Closing The Revenue Gap Between Sales and Marketing

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Gary Ruplinger: All right. Welcome everybody to today’s LinkedIn session. So we’ve got about, a little over 60 seconds before we’re actually scheduled to go live. So, 

[00:00:13] Jen Dunn: okay, I hear you. 

[00:00:14] Gary Ruplinger: I’m joined here by Jen Dunnet Grit Field. So we’ll be getting here going in just a few minutes. But in the meantime, Jen got a really important question for you.

What’s your, where is your, sorry, I can’t 

[00:00:29] Jen Dunn: hear you. 

[00:00:30] Gary Ruplinger: Oh, well, let me see. Is that my microphone? 

[00:00:40] Jen Dunn: Can you hear me? 

[00:00:41] Gary Ruplinger: I can hear you. 

[00:00:43] Jen Dunn: You can. Okay, sec. 

[00:00:45] Gary Ruplinger: So, while, while Jen is working out the, the technical difficulties on her side. I will, will ask you the audience what your favorite Olympic sport is.

I’ve, I’ve, this is like the obscure score that it’s like you remember dodgeball, the, the movie, from 2005. it had the magazine Obscure Sports Quarterly. I feel like that’s kind of what the Olympics are. I’ve been right watching, binging lots of, of curling, things out there in short track, racing.

So, the speed skating stuff I’ve been, been enjoying that. I find the, the speed skating kind of like a, almost a, you’d watch it just like you would watch NASCAR for, for all the crashes. So, Hey, Carrie, real quick, I’m gonna pull you in on, on here real quick. Carrie, can you hear me okay? I just wanna make sure that the audio is, is working. All right, 

[00:01:53] Jen Dunn: Jen? Yep, I can hear you and I can hear Jen. 

[00:01:55] Gary Ruplinger: Okay, we’ll, we’ll get her sorted out here, here, here real quick. So Hillary, Hillary loves ice dancing.

so I’ve, you know, I haven’t watched that in quite a few years. who’s, who’s good in that is, which, which countries? anybody else? What, what is your favorite, Olympic Olympic Sport? I’d say for me right now, it’s probably, yeah, the curling is definitely the one I’ve been watching the most. The, Olympic hockey was on in the, the background here at the office earlier. Let me just, check here on, Jen, see if we can get her, get her working. So, b, bear with us while we’ve got, get these, get these sorted out. We’ll be chatting about actually not the Olympics today on this session. As much fun as that might be, we’ll talk about the closing the revenue gap between sales and marketing.

So I see come back on. Jen, can you hear me? 

[00:03:00] Jen Dunn: I can hear you now. Sorry 

[00:03:02] Gary Ruplinger: about that. Oh, we’ve, we’ve just been, been chatting about what our favorite Olympic sport is. I’m, I’m, I’m in Michigan in the United States. I know you’re up and Canada. Mm-hmm. 

[00:03:14] Jen Dunn: So, 

[00:03:14] Gary Ruplinger: which one’s, which one’s yours? If you’re gonna sit down and watch one, which, which one is it?

[00:03:18] Jen Dunn: Well, I mean, it has to be hockey. I am a stereotypical Canadian. My kids play hockey, all about the hockey game and really anything on ice. the, I love this, the speed skating. I think it’s the funnest to watch 

[00:03:32] Gary Ruplinger: the, the short track ones. 

[00:03:34] Jen Dunn: Yeah. 

[00:03:35] Gary Ruplinger: This, it is like pure chaos. It’s like that, that chaotic energy of like they’re, they’re this close to each other and yeah, half the time they out.

It’s kind of, it’s, it’s, it’s 

[00:03:45] Jen Dunn: kind of, yeah, 

[00:03:46] Gary Ruplinger: it’s intense. 

[00:03:46] Jen Dunn: And that angle, being able to skate at that angle going, oh my gosh. I mean, that’s like when you pull a bucket over your head of water and watch it spin. Just really that, that physics is amazing. 

[00:04:00] Gary Ruplinger: Well, good deal. Well, I think, I think it’s, I’m glad we got the technical difficulties sorted out, so.

[00:04:06] Jen Dunn: Mm-hmm. 

[00:04:06] Gary Ruplinger: I guess we can probably jump in. ’cause I told, I told them earlier, while you’re, you’re coming back on that, we’re actually not just gonna chat about as much fun as that might be. and it’s fun. But, actually today we’re gonna chat about closing that revenue gap between marketing and sales.

So I guess, Jen, could you just kind of set the stage a little bit for. what That even is. Because I think for a lot of people, they think marketing and sales, like there there is no gap. That’s the same that you, they’re that should be seamless all the time. 

[00:04:38] Jen Dunn: They’re all together. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I’ve seen it a lot.

I mean, like many entrepreneurs. entrepreneurship was not my first career. I spent 20 years in the corporate world working with some rather large companies. and one thing that really, you know, always stood out is marketing and sales are definitely two different teams. There’s a lot of times we come together, work really collaboratively really well.

but for the most part there’s, there’s very distinct leaderships. And very distinct objectives. So while marketing is very much a support function to sales, quite often, they can really also have their own objectives. You know, marketing is very much about building the awareness, making sure everyone knows who the brand is, what it’s all about, hosting all of the automations and things that are needed.

And then with our sales team, of course, they’re about driving, very often it’s in month in quarter revenue, and then of course sometimes the longer sales cycles too, but that. gap can really become evident, especially in that timeline. I’ve spent a lot of time in sales enablement and field marketing, and that’s where it can really come nicely together.

But that’s also a bit of an extension of the sales team, so. When I very often see the revenue gap, it’s when companies are just constantly searching for, we just need more leads. We just need more to come through. And then, you know, give sales the time to close them. But then what happens is they get through to sales and they’re spending a ton of time.

Educating, not just, not just closing and selling, but really informing them on, what the product is, what it does, how it’s different. and then, you know, there’s not as much time left to really connect with the customer. we can see very often that about 30% of a seller’s time is spent selling. So the more that you can actually.

Allow for that salesperson to sell more in their time that is so precious to sell, that will bring in far more revenue for a company. So, fixing the revenue gap is really about bringing sales and marketing better together for better alignment. making sure that sales is really supported with opportunities that are as ready as possible to close.

Because ultimately, sales enablement is about, freeing up sales times to sell. Do what they do best. 

[00:07:01] Gary Ruplinger: So I guess one, one question then is kind of on, on this alignment issue is, mm-hmm. What is, is what, what is that lead like from when, from marketing, when marketing generates lead to sales, it’s like, this is, that’s not a lead, that’s a bad lead until, 

[00:07:18] Jen Dunn: mm-hmm.

[00:07:19] Gary Ruplinger: A month later when things are quiet and they’re like, Gary, we need more leads because. You’re not sending us enough. And you said, well, last month you said they were all bad. So I worked on getting you good. So I’m kind of curious about that alignment. ’cause I’ve seen, you know, in, in my corporate career, I worked in the automotive space where man it is, it is at the time anyway, it seemed like the wild west in terms of what leads were like sometimes the manufacturer would run a promotion and they’d be like, here’s all the people who from your area, who showed up to do a test and you should call all of them.

And like sales would be like. No, none of those people are interested in the car right now. And then you’re right compared to no that on a Monday morning, you know, the leads in would be from the people who were there on Sunday walking around. Well, you weren’t there, those were your best leads. ’cause those people actually wanted a So just kind of curious about that kind of alignment, and kind of getting, kind of setting the stage for that. 

[00:08:16] Jen Dunn: Yeah, absolutely. I mean that’s lead, I mean, this could be a whole podcast on itself is lead scoring. So, and that’s often what comes through is. A lot of companies will get to the place of having to find a marketing qualified lead and then also a sales accepted lead.

So even within that gap itself, there’s, there has to be clear alignment on what marketing considers a lead, what and what sales agrees. This is a good lead, I should call this one. and it’s not just cherry picking. It really is based on reality. So a way that companies can do this is they can look at.

What really qualifies? There’s, I mean, places like Salesforce will give you a whole lead scoring framework and be able to implement, you know, if a customer gives you their name, gives you their contact details, downloads a white paper, downloads a brochure, watches a video, there’s all types of different things that can really, score the lead through that, really give it that value.

So it goes from just, you know, a customer downloaded a simple guide. If they’re ready for sales. May not be quite as simple as that. It depends on your business. but when, when we can really score it and go through that way, the hot ticket is always, if they raise their hand, I want to talk to sales. So if a customer has said something like, I’ve booked a demo.

That is a very clear indication. They are ready to see the product, they’re ready to talk to sales. Sometimes those are tire kickers, but for the most part, if someone goes through to book a demo, they’re ready. so having a bit of that alignment’s really critical. one of the places that it’s going to be, that it’s going to struggle the most, I would say, is when marketing and sales don’t agree on their own two definitions.

So it’s not enough for marketing to say. We’ll tell you what is a marketing qualified lead? And sales will tell you, we’ll tell you what’s a sales qualified lead. It has to be based on reality and aligned between both teams. So really coming together with that agreement really does help, a more simple business or, or one that doesn’t have, you know, a huge teams and able to implement a ton of automation and things.

Just having those simple conversations to really make sure that’s aligned can really go a long way because if there’s that trust, if the sales. Is excited about the leads. They’re gonna work them and they’re gonna work them hard and they’re going to be happy with marketing’s producing. But if they’re garbage in, garbage out, if they’re not happy with the leads, like you say, if they, they know exactly what it is, they know those Sunday buyers, those are the ones that are ready.

That’s what they’re looking for. And. Really, if you think about a salesperson also, like any of us, they have to prioritize their time. So even if they know that, you know, I’ve got a Sunday buyer in front of me versus I’ve got, you know, kind of the, the tire kickers that we’re just looking around, they really should spend more of their time with the hot leads because more likely to close.

That’s what they’re there for. 

[00:11:15] Gary Ruplinger: Yeah, that’s, I mean, right. Probably it triage and sometimes that’s, you know, who, who needs to be called, who needs the most focus right now? Like that, that person’s ready to come in this afternoon to, to buy, or they’re, you know, ready to close next week. They just need to sign off from legal or whatever.

Then talk to them and then, you know, you know, tomorrow you can get through, you know, when you’re sitting around on a Tuesday afternoon and like, I got nothing to do. Great. Here’s, here’s some of the, you know, other stuff that kind of came in. You can spend some time there, I guess, today. 

[00:11:50] Jen Dunn: Yeah, 

[00:11:51] Gary Ruplinger: there’s probably some value in there, but you know, get, get the important ones out of the way right now.

[00:11:55] Jen Dunn: Mm-hmm. 

[00:11:58] Gary Ruplinger: So I’m kind of curious then, like when it comes to. Issues, like things aren’t converting and you know, kind of chasing things How, how do you kind of go about addressing that? Like identifying where, where the actual issue is? Because I know it’s not as cut and dry as well. It’s, you know, it’s sales on this one and it’s marketing on this one.

So how do you kind of 

go about approaching 

that 

[00:12:24] Jen Dunn: Absolutely. It’s, it’s helpful to really dig into all the different points of time, really. sometimes deals are falling through before they reach sales. Maybe while they’re waiting for sales. Sometimes it’s after that conversation. and sometimes it’s, it’s even just in the follow up.

And statistically, if you can look through where your biggest gap is, that’s where you’re focused first. sometimes, you know, we think about, Gartner actually did a study that says 69% of business buyers recognize that company websites are saying different information than the sales team is. Not across the board, but there’s pieces that are misaligned.

And what that actually does is that that really breaks down trust. So if you’re a buyer, you’re researching a car, you’re reading about all the different features and things that really make it incredibly special, and then you walk into the showroom, you’re getting shown around by the salesperson, and they’re not saying anything that you read online.

They’re talking about different features that maybe are still great, but they’re really, they’re, they’re really positioning something different. A good sales person is going to spin it in their own way. They’re going to adapt it to their personality and to the buyer. But if it’s fundamentally different from what that customer’s done on their research, then it can really cause a real breakdown for them.

what’s also interesting too is about 70, 74% of. Buyers will spend more than 50% of their time researching online before they make an offline purchase. So same case, even in your car salesman situation there, it’s critical that the salespeople and the marketing team are on the same page in that regard.

So yes, you can go update the website, you can reign in sales. But usually it’s not that sales has gone rogue. Sales will often go create their own pieces and their own materials too, if they’re not adequately supported by marketing. and it’s not to say marketing’s doing anything wrong and not to say sales is doing anything wrong, but they see a gap.

They’re gonna go fill it. So whether it’s filled in a way that. That really carries through the message in the full way. that can be a really big piece if it’s, if it happens even at, to be, if it’s happening right after the follow-up for the sales team, that’s where the biggest gap is happening that often is.

A bit more on sales place because they’ve already had that interaction with them. But we used to always think about lead flow, like a funnel, a straight funnel. You know, marketing did the awareness, the, getting everyone ready, bring them forward to sales and then their sales is to own. And that’s it.

But the reality is for most companies, especially if you think about tech companies, something that has, you know, a more complicated demo, for example, leads don’t really. Go through a straight funnel funnel anymore, they ping pong, they go back and forth. They kind of have a conversation with sales.

Might have to go back to some stakeholders. Buying cycles can be longer. so what actually needs to happen is marketing needs come back in and there needs to be a bit of nurture going on as they go through. that can be a really important piece of that as well, that many companies do well and some just don’t necessarily feel like they have time for.

But if you. Think about the old ad, the adage of, it’s 10 times harder to get a new customer than it is to keep an existing one that still holds true today. Think of leads in the same way. It’s actually less expensive and more critical to keep your existing leads going. So don’t forget, just because a lead isn’t ready right now doesn’t mean that they’re not still the right buyer.

It’s just timing. So keeping them going, having a nurture, having something, communications to keep them going, reinforce that value so that when they’re ready, then they’re ready to come back and, still have that salesperson periodically reach out becuase they’ve connected with that person. 

[00:16:31] Gary Ruplinger: I’m curious on the, the lead nurturing side.

What, what are some of the things you’re finding that have been, that are currently effective? on that? 

[00:16:39] Jen Dunn: side 

[00:16:40] Gary Ruplinger: Kind of, yeah. They’re not, they’re not ready yet, but, you know, we want to we want to keep in touch with them. What are those things that might, you know, will, will, not seem like annoying because I think that’s the, the problem sometimes is some of the stuff is so generic and it’s like, I don’t want to hear from you.

That’s not relevant. I don’t care. Go away. Yeah. Versus, no, this is actually, that’s interesting. This, you know, that’s cool. Oh, that’s a neat story. That’s, you know, the things that kind of, what are you finding actually kind of pulls the people back in versus the nurturing, for nurturing sake, or clearly it’s, you know, 

[00:17:14] Jen Dunn: yeah.

[00:17:15] Gary Ruplinger: Low effort. 

[00:17:17] Jen Dunn: It’s yeah that’s, it’s so true. I mean, you get so many emails from companies that bombard and just send far too much information and it’s really speaking at you, and that’s like anyone, we get annoyed We don’t want to hear from them anymore. So it’s, I mean, there’s, if you’re a smaller company, again, it’s, hard to do absolutely everything.

So if you’re a smaller company, even just having a consistent newsletter. Do it on a weekly basis, biweekly, monthly, whatever’s the right mix for your industry. keeping in mind you want to stay relevant and top of mind, but newsletters shouldn’t be. A novel. It’s not an editorial. It’s not meant to be incredibly long and boring.

Keep it to just a few calls to action. A few key things you’re gonna be sharing, add value. Don’t just be selling. of course we’re all here to make money. This is, this is commerce, but you definitely want to add value for your audience. So educate, inform, inspire. And you can sell, but don’t just do, don’t just sell.

even. and, what you think about having, email communications are so critical because you really build your list. You’re building, a piece that you own. If you think about, social media is wonderful. We love LinkedIn. and All the other platforms, they’re also very important. but we don’t own the lists of that.

that once you pull it into your email newsletter or email communications of any form, you’re really building that list yourself. So you have ownership to those, those rights essentially because people are opting in to hear from you. What also having a consistent communication can really do is it’s not just about building that, loyalty of your brand, but it’s also getting buyers used to opening your email address and that’s actually in your domain.

It’s really important because it actually helps overall with your open rates, with your engagements, and just keeping you out of spam filters. So having a highly engaged list is very important. ways to do that of course is to have quality that you’re putting out. You’re not always just pushing product.

and you’re really keeping it succinct enough that it’s people scan. Nobody really reads through in detail that much anymore unless you are an incredible writer, highly entertaining. so it really, it helps to carry all that forward. Other things is as your business grows and you’ve got a, a more staff and ability to do a bit more.

really breaking out your communications by persona can really be helpful. So thinking about your ideal customer profile, if you’ve got more than one. Or even if there’s many stakeholders within the buying groups, segment your buyers and then when you’re actually speaking to them, you’re really speaking directly to them so if I’m speaking to Gary, the sales rep versus Gary, the head of marketing, those messages can be quite different. so being able to really, be more specific and connect with the buyer. is helpful and, again, offering value, offering, you know, webinars, events, even just anecdotes or industry insights become, a source of information beyond just pushing your product.

[00:20:34] Gary Ruplinger: brings up a interesting question here. I’m curious to get your take on it, but before I ask my question, anybody, anybody, because I know we’ve got, you know, about 30 or so people kind of watching right now. If anybody does have questions for Jen, please feel free to post them in the chat. and we, we will get to them as they come in.

For example, Jackie, who’s, you know. Spin on Benny and many of these, you know, saying things like, we just need more leap. I’m so tight. Yeah. We should all get t-shirts, we should all get t-shirt marketing, you know, has, you know, done, been there, done that. and, but, I’m kind of curious. on the communicating side.

Mm-hmm. What do you find working? ’cause I, I’ll, I’ll be honest, I’ve been guilty of this more than once where, you know, working, you know, it was like working on a new initiative or a new campaign and, you know, launches and we’re like, okay, you know, did a big direct mail piece or something like that.

Something we know is gonna generate calls and, somebody forgot to tell 

[00:21:36] Jen Dunn: Oh, 

[00:21:37] Gary Ruplinger: oh, yeah. And, and yeah, it’s, it’s one of those, right? So if, if you’re in, you know, in the meetings with them and talking to them, ob obviously that helps. And I, you know, I, I, you know, took, didn’t take long before it made sense that, you know, I was like. You know, the, all the management would get together and kind of talk about what’s gonna be, you know, what, what marketing is working on, what sales is working on, so that people would communicate.

But, you know, kind of, especially as organizations grow, I mean Right. Even, even an organization 

[00:22:11] Jen Dunn: mm-hmm. 

[00:22:11] Gary Ruplinger: 20 people that you know, all of a sudden starts to get a little unruly. What if you’ve got, you know, multiple locations and everybody’s. all over the place and not everybody can be on every meeting Because who wants to be.

So kind of how, how are you kind of approaching that kind of communication, portion of it? 

[00:22:31] Jen Dunn: Absolutely. And I would say that that happens. I’ve seen it many times in my corporate career and it’s, it’s, it’s the worst thing. It’s because, you know, sales will will be up in a sales meeting, you know, in front of customers or even at a trade show.

And if they don’t know what’s going on or they don’t know about a. Promotion, especially if they don’t, if they don’t know about a new product, you have a major problem. But if it’s maybe a new promotion or a special offer, you know, those things can slip through the cracks. so what I’ve. Honestly, what I find is that you really need, again, to have that alignment with marketing and sales.

one thing that, I found worked really well, when I used to run on sales or marketing channel enablement, pardon me, is we would host a call, once a month, we bring in the full sales team. And we would present all the different materials and resources that our team and other teams within marketing had created.

And it was not to share with them for the first time. It was to kind of reinforce, we’d done pilots programs with sales reps. With new pieces that we would launch, or let’s say we’re creating a new bundle in a certain region. This worked here, it’s now available in wider regions, that kind of thing.

So every time that we would have new resources available, we’d make sure that there was a recorded call, recognize that salespeople travel too so it’s not even, you know, missing the entire sales team. That’s a big gap. But if a few sales reps don’t know about something that’s normal, but. making sure that you make things accessible.

So having, you know, a way to present that information. always record it, always make it available, send it out later. Make it easily clickable, linkable, because a lot of salespeople travel. So just having things in one place with easy to find resources is incredibly helpful. and just. Communicate it more than once.

Like anything, we all need to hear things about seven things for it to seven times for it to sink in. So just remember that they’re busy, they’re traveling and, and you always gotta lead with what’s in it for them like anyone else. they, they are driven, in certain ways. So you really need to hit the nail on the head of, as you’re presenting it.

It’s not just, here’s a new bundle that’s gonna help you sell more products. It’s. Here’s a new bundle that we’ve created based on a need that we saw, let’s say in a particular region. And these products are selling really well together because of X, Y, Z. Really pull it in and make it, a no brainer for them, for why they not only should know about it, but should want to effectively use it to help them reach their targets.

[00:25:22] Gary Ruplinger: Got it. And I’ll, I’ll, give you one kind of more horror story. This was the time I attended a trade show. and, you know, the C-E-O-C-E-O of a, some type of, I forget, some type of lead system for, you know, we were looking at buying. We’d already been. Talking with the rep, we were pretty far down the road with it.

So when I happened to be at the trade show and saw the CEO of the company was speaking, I was like, cool. I wanna, I wanna go, go check this out. And the CEO, he, he made a, he made a, an aggressive offer during his talk, you know, to try and get people signed up for his thing. I was like, oh, perfect. This is, this is a no brainer.

I had sign off from it, from, from my boss on it. I was like, okay. Went back to the sales rep when I got back from, from the show and he is like. haven’t heard about that. You know, it comes back to me a few hours later is they’re walking, doing their best to walk it all back and be like, oh no, that’s not what he said.

He didn’t say you, he was gonna do this. He actually meant this as, oh no, he lost, we lost that deal. Because we were like, no, that’s, that’s not what, that’s not what he said. And now I’m like, I don’t, I don’t trust you guys. It’s like, no, do, do, you know, so, yeah. But, yeah. So I think, which brings in, in this, question here for Mike.

So I, that’s setting this in up, but, so Mike says, what role does the CEO play and how in solidifying alignment between the org 

teams 

[00:26:53] Jen Dunn: Oh. CEO absolutely plays a role. That’s a great question, Mike. It depends on the size of the company for how involved they might be. So if it’s a smaller, medium sized company, the CEO needs to absolutely be at the table.

If we’re talking an enterprise level company, the CEO should be aware and involved in the strategy with his senior leadership team. His or hers CEOs can be ladies too. It really, it stems from leadership. So, you know, oftentimes you’ll see companies just simply put sales and marketing on the same team and.

That works in a lot of cases, but that’s not the only move that you make there. needs to be strong alignment objectives, KPIs, how folks are essentially measured and what success looks like. It needs to be aligned at the top because if it’s not aligned at the top, then it, as it trickles down, you know, if the CEO is not aligned to what sales and marketing are trying to achieve together.

Who, who are you going to listen to? You know, your, sales VP is wonderful and so is your marketing vp, but they’re not the CEO. So the CEO absolutely should be bought well into the strategy, should be feeding into it and should be working on it with them. The actual hands on piece will trickle down, of course, as things move forward, but absolutely they should be aligned.

and I mean, CEOs can go rogue in presentations that happens. Wow. That would be, oh, that would be so hard to, I mean, and, and I have to walk that back, Gary. That’s Wow. That, I mean, company. I feel bad for them. Oh 

[00:28:39] Gary Ruplinger: yeah. I mean, clearly it was like the, the VP of sales, right? ’cause he was ultimately, who was involved in this when he, he, he was, yeah.

I think he was like beside himself at what the CEO said. And he is like, I, what? And yeah, he kind of went, went the wrong way on it. Couldn’t figure out how to make it work. ’cause he is all like, oh, I collect my money and, you know, probably trying to hit, hit his quota versus, yeah. you know, right. You got all these different.

People’s goals and that it’s tied to their, you know, to what they’re making. So you can’t, you can’t really, it’s hard to blame ’em. Mm-hmm. But yeah, when it’s out of alignment, that’s when it’s, the problem is that, you know, yes, marketing’s incentives are not aligned with sales. I we see that a lot.

yeah. Is that they’re incentivized for things that don’t work together very well. 

[00:29:29] Jen Dunn: No, it’s true. It, it’s, even if you think about, if, again, if MQL is marketing qualified, leads aren’t defined in the right way, but marketing’s only objective is a high quantity of marketing. Qualified leads is defined a certain way, but the definition is terrible.

We’re not gonna hit our objectives. That’s just, that’s gonna fall completely flat. so it’s not just having, having KPIs in place. It has to be the right ones and the ones that really help move the business forward. So that CEO is actually probably, like you say, highly driven to hit revenue targets and thought, okay.

[00:30:06] Gary Ruplinger: Yeah. 

[00:30:06] Jen Dunn: If I just make this incredible 50% offer, everyone’s gonna buy it. But not realizing maybe that’s not gonna, I guess actually gonna kill our margin. We’re gonna lose money on all those deals. We 

[00:30:19] Gary Ruplinger: Yeah. And that’s, that’s what he did. So it was a great offer. I was like, oh, 

[00:30:21] Jen Dunn: wow.

[00:30:22] Gary Ruplinger: Nope, no brainer. So do it. And, yeah, but unfortunately, apparently, sales is like, that’s not, Nope, 

[00:30:31] Jen Dunn: nope. 

[00:30:33] Gary Ruplinger: Cool. you got time for another one. Ah. 

[00:30:37] Jen Dunn: Alright. 

[00:30:37] Gary Ruplinger: Alright, here we go. So, who should build channel partnership campaigns, sales or marketing? 

[00:30:44] Jen Dunn: Mm-hmm. 

[00:30:44] Gary Ruplinger: The natural answer. Marketing. But is there value in having sales teams in those meetings?

[00:30:52] Jen Dunn: Ooh, channel partnerships. Are we thinking, oh, can I ask a follow up? Are we thinking like reseller channel, or are we thinking of. Social media channel. I’m trying to think of the right channel. Maybe answer both. 

[00:31:07] Gary Ruplinger: we’ll call, we’ll call it Dealer’s choice here. 

[00:31:09] Jen Dunn: Dealer’s choice. Okay. well, I’d say yeah, if it’s channel partnerships, ugh.

I, I mean, I would say if you can have both at the table, that’s always a better thing. So channel partnerships, to me, having worked a lot in manufacturing, in technology and having worked with reseller and distributor channels, I would say that’s always sales and marketing come together because, You need to really build partnerships to extend your reach. So if you’re, you’re bringing on a new, a new, reseller channel or a new distributor channel, often marketing is kind of that conduit. Oh, reseller, oh, it was right. Alright. marketing can be that conduit. So a lot of times, you know, when you bring on, a bigger company like that, there’s an investment, whether it’s a kind of a forced pay to play, you need to almost sponsor to, to get in front of their reps.

or if it’s just. You just know you need to really invest heavily there. Marketing comes with the budget to be able to kind of have that opportunity. operations is of course gonna sign all the dealer agreements and things like that. but the sales team really needs to be, aligned and involved as well.

So we would. Go into buying, rather large sponsorship deals with big, big channel resellers and distributors. and this involves a lot of marketing exposure. So we get to build, Branded pages on their website, which is where the sales reps went. These were critical. we would get to have webinars and participate in events and, you know, they would off often bring in their, their customers to many trade shows.

We’d get to demo as, As, through the trade show as well. but everything, if we had loan as marketing, if we tried to do it ourselves without the sales team, it would’ve fallen completely flat. There are pieces that were absolutely for marketing to own, like digital, a advertising, things like that.

but even things like webinars, bringing in the marketing people for webinars is helpful. It’s not, not the same as when you bring in really strong salespeople. ’cause that’s who should be, you know, giving the demo candy and, and really showing the sales reps what they should be really excited about, and what will really help them, sell to their end users.

So I would say. I would say there’s, I could probably argue just about any situation where you should bring both parties together, but this one in particular, it’s a great question. Yes, you should absolutely bring, sales to the ta. Sales should be almost an equal part in the table, would say. 

[00:33:51] Gary Ruplinger: So I know before I wanna make sure we don’t take up too much of everybody’s time, so I want to kind of get to. Gap assessments that you offer and kind of when the timing is right, if somebody should, should bring one on. And then, and then I’ll do more questions from, from the audience. So, but could you kind of walk us through that?

Like what, what, what kind of, what is the, the. value I guess of bringing in an outside person, To help. And then when kind of is the right time or when is a good time to, to do that? so for somebody who’s looking and saying, well, I mean there’s Right, you know, there’s, chaos in my organization, but that’s normal.

So how do you figure out. If that’s normal, normal chaos, or if it’s actually dysfunctional. 

[00:34:36] Jen Dunn: It’s true. And then, to be honest, sometimes it takes an outside perspective to see that I find what, works best is if you’ve got, if any, if anything, is feeling off in terms of like you say, we just need more leads, and they’re maybe not.

Converting as they should, or, you know, you recognize that your sales team is spending so much time educating, not enough time closing, or just any kind of misalignment if you just know that, you know, like say, the website’s saying one thing and maybe the sales reps are saying another. Maybe the pitch decks are not really aligned with what marketing would’ve said and things like that.

So that’s look for kind of opportunities. Like that can be a good place to see. One of the most important times to, to really look at the revenue gap is if you have a big opportunity coming up. So let’s say you’ve invested a big trade show coming up, you’re hosting a big event that’s even bigger.

launching a new product, announcing a new partnership, something of that to the scale. If you think about, even just think about a hose, if you have little pin prick holes in it. And you just add gallons more water. What’s gonna happen to those holes?

[00:35:54] Gary Ruplinger: they’re gonna be a big bottleneck and, 

that nothing’s getting through, 

[00:36:00] Jen Dunn: they’re gonna expand. Yeah. and that’s, that’s almost like the pressure tester, right? So if you’ve got something like that coming up, that is the perfect time to really look at, do we have a revenue gap that’s worth fixing?

And that’s actually why I’ve created the revenue gap assessment. So it’s. a Quick little worksheet. just a self-assessment. You just go through and you identify, and just ask a couple of key questions that really help you identify if there’s potentially a gap. And then the next step is you book me for, a call, and then we go through it together.

And if there’s a gap worth fixing, then we talk about next steps. And if there’s not, then good on you. You have eliminated a potential problem that’s not there. But you’ve at least taken the time to look under the hood, especially before something big coming up. and you had one more question in there, Gary.

Now it’s less left my mind. Maybe not. 

[00:36:57] Gary Ruplinger: I don’t, I don’t remember. Maybe somebody will remind us. 

[00:37:02] Jen Dunn: It’ll come up. Yeah.

[00:37:06] Gary Ruplinger: Well, good deal. I guess, you know, one more, one more question. mm-hmm. And then, like I said, if any more questions come in, we’ll, we’ll take those too. But, have you kind of run into issues where, you know, a sales person, kind of is, is getting into advanced discussion with things and then they, they’re getting grumpy with marketing because the communication there feels like now marketing’s not really sending the.

The right types of communication or they should stop sending communication from different ones. ’cause now they’re just outta sync with where the deal’s going. 

[00:37:43] Jen Dunn: Mm-hmm. 

[00:37:44] Gary Ruplinger: Right? Like you’re in advanced ones and they’re still, Hey, look at our whizzbang thing for your widgets. And you’re like, we’re not even talking about widgets.

We’re talking about, you know, anvils or, you know, something like that. Like you’re, you’re sending that, that irrelevant stuff. How do we. Can we get marketing to pump the brakes a little bit on what they’re, they’re doing? 

[00:38:03] Jen Dunn: Yeah. I mean, and, and that’s a lot of, that’s list segmentation. for companies. Again, like, I’m gonna, I don’t work for Salesforce, but Salesforce, it’s definitely a place where you can, you can align those things a lot better.

There’s good integrations between things like HubSpot and Salesforce. but yeah, once a, once a, a lead is kind of progressing through a certain stage. most of these things don’t typically happen automatically for a lot of companies. There needs to be communication. So if, yeah, if a customer’s, in the market for something, something and marketing’s pushing something else, that can really disjoint a deal.

I remember one time we had, there was a, a good sale on a, one of our, you know, entry level products and. Customers, and it was really critical that the list did not get sent to the ones that had the higher end products or that were, like you say, in the market for the higher end products because they would all of a sudden be worth about half as much in the deal.

and it was gonna really hurt business. And it also hurts the reputation of the sales rep because then why are you not putting this. Lower cost option in front of me when, you know, it has most of what I’m looking for when, you know, I’m in the market for your high-end product. so really I would say list segmentation is really critical, and open communication.

So just knowing that. Even when sales knows what marketing’s doing, that’s important. So if they know a big, a big campaign is going out, pushing a certain product, and we want to segment out a group of customers, marketing may not be fully aware that they need to segment out this particular group of customers because the management of that account is kind of on the sales side now.

So just having that thorough and, and clear communication on a regular basis with both sides of the house, that’s how you prevent that stuff. 

[00:40:02] Gary Ruplinger: So I’m looking here, I’m not, not actually seeing any more questions. So for somebody who is, you know, looking maybe for a little bit of an outside perspective, they, you know, wanna check out that revenue gap assessment, where, where should they go to see that?

[00:40:15] Jen Dunn: Sure. so go to my website. It’s jen done.com/gap assessment. and Jen is with one n, done is with two. That was a Jen with one N before I was a done with two.

[00:40:30] Gary Ruplinger: Got it. So check out, check out Jen’s website if you’d like to, learn a little bit more, explore this a little bit further. you can always connect with her on LinkedIn here as well. I’m, I’m sure she’d be happy to chat with you there. Otherwise, thanks everybody for, for hopping on. Appreciate you taking some, some time outta your busy day.

[00:40:50] Jen Dunn: mm-hmm. 

[00:40:51] Gary Ruplinger: And, enjoy, enjoy the rest of the Olympics, Jen. Thanks so much. 

[00:40:54] Jen Dunn: Thanks everyone. Thanks Gary. Thanks for having me.