andthere's so much to to sort
through, which means having gooddata analytics and a good team
looking at that is hugelyimportant. But I think I wanted
to start with, before we diginto that too much is, you know,
how do you break down that like,how do you how do you how do you
break down the communicationwalls? Because a lot of times in
(03:44):
the larger your organization is,the more silos are put up. The
smaller organizations, the kindof the more connected people
are. But how do you break thatsilo down and and kind of really
work on that language differenceand and connecting everybody?
Laura Paterson (03:56):
That's a good question too. And one of the
things I think that's importantthat you said is we have a lot
of data. Mhmm. But the realchallenge is to have insights
from that data. So oftentimes,the way to begin is to be have a
conversation about here's thedata I have.
Here's the data you have. Whatis it we can what are the
(04:17):
insights we're getting from thisdata? And how can we translate
that into something that it canenable us to grow our the
company or offset thecompetition or create a better
experience for the customer,whatever those conversations
might be. And if you can speakin those terms from the
perspective of the insights fromthe data, you can build a much
(04:40):
stronger relationship becausefinance can talk up in those
terms. They can talk about, Isee that we have this issue,
this challenge that's creatingmore friction or more in the in
the relationship with customersand our ability to serve them or
creating a greater effort in ourability to engage with them.
That's what the data is tellingus, which is why in marketing we
(05:01):
wanna do X, which is going tocost high. But if we do that, it
will affect have this result. Wecan speak like that. Finance
gets that. They can relate tothat.
So it doesn't have to be we'renot talking about things that
are just really difficult foranybody to do, whether you're a
small company, a big company, amarketing team of one or a large
(05:23):
organization, this is the kindof conversation we should have
every time. And when we areengaged or asked to do something
by some entity or person in theorganization, right, we're
always asked for something,whether I need a new white paper
or a new piece of content or I'dlike to make a new video or get
a new customer testimonial orwhatever it might be. Right?
(05:48):
Then what we should be thinkingup through is which that could
turn into a random act if we'renot careful is really what
business outcome is that goingto support and how will it move
the ball down the field so tospeak for that outcome given the
investment and the investment iseven if it's not hard cash. It's
(06:09):
still time.
It's still energy.
Adam Larson (06:11):
Yeah. And and maybe we can talk a little, when
you're take talking about thoseinvestments because there's a
lot of investment when you'remarketing. You have to pour a
lot of money in there to getyour name out there to show to
show your presence in whateverindustry you're working in. And,
you know, how do you kind of arethere are there pitfalls that
you have to kinda look out forwhen you're trying to put those
investments against that valuethat you're trying to show? Hey,
(06:32):
team.
This is what I need to I needthis because this is the value
we bring.
Laura Paterson (06:36):
Yeah. So this is probably one of the biggest
pitfalls that marketers have atendency to make is that we jump
straight into a conversationaround tactics.
Adam Larson (06:45):
Okay.
Laura Paterson (06:45):
And that is a pitfall. And we don't have it.
We aren't clear about how thistactic or activity, which is an
investment because it's going totake money. And, you know,
everything we do is aninvestment on behalf of the
organization. And if it was ourpersonal money, we would be
asking what would be the valueof doing this tactic, whatever
(07:07):
it might be.
An investment could be going ona vacation. Investment could be
buying a new car. An investmentcould be a new appliance.
Whatever those things might be,we would justify that personally
on how why we're doing that andwhat the cost benefit is. That's
the same way we need to approachthe money we invest on behalf of
the company and marketing.
And so rather than jumping intothat tactic, which would be
(07:29):
going out and rashly doingsomething with our personal
money, we should step back andbe able to talk to the
leadership team, not justfinance, everybody else on the
leadership team on how thistactic or activity connects to
what is going to be beneficial,the benefit to the organization.
Otherwise, we end up in thiswhat we call cart before the
(07:50):
horse type of situation. Andwhen you end up with cart before
the horse, that's where thoserandom acts can can bite us in
the butt. So random act could belaunching a campaign or a
program, but don't have reallyclear measurable objectives that
are tied to some kind of resultfor the company. And I think I
(08:12):
read that MIT Sloan says thatrandom non customer centric
initiatives cost b to bcompanies.
I don't know about b to chundreds of thousands of dollars
a year. So the antidote, how doyou overcome this pitfall? Be
disciplined. Be customercentric. Think about the
investment in terms of thepurpose and result it's going to
produce for the company.
Adam Larson (08:33):
Mhmm. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. So when
we're looking at, you know,accounting and finance
professionals kind of being thebeing support for the marketing
team because, you know, they'rethey deal with the budgets and
they're helping them connect tostuff, and we're talking about
that we've talked about the dataa bit. Are there are there
different ways that that thatteam can help identify and track
the right the right indicatorsfor the campaign success with
(08:55):
marketing team?
Laura Paterson (08:56):
Okay. So we're talking about are we talking
about what I wanna be clear inour mind what we're looking at
here. So accounting, you know,when when when marketing was
first asked to be accountable,we looked way back when, Adam,
and you and I can relate to wayback when we looked up the word
(09:16):
accountable and was says, oh, toaccount. And so we said, oh, to
account means we just need tocount things. And so we started
thinking about what we couldcount.
But Yeah. But what the financialpeople want isn't just counting.
They want us to be able totranslate the measures into
something that has financialvalue. Like, how is this gonna
(09:39):
improve product adoption?Because if we can increase the
product adoption rate, it'sworth this.
How how will this help usimprove our penetration into a
segment? Because everypenetration, you know, share is
worth this. How will can wetranslate this measure into
increasing customer lifetimevalue or reducing cost to
(10:00):
acquisition. So everything we'redoing in marketing is beyond
just counting if we wanna beaccountable. And the finance
people can really help ustranslate changes in those
numbers to dollars for thecompany.
So that's where they can helpus. So when they worked we work
together. When we, marketing andaccountability, work together
(10:23):
and cocreate the measures, it'llbe a lot easier to track and
prove the value of marketing.And it'll be a lot easier for
marketing, a, to ensure thattheir activities are accountable
and aligned to business value,and, b, get the money, which is
really important.
Adam Larson (10:41):
It is hugely important. So I think we've
we've had a great conversationso far just kinda covering how,
you know, how the marketing teamand the accounting team kinda
work together. They cantranslate things so they can use
data together. But then a lot oftimes, it's easy for the you
know, somebody in the marketingteam and the finance team to
kind of work together and dothose things. But then then we
need to kind of resonate thatwith our leader with the
(11:02):
leadership team and make surethe c suite is is comfortable
with everything that'shappening.
What are some ways you've workedwith the the c suite and and
help the different teamstranslate those things so that
way everybody's on the samepage?
Laura Paterson (11:13):
Yeah. And you're exactly right. It we need to be
able to translate things thatare relevant to the leadership
team. And accounting teams andespecially the CFO teams, they
can help us tell a better storywhen it's time for us to report
to the board or do that, youknow, quarterly business review
(11:36):
or monthly operations review,whatever it is, however the
company's got their reportingset up so that when marketing is
talking about what they'redoing, it isn't a story about
the stuff they're doing, whichis what we have a tendency to
do. We did these events thislast quarter, and we had these
number of people come throughour event, or we are attend our
(11:58):
event or register for our event,or we publish X number of blogs
this quarter, and this is howmany people read the blog or
shared the blog.
Right? That's what we tend to doin our reporting. Mhmm.
Accounting can help us convertthose stories into financial
terms so that the stories willresonate with the leadership
(12:18):
board, like saying, we were ableto drive x number of new
conversations, which will wentinto the pipeline that represent
x potential new appointments forsalespeople as a result of this
these events or things alongthose lines so we can tell a
better story for the leadershipteam on how what we're doing and
(12:39):
how it ripples beyond what wedid in marketing to the rest of
the business. So it's relaterelatable.
So, oh, I see how what you'redoing is having an impact on the
sales team. I can see whatyou're doing is having an impact
on the strategic account team. Isee what you're doing is having
an impact on accelerating thenumber of conversations that we
(13:01):
might have or any number ofdifferent things. That's what we
wanted them to be able to do,not just see all the great
things we are producing and beseen as producers of stuff. And
that's what we end up becomingif we're not careful producers
of stuff.
Adam Larson (13:17):
Yeah. And what and those conversations you're
talking about, a lot of times,those are connected to the
budget. And when you and I firsttalked, you're very passionate
about, let's move away frombudget conversation, from line
items to to strategy. And somaybe we could talk a little
about that because I know everyorganization has their own
budget, has their own way ofbudgeting. But I think I think
you're right that we need tomove away from just focusing on
(13:37):
individual line items and kindof what is this what is the
outcome that we wanna get to?
Laura Paterson (13:41):
Yes. And that is that's a really important
perspective of that I have. I II feel really strongly about
this, so strongly that when Iwas in the corporate world and
working with all my financecolleagues, we did something
really innovative. And as aresult, we try to help other
(14:02):
companies do this. We stoppedbudgeting by subaccount, and we
started budgeting by outcome.
If you can just do that to thatone small step, it's huge
because you've changed theconversation. So what do I mean
by that? Well, the for for thoseof you listening that are on the
(14:22):
marketing side, it may not be asclear as it is to the people on
the finance side who understandsubaccounts. But in marketing,
the subaccounts are those lineitems that say PR or advertising
or social media or contentmarketing, whatever those line
items are in the budget that youhave allocated x number of
dollars for by month or byquarter. And then that rolls up
(14:46):
into the marketing budget.
But when we think like that,everything that we're doing, the
stuff, the activity is isdistributed across those
subaccounts, but they're but nottied to any business outcome. So
what I did in my career and whatwe try to do for our customers
(15:07):
is think about budgeting byoutcome. This is a pretty
innovative idea. So everythingthat you are spending is
connected to an outcome. So nowyou can see exactly what you're
investing in that outcome.
And if you make changes to thestrategy or the programs or the
tactics or the activities or thedollars, you can now see what
(15:31):
that might do as a to the resultyou're trying to produce, the
financial result you're tryingto do to do produce for the
outcome. So let me make see if Ican make it kind of real. Let's
say that one of the things acompany wants to do is acquire x
number of net new customers intheir existing top three custom,
(15:53):
market segments. So they wantwhatever next number in each of
their three existing marketsegments. So now they know
exactly how many customers,which what kind, and they're new
and in what markets.
And that's gonna be worth xnumber on an average order value
of y that's worth x number ofdollars. And marketing's job is
to create some x number ofconversations specifically with
(16:17):
customers who match thatcriteria in those segments. And
everything marketing is gonna dois gonna be tied to that. So
that's marketing's outcome, andit's gonna be x number of
dollars. And everything belowthat is what they're gonna spend
to do it.
And if we achieve it, thenwithin the parameters of the
dollars, now we can measure thatagainst what the financial value
(16:38):
of the outcome was. So itbecomes very real way of looking
at marketing in a in a muchdifferent and more meaningful
way than just talking ROIbecause now we can really
connect it to a business result.And it forces a different kind
of alignment than what we oftensee. So LSA Global did a report
that said that, you know, highlyaligned companies grow revenue
(17:02):
5858% faster, and they're 72%more profitable than less
aligned companies. And aligningaround outcomes is one of the
easiest things to begin to thinkabout doing.
It's I'm not saying it's an easything to do, but visually, it's
something that every company canget, and you can use visual
(17:23):
tools to help you do it. Right?So your performance management
dashboards can help you, andthat helps everyone see what the
direct connections are. And nowthe conversation is less again
about the budget and more aboutthe strategy that we're going to
do to achieve the outcome. So itbecomes less transactional in
your relationship with finance.
Adam Larson (17:44):
Yeah. It becomes less transactional. I would it
would be interesting to have youon a panel with a bunch of
people who do budgets for a fora living and to to, like, really
get into the nitty gritty of howthat would all would work
because I'm sure that they wouldhave opinions on what you're
saying, and it would be reallyinteresting. I I wonder, have
you had those conversations withpeople who are really into their
budgets? And how do thoseconversations go?
Laura Paterson (18:06):
Well, listen. So it does create some challenges
for the finance organizationbecause they're reporting like,
if you're a really, really bigcompany and you're in one of the
biz lines of business and youstart this thing and change,
like, what this so what we did,you know, I was, you know, I was
really fortunate to have afinancial partner, a finance
(18:29):
partner who was open to thisidea. And so we just arbitrarily
called the PR subaccount lineoutcome one and advertising
subaccount line outcome two and,you know, whatever the event
subaccount line outcome three.We just labeled them that for
our purposes. But he knew,Enrique knew, that that was
(18:52):
gonna create roll up challengesbecause, really, it wasn't
advertising dollars or PRdollars or event dollars.
It was these outcomes. So he wasdoing probably some other kind
of tracking just to keep things,you know, legit for the roll up,
but it'll definitely helped usget a understanding of what we
(19:12):
were spending by outcome when wewere spending it and what those
total expenditures ended upbeing compared to what the
results were.
Adam Larson (19:22):
That's really cool. Yeah.
Laura Paterson (19:24):
It was cool. So we have a we have a tool. We
have an application calledexcellence that allows our
customers to do exactly that. Sothey don't have to get their
finance people to change the subaccount charts, which could you
know, that you're gonna getpushback from. It's just inside
the application and it createsan outcome based budget for you.
Adam Larson (19:42):
Wow. So let's talk a little bit about, you know,
VisionEdge marketing, your yourorganization. So you've been
around for over twenty fiveyears, you know, and you focus
on data measurements,performance, and all those
things. You know, how is how iskind of your approach changed?
Because real time analytics,digital transformation, you
know, the raise of the rise ofAI and AgenTik AI, which you and
I were just talking about.
You know, how has that kindachanged your approach as, you
(20:04):
know, as technology isconstantly changing?
Laura Paterson (20:06):
Well, it has changed our approach in some
ways, but in other ways, not somuch. Because our whole
philosophy is that customersthat a customer centric
strategies are the only way togrow. And getting you and
thinking about growth incustomer centric terms is not
(20:29):
going to be impacted by AI ortechnology. It may you may use
AI and technology to help youachieve them, maybe achieve them
faster or achieve them moreaffordably. But the real
strategy, like making a decisionthat these are our x number of
(20:50):
best customers and they are theones that we wanna invest in and
help and figure out how they canhelp us and how we can help them
with the product road map.
So we want our next innovationsto support these top 50
companies, for example. Right?That would be something you
would do as a result of lookingat your data, that they're the
(21:11):
ones who typically are drivingyour innovation. They're the
ones who are making the requestsfor, you know, additional
capabilities, or they're theones that are are sharing their
innovation road map and you'rebuilding your road map to them.
So that would wouldn't besomething you would do
differently as a result of AI,but your data might inform you
of that.
And then you would build outwhat is the strategy for doing
(21:33):
that, and is that what we wannado kind of conversation. So that
would be an example potentiallythat isn't really any different
than what we've been doing forthe last twenty five years. But
how we go about getting the dataor how we go about analyzing the
data or how we go about puttingstrategies and tactics to get or
tactic programs and tacticstogether, that might change.
(21:55):
There may be more online thingsand less virtual in person
things, potentially. There maybe different kinds I mean, more
podcasts, you know, potentiallyas a as a activity depending on
what that might look like.
So I would say thatimplementation may have changed
some in terms of approach, butwhat we do has really changed
(22:16):
and because companies still havea long way to go to get more
customer centric out there,particularly b to b companies.
Adam Larson (22:23):
So when you say customer centric, what do you
mean by being more customercentric?
Laura Paterson (22:28):
So customer centric is about I'm glad you
asked this, Adam, because peoplesay, oh, you so you just want us
to do whatever customers want.That's not really what customer
centricity is. Customercentricity is not about catering
to every whim of every customer.Customer centricity is about
keeping your customer's successrequirements in mind in the
(22:50):
decisions that you're going tomake for your business. That if
you can improve customer value,then you will improve business
and shareholder value becausecustomers are what pay the
bills.
Right? So by being customercentric, what you're saying is
do we understand what success isfor the customers we serve and
(23:12):
how we can help them achievethat? What are the products and
services that we can bring tothe market that they will most
likely adopt and pay more for,buy more of so that we are
growing and they're being moresuccessful?
Adam Larson (23:27):
Yeah. That makes sense. And you would think that
most companies are customercentric, but the way you're
listing that, I'm like, it seemslike that not a like, it's not
everybody's top of mind. Becausea lot of times, it's like their
bottom line is their is their istheir main, source of, like,
motivation.
Laura Paterson (23:42):
Well, there's different models for out there.
And just kinda quickly justmaybe to make help people,
understand what those differentmodels are. There are product
centric companies. These youknow these companies? Because
when you look at their r and dinvestments, they're massive.
They're a huge portion of thecompany. They're doing a lot in
r and d, and they're betting onthe future. They're trying to
(24:05):
make the future, and there'snothing necessarily wrong with
that because we need those kindsof companies. And if we build
it, they will come kind ofcompanies. And sometimes, you
know, people don't even knowthat they want people don't even
know they want autonomousvehicles.
Somebody figured out thatautonomous vehicles are
something that people are gonnawant, and they made huge
investments to get that. So asan I mean, I'm using that as an
(24:26):
example because you and I werewe're talking about the influx
of autonomous vehicles for Uberand Waymo and companies like
that and how they're growing,rapidly growing. And certainly
five years ago, none of us wouldhave been thinking that we would
be getting in driverlessvehicles to take us but then and
then there's sales centriccompanies. And you kinda know
(24:48):
these companies becausesalespeople are pretty much
running the show, and they sellthings you may not even make
yet. They set pricing that youmay or may not be profitable.
They might do delivery datesthat are almost impossible to
meet. So they're, you know,they're making a lot of
decisions in order to get thedeal. And so that's, that's a
(25:11):
very common model. Right? Soit's just all about selling and
getting salespeople out there tosell as much as they possibly
can and make a number.
I've been in those companies. Iimagine you have too. There's
lots of those and they're veryopportunistic. There's, you
know, oftentimes you see that inmore early stage companies, but
they don't grow out of it.They're still stuck there even
(25:32):
when it's time to make a shift.
And oftentimes, they end upgetting customers in the long
down the road that they need tojettison because they're really
not gonna be the best customersfor future growth. And then
there's market centriccompanies, and I I know you've
been in some of those too. Thoseare companies that look a lot
like product centric companies.But unlike product centric
(25:53):
companies who are creating thewave that are the first to
market, market centric companiesare more about drafting the
wave. So we can see thathappening.
We were talking about AIearlier. We can see that
happening in the AI landscape.Look at all the companies that
have emerged in that space justin the course of the last couple
of years. So those are allmarket centric companies who are
(26:16):
seeing this is a hugeopportunity, new new area of
growth. Where can we go?
And there's a lot of, you know,a lot of clutter and a lot of
noise in the space and lot ofoverlap between companies, and
eventually that will weed itselfout. So those are some examples
of other ways that people haveoperating models that aren't
(26:36):
necessarily customer centric.
Adam Larson (26:38):
Mhmm. That's helpful. I think that's it's
good to kind of establish thedifferences, especially when
somebody might not even knowwhat what is my organization?
What is our what what what arewe on? And it kind of gets you
thinking about that for sure.
Laura Paterson (26:52):
I can usually tell, by when I start asking
them what their measures aregoing to be for of success. And
I usually tell if when I startasking the question, do you know
what success is for yourcustomer? And do you know what
success is for their customers?And if they don't know that
begin to know some of theanswers to those kinds of
questions, then odds are theyprobably have some things they
(27:12):
need to revisit.
Adam Larson (27:14):
Now, you know, with all the tools and the strategies
that we talked about today, arethere certain types of companies
that work better with thesestrategies, or can we can this
be applied no matter what yourfocus of your organization is?
Laura Paterson (27:27):
This can be applied to any company. Mhmm.
Being customer centric is notdependent on what kind of market
you're in.
Adam Larson (27:35):
Mhmm.
Laura Paterson (27:37):
I would say that companies who have complex
products that require aconsultative sell, which is
often the case in b to bmanufacturing or technology,
life sciences, medical devices,logistics, those kinds of
companies, that they they shouldbe at the forefront of embracing
customer centricity because thatthey they'll they'll have the
(28:01):
they'll reap the bet greatestbenefits compared to a a company
that's, you know, maybe sellingI always use this because I sold
chocolate when I was young, theworld's finest chocolate. So
selling a chocolate bar, it's alittle bit more transactional.
Adam Larson (28:15):
Yeah.
Laura Paterson (28:15):
It doesn't require a consultative sell
typically. And, there's not alot of buyer's remorse if you
buy it. You might have remorseover the calories, but not
necessarily over the money.
Adam Larson (28:25):
Definitely. You know, Laura, this has been a
great conversation, and I wannakinda end with, you know, for
CFOs or even just finance andaccounting leaders within
organizations, what's, like,maybe one thing they can do
today to build help build astronger, more strategic
relationship with theirmarketing counterparts?
Laura Paterson (28:40):
Sit down and take a look at the marketing
plan and see if you can draw astraight line from a business
outcome all the way down throughthe activities and tactics for
that outcome in the marketingplan. And if you can't, that
would be the place I wouldbegin.
Adam Larson (29:01):
That's powerful because it's it's it's such a
simple thing, but if you can'tdo that, then it creates a whole
world of a road map almost ofhow you can how you can start
working together better in asense.
Laura Paterson (29:12):
Yes. And it will help the finance people and the
marketing people see where whatdo we need to do to get the
right things lined up and in theright buckets.
Adam Larson (29:20):
Mhmm.
Laura Paterson (29:21):
And it will improve that alignment and to
change the conversation. It willcompletely change the
conversation with your financeorganization.
Adam Larson (29:30):
Definitely. Well, Laura, I again, I appreciate you
coming on the podcast. Thank youso much for sharing your
expertise with our audiencetoday.
Laura Paterson (29:37):
It's my pleasure. Thank you for having
me, Adam.
Announcer (29:41):
This has been Count Me In, IMA's podcast providing
you with the latest perspectivesof thought leaders from
accounting and financeprofession. If you like what you
heard and you'd like to becounted in for more relevant
accounting and financeeducation, visit IMA's website
at www.imanet.org.
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