August 8, 2022 • 15 mins
Episode 20- We speak with Liudmila Kiseleva CEO at Rampiq a Digital Marketing Agency for B2B/B2C SaaS and IT Businesses.
Liudmila talks about her journey over the last 17 Years in the Marketing space and how data driven analytics are critical to Marketing and Sales success in the B2B SaaS Space. She highlights how defining outcomes through data analytics vs. traditional Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL) vs. Sales Qualified Leads (SQL) models that hold both Sales and Marketing at a standstill in many SaaS businesses.
Learn how RampIQ's approach is winning accolades and results with their data driven approach to better marketing spend analysis, quantifiable results and better business outcomes related to sales and marketing investments.
About RampIQ:
Rampiq is a high-performing digital marketing agency focused on mining meaningful data insights, and applying these insights to maximizing online marketing investment. From detailed research and promotion strategy planning to meticulous execution, Rampiq is a dream team of online marketers ready to drive online campaign success, at scale. The Rampiq team is made up of over 20 uber-talented digital marketing consultants specializing in PPC, SEO, content marketing, and analytics.
Industry-wise, Rampiq puts a special focus on B2B IT & SaaS businesses, helping them reach alignment between their sales and marketing teams and drive revenue growth.
Learn More:
Website: https://rampiq.agency/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Play the King (00:00):
This podcast is sponsored by OMI.
The company that makes CRM work.
My guest today is LiudmilaKiseleva, who is the CEO of
RampIQ.
Liudmila, I would love to juststart by asking you, you're just
telling me about your personalpast you were born in Belarus
and grew up in Russia.
I think I have that right.
And you've lived in a bunch ofcountries.
How did you get here?
Living outside Washington DCrunning RampIQ.
Liudmila Kiseleva (00:23):
actually, I was born in Russia,
but got it
Play the King (00:26):
Backwards.
there we go.
Liudmila Kiseleva (00:29):
I came to the United States four years ago for
the combination of business andprofessional reasons.
But first and foremost, I camehere to get my third master's
degree.
I actually have three, the firstone is in international law.
The second one is in digitalmarketing from the university of
East London.
(00:49):
So that brought me to London fora couple years.
The third one is from theAmerican university here in
Washington, DC.
And this is MS Analytics.
So I decided to leverage myprofessional knowledge with some
academics background in the areathat I love, that's marketing
and data.
And this is what actuallybrought me here.
Play the King (01:09):
Got it.
And, and take me through thejourney to what you do now with
RampIQ.
I mean, because it feels like avery modern business.
Something that is veryapplicable right in 2022.
I imagine you've been part ofthis world for a while and,
something brought you here.
Liudmila Kiseleva (01:24):
I've been in the industry and in the online
marketing industry for more than17 years now, RampIQ is the
third generation and combinationof the digital marketing
agencies that I owned.
So we are a full cycle, digitalmarketing agency and we worked
with B2B, SaaS and IT companies,and we support our clients with
(01:46):
the marketing strategy planning,lead generation planning and of
course execution.
So we provide services likeniche analysis, competitive
research, web analytics, SEO,paid Adds and content marketing.
So we h ave pretty much fullcycle when it comes to digital
marketing needs o f like a B2Bor a SaaS company.
Play the King (02:05):
Gotcha.
And so take me through how acompany comes to RampIQ, what
are they telling you?
They need help with.
Liudmila Kiseleva (02:11):
This is interesting because, I've been
around for a while, I saw howthe, um, intent and the
potential to connect, my clients, n eeds changed over
time.
So first we were hired just todo the job, like run a search
engine optimization campaign fora website or launch a seasonal P
PC ads for, for a particularbusiness.
But now the ne ed e volved to bem ore like the request for a
(02:37):
dedicated really professionalonline marketing team.
So most often we ac t a s a dedicated online marketing
department for our clients wherewe substitute or facilitate.
It r eally depends on the sizeof the business.
The online marketing expertisewe put together the team of
professionals and we act like,you know, li ke a s a s e al t
(02:58):
eam on the project, an d wedelivered the results that a
single person possibly could not d eliver for the business
anymore.
What I mean here is that theindustry evolved so much.
So o ne person just cannot knowat all, one person cannot be an
expert in SEO and contentmarketing and pa id a ds and web
analytics and be l ike a S wissarmy knife for the business
(03:20):
anymore.
It's j ust too complex.
Play the King (03:22):
That's, that's really interesting.
And so just personally, is thereone of these, one of these
disciplines that you really lovethe most or?
Are you, are you agnostic?
Liudmila Kiseleva (03:30):
I
still, like, I can flatter in
myself, but I can be like an oldversion, but still Swiss army
knife.
I still can do most of thethings like hands on.
I do work with the clientsdirectly, especially for, with
the kinda onboarding and thelarger accounts, sometimes, but
I believe that the best way towork now is still to have, a few
(03:51):
people on the project who knowwhat they're doing in their
particular areas.
So this is how, we actually formthe teams.
The project teams, we have thecustomer success manager and
this is the person whounderstands the business goals.
We have the professionalsworking closely with him or with
her to deliver specific tasks.
We keep it under one roof, wekeep it under the roof of
(04:12):
customer success.
And this is one of theinitiatives that worked really
great, both for the clients andfor the team we introduced it
early this year.
Play the King (04:21):
Okay, great.
And then give me some examplesof clients that you have.
I don't know if you're allowedto tell me some, some names,
what kind of companies are they,what business, what industries
are they in?
Liudmila Kiseleva (04:30):
Yeah, I hope, Brad doesn't mind, me
sharing the OMI is our clientfor many years.
We work with SaaS companies andIT companies and one of the most
recent parts of like patternsthat we share that we saw in our
client portfolio is the B2BSaaS.
We can also work with B2C SaaS,too.
(04:52):
This is where our specialty is,and this is where we would like
to grow ourselves.
Play the King (04:57):
Can you tell me what it has been like for over
the past?
Say, I don't know, six, sevenyears, maybe five, six years
where it felt like SaaScompanies were just sort of
taking over the whole world andnow where, you know, there's
like there's talk of recession,there are fears of this downturn
and things look a littledifferent.
How are companies operating whatwere your engagements like
during the really, really goodtimes?
(05:18):
And now how are they shaping upnow that things seem a little
tinier
Liudmila Kiseleva (05:22):
Typically as any other marketing costs.
This is something that we saw onour agency part.
We have a lot of clientsordering more and more services
over time, and then suddenlythey either drop off or start
cutting costs like crazy.
That's typical.
That's not the first crisis ornot the first recession that I'm
facing.
This one is a little bitdifferent with the speed, how
(05:42):
people take decisions.
So unfortunately, we saw like arapid shift in changes in the
contracts that we are currentlymanaging, but it's not about the
performance of my team.
It's more about the productmarket field.
And, you know, like this isprobably relates more to the
customers of our customers, sothat instability starts to
(06:04):
affect them harder and it hitsthem.
The first costs that usuallypeople kind of cut down is
either the ads spend and thenmarketing spend or
simultaneously two of those.
Play the King (06:15):
Gotcha.
And, and so what have you guysbeen doing to sort of support
your clients as they try tonavigate this?
Liudmila Kiseleva (06:23):
We are pretty much data driven as a company,
so we don't just run campaignsand look at the webinar
analytics metrics and stuff likethat.
Of course we do take in thatinto account, but what we tend
to do with the B2B SaaScompanies, we heavily rely on,
we heavily use the CRM data.
So we designed an approach wherewe started to help the sales and
(06:46):
companies to look at their CRMdata in a slightly different
way.
We call it advanced sales,marketing metrics.
I even recorded the series ofvideos about it.
So we try to employ data toavoid panic mode, decisions and
make sure that the CEOs and theexecutive team and the sales
(07:06):
team and the marketing team ofthe business do look at their
leads in a particular way.
So we use CRM data to drivedecisions.
Let's say like, hypothetically,we have an average size sales
company, we have the CEO, wehave the marketing department
and we have the salesdepartment.
Of course there is kind ofmarketing and budget spent.
So we have a typical set ofmetrics everybody looks at.
(07:27):
But, when we look a little bitdeeper to the data that a SaaS
business typically has, we cannotice the metrics, for example,
like disqualification rate.
So everybody looks at SQLs,right?
Sales qualification leads(SQL)and the rates.
But, rarely people look atdisqualification rate, this is
how much you lose.
This is how much you win.
This is how much you lose mm-hmm mm-hmm
(07:47):
.
And this is one of the ways toquickly identify where the
business is bleeding, where youput the budget that like you
should, you should not be doingthat because like, if you just
look at the cost per lead costper requisition, it will give
you some information about howmuch you're paying per lead.
But if you look at thedisqualification rate, it
immediately kind of switches youto the mode where, Hey, here,
(08:09):
I'm losing money.
This is exactly what I'm losingmoney.
So this is pretty mucheffective.
Not too many businesses do that.
And this is a perfect KPI forthe marketing team.
And this is the perfect KPI forthe channel performance.
For example, if you are aspecific campaign within your
paid ads is driving yourdisqualification rate through
the roof, you should not bespending too much there.
(08:30):
You should be looking for theways where you can get better
performance,
Play the King (08:34):
Right?
Yeah.
That makes sense.
And so on the RampIQ website,you divide things up by size of
the business and what thebusiness focuses on.
You have everything fromstartups to SaaS companies.
So I wonder how are theseapproaches different for various
companies?
Like I know that's a very broad,, that's a very broad
question.
Maybe you could focus onSaaScompanies and talk to me about
(08:54):
like the biggest obstacles theyface and how you guys approach
that.
Liudmila Kiseleva (08:57):
Actually, this is where we came to the
conclusion that the company sizedoes not really matter because,
the data, is pretty much thesame.
It's only the volume of the datathat you're dealing with, but
not the data itself and themetrics themselves.
So for example, take the costper demo.
When SaaS companies run demos,they have a metric which is cost
per demo.
That is going to be universalregardless the size of the
(09:20):
company, you will have a certaincost attached to the demo.
This is where the data driven orlike advanced metrics driven
approach really works because ithelps to solve a really
important problem.
It aligns the marketing andsales team.
Basically what we try to helpsales businesses with is to not
just have the, just sales injust marketing, but have like
(09:42):
the growth department,growthteam.
We do it through CRM data aswell.
Play the King (09:47):
And so, talk to me about for SaaS companies,
What are some obstacles you see,how do you help companies, get
past them or overcome them?
Liudmila Kiseleva (09:54):
One of the biggest concerns that we hear
over and over and over from SaasCEOs that we work with is the
never ending conflict betweenthe sales and marketing
department.
Hmm.
I guess like sales are sayinglike, Hey, we don't have enough.
Good leads.
And marketing will be like, Hey,we've just sent you like a ton
of leads, but you're not closingor you are not even kinda
(10:15):
looking at them.
So, one of the CEOs I talked torecently told me, Hey, they
fight all the time.
this is where like maybecouple of years ago, like five,
seven years ago, we were hired,as I said, to do like really
specific tasks, just to run thepains, help the content
(10:38):
marketing launch, the seasonaloffering support.
Now, they need more in thebuilding, the growth teams that
will help CEOs to align thecompanies.
They did the teams within theircompany, within their
organization.
This is where the properanalytics systems become really
helpful.
(10:59):
So what you do and what we dobefore we even start any kind of
marketing recommendations, whatto do with your SEO, which
keywords to target, or how muchdo I spend on Google ads?
We can't answer those questions,but our answers will be so much
better if we look at the leadsquality by source and spend some
time with sales and marketingteam, trying to understand the
(11:21):
pitfalls.
And usually what we see is abusinesses do not have the
proper analytics systems inplace.
They collect some data, but theydon't use it as a system.
This is where, uh, we can helpintegrate the web analytics, all
the digital marketing data withCRM data.
And it works so much better.
We typically have a lot ofinsights straight away.
This is what we do.
First hand, we set up theanalytic system.
(11:43):
The second thing that we do, wetry to see if the teams, or like
the people within the SaaScompany, or within the sales
organization, if they are on thesame page in terms of the CRM
statuses.
So do they call the same things,but the same names, usually they
don't, usually thedefinition of a good lead.
Like if for the sales accepted,lead sales, qualified, lead
(12:07):
marketing, qualified, lead, andeverything, and then is think
that they haven't seen peoplejust don't know how to, how to
read this data.
And how can you make decisionsif you just don't don't call
same things by the same name,you are lost!
Play the King (12:22):
Yeah, of course.
I can see why the datacomes in so handy within these
departments are squabbling.
Like, oh, you didn't send thisleads.
Well, here they are.
We we're gonna show'em to you.
.
Liudmila Kiseleva (12:32):
Yeah.
This is where we where we havean alignment session in place
where we hear like, uh, okay,sales, what is SQL for you?
They tell us, and then we saymarketing, does it relate to
you?
They say, mm, yeah.
Maybe yes, no.
And, and, and then we, wedevelop some kind of like a
glossary or at least like fixedset of statuses and say like,
okay, so now we call those leads.
(12:53):
Like, MTLS this sales acceptedleads, so on and so forth.
And only then we, can startlooking into marketing budgets
the channels and do the actualimplementation because then we
can s hout to the sales floor.
Hey, we generated five SQLs.
U m, yesterday how's thequality.
How do you see those leads?
Is it relevant?
So what we do as a consultantbefore we start doing actual
(13:16):
marketing work, w e try to seehow we can align, both sales and
marketing t eams t hrough data,through their own CRM data, not
anything external, somethingthat we invented, n o, uh,
something that they a lready have in the business, but don't
use but pro-actively as a toolto help them be o n the same
page.
We noticed in one of the mostrecent projects we worked with,
(13:38):
t hat the sales cycle l inks wasover 180 days.
This is how poorly the salescycle was designed.
And, uh, w hen we sent them abunch of really good leads, uh,
our message to their k indexecutive team was if you keep
your sales cycle the samelength, like 1 80 days, a nd you
(13:59):
will have to wait at least halfa year before you see those
leads working.
So our suggestion would be tosee if we can customize t he w
orkflow or see what we can do tospeed up the s ales cycle.
We can continue sending youthose kind of marketing
qualified leads and spend yourbudgets over and over.
But, o ur recommendation wouldbe actually to align the teams
(14:20):
together and see how you can getthe value.
So this is the kind of feedbackthat their CEO was really happy
to hear.
Although she was reallysurprised to see, t he real,<
laugh> l engths of those of thesales cycle s tages.
Play the King (14:34):
I can
sympathize with that feeling of
shock, and I'm glad I know thisfinally, you know?
Liudmila Kiseleva (14:39):
Yeah.
Wow.
This is the results evaluationculture, right?
It's not just the markting, it'snot just the sales it's how you
look at your data together.
If you set up the cadence ofmeetings and you look just at
the numbers all the time, youknow, people conflicts team
conflicts, it does not just goaway, but they fade away a
little bit and everybody becomesmore productive and more
(15:01):
aligned.
Play the King (15:01):
Yeah.
You're not just marketing,you're also, uh, like a therapy
session for the business
Liudmila Kiseleva (15:05):
yeah.
They can find in the talk,right.
and they can, they cantalk to data, numbers don't lie
or if they do, why they don't doit so often as people.
So, data alignment is a verycool thing.
Play the King (15:20):
Liudmila, This has been really fascinating.
I wonder if you could tell ouraudience where they can find
more about RampIQ and how to getin touch with you.
Liudmila Kiseleva (15:26):
Sure.
Our website is very simpleRampIQ.agency, and you can
always connect with me onLinkedIn.
My last name is pretty muchunique and you'll definitely
find me.
Play the King (15:40):
It will be in the show notes.
I'm sure people will come outand reach out and thank you for
your time today.
And I appreciate theconversation.
Liudmila Kiseleva (15:45):
Thank you.
That was a great pleasure.
Thank you so much.
This podcast is sponsored by OMI.
The company that makes CRM work.
My guest today is LiudmilaKiseleva, who is the CEO of
RampIQ.
Liudmila, I would love to juststart by asking you, you're just
telling me about your personalpast you were born in Belarus
and grew up in Russia.
I think I have that right.
And you've lived in a bunch ofcountries.
How did you get here?
Living outside Washington DCrunning RampIQ.
Liudmila Kiseleva (00:23):
but got it
Play the King (00:26):
Backwards.
Liudmila Kiseleva (00:29):
I came to the United States four years ago for
the combination of business andprofessional reasons.
But first and foremost, I camehere to get my third master's
degree.
I actually have three, the firstone is in international law.
The second one is in digitalmarketing from the university of
East London.
(00:49):
So that brought me to London fora couple years.
The third one is from theAmerican university here in
Washington, DC.
And this is MS Analytics.
So I decided to leverage myprofessional knowledge with some
academics background in the areathat I love, that's marketing
and data.
And this is what actuallybrought me here.
Play the King (01:09):
Got it.
And, and take me through thejourney to what you do now with
RampIQ.
I mean, because it feels like avery modern business.
Something that is veryapplicable right in 2022.
I imagine you've been part ofthis world for a while and,
something brought you here.
Liudmila Kiseleva (01:24):
I've been in the industry and in the online
marketing industry for more than17 years now, RampIQ is the
third generation and combinationof the digital marketing
agencies that I owned.
So we are a full cycle, digitalmarketing agency and we worked
with B2B, SaaS and IT companies,and we support our clients with
(01:46):
the marketing strategy planning,lead generation planning and of
course execution.
So we provide services likeniche analysis, competitive
research, web analytics, SEO,paid Adds and content marketing.
So we h ave pretty much fullcycle when it comes to digital
marketing needs o f like a B2Bor a SaaS company.
Play the King (02:05):
Gotcha.
And so take me through how acompany comes to RampIQ, what
are they telling you?
They need help with.
Liudmila Kiseleva (02:11):
This is interesting because, I've been
around for a while, I saw howthe, um, intent and the
potential to connect, my clients, n eeds changed over
time.
So first we were hired just todo the job, like run a search
engine optimization campaign fora website or launch a seasonal P
PC ads for, for a particularbusiness.
But now the ne ed e volved to bem ore like the request for a
(02:37):
dedicated really professionalonline marketing team.
So most often we ac t a s a dedicated online marketing
department for our clients wherewe substitute or facilitate.
It r eally depends on the sizeof the business.
The online marketing expertisewe put together the team of
professionals and we act like,you know, li ke a s a s e al t
(02:58):
eam on the project, an d wedelivered the results that a
single person possibly could not d eliver for the business
anymore.
What I mean here is that theindustry evolved so much.
So o ne person just cannot knowat all, one person cannot be an
expert in SEO and contentmarketing and pa id a ds and web
analytics and be l ike a S wissarmy knife for the business
(03:20):
anymore.
It's j ust too complex.
Play the King (03:22):
That's, that's really interesting.
And so just personally, is thereone of these, one of these
disciplines that you really lovethe most or
Are you, are you agnostic?
Liudmila Kiseleva (03:30):
myself, but I can be like an oldversion, but still Swiss army
knife.
I still can do most of thethings like hands on.
I do work with the clientsdirectly, especially for, with
the kinda onboarding and thelarger accounts, sometimes, but
I believe that the best way towork now is still to have, a few
(03:51):
people on the project who knowwhat they're doing in their
particular areas.
So this is how, we actually formthe teams.
The project teams, we have thecustomer success manager and
this is the person whounderstands the business goals.
We have the professionalsworking closely with him or with
her to deliver specific tasks.
We keep it under one roof, wekeep it under the roof of
(04:12):
customer success.
And this is one of theinitiatives that worked really
great, both for the clients andfor the team we introduced it
early this year.
Play the King (04:21):
Okay, great.
And then give me some examplesof clients that you have.
I don't know if you're allowedto tell me some, some names,
what kind of companies are they,what business, what industries
are they in?
Liudmila Kiseleva (04:30):
Yeah, I hope, Brad doesn't mind,
sharing the OMI is our clientfor many years.
We work with SaaS companies andIT companies and one of the most
recent parts of like patternsthat we share that we saw in our
client portfolio is the B2BSaaS.
We can also work with B2C SaaS,too.
(04:52):
This is where our specialty is,and this is where we would like
to grow ourselves.
Play the King (04:57):
Can you tell me what it has been like for over
the past?
Say, I don't know, six, sevenyears, maybe five, six years
where it felt like SaaScompanies were just sort of
taking over the whole world andnow where, you know, there's
like there's talk of recession,there are fears of this downturn
and things look a littledifferent.
How are companies operating whatwere your engagements like
during the really, really goodtimes?
(05:18):
And now how are they shaping upnow that things seem a little
tinier
Liudmila Kiseleva (05:22):
Typically as any other marketing costs.
This is something that we saw onour agency part.
We have a lot of clientsordering more and more services
over time, and then suddenlythey either drop off or start
cutting costs like crazy.
That's typical.
That's not the first crisis ornot the first recession that I'm
facing.
This one is a little bitdifferent with the speed, how
(05:42):
people take decisions.
So unfortunately, we saw like arapid shift in changes in the
contracts that we are currentlymanaging, but it's not about the
performance of my team.
It's more about the productmarket field.
And, you know, like this isprobably relates more to the
customers of our customers, sothat instability starts to
(06:04):
affect them harder and it hitsthem.
The first costs that usuallypeople kind of cut down is
either the ads spend and thenmarketing spend or
simultaneously two of those.
Play the King (06:15):
Gotcha.
And, and so what have you guysbeen doing to sort of support
your clients as they try tonavigate this?
Liudmila Kiseleva (06:23):
We are pretty much data driven as a company,
so we don't just run campaignsand look at the webinar
analytics metrics and stuff likethat.
Of course we do take in thatinto account, but what we tend
to do with the B2B SaaScompanies, we heavily rely on,
we heavily use the CRM data.
So we designed an approach wherewe started to help the sales and
(06:46):
companies to look at their CRMdata in a slightly different
way.
We call it advanced sales,marketing metrics.
I even recorded the series ofvideos about it.
So we try to employ data toavoid panic mode, decisions and
make sure that the CEOs and theexecutive team and the sales
(07:06):
team and the marketing team ofthe business do look at their
leads in a particular way.
So we use CRM data to drivedecisions.
Let's say like, hypothetically,we have an average size sales
company, we have the CEO, wehave the marketing department
and we have the salesdepartment.
Of course there is kind ofmarketing and budget spent.
So we have a typical set ofmetrics everybody looks at.
(07:27):
But, when we look a little bitdeeper to the data that a SaaS
business typically has, we cannotice the metrics, for example,
like disqualification rate.
So everybody looks at SQLs,right?
Sales qualification leads(SQL)and the rates.
But, rarely people look atdisqualification rate, this is
how much you lose.
This is how much you win.
This is how much you lose mm-hmm
(07:47):
And this is one of the ways toquickly identify where the
business is bleeding, where youput the budget that like you
should, you should not be doingthat because like, if you just
look at the cost per lead costper requisition, it will give
you some information about howmuch you're paying per lead.
But if you look at thedisqualification rate, it
immediately kind of switches youto the mode where, Hey, here,
(08:09):
I'm losing money.
This is exactly what I'm losingmoney.
So this is pretty mucheffective.
Not too many businesses do that.
And this is a perfect KPI forthe marketing team.
And this is the perfect KPI forthe channel performance.
For example, if you are aspecific campaign within your
paid ads is driving yourdisqualification rate through
the roof, you should not bespending too much there.
(08:30):
You should be looking for theways where you can get better
performance,
Play the King (08:34):
Right?
Yeah.
That makes sense.
And so on the RampIQ website,you divide things up by size of
the business and what thebusiness focuses on.
You have everything fromstartups to SaaS companies.
So I wonder how are theseapproaches different for various
companies?
Like I know that's a very broad,
question.
Maybe you could focus onSaaScompanies and talk to me about
(08:54):
like the biggest obstacles theyface and how you guys approach
that.
Liudmila Kiseleva (08:57):
Actually, this is where we came to the
conclusion that the company sizedoes not really matter because,
the data, is pretty much thesame.
It's only the volume of the datathat you're dealing with, but
not the data itself and themetrics themselves.
So for example, take the costper demo.
When SaaS companies run demos,they have a metric which is cost
per demo.
That is going to be universalregardless the size of the
(09:20):
company, you will have a certaincost attached to the demo.
This is where the data driven orlike advanced metrics driven
approach really works because ithelps to solve a really
important problem.
It aligns the marketing andsales team.
Basically what we try to helpsales businesses with is to not
just have the, just sales injust marketing, but have like
(09:42):
the growth department,growthteam.
We do it through CRM data aswell.
Play the King (09:47):
And so, talk to me about for SaaS companies,
What are some obstacles you see,how do you help companies, get
past them or overcome them?
Liudmila Kiseleva (09:54):
One of the biggest concerns that we hear
over and over and over from SaasCEOs that we work with is the
never ending conflict betweenthe sales and marketing
department.
Hmm.
I guess like sales are sayinglike, Hey, we don't have enough.
Good leads.
And marketing will be like, Hey,we've just sent you like a ton
of leads, but you're not closingor you are not even kinda
(10:15):
looking at them.
So, one of the CEOs I talked torecently told me, Hey, they
fight all the time.
seven years ago, we were hired,as I said, to do like really
specific tasks, just to run thepains, help the content
(10:38):
marketing launch, the seasonaloffering support.
Now, they need more in thebuilding, the growth teams that
will help CEOs to align thecompanies.
They did the teams within theircompany, within their
organization.
This is where the properanalytics systems become really
helpful.
(10:59):
So what you do and what we dobefore we even start any kind of
marketing recommendations, whatto do with your SEO, which
keywords to target, or how muchdo I spend on Google ads?
We can't answer those questions,but our answers will be so much
better if we look at the leadsquality by source and spend some
time with sales and marketingteam, trying to understand the
(11:21):
pitfalls.
And usually what we see is abusinesses do not have the
proper analytics systems inplace.
They collect some data, but theydon't use it as a system.
This is where, uh, we can helpintegrate the web analytics, all
the digital marketing data withCRM data.
And it works so much better.
We typically have a lot ofinsights straight away.
This is what we do.
First hand, we set up theanalytic system.
(11:43):
The second thing that we do, wetry to see if the teams, or like
the people within the SaaScompany, or within the sales
organization, if they are on thesame page in terms of the CRM
statuses.
So do they call the same things,but the same names, usually they
don't,
Like if for the sales accepted,lead sales, qualified, lead
(12:07):
marketing, qualified, lead, andeverything, and then is think
that they haven't seen peoplejust don't know how to, how to
read this data.
And how can you make decisionsif you just don't don't call
same things by the same name,you are lost!
Play the King (12:22):
Yeah, of course.
departments are squabbling.
Like, oh, you didn't send thisleads.
Well, here they are.
We we're gonna show'em to you.
Liudmila Kiseleva (12:32):
Yeah.
This is where we where we havean alignment session in place
where we hear like, uh, okay,sales, what is SQL for you?
They tell us, and then we saymarketing, does it relate to
you?
They say, mm, yeah.
Maybe yes, no.
And, and, and then we, wedevelop some kind of like a
glossary or at least like fixedset of statuses and say like,
okay, so now we call those leads.
(12:53):
Like, MTLS this sales acceptedleads, so on and so forth.
And only then we, can startlooking into marketing budgets
the channels and do the actualimplementation because then we
can s hout to the sales floor.
Hey, we generated five SQLs.
U m, yesterday how's thequality.
How do you see those leads?
Is it relevant?
So what we do as a consultantbefore we start doing actual
(13:16):
marketing work, w e try to seehow we can align, both sales and
marketing t eams t hrough data,through their own CRM data, not
anything external, somethingthat we invented, n o, uh,
something that they a lready have in the business, but don't
use but pro-actively as a toolto help them be o n the same
page.
We noticed in one of the mostrecent projects we worked with,
(13:38):
t hat the sales cycle l inks wasover 180 days.
This is how poorly the salescycle was designed.
And, uh, w hen we sent them abunch of really good leads, uh,
our message to their k indexecutive team was if you keep
your sales cycle the samelength, like 1 80 days, a nd you
(13:59):
will have to wait at least halfa year before you see those
leads working.
So our suggestion would be tosee if we can customize t he w
orkflow or see what we can do tospeed up the s ales cycle.
We can continue sending youthose kind of marketing
qualified leads and spend yourbudgets over and over.
But, o ur recommendation wouldbe actually to align the teams
(14:20):
together and see how you can getthe value.
So this is the kind of feedbackthat their CEO was really happy
to hear.
Although she was reallysurprised to see, t he real,<
laugh> l engths of those of thesales cycle s tages.
Play the King (14:34):
shock, and I'm glad I know thisfinally
Liudmila Kiseleva (14:39):
Yeah.
Wow.
This is the results evaluationculture, right?
It's not just the markting, it'snot just the sales it's how you
look at your data together.
If you set up the cadence ofmeetings and you look just at
the numbers all the time, youknow, people conflicts team
conflicts, it does not just goaway, but they fade away a
little bit and everybody becomesmore productive and more
(15:01):
aligned.
Play the King (15:01):
Yeah.
You're not just marketing,you're also, uh, like a therapy
session for the business
Liudmila Kiseleva (15:05):
They can find in the talk,right.
or if they do, why they don't doit so often as people.
So, data alignment is a verycool thing.
Play the King (15:20):
Liudmila, This has been really fascinating.
I wonder if you could tell ouraudience where they can find
more about RampIQ and how to getin touch with you.
Liudmila Kiseleva (15:26):
Sure.
Our website is very simpleRampIQ.agency, and you can
always connect with me onLinkedIn.
My last name is pretty muchunique and you'll definitely
find me.
Play the King (15:40):
It will be in the show notes.
I'm sure people will come outand reach out and thank you for
your time today.
And I appreciate theconversation.
Liudmila Kiseleva (15:45):
Thank you.
That was a great pleasure.
Thank you so much.
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