May 5, 2025 • 48 mins
Text us your thoughts on the episode or the show!
Join us as we welcome back Garrath Robinson and first-time guest Sebastian Hidalgo from RevXcel for a deep dive into what it really takes to execute a go-to-market (GTM) strategy effectively today. Spoiler: it’s not just about tactics or tools—it’s about speed, trust, and team unity.
Garrath and Sebastian challenge the old playbook of siloed teams and rigid strategies, and instead offer practical insights into how GTM execution needs to evolve to match buyer behavior and internal team dynamics. From sales being the true face of the brand to using frameworks like STRIKE and SWAT to stay agile, this conversation is packed with hard-earned lessons and bold takes.
💡 Episode Highlights
- Why connection and speed are the only competitive advantages left in a post-AI world
- How frontline execution—not just strategy—can make or break your GTM motion
- The gap between marketing and sales (and why the “revenue team” mindset matters more than ever)
- Why “best practices” might be your biggest blocker to moving fast and being relevant
- How frameworks like STRIKE and SWAT bring clarity and execution back to the people doing the work
🎧 Tune in to rethink how your team shows up at every stage of the buyer journey—and why now’s the time to ditch the handoffs and play as one team.
Episode Brought to You By MO Pros
The #1 Community for Marketing Operations Professionals
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of
OpsCast brought to you byMarketingOpscom and powered by
all the mo pros out there.
I'm your host, michael Hartman,joined today by my co-host,
mike Rizzo.
It's been a long time, mike.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
It has been a long time, far too long.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
There's not much going on for you right, yeah no.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
How far away is Spring?
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Fling Spring.
Fling is like two weeks.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
As of recording this episode.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
We're about three weeks, a little like right
around three weeks.
It's on the 21st, so, yeah,basically three.
Yeah, got it, got it.
Well, joining Mike and me todayto talk about how to streamline
go-to-market execution isSebastian Hidalgo and Gareth
Robinson.
Sebastian is co-founder andhead of sales RevExcel and a
sales trainer and businessstrategist with Sipnotic.
(00:51):
I should have practiced thatahead of time.
His previous experienceincludes working in marketing
consulting as a product owner,as well as his current ventures.
On top of that, sebastian hasbeen trained in hostage
negotiations and applies thoseprinciples to the domain and how
he approaches training forsales, which is, I thought,
interesting on its own right.
Gareth may be a familiar nameto our longtime listeners.
(01:12):
Gareth has been a guest before.
He is co-founder and head ofmarketing for WebExcel.
He has held both in-houseconsulting and fractional roles
in marketing, marketing, ops andleadership.
He's also started multiplecompanies and served in the US
Army.
Sebastian and Gareth, thank youand Gareth, thanks for your
service again.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Yeah, michael, thank you, and it's great to be on
with you guys again, so thankyou for having us.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Yeah, and for our listeners you might now guess
that Sebastian is.
He's not here in the UnitedStates.
Gareth is joining us fromGermany.
So I think we figured outbefore this.
We've got three of the four UStime zones covered, four major
ones and then one in Europe.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
That's the beauty of the remote world we all live in.
Now I'll just get to hang out.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
It doesn't matter where we're at, it's really
global.
Yeah, exactly it is.
Yeah, well, let's get thingsgoing here.
So, gareth, one of the thingsyou and I discussed is the
importance of being able toexecute I would add, quickly,
execute, efficiently, whateverand that it's often underrated
(02:25):
capability, especially when itcomes to being compared to like
strategy, which tends to getmore attention.
So I'm curious, like I'm a bigbeliever that being able to move
quickly and learn and adjust isan important one.
It's not that I don't discountstrategy, but, like A, I guess,
do you see the same kind ofthing out there and why do you
(02:46):
think that's the case?
I'll leave it, gareth.
Why don't you maybe start us?
Speaker 3 (02:49):
and then, sebastian, if you want to add yeah, you
know, um, you know that's agreat question and I think you
and I, um, last time we were ontogether, we we actually ended
up spending like quite some timetalking about this.
And you know, it's kind of boilsdown to that notion that, like
you know, I think in a lot oforganizations in my experience,
(03:11):
the idea that, you know, speedequals like a lack of focus,
equals a lack of intentionality,equals a lack of control.
And you and I had had a reallygreat conversation around how
speed is something that developsover time.
It's not something, you know,we don't just come out of the
gates launching campaigns.
You know, implementing a CRM orwhatever it is.
(03:31):
You know, this idea around thespeed of execution is something
that develops over time.
And you know, what we had kindof talked about was that comes
through frontline execution.
And you know, I think when wewere talking about this, the
conversation was rooted in, aswe were kind of developing our
services here at RevExcel, wewere having conversations.
(03:53):
Really the root issues keptboiling back down to yeah, we
can build you a great data model, we can set up all the systems
in the world, all theautomations, the signals and all
of that, and that's great.
But if that frontline teamdoesn't have the trust of the
executive leadership team and ifthey don't have clarity on what
they need to execute on in aday-to-day basis, that all kind
(04:16):
of falls apart.
And when we talk about speed,we're not really talking about
like zero to 100 execution.
We're really talking about likezero to 50 and then 50 to 60
and 60 to 70.
And as we get used to, whatshould we be executing on a
frontline basis, on a day-to-daybasis?
I think that's where the speedcomes from.
But really that's not only likea bottom-up function.
(04:39):
I think leadership teams tendto kind of look at that of like,
well, you know, we trust you tojust go figure it out and go
make it happen, and you know, Ithink we've all been in those
kind of roles and it's great forlearning.
But when we're in a growth stagecompany, that tends to kind of
break down over time.
And so when we talk aboutfrontline execution, we're
talking about how does marketingreally all this boils down to
(05:02):
is how does marketing become thespearhead for sales?
And really all this boils downto is how does marketing become
the spearhead for sales?
And you know, kind of one ofthe issues that I think
marketers run into a lot oftimes is the perception that
marketing is a support functionor the perception that marketing
is lagging behind the sales.
And I don't think it's becauseyou know marketers are lazy.
I don't think it's because youknow marketers don't have the
(05:30):
chops to kind of live at thesame speed as sales.
I think a lot of it comes downto we just don't know how to act
on these signals, we don't knowhow to act on this execution,
and I don't have and having beenin this position before of I
don't have clarity on what myweekly priorities are, and I
don't have clarity on what do Ineed to be focused on on a
day-to-day basis.
So that's where this wholeconversation really kind of
stems from.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
Sebastian, what are your thoughts on all this?
Speaker 4 (05:54):
Speed.
Speed is a big topic,especially, you know, having
worked in tech.
I saw everybody talking aboutthe need to be agile and somehow
, in those same environments,you talked about speed and
everybody stepped back.
And at the same time, you talkabout strategy and also
(06:16):
everybody stepped back, becauseit's like we have in companies,
this syndrome where we seestrategy and execution being two
separate things, whereas onething is dead without the other.
And speed, in particular,matters right now in everything
that's go-to-market related,sales related, because the
market isn't waiting for anybody, the train has to leave the
(06:39):
station and the train has toleave the station applies to the
people we sell to, to thepeople we market to.
They don't have time, they areoverwhelmed, they are constantly
pitched to.
So we cannot afford to not havespeed, both at the strategy
level and at the front-end level, because, in my opinion, now
(07:01):
that AI is upon us right andthat's undeniable it's changing
how we do business, it'schanging how we approach every
single aspect of business.
But, with AI being upon us, thelast two competitive advantages
that we truly have, the lasttwo modes that we have, are
(07:21):
connection and speed, and I seemarketing as connection and
sales as speed.
If you have both of thosethings lined up in your business
, then you have a machine that'swell-oiled and that can
actually allow you, enable you,to out-compete somebody else in
the market, because there arecompanies out there that have
(07:42):
connection and speed built intotheir culture and you will never
beat them at any other game,because that is the name of the
game.
Now everything changes so fast.
Connection and speed are thelast two modes of business
that's.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
That's an interesting take that it just occurred to
me like one of my all-timefavorite books I reckon to be
recommend in a business contextis called.
The title is Execution,subtitles the Discipline of
Getting Things Done, and ittalks about the importance of
strategy to a point.
But that focus on execution andthat sort of knowing doing gap
is kind of it's a variation ofthat, I think, of sort of
(08:20):
knowing doing gap is kind ofit's a variation of that, I
think.
And it's it's so.
It's been around for 15, 20years so in the back of my head.
That's why I've always thoughtthat strategy is important.
At the same time, if you can'tactually execute on what you say
you're going to do and deliveron what you committed to, then
it's kind of just you know wordson a piece of paper or words
(08:42):
now in a virtual piece of paper.
It also Do you have somethingto say Gareth.
Speaker 4 (08:47):
It also concerns conception.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
You know, last time.
Go Gareth, oh my apologies, Ihave a one-second delay, so I
apologize, guys.
You know, last time we spoke,you know we had kind of talked
about this and where this reallykind of formulated for me and
that was, you know, about a yearago, we were working with a
(09:08):
commercial real estate companyand in that world, speed to lead
is king.
The first person to contact hasa 90% close rate within the
first 60 seconds.
And you know, a lot of timeswe're talking about deals that
are half a million or a millionor, you know, millions of
dollars overall, and at the timewhen we were working with this
(09:29):
company, ai agents and botsreally weren't where they needed
to be to kind of lean into that.
But through that we realizedI'm working with this company
and I'm like man, this isinteresting.
I've never been in a salesenvironment where it's like you
have to truly be on top of yourgame.
You have a 60 second window toget in front of that lead and
(09:52):
these are qualified leads.
You know they fill out a formthat's like, hey, we're wanting
to sell this property, we'reshopping this property, and so,
you know, a little bit laterdown the line, you know we're
doing some more deep researchand I think part of this
research was something thatMopros had put out, and it was
along the lines that 70% ofbuyers are basically showing up
(10:14):
about anywhere from 70% to 90%of the way through their
purchasing or through the buyingprocess.
Now, so they're showing up tothe table with the information
they need and I think, like wehad talked about, it's like at
this point in sales, whetheryou're in SaaS, whether you're
in manufacturing, et cetera, ifa prospect is coming to you,
they are nailing their.
(10:34):
They're at this point, they'renailing their decision down to
maybe two or three options.
They have most of theinformation that they need.
They're just giving you achance to screw it up at the end
of the day, and you know.
So when we kind of talk aboutthat, it's like okay, this idea
that you know we're going tomarketing passes off a lead to
sales and we're going to wait 72hours or we're going to wait 96
(10:55):
hours to get in front of thatlead.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
I think those days are gone Now when we talk about
speed should have been gone along time ago, like yeah, I'm
getting sick, like my, my neckis just getting sick.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
72 hours, please no 72 hour SLA, let's go.
I just don't think that's goingto work in today's environment
anymore.
And maybe it does work for somecompanies that might have
longer sales processes.
I don't know.
But I think this is wherethings are really shifting and I
think salespeople are adaptingto this a lot better than
(11:30):
marketers.
This kind of comes back to theconversation of marketers really
understanding how can we be thespearhead for sales, how can we
get out in front of thesesignals, whether it's a new lead
that filled out a qualifiedform of like hey, I'm ready to
buy and then we can kind of getinto the conversation of
something that never really getstalked about a lot.
(11:51):
We can kind of get into theconversation of something that
never really gets talked about alot, having been in companies
myself before, where marketingyou know you come in from one
company where you see how salesis done the right way.
You come into a new company andit's like marketing hands off a
lead.
They're like all right, see, Ihave fun with that, let us know
how it goes.
And we really need to talk abouthow marketing and sales are
oscillating functions.
You know, maybe marketingpasses that lead off sales
(12:11):
qualifies and we can't justpretend like we're just going to
throw them in a nurture trackand then they're going to come
back to us, because that's nothow we build relationships.
That's just how we sustain, youknow, interaction.
That's just how we sustainengagement.
But then marketing still needsto be able to come back to the
table and find a way to get backin front of those leads and
stay relevant, provide content,provide information and like,
(12:35):
for instance, one of the piecesof feedback we've gotten from
three or four differentcompanies in the last month.
These are companies that havelong technical sales processes,
so we're talking nine to 18months, somewhere in that range.
Very high value, you know,ticket items $100,000 plus deals
and it's this idea that like,hey, our sales guys, they're
(12:58):
great at closing when weactually have a qualified deal,
come through the pipeline and weget those terms into an
opportunity, we can close thosereally well.
But where we're reallystruggling now is getting out in
front of these leads and trulyestablishing that trust and
establishing a relationship upfront.
And then again, you know thiskind of not to like beat
marketing.
(13:18):
I'm speaking as a marketerwho's gone through these things
and just kind of seen how thesethings play out in the sense
that I think this is wheremarketers are really struggling
right now.
It's like, yes, we have all theAI tools, now we have HubSpot,
we have Salesforce, we haveHubSpot, we have Salesforce, we
have amazing tech stacks, but,at the end of the day, like
that's not going to do the heavylifting for us.
Marketing still has to get outin front of these things.
(13:40):
Marketing still has to beattached at the hip of the sales
team and being proactive hey,what do you guys need from us?
And too much of the marketingthat gets done almost gets
treated as like plug and play,like well, we've got the nurture
tracks, we've got this, we justneed to roll out some campaigns
, we'll be fine, everything willtake care of itself.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
And it just doesn't work like that anymore.
Yeah, look, I'm going to jump injust to add some, I don't know,
like additional thoughts, color, maybe spicy takes, I don't
know.
We'll see what happens, but,like I, I I agree with you.
Um, I think that you know Icome from a B2B, SaaS sort of
(14:23):
background.
Obviously sales motions vary,uh, based on your industry and
the types of products you'reselling and all that stuff.
But fundamentally,relationships matter, right?
People buy from people.
At the end of the day, Moreoften than not they buy from
people who truly understandtheir problem and are trying to
solve their problem.
(14:45):
And what's interesting about thesort of go-to-market motion
between that marketing and salessort of handoff, is that
marketing as we've sort ofpictured it.
I think if I say the wordmarketing and sales, two
different images probably cometo my mind.
I don't know about you all.
(15:06):
Yeah, One is this sort of like.
I don't know.
When I say marketing, I seethis sort of just like this
brand, it's just a logo.
So the word marketing in and ofitself is a logo, it's a brand,
it's an entity.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
Pretty pictures.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Right.
Like yeah, I think it's likeit's the aspect of the brand
itself.
When I say sales, I picture aperson of the brand itself.
When I say sales, I picture aperson.
More often than not I picturesome young salesperson that is
talking to me about their thing.
Right, I don't think of it asan apartment, I don't think of
it as the brand.
But what's interesting isthere's actually kind of like an
(15:43):
intersection and you hit on it,gareth right when there's
actually this like gap.
It's not even an intersection,there's a gap still, and and I
and and I'll I'll share the gapin a moment.
But you, you kind of touched onit where you said, hey, our
salespeople can close deals andthey're really good at that.
And I agree, salespeople whoare good at closing deals know
(16:07):
how to get the right informationout, talk to them about their
pain points and move the dealstructure along, because there's
an art to that.
They're critical to asuccessful organization and you
should hire really goodsalespeople that can close deals
and move that deal along.
Their job, while you wouldconsider it to be relationship
(16:30):
building, is in pursuit of toclose a deal.
The ones who are really good atit figure out how to find
relevant information and retainand recall back to the
conversations that they've hadto say hey, I just saw this
(16:50):
thing that I think you mightfind helpful.
Let me know when you're readyto jump back on a call.
We can talk through some ofthis stuff.
Maybe it has nothing to do withour product right, they're
doing a good job of relationshipbuilding but their job isn't.
Yeah, they're storytelling buttheir job is in pursuit of
closing a deal.
I think there's still a gap.
The gap is that someone needsto be there going who in, and
(17:14):
you know you might be like oh,that's marketing's job.
It's like, well, maybe, butevery marketer that I've ever
met, for the most part, is likeI don't want to be the person
who's on a video phone calltrying to sell our product to
somebody.
I just want to put the rightinformation.
My face isn't a part of this,my logo is, and so I don't feel
(17:35):
like I want to go figure out howto say oh, look, I found like
10 prospects in our databasethat have this specific pain
point and I know that they wouldfind this valuable, and so I'm
going to send them an emailright, we think from the brand's
messaging perspective, and thesales rep is supposed to somehow
find that information that wefound that we created for them
(17:58):
on the marketing side and say,oh yeah, here's these 10
accounts that I need to givethis to, and really they're like
well, that deal's not farenough along, I need to go focus
on the one that's going toclose.
And so there's a gap still.
Somebody needs needs to fill thegap of of like, how do I bring
value to these people so that Ican have them trust us?
(18:20):
And if trust is the currencythat everything is sort of built
upon, then there's still sortof this thing that's missing,
and I think that's the excitingpart of what's happening in AI
and marketing operations to sortof bring this whole circle,
like the speed and efficacy ofyour ability to go to market.
Today, the great enabler is AI,because it allows you at some
(18:44):
point, when implementedcorrectly, with all the right
data and infrastructure andconnected ecosystem, you can now
, as a marketing team, teachyour sales reps to say hey, ai
bot, whatever right AI tool webuilt, can you pull up the 10
accounts that this piece ofcontent we just produced would
(19:04):
be most relevant for and help mepersonalize an email to them,
because I know we have at leastfive right.
Yeah, okay, great, now I canfigure out how to bring this
stuff to market in a way thatbuilds on relationships, and
maybe the sales rep can do it.
Maybe it's somebody else, but Istill think that, ultimately,
(19:26):
there's somebody who'sresponsible for building
relationships and it's not thebrand necessarily.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
I'd be curious to get Sebastian's take on this.
Speaker 4 (19:36):
Yeah, sorry.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
I feel like, Sebastian, you're kind of
representing the sales viewpointon all this.
Speaker 4 (19:43):
I have a controversial take on all of
this meaning.
I don't believe anymore inseparated sales and marketing
teams.
I hate that distinction.
It's one team and it's therevenue team.
You either call it the brandteam because in the end, there
is nothing that impacts yourreputation more as a company,
(20:04):
especially in B2B, as a good ora bad salesperson.
So a salesperson is literallythe embodiment of your brand at
any given point in the customerjourney.
So we either call it therevenue team or the brand team.
Probably in B2B we're going tocall it the revenue team.
Good.
Now what I notice is that theequation is always backwards.
(20:25):
There's always marketers andeven brand strategists.
There's always these twofigures trying to fit to sales
talking points based on researchthat was produced.
I don't know, maybe we hired amarket research agency to
produce these nice conceptsabout our ideal customer.
Well, guess what?
Hiring a market research agencyand I've been there because I
(20:46):
tried to hire many when I wasworking for other companies is a
mess, because there is a salescycle and then you have to agree
on the topics and then theyhave to do the research and then
they have to present theresults.
That takes three to six months.
Good, the information you gotafter six months is outdated by
the time you got it.
So you just throw a bunch ofmoney in the trash to have
(21:09):
talking points that yourprospects don't relate to
anymore.
Why do we waste money on thosethings when the salesperson is
the person that's doing livemarket research by talking to
prospects?
So the information loop has tostart from sales and go into
marketing, then pushes back intothe market the kind of content,
(21:32):
the kind of interaction thatattracts an ideal customer.
So that's backwards.
And another point that I want tobring is yes, many companies
are very good at closing whenthey get somebody in front of
them.
Every time I hear that.
What I hear is we are very goodat closing every time somebody
has a strong enough pain thatthey're just begging for mercy
(21:53):
and they want it to stop and nowwe can close them.
What I don't hear is oh, oursales reps excel at building
relationships and they are verygood at influencing our
prospects into making themunderstand that our solution is
the best for them.
Because that's sales.
Sales is a craft where you builda relationship with the goal of
(22:14):
building influence oversomebody else so that they trust
you with solving their problems.
Now, if you solve the problemof every person, that's
suffering extremely much fromwhat they're going through.
Yes, you can say we close abunch of deals and we're good at
that, and I'm very skepticalagain, because what I hear is
our sales reps don't know how tobuild relationships, so we only
(22:35):
close the ones that would closeanyway.
And so those are my two takes.
Sales has to fit information tomarketing, and most of the
teams that think they're good atclosing are actually leaving at
least a 12% or 20% more ofdeals on the table actually
leaving at least a 12% or 20%more of deals on the table.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
It's interesting that you bring up this point that
sales is like the embodiment ofthe brand out in the market.
If you will right, and becauseI've for a long time and maybe
it's because I was in sales fora little while I've thought most
very often not utilizedresource for, like you said,
market research is the salesteam, and I would like encourage
marketers who have not actuallybeen in front of customers
(23:20):
either go do that Right, or sitin on calls or listen to calls
or whatever, because what you'regoing to find is the language
that's used may not be on brand,but if it works, who the hell
cares?
May not be on brand, but if itworks, who the hell cares?
It's like adjust the languageto match the customer's pain.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
So I want to get back to Can I touch on the trust
piece real quick?
And I think also, when we'retalking about trust, it's not
just like hey, I'm a nice person, you know, I have a great
personal brand and I look thepart it's, you know.
I think the foundational layerof trust is how we talk about it
(23:59):
in sales is can I trust youdeliver to deliver, can I trust
your company to deliver on thispromise?
And what evidence do you have,both past evidence plus current
evidence what evidence do youhave that I can trust you to
deliver?
Before we ever talk aboutpricing, before we ever talk
about features and benefits andthose things I think
(24:20):
establishing that trust.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
I actually don't.
I actually think it comesbefore that, I actually think it
comes before that and it comesdown to do.
I trust that you have my bestinterest in in, in heart.
So, like are you actually tryingto help me If it happens to be
that what my company provides asa service or a product can do
that, great.
If it can't, are you helping mefind that other alternative?
(24:43):
And I think that it's actuallydeeper than can you deliver on
what you say you can deliver?
Eventually it might get to that, but there's a lot that happens
before that.
I agree Also.
Speaker 3 (24:59):
Yeah, sometimes being trustworthy means you recognize
that maybe this isn't a goodfit for us and I apologize.
I have a one second delay.
I apologize, but maybe thatmeans you know that conversation
ends with hey, you know, yeah,you guys have the budget to go
with us, but this isn't a goodfit and you know that that could
take us down the customersuccess um pipeline there.
(25:21):
And then we get to the, we getto retention and how bringing on
that bad fit customer in thebeginning leads to retention
issues later on down the line.
Um, but yeah, I, I think you'retotally right, michael what
were you going to say, sebastian?
Speaker 4 (25:40):
I was going to say that you know, the sales method
we train people on at revicsales was built exactly to build
that type of trust, the one youmentioned, michael, the one
that do.
You have my best interest inmind, because there is a thing
called commission breath.
People can't.
You know people's bullshitradar is so fine-tuned to every
little tweak in your, in yourattitude, in how you speak, in
(26:04):
the things you say.
People feel the pressure.
That's why something I hatethat people doing sales is using
the word hey, following up onwhat we said, following up on
our meeting.
The moment a prospect readsfollow up, their, their
resistance got goes all the wayup here.
It's like, okay, follow up,he's about to pitch, he wants to
pitch, he wants a meeting topitch.
(26:26):
People love buying but they hatefeeling, and this is true for
every industry.
They hate feeling like you wantto get them to buy and that's
why one of the biggest things Iteach in my sales methodology is
that, before you introduce anysolution, your relationship to a
prospect is that of a doctorwith a patient.
You don't walk to the doctorand say, doc, I have a headache,
(26:49):
and the doctor goes hmm, youneed morphine.
That's ridiculous.
What you do is you go to thedoctor doc, I have a headache
and, okay, the doctor startsasking you things to understand
what's going wrong in your body,and then they will prescribe
something.
That's a salesperson.
The salesperson prescribes asolution to a problem, but first
they have to listen and firstthey have to put the patient
(27:11):
first.
And the patient is the prospect.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
Yeah, agreed.
So, yeah, we were kind ofgetting into.
There's a couple of things thatare going in my head here.
(27:39):
I'm trying to figure out whereto go, but you know, to get this
.
There's like, how do you havethat happen at scale and move
quickly, right, how do you closethose gaps?
How do you get teams to change?
Part of that is, I like to callit, the fallacy of best
practices.
Right, there's this idea thatbest practices are out there
that can be universally used andactually then you, to me, you
don't stand out at all, right,um, because you are just like
everybody else.
So the things like nurture,like, yeah, okay, fine, do
nurture, but don't spend a lotof fucking time on it because,
(28:02):
like, no one's waiting for thenext nurture email.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
Like literally no one .
Speaker 1 (28:07):
So like how can you do those kinds of things and
move quickly on the things thatare probably not going to be
beneficial and those that will,and do that at scale, that at
scale, and you know, Iespecially I really like to get
your take on like, because it'sit does feel like the best
practice and kind of generalmodel in b2b is marketing does
(28:28):
one thing right, generates leads.
There's some sort of handoffprocess sales goes to, is
supposed to go, you know,research those and close them uh
, and move them through thefunnel, and it's like there's
not this connection.
You mentioned that it should beone team.
I tend to agree, even iforganizationally it's not like
the way that they functionshould be, but like how do you
(28:48):
do that?
How do you get that to happenacross those teams and have and
then enable them to move quicklyin all those kind of domains
you're entering one of myfavorite topic areas, which is
this is a cultural problem.
Speaker 4 (29:01):
In the end, in a company, we're talking about a
culture change If you want toimplement that transition from
having two separate teams tohaving one.
Now, there is something thatI've consulted companies on in
the past, and it's a very nichesolution, and it's building what
I call a cluster of effectiveculture.
What is a cluster of effectiveculture?
(29:24):
It is a spinoff of your twomain teams that you're building
that from, and you build thatwith people that are in sales
marketing and if you havecustomer success, you include
them too.
If you don't, and you're in aB2B tech company that delivers a
custom software, you will needa requirements engineer, which
is the other figure that's intouch with the customer at all
(29:45):
points.
Why do you bring these peopletogether?
You bring them together becausethey need to form a cluster, a
cross-functional team.
That cross-functional team hasto be be led by somebody who is
external to them, and that's whysometimes a consultant is
needed, because if you have itled by marketing, sales won't
(30:07):
listen.
If you have it led by sales,marketing will feel victimized.
If you have it led by a tech ora customer success person,
everybody will feel like theauthority is not in the room.
So what you do?
You bring an external, you takesomebody else from the company
that's capable, or you hire themwith that purpose and you bring
them in and you have a clusterof effective culture.
(30:27):
The key is that the personleading them is an enabler.
Is somebody who's there to justcorrect the course every once
in a while?
Is somebody that's looking atwhat happens and helping them
distinguish between okay, thisis a new best practice, or this
actually is a great idea, orthis idea sucks.
What you have is that over thecourse of three to six months,
(30:51):
the cluster will have createdtheir own sets of practices,
their own habits and their ownmicroculture.
Now you have an example thereof how to take this cluster and
start reproducing it, how salesreproduce, separate it, build it
somewhere else in the company.
Eventually you have enoughpeople doing this that this
(31:13):
becomes a new reality and youhave a new department, even
though I don't like the word andthat's one way to solve it.
There's no magic bullet.
You will not just build acluster in three weeks.
You have a new revenue team andyou will not just, you know,
tell marketers do this and tellpeople do that and they will
magically come together.
Too many rivalries.
You need to create a processand give them the opportunity to
(31:37):
develop new ways of workingtogether, to build culture, to
get used to each other, toappreciate each other, because
that's the issue.
Sometimes marketing doesn'tknow what it takes to be on the
front line getting rejected,taking calls, making calls, and
sales doesn't know what it takesto be in marketing trying to
(32:00):
guess what the customer wantsand having pressure on you
because you think you're goingto lose your job.
You need to bring them togetherin a separate context so that
they can start appreciating eachother and building those best
practices together.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
I love that.
I've used something like that.
I would call it like.
I've called it like tiger teams, right, I've used something
like that.
I would call it like.
I've called it like tiger teams, right, but essentially right a
small cross-functional groupwho is very focused on a mission
of testing a new way of doingthings and learning from it so
that you can you know, the risksare relatively low, so there's
(32:39):
a lot of openness to change andtrying new things and um.
But I think it's interestingthat you've got this like
outside, indirectly overseeingit or directly overseeing it,
but not in, not directly, in akind of organizational structure
where their focus, like the onething I would add is like they
should be there to help, likewhen things get off track from
(33:01):
what, that that objective isright, they bring them back to.
This is the objective.
It's not a boss, it's somebodyguiding them yeah, yeah yeah and
it's got to be somebody thatwho's, who's willing to tell
people what they maybe don'twant.
That's why an external works sowell for that role because they
can take all.
Speaker 4 (33:21):
They can take it all, and they can also.
They don't want to hear.
That's why an external works sowell for that role Because they
can take it all and they don'tcare.
They have no stakes, they knownobody.
They can just tell people hey,this doesn't work, everybody
will hate that person.
Okay, but in six months they'llbe gone, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 3 (33:33):
Yeah, yeah, and you know kind of having and I'm sure
we've all everybody on thiscall has experienced that when
you're the new hire and maybeand Michael, we talked about
this a lot you know I was reallyfortunate to be on three
(33:53):
go-to-market teams that executedat a really high level and when
you see it done a certain wayand you know it works a certain
way, and then you try to comeinto a new culture where maybe
it's very top-down in the sensethat, hey, you just worry about
what you need to do and you knowyou let the executives kind of
determine and like the way thatplayed out in my career, you
know, going going to a highgrowth, you know a hardware IT
(34:13):
company, um, where the marketingyou know the CMO and the
marketing director were like hey, listen, as the marketing ops
person, we want you attached atthe hip with the sales team and
we want you out in frontsupporting them any way that
they need.
And then you go to anotherculture where you know I think
we talked about this last timelike two weeks in, I set up a
(34:34):
weekly meeting with two of oursales sales guys and I
immediately got an email thatwas like why are you setting up
meetings with the sales team?
It's like well, this is kind ofjust how it's done.
I'm the new marketing ops guy.
Don't you want me attached?
Speaker 1 (34:51):
to their head.
Red flag number one, right.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
Oh, it was a red flag .
That was just the first one.
So terrifying it is, man,because it kind of goes back to
like once you see it done acertain way.
And actually let me kind ofprovide some context.
I went to this company and itwas the complete opposite,
(35:15):
culture-wise and execution-wise,from the company I was at
before.
The interesting part is Istayed at that company the
longest I stayed at any companyand it made me miserable.
It damn near made me depressed.
But what I didn't notice at thetime was I actually needed that
context in my career Because Ihad never truly been in a
dysfunctional.
I worked on a huge enterpriseproject with Microsoft and
(35:37):
Kroger.
But it is so easy to work withMicrosoft because they are so
razor sharp in execution that upto that point in my career, had
I dealt with some headwindstrying to push things through?
Yeah, but most of the time wewere able to go make those
happen.
But this was a culture where itwas like oh my God, we are
doing everything the wrong way.
(35:58):
We're still trying to run this2005 playbook and it's 2022,
it's 2023.
And we're six months into thisgo-to-market motion and
nothing's working.
And at the time I didn't realizewhy I needed that context in my
career, but what thatexperience showed me was just
this is how things truly breakdown when there is no
organizational alignment, whenthere is no clear leadership,
(36:21):
when you have leadership that onMonday says we're going to do
it this way, and then by Fridaythat plan is totally changed.
And then you see how thatmatriculates throughout the
organization, how it erodestrust across the team and then
ultimately it just completelyerodes morale, because everybody
gets to a point where it's justlike nothing I'm doing is
working and I have no idea whatthey want me to execute on.
(36:43):
And a large part of that isbecause I don't feel like I
actually have ownership of whatI'm working on.
I'm just being told tobasically sit down, shut up and
just do what you're told.
Right, and just seeing how thatcompletely eviscerated a
culture within 12 months.
And next thing, you know, yousee people leaving left and
right.
It's like this all could havebeen prevented had we and
(37:05):
granted, now this was a Europeancompany versus an American
company, so totally operated ina different way.
But you just kind of see, Ineeded that context to
understand why does it need tobe done this way versus this way
, and I think that's why we feelso convicted about that front.
(37:26):
You hear me talk so much aboutfrontline alignment and
frontline execution now, becausethat was kind of like my big
light bulb of like we can buildyou the best data model ever.
We could do winning by design.
We could do all these differentdata models, but if you guys
don't know how to really act onthat, if there's not that
ownership, that accountabilityand that trust built within your
culture between marketing,sales and customer success,
(37:48):
nothing we do for you is goingto work regardless.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
It might work for a few months, but then the people
in the culture is huge.
Speaker 3 (37:56):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
So you brought this up, like when you work with your
clients, I think you you toldme, garrett, that you have
something that you, um, you guyshave, I guess, a methodology or
framework that you call strike.
I think yeah is um, that is tohelp streamline I was gonna say
marketing teams, but it soundslike to Sebastian's point right
Revenue teams to actuallyexecute more seamlessly and
(38:26):
better, maybe between two of you, if you can maybe walk us
through what is that and whatare some typical results.
Speaker 3 (38:45):
Yeah, so the way that we think about our frameworks,
our methodologies are.
These aren't like rigidframeworks where it's like you
need to do it this way.
It's more of a mental model andit's more of a tactical
execution framework.
For how do I actually get outin front of these signals, how
do I get out in front of theseleads?
How you know, to Sebastian'spoint, how do we follow up with
these leads, re-engage staledeals?
Who owns what?
How does marketing get theconversation rolling?
(39:06):
Hey, we've got 10 deals in ourpipeline that we've carried for
three quarters, that we justcannot get any kind of answer
out of.
How do we get those re-engaged?
How does marketing and saleswork together to re-engage those
prospects and just get a finalanswer?
Even if it's a no, at least wecan get it out of the pipeline
and we have a more accurateforecast.
That's one less thing thatwe're wasting our time trying to
(39:27):
execute on.
That's one less thing thatwe're wasting our time worrying
about it.
Really, I think at the end ofthe day, when you boil it all
down, we're really trying tosimplify.
What do you need to be doing ona day-to-day basis as a
marketing ops person or as ago-to-market manager, and what
do you need to be doing on aday-to-day basis as a sales
leader or a sales manager?
And then, how do we get you tooscillate and work together to
(39:51):
where, again, it's not likethere's three separate teams
here, and I think this is anarea that you guys highlighted
and Sebastian and I view it aslike I don't really we might say
marketing and sales, customersuccess.
I don't view it as threeseparate teams, and the goal of
strike and the goal of SWOT isto get these teams to act as one
team versus thinking well, thatis, customer success is full
(40:15):
right, because customer successis always thrown in a cubicle,
in the corner, with zeroresources, and they're asked to
basically be an extension ofsales.
Yet you go into so manyorganizations and CS has
literally no idea what's goingon and what's being prioritized.
Speaker 4 (40:30):
And by the way.
Speaker 3 (40:31):
We also need you to be customer support, not just
customer success.
So, you know, our goal withthis is to get teams to work
together as one individual team.
We think of it like a footballteam or a basketball team.
You got offense, defense andspecial teams, all right.
But when we talk about, youknow, hey, the reason the
Bengals lost this game you'rethe coach just doesn't just say,
(40:53):
well, it was offense's fault,or it was a defense's fault, or
it was, you know, special teamsfault.
It's like, hey, we lost this asa team.
We want it as a team, and theteams that excel at a really
high level are the ones thatunderstand the people that are
executing at the front lines.
I know what my role is, I knowwhat my job is and I know I'm
given the ability to execute onthat at a high level, without
these restraints where I feellike if I go beyond what my
(41:15):
scope of work is, am I steppingon somebody's toes?
Am I going to get reprimandedfor trying to go a little bit
above and beyond, maybe, what myjob description is?
And so we really try to boilall of that down into a
simplified methodology, forhere's how we execute as one
team, one motion, one mission,Sebastian.
Speaker 1 (41:37):
any additional thoughts on that?
I?
Speaker 4 (41:40):
would say that something I've noticed, and one
of the reasons why Strike isGareth's baby, swartz is my baby
, and one of the reasons why Icreated Swartz is because I've
noticed something.
It is companies consistentlyfail a strategy because they all
(42:00):
understand strategy as goalsetting.
Now, why am I bringing this up?
I am bringing this up becauseIf most companies fail a
strategy which means they failat positioning, which means they
fail at understanding theircustomers it means the sales and
marketing teams in 90 or 98% ofcases don't have the tools to
(42:22):
succeed at what they do.
Because if you don't have aproper positioning in your
company, you have a lot ofguessing, a lot of chaos and a
lot of conflict and a lot oftrouble at the management level.
Now, that is not something youcan solve if you're a
salesperson or a marketer, butyou still need to do your job.
(42:44):
You still need to deliver onthese KPIs.
You still need to have to close.
You still need to generateleads.
You still need to have to close.
You still need to generateleads.
So fixing also positioning andstrategy for companies requires
a mindset shift and it is asales cycle I've been through
that takes six to 12 months.
That's a lot of time for acompany and for a revenue team.
(43:16):
Now SWOT comes in place for thesales team to basically make up
for the fact that the company,that 98% of companies, have no
clear positioning and no clearstrategy.
So that means that my salesframework, my sales method, is
probably the only sales methodthat will allow you, as a
salesperson, to get to knowexactly what you need from the
prospect or prospects in amulti-stakeholder type of deal,
(43:40):
to build a report, but also toinfluence them and to make them
trust you, make them say okay,you guys care about me.
So SWOT is a safeguard wheneverything at management levels
fails.
If even marketing were to fail,you still get a system that
works one-to-one and one-to-manyin sales context.
(44:02):
Now, if you combine that withStripe, you have, as a
salesperson, you are equippedwith beforehand, all the tools
you need to have even betterchances of closing or pushing
forward the deal in front of you.
And that's what these twoframeworks do.
They make up for the fact thatthere is a massive
(44:26):
misunderstanding at the top ofwhat it means to be in this
market today, and we make up forthat at the execution level, at
the day-to-day.
You know what to say how to sayyou know which process to take
them through in order to earntheir trust.
That's what we do.
Speaker 1 (44:45):
Yeah, I mean.
What I'm hearing through bothof these is that, yeah, what
you're providing is a way forpeople to really focus on what
they, what's controllable wherethey have agency right.
Speaker 3 (44:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:57):
There may be all this chaos happening within the
organization, but I can controlwhat I do today, this next five
minutes, next 30 minutes,whatever, and I think that's
probably good to recognize.
Speaker 3 (45:07):
Can I add no?
Speaker 1 (45:08):
matter what the context.
Speaker 3 (45:11):
Sure Can I add one thing there, gareth?
You know we we hear so muchabout the COVID era tactics and
everything, but if you thinkback let's think back to like
2010, we didn't really havemarketing ops, we didn't have
sales ops, we didn't havego-to-market ops.
We didn't have any of this.
And when I first started out, Iwas doing Salesforce consulting
for banks and credit unions andwe were basically just calling
(45:34):
it the customer journey, whichyou know, a lot of people still
use that to this day, but it wasnever.
Over time, over my 12 year, 13year career Now, we started
siloing these specific functionsinto marketing ops or sales ops
or whatever.
And now we have these fivedifferent groups, and I think
the intention behind all of thiswas we were trying to simplify
(45:58):
what maybe was becoming a littlebit more complex, but through
that we created the very silosthat we seeked to destroy.
We created the very silosourselves that we were trying to
get rid of.
We were trying to create thesefunctions as a means to get
people to individually focus ontheir area of operations, but
through that, over time, reallyall we've done is created these
(46:21):
silos where nobody speaks toeach other and nobody takes
accountability.
Now we're at a point where in alot of companies maybe not so
much as an enterprise, but insmaller companies it's like why
you have 75 employees and eightof those employees are rev ops.
That doesn't make sense.
Like we're trying to forcethese functions to be a part of
the business that maybe don'teven fit into the business.
Speaker 1 (46:41):
So I just wanted to add that as a little bit of a
side note.
Yeah, makes sense.
Well, guys, I would love tocontinue the conversation, but
we're going to have to cut itthere.
So, first off, thank you guysfor the insights.
It's been really interesting.
I wish we could go longer.
Go one at a time.
If people want to connect withyou or learn more about either
(47:04):
of these things or what you'redoing, what's the best way to do
it?
Speaker 3 (47:07):
Gareth, you first, gareth you first yeah you can
find me on LinkedIn GarethG-A-R-R-A-T-H.
Gareth Robinson or you cancheck out our website at
(47:28):
wwwgorevxcelcom R-E-V-X-C-E-Lcom.
Speaker 4 (47:29):
You can find me on LinkedIn, mainly Sebastian DP
Hidalgo.
That's my main platform.
I'm also on Twitter.
Don't look me up there.
I'm also on threads, Don't lookme up there.
Go to the website as Garethsaid, and spell it pretty well
LinkedIn is the main platform.
You want to send me a message.
Talk more about SWOT, talkabout sales and just get to know
each other.
Speaker 1 (47:49):
I'm always open to answering.
Terrific, all right, and Gareth, I mean Sebastian, when we we
talked before we started.
If you find your way to Dallas,let me know.
Speaker 4 (47:58):
I will All right.
Thanks for having us on guys.
Speaker 1 (48:01):
Mike, thank you, yeah , thank you.
Speaker 2 (48:04):
I appreciate you guys coming on.
I love your insights and whatyou're talking about.
These are importantconversations for everybody, so
we appreciate you taking thetime Absolutely Well, as always.
Speaker 1 (48:13):
Thank you to everyone here and thank you to our
listeners and our audience forcontinuing to support us.
If you have suggestions fortopics or guests, or want to be
a guest, reach out to Naomi,mike or me and we'd be happy to
talk to you about that.
Until next time.
Speaker 3 (48:29):
Bye, everybody, yep, see you guys.
Thank you.
Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of
OpsCast brought to you byMarketingOpscom and powered by
all the mo pros out there.
I'm your host, michael Hartman,joined today by my co-host,
mike Rizzo.
It's been a long time, mike.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
It has been a long time, far too long.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
There's not much going on for you right, yeah no.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
How far away is Spring?
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Fling Spring.
Fling is like two weeks.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
As of recording this episode.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
We're about three weeks, a little like right
around three weeks.
It's on the 21st, so, yeah,basically three.
Yeah, got it, got it.
Well, joining Mike and me todayto talk about how to streamline
go-to-market execution isSebastian Hidalgo and Gareth
Robinson.
Sebastian is co-founder andhead of sales RevExcel and a
sales trainer and businessstrategist with Sipnotic.
(00:51):
I should have practiced thatahead of time.
His previous experienceincludes working in marketing
consulting as a product owner,as well as his current ventures.
On top of that, sebastian hasbeen trained in hostage
negotiations and applies thoseprinciples to the domain and how
he approaches training forsales, which is, I thought,
interesting on its own right.
Gareth may be a familiar nameto our longtime listeners.
(01:12):
Gareth has been a guest before.
He is co-founder and head ofmarketing for WebExcel.
He has held both in-houseconsulting and fractional roles
in marketing, marketing, ops andleadership.
He's also started multiplecompanies and served in the US
Army.
Sebastian and Gareth, thank youand Gareth, thanks for your
service again.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Yeah, michael, thank you, and it's great to be on
with you guys again, so thankyou for having us.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Yeah, and for our listeners you might now guess
that Sebastian is.
He's not here in the UnitedStates.
Gareth is joining us fromGermany.
So I think we figured outbefore this.
We've got three of the four UStime zones covered, four major
ones and then one in Europe.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
That's the beauty of the remote world we all live in.
Now I'll just get to hang out.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
It doesn't matter where we're at, it's really
global.
Yeah, exactly it is.
Yeah, well, let's get thingsgoing here.
So, gareth, one of the thingsyou and I discussed is the
importance of being able toexecute I would add, quickly,
execute, efficiently, whateverand that it's often underrated
(02:25):
capability, especially when itcomes to being compared to like
strategy, which tends to getmore attention.
So I'm curious, like I'm a bigbeliever that being able to move
quickly and learn and adjust isan important one.
It's not that I don't discountstrategy, but, like A, I guess,
do you see the same kind ofthing out there and why do you
(02:46):
think that's the case?
I'll leave it, gareth.
Why don't you maybe start us?
Speaker 3 (02:49):
and then, sebastian, if you want to add yeah, you
know, um, you know that's agreat question and I think you
and I, um, last time we were ontogether, we we actually ended
up spending like quite some timetalking about this.
And you know, it's kind of boilsdown to that notion that, like
you know, I think in a lot oforganizations in my experience,
(03:11):
the idea that, you know, speedequals like a lack of focus,
equals a lack of intentionality,equals a lack of control.
And you and I had had a reallygreat conversation around how
speed is something that developsover time.
It's not something, you know,we don't just come out of the
gates launching campaigns.
You know, implementing a CRM orwhatever it is.
(03:31):
You know, this idea around thespeed of execution is something
that develops over time.
And you know, what we had kindof talked about was that comes
through frontline execution.
And you know, I think when wewere talking about this, the
conversation was rooted in, aswe were kind of developing our
services here at RevExcel, wewere having conversations.
(03:53):
Really the root issues keptboiling back down to yeah, we
can build you a great data model, we can set up all the systems
in the world, all theautomations, the signals and all
of that, and that's great.
But if that frontline teamdoesn't have the trust of the
executive leadership team and ifthey don't have clarity on what
they need to execute on in aday-to-day basis, that all kind
(04:16):
of falls apart.
And when we talk about speed,we're not really talking about
like zero to 100 execution.
We're really talking about likezero to 50 and then 50 to 60
and 60 to 70.
And as we get used to, whatshould we be executing on a
frontline basis, on a day-to-daybasis?
I think that's where the speedcomes from.
But really that's not only likea bottom-up function.
(04:39):
I think leadership teams tendto kind of look at that of like,
well, you know, we trust you tojust go figure it out and go
make it happen, and you know, Ithink we've all been in those
kind of roles and it's great forlearning.
But when we're in a growth stagecompany, that tends to kind of
break down over time.
And so when we talk aboutfrontline execution, we're
talking about how does marketingreally all this boils down to
(05:02):
is how does marketing become thespearhead for sales?
And really all this boils downto is how does marketing become
the spearhead for sales?
And you know, kind of one ofthe issues that I think
marketers run into a lot oftimes is the perception that
marketing is a support functionor the perception that marketing
is lagging behind the sales.
And I don't think it's becauseyou know marketers are lazy.
I don't think it's because youknow marketers don't have the
(05:30):
chops to kind of live at thesame speed as sales.
I think a lot of it comes downto we just don't know how to act
on these signals, we don't knowhow to act on this execution,
and I don't have and having beenin this position before of I
don't have clarity on what myweekly priorities are, and I
don't have clarity on what do Ineed to be focused on on a
day-to-day basis.
So that's where this wholeconversation really kind of
stems from.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
Sebastian, what are your thoughts on all this?
Speaker 4 (05:54):
Speed.
Speed is a big topic,especially, you know, having
worked in tech.
I saw everybody talking aboutthe need to be agile and somehow
, in those same environments,you talked about speed and
everybody stepped back.
And at the same time, you talkabout strategy and also
(06:16):
everybody stepped back, becauseit's like we have in companies,
this syndrome where we seestrategy and execution being two
separate things, whereas onething is dead without the other.
And speed, in particular,matters right now in everything
that's go-to-market related,sales related, because the
market isn't waiting for anybody, the train has to leave the
(06:39):
station and the train has toleave the station applies to the
people we sell to, to thepeople we market to.
They don't have time, they areoverwhelmed, they are constantly
pitched to.
So we cannot afford to not havespeed, both at the strategy
level and at the front-end level, because, in my opinion, now
(07:01):
that AI is upon us right andthat's undeniable it's changing
how we do business, it'schanging how we approach every
single aspect of business.
But, with AI being upon us, thelast two competitive advantages
that we truly have, the lasttwo modes that we have, are
(07:21):
connection and speed, and I seemarketing as connection and
sales as speed.
If you have both of thosethings lined up in your business
, then you have a machine that'swell-oiled and that can
actually allow you, enable you,to out-compete somebody else in
the market, because there arecompanies out there that have
(07:42):
connection and speed built intotheir culture and you will never
beat them at any other game,because that is the name of the
game.
Now everything changes so fast.
Connection and speed are thelast two modes of business
that's.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
That's an interesting take that it just occurred to
me like one of my all-timefavorite books I reckon to be
recommend in a business contextis called.
The title is Execution,subtitles the Discipline of
Getting Things Done, and ittalks about the importance of
strategy to a point.
But that focus on execution andthat sort of knowing doing gap
is kind of it's a variation ofthat, I think, of sort of
(08:20):
knowing doing gap is kind ofit's a variation of that, I
think.
And it's it's so.
It's been around for 15, 20years so in the back of my head.
That's why I've always thoughtthat strategy is important.
At the same time, if you can'tactually execute on what you say
you're going to do and deliveron what you committed to, then
it's kind of just you know wordson a piece of paper or words
(08:42):
now in a virtual piece of paper.
It also Do you have somethingto say Gareth.
Speaker 4 (08:47):
It also concerns conception.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
You know, last time.
Go Gareth, oh my apologies, Ihave a one-second delay, so I
apologize, guys.
You know, last time we spoke,you know we had kind of talked
about this and where this reallykind of formulated for me and
that was, you know, about a yearago, we were working with a
(09:08):
commercial real estate companyand in that world, speed to lead
is king.
The first person to contact hasa 90% close rate within the
first 60 seconds.
And you know, a lot of timeswe're talking about deals that
are half a million or a millionor, you know, millions of
dollars overall, and at the timewhen we were working with this
(09:29):
company, ai agents and botsreally weren't where they needed
to be to kind of lean into that.
But through that we realizedI'm working with this company
and I'm like man, this isinteresting.
I've never been in a salesenvironment where it's like you
have to truly be on top of yourgame.
You have a 60 second window toget in front of that lead and
(09:52):
these are qualified leads.
You know they fill out a formthat's like, hey, we're wanting
to sell this property, we'reshopping this property, and so,
you know, a little bit laterdown the line, you know we're
doing some more deep researchand I think part of this
research was something thatMopros had put out, and it was
along the lines that 70% ofbuyers are basically showing up
(10:14):
about anywhere from 70% to 90%of the way through their
purchasing or through the buyingprocess.
Now, so they're showing up tothe table with the information
they need and I think, like wehad talked about, it's like at
this point in sales, whetheryou're in SaaS, whether you're
in manufacturing, et cetera, ifa prospect is coming to you,
they are nailing their.
(10:34):
They're at this point, they'renailing their decision down to
maybe two or three options.
They have most of theinformation that they need.
They're just giving you achance to screw it up at the end
of the day, and you know.
So when we kind of talk aboutthat, it's like okay, this idea
that you know we're going tomarketing passes off a lead to
sales and we're going to wait 72hours or we're going to wait 96
(10:55):
hours to get in front of thatlead.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
I think those days are gone Now when we talk about
speed should have been gone along time ago, like yeah, I'm
getting sick, like my, my neckis just getting sick.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
72 hours, please no 72 hour SLA, let's go.
I just don't think that's goingto work in today's environment
anymore.
And maybe it does work for somecompanies that might have
longer sales processes.
I don't know.
But I think this is wherethings are really shifting and I
think salespeople are adaptingto this a lot better than
(11:30):
marketers.
This kind of comes back to theconversation of marketers really
understanding how can we be thespearhead for sales, how can we
get out in front of thesesignals, whether it's a new lead
that filled out a qualifiedform of like hey, I'm ready to
buy and then we can kind of getinto the conversation of
something that never really getstalked about a lot.
(11:51):
We can kind of get into theconversation of something that
never really gets talked about alot, having been in companies
myself before, where marketingyou know you come in from one
company where you see how salesis done the right way.
You come into a new company andit's like marketing hands off a
lead.
They're like all right, see, Ihave fun with that, let us know
how it goes.
And we really need to talk abouthow marketing and sales are
oscillating functions.
You know, maybe marketingpasses that lead off sales
(12:11):
qualifies and we can't justpretend like we're just going to
throw them in a nurture trackand then they're going to come
back to us, because that's nothow we build relationships.
That's just how we sustain, youknow, interaction.
That's just how we sustainengagement.
But then marketing still needsto be able to come back to the
table and find a way to get backin front of those leads and
stay relevant, provide content,provide information and like,
(12:35):
for instance, one of the piecesof feedback we've gotten from
three or four differentcompanies in the last month.
These are companies that havelong technical sales processes,
so we're talking nine to 18months, somewhere in that range.
Very high value, you know,ticket items $100,000 plus deals
and it's this idea that like,hey, our sales guys, they're
(12:58):
great at closing when weactually have a qualified deal,
come through the pipeline and weget those terms into an
opportunity, we can close thosereally well.
But where we're reallystruggling now is getting out in
front of these leads and trulyestablishing that trust and
establishing a relationship upfront.
And then again, you know thiskind of not to like beat
marketing.
(13:18):
I'm speaking as a marketerwho's gone through these things
and just kind of seen how thesethings play out in the sense
that I think this is wheremarketers are really struggling
right now.
It's like, yes, we have all theAI tools, now we have HubSpot,
we have Salesforce, we haveHubSpot, we have Salesforce, we
have amazing tech stacks, but,at the end of the day, like
that's not going to do the heavylifting for us.
Marketing still has to get outin front of these things.
(13:40):
Marketing still has to beattached at the hip of the sales
team and being proactive hey,what do you guys need from us?
And too much of the marketingthat gets done almost gets
treated as like plug and play,like well, we've got the nurture
tracks, we've got this, we justneed to roll out some campaigns
, we'll be fine, everything willtake care of itself.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
And it just doesn't work like that anymore.
Yeah, look, I'm going to jump injust to add some, I don't know,
like additional thoughts, color, maybe spicy takes, I don't
know.
We'll see what happens, but,like I, I I agree with you.
Um, I think that you know Icome from a B2B, SaaS sort of
(14:23):
background.
Obviously sales motions vary,uh, based on your industry and
the types of products you'reselling and all that stuff.
But fundamentally,relationships matter, right?
People buy from people.
At the end of the day, Moreoften than not they buy from
people who truly understandtheir problem and are trying to
solve their problem.
(14:45):
And what's interesting about thesort of go-to-market motion
between that marketing and salessort of handoff, is that
marketing as we've sort ofpictured it.
I think if I say the wordmarketing and sales, two
different images probably cometo my mind.
I don't know about you all.
(15:06):
Yeah, One is this sort of like.
I don't know.
When I say marketing, I seethis sort of just like this
brand, it's just a logo.
So the word marketing in and ofitself is a logo, it's a brand,
it's an entity.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
Pretty pictures.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Right.
Like yeah, I think it's likeit's the aspect of the brand
itself.
When I say sales, I picture aperson of the brand itself.
When I say sales, I picture aperson.
More often than not I picturesome young salesperson that is
talking to me about their thing.
Right, I don't think of it asan apartment, I don't think of
it as the brand.
But what's interesting isthere's actually kind of like an
(15:43):
intersection and you hit on it,gareth right when there's
actually this like gap.
It's not even an intersection,there's a gap still, and and I
and and I'll I'll share the gapin a moment.
But you, you kind of touched onit where you said, hey, our
salespeople can close deals andthey're really good at that.
And I agree, salespeople whoare good at closing deals know
(16:07):
how to get the right informationout, talk to them about their
pain points and move the dealstructure along, because there's
an art to that.
They're critical to asuccessful organization and you
should hire really goodsalespeople that can close deals
and move that deal along.
Their job, while you wouldconsider it to be relationship
(16:30):
building, is in pursuit of toclose a deal.
The ones who are really good atit figure out how to find
relevant information and retainand recall back to the
conversations that they've hadto say hey, I just saw this
(16:50):
thing that I think you mightfind helpful.
Let me know when you're readyto jump back on a call.
We can talk through some ofthis stuff.
Maybe it has nothing to do withour product right, they're
doing a good job of relationshipbuilding but their job isn't.
Yeah, they're storytelling buttheir job is in pursuit of
closing a deal.
I think there's still a gap.
The gap is that someone needsto be there going who in, and
(17:14):
you know you might be like oh,that's marketing's job.
It's like, well, maybe, butevery marketer that I've ever
met, for the most part, is likeI don't want to be the person
who's on a video phone calltrying to sell our product to
somebody.
I just want to put the rightinformation.
My face isn't a part of this,my logo is, and so I don't feel
(17:35):
like I want to go figure out howto say oh, look, I found like
10 prospects in our databasethat have this specific pain
point and I know that they wouldfind this valuable, and so I'm
going to send them an emailright, we think from the brand's
messaging perspective, and thesales rep is supposed to somehow
find that information that wefound that we created for them
(17:58):
on the marketing side and say,oh yeah, here's these 10
accounts that I need to givethis to, and really they're like
well, that deal's not farenough along, I need to go focus
on the one that's going toclose.
And so there's a gap still.
Somebody needs needs to fill thegap of of like, how do I bring
value to these people so that Ican have them trust us?
(18:20):
And if trust is the currencythat everything is sort of built
upon, then there's still sortof this thing that's missing,
and I think that's the excitingpart of what's happening in AI
and marketing operations to sortof bring this whole circle,
like the speed and efficacy ofyour ability to go to market.
Today, the great enabler is AI,because it allows you at some
(18:44):
point, when implementedcorrectly, with all the right
data and infrastructure andconnected ecosystem, you can now
, as a marketing team, teachyour sales reps to say hey, ai
bot, whatever right AI tool webuilt, can you pull up the 10
accounts that this piece ofcontent we just produced would
(19:04):
be most relevant for and help mepersonalize an email to them,
because I know we have at leastfive right.
Yeah, okay, great, now I canfigure out how to bring this
stuff to market in a way thatbuilds on relationships, and
maybe the sales rep can do it.
Maybe it's somebody else, but Istill think that, ultimately,
(19:26):
there's somebody who'sresponsible for building
relationships and it's not thebrand necessarily.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
I'd be curious to get Sebastian's take on this.
Speaker 4 (19:36):
Yeah, sorry.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
I feel like, Sebastian, you're kind of
representing the sales viewpointon all this.
Speaker 4 (19:43):
I have a controversial take on all of
this meaning.
I don't believe anymore inseparated sales and marketing
teams.
I hate that distinction.
It's one team and it's therevenue team.
You either call it the brandteam because in the end, there
is nothing that impacts yourreputation more as a company,
(20:04):
especially in B2B, as a good ora bad salesperson.
So a salesperson is literallythe embodiment of your brand at
any given point in the customerjourney.
So we either call it therevenue team or the brand team.
Probably in B2B we're going tocall it the revenue team.
Good.
Now what I notice is that theequation is always backwards.
(20:25):
There's always marketers andeven brand strategists.
There's always these twofigures trying to fit to sales
talking points based on researchthat was produced.
I don't know, maybe we hired amarket research agency to
produce these nice conceptsabout our ideal customer.
Well, guess what?
Hiring a market research agencyand I've been there because I
(20:46):
tried to hire many when I wasworking for other companies is a
mess, because there is a salescycle and then you have to agree
on the topics and then theyhave to do the research and then
they have to present theresults.
That takes three to six months.
Good, the information you gotafter six months is outdated by
the time you got it.
So you just throw a bunch ofmoney in the trash to have
(21:09):
talking points that yourprospects don't relate to
anymore.
Why do we waste money on thosethings when the salesperson is
the person that's doing livemarket research by talking to
prospects?
So the information loop has tostart from sales and go into
marketing, then pushes back intothe market the kind of content,
(21:32):
the kind of interaction thatattracts an ideal customer.
So that's backwards.
And another point that I want tobring is yes, many companies
are very good at closing whenthey get somebody in front of
them.
Every time I hear that.
What I hear is we are very goodat closing every time somebody
has a strong enough pain thatthey're just begging for mercy
(21:53):
and they want it to stop and nowwe can close them.
What I don't hear is oh, oursales reps excel at building
relationships and they are verygood at influencing our
prospects into making themunderstand that our solution is
the best for them.
Because that's sales.
Sales is a craft where you builda relationship with the goal of
(22:14):
building influence oversomebody else so that they trust
you with solving their problems.
Now, if you solve the problemof every person, that's
suffering extremely much fromwhat they're going through.
Yes, you can say we close abunch of deals and we're good at
that, and I'm very skepticalagain, because what I hear is
our sales reps don't know how tobuild relationships, so we only
(22:35):
close the ones that would closeanyway.
And so those are my two takes.
Sales has to fit information tomarketing, and most of the
teams that think they're good atclosing are actually leaving at
least a 12% or 20% more ofdeals on the table actually
leaving at least a 12% or 20%more of deals on the table.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
It's interesting that you bring up this point that
sales is like the embodiment ofthe brand out in the market.
If you will right, and becauseI've for a long time and maybe
it's because I was in sales fora little while I've thought most
very often not utilizedresource for, like you said,
market research is the salesteam, and I would like encourage
marketers who have not actuallybeen in front of customers
(23:20):
either go do that Right, or sitin on calls or listen to calls
or whatever, because what you'regoing to find is the language
that's used may not be on brand,but if it works, who the hell
cares?
May not be on brand, but if itworks, who the hell cares?
It's like adjust the languageto match the customer's pain.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
So I want to get back to Can I touch on the trust
piece real quick?
And I think also, when we'retalking about trust, it's not
just like hey, I'm a nice person, you know, I have a great
personal brand and I look thepart it's, you know.
I think the foundational layerof trust is how we talk about it
(23:59):
in sales is can I trust youdeliver to deliver, can I trust
your company to deliver on thispromise?
And what evidence do you have,both past evidence plus current
evidence what evidence do youhave that I can trust you to
deliver?
Before we ever talk aboutpricing, before we ever talk
about features and benefits andthose things I think
(24:20):
establishing that trust.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
I actually don't.
I actually think it comesbefore that, I actually think it
comes before that and it comesdown to do.
I trust that you have my bestinterest in in, in heart.
So, like are you actually tryingto help me If it happens to be
that what my company provides asa service or a product can do
that, great.
If it can't, are you helping mefind that other alternative?
(24:43):
And I think that it's actuallydeeper than can you deliver on
what you say you can deliver?
Eventually it might get to that, but there's a lot that happens
before that.
I agree Also.
Speaker 3 (24:59):
Yeah, sometimes being trustworthy means you recognize
that maybe this isn't a goodfit for us and I apologize.
I have a one second delay.
I apologize, but maybe thatmeans you know that conversation
ends with hey, you know, yeah,you guys have the budget to go
with us, but this isn't a goodfit and you know that that could
take us down the customersuccess um pipeline there.
(25:21):
And then we get to the, we getto retention and how bringing on
that bad fit customer in thebeginning leads to retention
issues later on down the line.
Um, but yeah, I, I think you'retotally right, michael what
were you going to say, sebastian?
Speaker 4 (25:40):
I was going to say that you know, the sales method
we train people on at revicsales was built exactly to build
that type of trust, the one youmentioned, michael, the one
that do.
You have my best interest inmind, because there is a thing
called commission breath.
People can't.
You know people's bullshitradar is so fine-tuned to every
little tweak in your, in yourattitude, in how you speak, in
(26:04):
the things you say.
People feel the pressure.
That's why something I hatethat people doing sales is using
the word hey, following up onwhat we said, following up on
our meeting.
The moment a prospect readsfollow up, their, their
resistance got goes all the wayup here.
It's like, okay, follow up,he's about to pitch, he wants to
pitch, he wants a meeting topitch.
(26:26):
People love buying but they hatefeeling, and this is true for
every industry.
They hate feeling like you wantto get them to buy and that's
why one of the biggest things Iteach in my sales methodology is
that, before you introduce anysolution, your relationship to a
prospect is that of a doctorwith a patient.
You don't walk to the doctorand say, doc, I have a headache,
(26:49):
and the doctor goes hmm, youneed morphine.
That's ridiculous.
What you do is you go to thedoctor doc, I have a headache
and, okay, the doctor startsasking you things to understand
what's going wrong in your body,and then they will prescribe
something.
That's a salesperson.
The salesperson prescribes asolution to a problem, but first
they have to listen and firstthey have to put the patient
(27:11):
first.
And the patient is the prospect.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
Yeah, agreed.
So, yeah, we were kind ofgetting into.
There's a couple of things thatare going in my head here.
(27:39):
I'm trying to figure out whereto go, but you know, to get this
.
There's like, how do you havethat happen at scale and move
quickly, right, how do you closethose gaps?
How do you get teams to change?
Part of that is, I like to callit, the fallacy of best
practices.
Right, there's this idea thatbest practices are out there
that can be universally used andactually then you, to me, you
don't stand out at all, right,um, because you are just like
everybody else.
So the things like nurture,like, yeah, okay, fine, do
nurture, but don't spend a lotof fucking time on it because,
(28:02):
like, no one's waiting for thenext nurture email.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
Like literally no one .
Speaker 1 (28:07):
So like how can you do those kinds of things and
move quickly on the things thatare probably not going to be
beneficial and those that will,and do that at scale, that at
scale, and you know, Iespecially I really like to get
your take on like, because it'sit does feel like the best
practice and kind of generalmodel in b2b is marketing does
(28:28):
one thing right, generates leads.
There's some sort of handoffprocess sales goes to, is
supposed to go, you know,research those and close them uh
, and move them through thefunnel, and it's like there's
not this connection.
You mentioned that it should beone team.
I tend to agree, even iforganizationally it's not like
the way that they functionshould be, but like how do you
(28:48):
do that?
How do you get that to happenacross those teams and have and
then enable them to move quicklyin all those kind of domains
you're entering one of myfavorite topic areas, which is
this is a cultural problem.
Speaker 4 (29:01):
In the end, in a company, we're talking about a
culture change If you want toimplement that transition from
having two separate teams tohaving one.
Now, there is something thatI've consulted companies on in
the past, and it's a very nichesolution, and it's building what
I call a cluster of effectiveculture.
What is a cluster of effectiveculture?
(29:24):
It is a spinoff of your twomain teams that you're building
that from, and you build thatwith people that are in sales
marketing and if you havecustomer success, you include
them too.
If you don't, and you're in aB2B tech company that delivers a
custom software, you will needa requirements engineer, which
is the other figure that's intouch with the customer at all
(29:45):
points.
Why do you bring these peopletogether?
You bring them together becausethey need to form a cluster, a
cross-functional team.
That cross-functional team hasto be be led by somebody who is
external to them, and that's whysometimes a consultant is
needed, because if you have itled by marketing, sales won't
(30:07):
listen.
If you have it led by sales,marketing will feel victimized.
If you have it led by a tech ora customer success person,
everybody will feel like theauthority is not in the room.
So what you do?
You bring an external, you takesomebody else from the company
that's capable, or you hire themwith that purpose and you bring
them in and you have a clusterof effective culture.
(30:27):
The key is that the personleading them is an enabler.
Is somebody who's there to justcorrect the course every once
in a while?
Is somebody that's looking atwhat happens and helping them
distinguish between okay, thisis a new best practice, or this
actually is a great idea, orthis idea sucks.
What you have is that over thecourse of three to six months,
(30:51):
the cluster will have createdtheir own sets of practices,
their own habits and their ownmicroculture.
Now you have an example thereof how to take this cluster and
start reproducing it, how salesreproduce, separate it, build it
somewhere else in the company.
Eventually you have enoughpeople doing this that this
(31:13):
becomes a new reality and youhave a new department, even
though I don't like the word andthat's one way to solve it.
There's no magic bullet.
You will not just build acluster in three weeks.
You have a new revenue team andyou will not just, you know,
tell marketers do this and tellpeople do that and they will
magically come together.
Too many rivalries.
You need to create a processand give them the opportunity to
(31:37):
develop new ways of workingtogether, to build culture, to
get used to each other, toappreciate each other, because
that's the issue.
Sometimes marketing doesn'tknow what it takes to be on the
front line getting rejected,taking calls, making calls, and
sales doesn't know what it takesto be in marketing trying to
(32:00):
guess what the customer wantsand having pressure on you
because you think you're goingto lose your job.
You need to bring them togetherin a separate context so that
they can start appreciating eachother and building those best
practices together.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
I love that.
I've used something like that.
I would call it like.
I've called it like tiger teams, right, I've used something
like that.
I would call it like.
I've called it like tiger teams, right, but essentially right a
small cross-functional groupwho is very focused on a mission
of testing a new way of doingthings and learning from it so
that you can you know, the risksare relatively low, so there's
(32:39):
a lot of openness to change andtrying new things and um.
But I think it's interestingthat you've got this like
outside, indirectly overseeingit or directly overseeing it,
but not in, not directly, in akind of organizational structure
where their focus, like the onething I would add is like they
should be there to help, likewhen things get off track from
(33:01):
what, that that objective isright, they bring them back to.
This is the objective.
It's not a boss, it's somebodyguiding them yeah, yeah yeah and
it's got to be somebody thatwho's, who's willing to tell
people what they maybe don'twant.
That's why an external works sowell for that role because they
can take all.
Speaker 4 (33:21):
They can take it all, and they can also.
They don't want to hear.
That's why an external works sowell for that role Because they
can take it all and they don'tcare.
They have no stakes, they knownobody.
They can just tell people hey,this doesn't work, everybody
will hate that person.
Okay, but in six months they'llbe gone, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 3 (33:33):
Yeah, yeah, and you know kind of having and I'm sure
we've all everybody on thiscall has experienced that when
you're the new hire and maybeand Michael, we talked about
this a lot you know I was reallyfortunate to be on three
(33:53):
go-to-market teams that executedat a really high level and when
you see it done a certain wayand you know it works a certain
way, and then you try to comeinto a new culture where maybe
it's very top-down in the sensethat, hey, you just worry about
what you need to do and you knowyou let the executives kind of
determine and like the way thatplayed out in my career, you
know, going going to a highgrowth, you know a hardware IT
(34:13):
company, um, where the marketingyou know the CMO and the
marketing director were like hey, listen, as the marketing ops
person, we want you attached atthe hip with the sales team and
we want you out in frontsupporting them any way that
they need.
And then you go to anotherculture where you know I think
we talked about this last timelike two weeks in, I set up a
(34:34):
weekly meeting with two of oursales sales guys and I
immediately got an email thatwas like why are you setting up
meetings with the sales team?
It's like well, this is kind ofjust how it's done.
I'm the new marketing ops guy.
Don't you want me attached?
Speaker 1 (34:51):
to their head.
Red flag number one, right.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
Oh, it was a red flag .
That was just the first one.
So terrifying it is, man,because it kind of goes back to
like once you see it done acertain way.
And actually let me kind ofprovide some context.
I went to this company and itwas the complete opposite,
(35:15):
culture-wise and execution-wise,from the company I was at
before.
The interesting part is Istayed at that company the
longest I stayed at any companyand it made me miserable.
It damn near made me depressed.
But what I didn't notice at thetime was I actually needed that
context in my career Because Ihad never truly been in a
dysfunctional.
I worked on a huge enterpriseproject with Microsoft and
(35:37):
Kroger.
But it is so easy to work withMicrosoft because they are so
razor sharp in execution that upto that point in my career, had
I dealt with some headwindstrying to push things through?
Yeah, but most of the time wewere able to go make those
happen.
But this was a culture where itwas like oh my God, we are
doing everything the wrong way.
(35:58):
We're still trying to run this2005 playbook and it's 2022,
it's 2023.
And we're six months into thisgo-to-market motion and
nothing's working.
And at the time I didn't realizewhy I needed that context in my
career, but what thatexperience showed me was just
this is how things truly breakdown when there is no
organizational alignment, whenthere is no clear leadership,
(36:21):
when you have leadership that onMonday says we're going to do
it this way, and then by Fridaythat plan is totally changed.
And then you see how thatmatriculates throughout the
organization, how it erodestrust across the team and then
ultimately it just completelyerodes morale, because everybody
gets to a point where it's justlike nothing I'm doing is
working and I have no idea whatthey want me to execute on.
(36:43):
And a large part of that isbecause I don't feel like I
actually have ownership of whatI'm working on.
I'm just being told tobasically sit down, shut up and
just do what you're told.
Right, and just seeing how thatcompletely eviscerated a
culture within 12 months.
And next thing, you know, yousee people leaving left and
right.
It's like this all could havebeen prevented had we and
(37:05):
granted, now this was a Europeancompany versus an American
company, so totally operated ina different way.
But you just kind of see, Ineeded that context to
understand why does it need tobe done this way versus this way
, and I think that's why we feelso convicted about that front.
(37:26):
You hear me talk so much aboutfrontline alignment and
frontline execution now, becausethat was kind of like my big
light bulb of like we can buildyou the best data model ever.
We could do winning by design.
We could do all these differentdata models, but if you guys
don't know how to really act onthat, if there's not that
ownership, that accountabilityand that trust built within your
culture between marketing,sales and customer success,
(37:48):
nothing we do for you is goingto work regardless.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
It might work for a few months, but then the people
in the culture is huge.
Speaker 3 (37:56):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
So you brought this up, like when you work with your
clients, I think you you toldme, garrett, that you have
something that you, um, you guyshave, I guess, a methodology or
framework that you call strike.
I think yeah is um, that is tohelp streamline I was gonna say
marketing teams, but it soundslike to Sebastian's point right
Revenue teams to actuallyexecute more seamlessly and
(38:26):
better, maybe between two of you, if you can maybe walk us
through what is that and whatare some typical results.
Speaker 3 (38:45):
Yeah, so the way that we think about our frameworks,
our methodologies are.
These aren't like rigidframeworks where it's like you
need to do it this way.
It's more of a mental model andit's more of a tactical
execution framework.
For how do I actually get outin front of these signals, how
do I get out in front of theseleads?
How you know, to Sebastian'spoint, how do we follow up with
these leads, re-engage staledeals?
Who owns what?
How does marketing get theconversation rolling?
(39:06):
Hey, we've got 10 deals in ourpipeline that we've carried for
three quarters, that we justcannot get any kind of answer
out of.
How do we get those re-engaged?
How does marketing and saleswork together to re-engage those
prospects and just get a finalanswer?
Even if it's a no, at least wecan get it out of the pipeline
and we have a more accurateforecast.
That's one less thing thatwe're wasting our time trying to
(39:27):
execute on.
That's one less thing thatwe're wasting our time worrying
about it.
Really, I think at the end ofthe day, when you boil it all
down, we're really trying tosimplify.
What do you need to be doing ona day-to-day basis as a
marketing ops person or as ago-to-market manager, and what
do you need to be doing on aday-to-day basis as a sales
leader or a sales manager?
And then, how do we get you tooscillate and work together to
(39:51):
where, again, it's not likethere's three separate teams
here, and I think this is anarea that you guys highlighted
and Sebastian and I view it aslike I don't really we might say
marketing and sales, customersuccess.
I don't view it as threeseparate teams, and the goal of
strike and the goal of SWOT isto get these teams to act as one
team versus thinking well, thatis, customer success is full
(40:15):
right, because customer successis always thrown in a cubicle,
in the corner, with zeroresources, and they're asked to
basically be an extension ofsales.
Yet you go into so manyorganizations and CS has
literally no idea what's goingon and what's being prioritized.
Speaker 4 (40:30):
And by the way.
Speaker 3 (40:31):
We also need you to be customer support, not just
customer success.
So, you know, our goal withthis is to get teams to work
together as one individual team.
We think of it like a footballteam or a basketball team.
You got offense, defense andspecial teams, all right.
But when we talk about, youknow, hey, the reason the
Bengals lost this game you'rethe coach just doesn't just say,
(40:53):
well, it was offense's fault,or it was a defense's fault, or
it was, you know, special teamsfault.
It's like, hey, we lost this asa team.
We want it as a team, and theteams that excel at a really
high level are the ones thatunderstand the people that are
executing at the front lines.
I know what my role is, I knowwhat my job is and I know I'm
given the ability to execute onthat at a high level, without
these restraints where I feellike if I go beyond what my
(41:15):
scope of work is, am I steppingon somebody's toes?
Am I going to get reprimandedfor trying to go a little bit
above and beyond, maybe, what myjob description is?
And so we really try to boilall of that down into a
simplified methodology, forhere's how we execute as one
team, one motion, one mission,Sebastian.
Speaker 1 (41:37):
any additional thoughts on that?
I?
Speaker 4 (41:40):
would say that something I've noticed, and one
of the reasons why Strike isGareth's baby, swartz is my baby
, and one of the reasons why Icreated Swartz is because I've
noticed something.
It is companies consistentlyfail a strategy because they all
(42:00):
understand strategy as goalsetting.
Now, why am I bringing this up?
I am bringing this up becauseIf most companies fail a
strategy which means they failat positioning, which means they
fail at understanding theircustomers it means the sales and
marketing teams in 90 or 98% ofcases don't have the tools to
(42:22):
succeed at what they do.
Because if you don't have aproper positioning in your
company, you have a lot ofguessing, a lot of chaos and a
lot of conflict and a lot oftrouble at the management level.
Now, that is not something youcan solve if you're a
salesperson or a marketer, butyou still need to do your job.
(42:44):
You still need to deliver onthese KPIs.
You still need to have to close.
You still need to generateleads.
You still need to have to close.
You still need to generateleads.
So fixing also positioning andstrategy for companies requires
a mindset shift and it is asales cycle I've been through
that takes six to 12 months.
That's a lot of time for acompany and for a revenue team.
(43:16):
Now SWOT comes in place for thesales team to basically make up
for the fact that the company,that 98% of companies, have no
clear positioning and no clearstrategy.
So that means that my salesframework, my sales method, is
probably the only sales methodthat will allow you, as a
salesperson, to get to knowexactly what you need from the
prospect or prospects in amulti-stakeholder type of deal,
(43:40):
to build a report, but also toinfluence them and to make them
trust you, make them say okay,you guys care about me.
So SWOT is a safeguard wheneverything at management levels
fails.
If even marketing were to fail,you still get a system that
works one-to-one and one-to-manyin sales context.
(44:02):
Now, if you combine that withStripe, you have, as a
salesperson, you are equippedwith beforehand, all the tools
you need to have even betterchances of closing or pushing
forward the deal in front of you.
And that's what these twoframeworks do.
They make up for the fact thatthere is a massive
(44:26):
misunderstanding at the top ofwhat it means to be in this
market today, and we make up forthat at the execution level, at
the day-to-day.
You know what to say how to sayyou know which process to take
them through in order to earntheir trust.
That's what we do.
Speaker 1 (44:45):
Yeah, I mean.
What I'm hearing through bothof these is that, yeah, what
you're providing is a way forpeople to really focus on what
they, what's controllable wherethey have agency right.
Speaker 3 (44:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:57):
There may be all this chaos happening within the
organization, but I can controlwhat I do today, this next five
minutes, next 30 minutes,whatever, and I think that's
probably good to recognize.
Speaker 3 (45:07):
Can I add no?
Speaker 1 (45:08):
matter what the context.
Speaker 3 (45:11):
Sure Can I add one thing there, gareth?
You know we we hear so muchabout the COVID era tactics and
everything, but if you thinkback let's think back to like
2010, we didn't really havemarketing ops, we didn't have
sales ops, we didn't havego-to-market ops.
We didn't have any of this.
And when I first started out, Iwas doing Salesforce consulting
for banks and credit unions andwe were basically just calling
(45:34):
it the customer journey, whichyou know, a lot of people still
use that to this day, but it wasnever.
Over time, over my 12 year, 13year career Now, we started
siloing these specific functionsinto marketing ops or sales ops
or whatever.
And now we have these fivedifferent groups, and I think
the intention behind all of thiswas we were trying to simplify
(45:58):
what maybe was becoming a littlebit more complex, but through
that we created the very silosthat we seeked to destroy.
We created the very silosourselves that we were trying to
get rid of.
We were trying to create thesefunctions as a means to get
people to individually focus ontheir area of operations, but
through that, over time, reallyall we've done is created these
(46:21):
silos where nobody speaks toeach other and nobody takes
accountability.
Now we're at a point where in alot of companies maybe not so
much as an enterprise, but insmaller companies it's like why
you have 75 employees and eightof those employees are rev ops.
That doesn't make sense.
Like we're trying to forcethese functions to be a part of
the business that maybe don'teven fit into the business.
Speaker 1 (46:41):
So I just wanted to add that as a little bit of a
side note.
Yeah, makes sense.
Well, guys, I would love tocontinue the conversation, but
we're going to have to cut itthere.
So, first off, thank you guysfor the insights.
It's been really interesting.
I wish we could go longer.
Go one at a time.
If people want to connect withyou or learn more about either
(47:04):
of these things or what you'redoing, what's the best way to do
it?
Speaker 3 (47:07):
Gareth, you first, gareth you first yeah you can
find me on LinkedIn GarethG-A-R-R-A-T-H.
Gareth Robinson or you cancheck out our website at
(47:28):
wwwgorevxcelcom R-E-V-X-C-E-Lcom.
Speaker 4 (47:29):
You can find me on LinkedIn, mainly Sebastian DP
Hidalgo.
That's my main platform.
I'm also on Twitter.
Don't look me up there.
I'm also on threads, Don't lookme up there.
Go to the website as Garethsaid, and spell it pretty well
LinkedIn is the main platform.
You want to send me a message.
Talk more about SWOT, talkabout sales and just get to know
each other.
Speaker 1 (47:49):
I'm always open to answering.
Terrific, all right, and Gareth, I mean Sebastian, when we we
talked before we started.
If you find your way to Dallas,let me know.
Speaker 4 (47:58):
I will All right.
Thanks for having us on guys.
Speaker 1 (48:01):
Mike, thank you, yeah , thank you.
Speaker 2 (48:04):
I appreciate you guys coming on.
I love your insights and whatyou're talking about.
These are importantconversations for everybody, so
we appreciate you taking thetime Absolutely Well, as always.
Speaker 1 (48:13):
Thank you to everyone here and thank you to our
listeners and our audience forcontinuing to support us.
If you have suggestions fortopics or guests, or want to be
a guest, reach out to Naomi,mike or me and we'd be happy to
talk to you about that.
Until next time.
Speaker 3 (48:29):
Bye, everybody, yep, see you guys.
Thank you.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.