Marketing and Sales HATE Each Other (How To Fix It)

Rob  00:05

Welcome everybody to the slow pitch. We where we talk about a lot of sales stuff, right? And today, we’re going to talk a little bit about marketing and sales. And for those of you that are in sales and think this doesn’t apply to you, you you might want to listen in today we have Lisa Rabel, and she owns a digital marketing agency. Lisa, welcome and let’s have you give us a little bit of high level of what you do on the daily.

Lisa  00:28

Thanks so much for having me. This is going to be fun. Yeah. LISA raves my name, rebel girl. Marketing is my business, and the reason I named it that is because when I spent all that time in corporate America, in marketing and in sales, I disagreed a lot with the way that corporate America was making me sell and making me do the marketing.

Lisa  00:48

Quite honestly, I like the name rebel girl, because, quite honestly, I like to think differently, because I like to think about things that will actually work, instead of the things that we’ve always done. So as a marketing strategist for mostly small to mid sized businesses, I help them understand what marketing is, but it really is and how it ties to sales, because the two of them aren’t playing nice in the sandbox. We all know what happens.

Rob  01:07

Yeah, doesn’t work very well, I know. So, so you have some sales background, which is helpful, so you understand how some of that applies, but you come at it from a marketing strategy and making sure that the strategies there first, correct, correct.

Lisa  01:23

So if you’ve ever read any of Bob Burg’s books, we talked about this, what I think when I first met you is that the know, like, and trust, like, K, N, O, W, like trust is a concept, and marketing is the know, and the like, and from like to trust is sales. So, it has to be a seamless process to really have a better ROI and actually attract the customers you want to work with, versus just somebody with a pulse and a paycheck.

Rob  01:51

Yeah, exactly, and that makes sense to me. So I think we’re, we’re going to get into a little bit of discussion here. And for those of you listening, I don’t know if you’ve ever worked with a marketing agency or marketing person. Work with a marketing person as a salesperson is very difficult.

Rob  02:04

It’s frustrating because they can tell you all the reasons why you’re not selling very well, or what you’re missing or you didn’t do this well, well, we did the marketing, so the lead came in just because you can’t close. It doesn’t mean, right? And I mean, I mean, how many times have you either heard that or said, Yeah,

Lisa  02:21

I’ve heard it. I’ve said it myself, and I’ve honestly, I hear clients say it all the time, all the time,

Rob  02:27

yeah, yep. So at what point does marketing actually end? From whether, I mean, you know, you did the strategy piece, but from a marketing standpoint, when does it actually end and sales actually begin? And in your opinion, who usually gets it wrong?

Lisa  02:40

So I’m going to go back and answer the question a little bit differently than I think what you’re anticipating, because marketing actually happens way before you think it happens. Yeah. So according to Well, it depends, well, which research you look at, anywhere between 50 and 90% of the sales decision making has already been done by the time you even know a customer exists today, with technology and so marketing actually happens way before you even know what customer exists.

Lisa  03:06

That’s the part that marketing has to get right to attract the right customers to say the right things. What happens, though, is that they both get it wrong, to be completely honest with you, because as a marketing professional, I went to my sales people, as an ex salesperson, and said, tell me what’s going on in the market, in the marketplace, tell me what the customers and the prospects are saying.

Lisa  03:25

Tell me what they’re worried about. So I know what to build. Because if you’re a marketing person, and your sales people aren’t telling you what’s happening out in the in the industry, happening with their customers, like, what are the what are their problems or concerns? What are their fears?

Lisa  03:40

Marketing can’t create campaigns that speak to the audience, and sales gets it wrong, because I hate to say this sales, but a lot of the times you’re looking at the numbers and picking and choosing who you want to sell to, not seeing future sales. It happened a lot when I was in corporate sales is that they like, Oh, it’s too small.

Lisa  03:59

I’m like, Yes, but do you also realize that they’re like, transitioning into doing like, three different acquisitions in the next seven years? They’re small now, but they won’t be small later, and so they both get it wrong. Marketing is not asking the right questions, and sales is not giving enough information. I hope that answers your

Rob  04:17

question, yeah, well, it does, and that’s kind of interesting in terms of the sales person looking at the numbers and saying, that’s too small. But the other thing I can also see is that a salesperson might say, well, they’re not really ready, because there’s not enough urgency there, yeah, because just because we had marketed to it doesn’t mean that they really want this product, right?

Rob  04:35

So, but if the lead comes in and they’ve reached out to you, they’re somewhat ready, they’re somewhere ready in that process, right? If you’ve been marketing to them for, you know, long time already, they’ve seen your stuff over the years or over the last six months, and they are now going to make that phone call to you or reach out now you’ve got more of a warmer lead than you think as a salesperson, right?

Rob  04:56

And the fact that they don’t understand the other side of that is valid. Like, in terms of the it’s a longer game. Anybody that’s in sales doesn’t think longer game is crazy. I don’t get that. I don’t get that. Why people will say, well, that’s not worth very much.

Rob  05:10

I can’t tell you how many people that I work with, that I have, we’ve gotten the first sale that’s small, and that has ballooned into some much bigger projects or other things that they’re doing. So never discount. Never discount, right? The only way I would discount is if they had zero pain in the process, meaning they just did not have a reason to buy, then I might say it’s not worth it.

Rob  05:34

And usually, when I push them back on saying, I don’t think you really have the need to do this. I don’t think this is a good time to do that for you, they will typically then push back to me and say, no, no, we need and then I know whether or not there’s real issues there or not, because if they don’t push me back, there’s really no need for them to be talking anymore. I mean, we all get tire kickers, right? So, I mean, that’s, that’s, that’s normal, yeah?

Lisa  05:56

And I think that’s the part that sales and marketing need to work on better as well as that. What is the psychographic as well as the demographic of the sale or the ideal customer? We all look at the demographics.

Lisa  06:08

Do they have enough money? Of course, that’s our first question in sales. Do they have the is it the right amount of employees or the right industry, or what like? Are they fitting all those like boxes, right?

Lisa  06:18

And what I found is my best customers started out not being the best demographic, but they had the best psychographic or that, like that mindset of the willingness to learn and the willingness to change and the willingness to be better at what they are. I have two clients.

Lisa  06:37

I can tell you right now that the first time I met them, I’m like, Oh yeah, that’s not gonna happen, literally. And I would just I tried to do the whole like, I’m not sure you’re ready yet. I’m not sure if this I’m the right person for you. All the things, right? And they both were like, No, I and then they convinced me, and they turned out to be some of my absolute best clients and best referral people. But I was too in the demographics and not enough into the psychographics of wanting to learn.

Rob  07:03

Yeah, I think a lot of people don’t realize the impact of the psychographic part, because just listening to you talk about their ability to think about and learn and be open to, right? That’s kind of what you’re talking about there.

Rob  07:15

They’re open to saying, Yeah, this is what I could do. I could do, yeah, I could see us doing that, at least having that, is that what you’re describing when you’re talking about that? Yeah. So, yeah, that’s part of sales that you have to recognize that if they’re not displaying that, that’s one of those check boxes.

Rob  07:29

If it’s not there, it’s not there. And I wouldn’t proceed like, that’s where I would start to push back, just like you’re describing. So I, you know, from a psychographics I think that’s really good, a really good insight from a marketing angle. But what is something that you as a marketer, that you think that people do, that they think they’re helping sales, but there’s just they’re actually really not helping sales at all. Is there anything comes to mind?

Lisa  07:53

Yeah, that’s a really good question. Marketing people getting something wrong that they think they’re helping sales. I think at the their their target audience is too broad. I think we, we need to marketers, target audience.

Lisa  08:06

The marketers, target audience is too broad. Now, for those of you listening real quick, a target audience is where you go to do your marketing, because your ideal client is there, like your ideal client is like, you think of them as a human person, right?

Lisa  08:20

Where are all those human people hanging out? That’s your target audience. Just as a clarification, most likely to hang out, right? Yes, yes, in case you didn’t know that audience, but I think that it’s too broad, because they might be here and they might be there. I think there’s a commercial that’s on TV right now, and it’s the forklift is being driven into the conference room, and they’re it’s like picking up the conference table, it said, Stop selling forklifts to banks.

Lisa  08:43

Like, banks don’t need forklift. See what I mean to like, I think that’s what I’m talking about. Is that it’s this huge, broad audience. Like, if I just tell everybody now, I’m gonna go a little deep here. You don’t mind, I love it, I love it. But you can sell to a broader audience.

Lisa  08:57

The marketing people can do that. But what, where they’re missing it is that there’s three type of people to mark to. People usually just sell to the person who has a paycheck, when, honestly, that’s not always the person who’s actually looking for you and your product. A lot of times it’s the end user, and they’re the ones influencing the people with the paycheck to say, hey, I want this.

Lisa  09:17

I need the software. I need this kind of furniture, I or, you know, office furniture. I need this kind of technology. Whatever the case might be, you can market to people in that broader spectrum, but think of them more as influencers, not buyers. So more of a interesting

Lisa  09:33

Do you know somebody the perfect one? Actually, somebody who’s doing it really, really well is a online therapy app. And what they’re doing is, you may not have these things, but you might know somebody who does. So could you please? We love to help them. And so that’s targeting a broader audience, not because they’re the ones who are going to buy them, but they could influence the buyer or end user. I

Lisa  09:57

hope this is going to sound really kind of convoluted, but. You have a bigger, broader audience, but if you’re not using the right messaging marketers, that’s where you miss it. If you’re trying to market to influencers as if they’re buyers, you’re missing the point.

Rob  10:11

Okay, let me put a twist to that, because you’re you’re right, and it just dawned on me that in sales, you’re doing the same thing. I’ve had conversations with individuals sitting in the room that is the exact buyer, right?

Rob  10:22

And in that process, I might have a thing that I need to sell them, or want to sell them, because I know they need it, but they’re not there yet. They haven’t seen that, or they don’t understand that one point, that’s where that whole listen, I’m sure you don’t need this, but this is something we’re doing for another client.

Rob  10:39

This is not for a conversation for right now, but at some point, if you think that might be something you want to add, that is something that we do all the time, and you know, we have to, we’ve talked briefly about that. Just give them a high level, based on the pains now, all of a sudden that’s planted in their head.

Rob  10:54

And when that’s planted, almost, I would say, eight out of 10 times, what happens is, is that somebody will come back as we get closer to the closing the deal where they’re signing on the agreement, they’ll come back and go, can you tell me a little bit more about this before we finish up?

Rob  11:11

Because they want to know more about that, and they know they need it, and they figured out, I need it. And now we’re back into that conversation, and we’ve just expanded the project. So that fits exactly with what you’re talking about in terms of, you know, wide, broad demographic.

Rob  11:22

Can you think of anybody else that might and what your brain does is, first goes, well, am I? Am I one of those people? Yeah, that’s right, you can help it. And so, yeah, you use that in sales, but you also are, you’re saying, use that in marketing to make sure that you have them thinking that way, and they may be able to refer over to somebody too.

Lisa  11:40

Yeah, the message has to be different for each of those people. The message has to be different for the buyer, for the end user, and for the people. I call them influencers, but there is like, You mean, like, a social media influencer?

Lisa  11:51

Like, no, yeah, like, and I’m trying to think of a better word than influencer, and as soon as I have one, I’ll let you know what it is. But the people who influence the buyer, so for me, business coaches are really great, because they’re in there fixing operations and finance. They see this big gap in marketing, and they go, Hey, Bobby, want to talk to my friend Lisa. Yeah.

Rob  12:12

And sometimes, for me, when I’m in sales, there’s the group of people that are inside that I’m dealing with, and I end up finding somebody that’s on my side and pushing for me. They’re kind of an influencer as well, doing the same thing, right?

Rob  12:24

They’re kind of my white knight, so to speak. They’re the ones that are like bringing the flag forward every time we get close. Once you talk to this and I can have those conversations with that individual and say, can you ask that person what they need?

Rob  12:43

So I understand and make sure that I put that into the estimate correctly, and they’ll get that information for me, because they’re the person that’s really wanting me to keep moving this thing forward. And you’re saying it’s kind of the same. It’s a little different, obviously, verbiage and what’s happening, but similar in style. Yeah, I think is what you’re saying. So, yeah.

Lisa  12:53

So that, like, what is, what is the core message? Exactly, you nailed it.

Rob  12:57

If sales are soft, numbers aren’t hitting the goals. How do you know if this is a marketing issue or a sales issue, or somewhere in between, and during the handoff, how do you, how do you, how do you figure that out, or what? How do you identify that as an issue? From a strategy standpoint?

Lisa  13:13

Yeah, everybody get their sandwiches and their cup of coffee, and you sit in a conference room and you talk about it. You don’t yell about it, you talk about it, where are we missing the mark? Because the client experience, like I said, happens way before you know a customer exists. I had a client…

Lisa  13:28

They were professional photography, and they hired me to do an email campaign because they thought, because people were opting out a lot of their emails, it wasn’t an email issue. It was a client process. It was a client experience process, like across the board.

Lisa  13:40

So we filled all those gaps in the customer experience, and now they’re like, huge difference, huge difference. But we set everybody in the same room. We set the photographers and the production people and the shipping people and like customer service people, like, we set everybody in the same room and say, Where is the where’s the miscommunication?

Lisa  14:00

And I think what happens is that if you spent time as a salesperson with the marketing department in their meetings and vice versa, if marketing people went out on sales calls and prospect calls, I think we would have a much better understanding of each other. I think those conversations would go much smoother.

Rob  14:21

Yes, I totally agree. I feel like, if marketing doesn’t listen to sales calls, period, they’re just totally guessing as to what they need to be marketing. I mean, what you described earlier, a little bit, is like, hey, if I don’t know what the pain is, what the problem is, how do I even know what to market is absolutely valid.

Rob  14:40

And so yeah, being a part of the sales call, whether that’s on the phone or in person, on in the car, going to the meetings, you got to do that as a marketer, otherwise you’re missing the boat. And so from a reference standpoint, you know, Lisa, what you, what you what you do is you do the strategy part, and somebody else is going to be executing.

Rob  15:00

Or strategy, right? Yes, you work with clients, businesses, what have you, and when those businesses have a sales team and a marketing team, my assumption would be, you’d recommend, hey, these two need to work and coordinate and overlap. I would assume that would be part of the conversation. If you see the issue, maybe not.

Rob  15:16

Maybe don’t see the issue very quickly, but because it’s hard to see on the outside, right once you’re walking in here, they don’t let you see stuff right away. Until you get in, you’re like, oh, there’s way more going on here than I thought.

Lisa  15:27

Oh, yeah, yeah. I’ve had, like, had to give, like, adult men timeouts, yeah? Not literally, but you know, no, but I know what you made. So what I fight and a lot of businesses these days, which is makes me a little bit sad, but what I find is that they don’t have marketing people.

Lisa  15:48

They have people doing marketing. Yes, so they’re not actual they’re office managers or, H, okay, I’ve had office managers, HR, directors. I’ve had the sales people try to do marketing. There’s just a different totally mindset with sales and marketing.

Lisa  16:04

The reason that there’s so much disconnect is that the person that they have doing marketing isn’t actually a marketing person. There’s someone who’s taken over the role in addition to the role that they had before when they got there.

Lisa  16:17

And I think that is one of the biggest challenges businesses have, because that’s why I developed my my market, my rebel accelerator program, because it’s three months of me taking people who are sales people, or they’re they’re people doing marketing, but they’re not marketing people, and I just basically give them this, like, you know, fire hose, three months of consulting and training on and What is marketing?

Lisa  16:41

What does that mean to your business? And what do you already know? And where are the gaps in your knowledge? Let’s fill them, and that kind of thing. So, like, that’s, that’s what I think about. I have had business owners who’ve been a business for not exaggerating, 20 years go, nobody has ever explained to me marketing and sales as simply as you have because what I call it a rebel mindset.

Lisa  17:03

My rebel mindset is this, marketing is simply storytelling, and selling is simply telling that story to other people. The problem is, is that people don’t know their story, yes, and they don’t know who to tell the story to. And so we fix that. And honestly, one of the first things we talk about is, why are you in business in the first place people forget why they even started the company.

Rob  17:23

Which is crazy, but also, I could see why that could happen, because you’re just getting the day to day of stuff. And I think if you’re smaller, let’s call it, I mean, if you’re a one person, two person business, that’s not what we’re talking about, because you’re doing everything anyway, right?

Rob  17:36

Yeah, but when you’ve got a team of people, and you’ve got marketing people, but they’re not marketing people that that is a different right? That’s different, that’s a different, whole different problem.

Rob  17:46

Now the problem I can see happening is, well, we don’t have enough revenue to hire somebody specifically to do the marketing piece who’s really good at it. And my argument would be, you need to start to save a little bit of money so that you can figure out how to make that happen, because it’s going to be worth every penny.

Rob  18:02

I feel like, if you get the right marketing people into place, they can drive leads faster and more accurately than somebody that’s just trying to figure this out. And then the sales person, if they’re a good sales person, they can close those individuals because they’re the right leads. It just amplifies way more than what you’re paying that one person who’s really good. Am I wrong?

Lisa  18:25

Oh, you’re absolutely right. There’s so many people out there that I know that are fractional CMOS or fractional like for a couple of my customers, I’m part time marketing director for them, they don’t need somebody full time, but they need an expert in that area. There’s a solution to that full time, you know, high expense marketing person.

Lisa  18:41

You need somebody either that or get the person who’s doing the marketing some training, yeah, because it’s that’s, that’s where a big mistake is.

Lisa  18:48

So like, if you actually have a full fledged sales department and a full fledged marketing department, it’s a totally different pressure that they have, because they’re under so many KPIs and so many, you know, revenue goals and quotas and all the things that you know, they don’t have the free flowing time to just brainstorm and work together and figure out what that is. It’s kind of like, you know, at least I know when I was in corporate sales, it was a very much a, what have you done for me lately?

Lisa  19:17

Kind of a concept, even though, like, one year, I had 440% of my quota, and I literally had that conversation in January, going, can I have, like, I don’t know, a couple minutes to breathe before you like, up my my quota again this year. And, like, tell me, ask me what my pipeline is serious?

Rob  19:32

Yeah. And I’ve seen, I’ve seen companies now too. They’re consolidating individuals that you know, they were doing print marketing, but now they’re adding to their list of things to do, social media or vice versa, and it’s not the same.

Rob  19:45

It’s similar, but it’s not the same. And if you get people that are out of their normal way of doing things, of what you should be doing, you’re doing yourself a little bit of a disservice. Now I get the financial part, but then there’s got to be an issue that you got to be fixing somewhere. Is it the sales? Team, is it what you’re offering that’s not resonating anymore?

Rob  20:04

Is the pain not there anymore out there? Or is the pain not enough to cover what it’s going to cost to do it from a from a purchase and standpoint, I don’t know what that is, but I’ve seen of several companies now starting to consolidate, move tasks under people that that person shouldn’t, should not be doing, should not be doing that right.

Lisa  20:22

And I find the most successful sales people and sales divisions or sales organizations change the compensation structure from you get a big old bonus when you sign on the bottom line those new logos, you get a bigger bonus the longer they stay, because organizations have realized that it’s a lot less.

Lisa  20:42

It takes a lot less money to keep a client than it does to find a new one, and it’s a lot easier to keep an existing client than it is to find a new one. So giving them more compensation the longer their client proves to be a much better relationship building sales process than a thanks for signing on dotted line. I’m going to turn you over to somebody else. I’m going to somebody else. I’m going to go find my next victim. And so I think that there’s…

Rob  21:06

When you say victim, you mean prospect. I think…

Lisa  21:09

Ha ha, Yes, it feels like that sometimes. So you threw off my train of thought that was, I’m sorry, yes, but what I what I love, is that these business owners, these leaders of these organizations, have realized that the long term customers provide the highest revenue and the highest profit margins.

Lisa  21:32

Yes, and they’ve shift their focus from I’m going to give you a bunch of cash when you sell it to I’m going to give you a bunch of cash as long as they stay customers for X amount of time. Yeah. It also helps with the retention of the sales people.

Rob  21:44

Yeah. And the other thing is, I think it gets easier to work with a client the longer that you’re with them, because you’re ingrained in their business. It does two things, you’re ingrained in their business as a marketing company, or what have you, that they understand what you’re doing, right?

Rob  21:59

And you understand all of that stuff and those clients that come in, you can start to understand what they need. You can start to anticipate what they need. What I find is that companies that have a marketing team that sell to repeat clients that they forget the important components of why the customer the client is the client.

Rob  22:19

So when you start working with them, month after month after month, your sales team, your operations team, all the people that are involved in servicing this client, forget how much this value of this customer is. Number two, what what their value, or what they see in you as the company they’re providing the value? Does that make sense? Yeah, of course.

Rob  22:37

And I feel like when that starts to decline, that’s when they lose the client. And so there’s got to be a check in point. And I think this is one of those situations where one of our other episodes, we talk about how to do a client review, so that you then renew that interest and renew your understanding of each other, and they confirm where you’re at.

Rob  22:55

And by doing that, you re invigorate the relationship, you make it stronger. And you also can, as a company, start to expand, whether you know, if you’re just supporting one area of a company as your business, you could start to expand into other areas of their company as well.

Rob  23:12

Hey, if you like this episode and you want to hear more, go to theslopitch.com you can find more episodes, or you can go wherever you listen to your podcast. If you found this to be helpful, would you mind giving us a review and share it with someone who you think would use this information?

Rob  23:27

We really appreciate it in marketing and in sales. In your experience, where do you see the ego start to show up the most? Like, when is that all about ego and and when it comes right down, and this is talking about like in the departments, right? So departments, right? So when does that hurt your ability to help the client the most?

Lisa  23:48

Like always. Ego always hurts. It hurts yourself, it hurts your teammates, it hurts your clients, it hurts your numbers. Ego hurts everything. And there’s a difference between having an ego and being proud of the work that you’ve done.

Lisa  24:03

Yes, you can be proud of the work that you did, and you can celebrate. You can say, great job and all these other things, and you can be very but to be ego comes with comparison. In my opinion, I have an ego only when I compare myself to somebody else, and I think that I’m better than somebody else. You can’t do that if you actually want to work as a team.

Lisa  24:23

Agreed. I mean, I’m telling you, I watched some football this week. Well, okay, my husband was watching football this weekend, and I was, happened to be sitting on the couch, and one of the young men that won the game, he says, You know, I you know, you’re up for MVP. And he goes, MVP is not an individual award. It’s a team award. And I was just like, I wish corporate America could think like that.

Rob  24:42

I know. Well, yeah, it’s because they’re not thinking in terms of teams or think it is what it is like. It’s all competitive anyway. That’s all in the culture of what a lot of companies have created over time. I feel like, right? So I also wonder how much ego fits into like when you’re trying to forecast sales leads.

Rob  24:59

You. Trying to forecast what’s coming. There’s some danger there too. No. I mean, when you’re trying to forecast numbers, whether or not you think it’s sales or number of leads, or whatever it is, how do you fix that problem, or how do you make it so that we stay on the same page with that? Because I feel like that’s a that can be very easily an issue.

Lisa  25:16

Yeah, it That’s tricky. So when I work on pipelining with my clients, we work on. There’s five stages. There’s the I know a company exists and I want to sell to them. There’s the I’ve had a conversation with this company, but they haven’t wanted to buy from me yet. And then it goes on right.

Lisa  25:32

Then it goes on to I’ve sent to my proposal, like they’ve signed the proposal. We’re doing onboarding, whatever, and I like to have a very heavy stack in line one and one, in line one and line two, because it’s dangerous to forecast eventual spending, because you don’t know what’s going to happen to the economy.

Lisa  25:49

And I think we’ve learned that in the past five years, have we not? Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Well, I hope we’ve learned that in the past five years. And so it’s more of a, am I gonna call it a wish list? It’s more of like, you know, if I had my druthers, and that if everything, if all the stars align perfectly, this is what will happen.

Lisa  26:04

But you you can’t make future decisions based on that. If it’s a, if you’re Coca Cola, okay, you got some trends. You’re McDonald’s, you’re like, you’re these huge multi international conglomerates. You can do a lot of predicting, but if you’re a medium sized business to, you know, even a, even like a larger medium business, you have some recollection of that, but you can’t, you can’t rely on that to happen.

Lisa  26:30

So for me, it’s more of a it’s an aspect of communication. Because what I found in another company that I worked with is that sales never talked to production, and so production didn’t know what to have in on hand when the sales came in. Oh, wow. Oh, yeah.

Rob  26:44

You would think that would be a normal progression of how things would work.

Lisa  26:48

Yeah, yes. But what happened was, is that egos got in the way. And so would you ask that question all of a sudden, like, oh, this company’s like, popped into my head because the salesperson was trying to prove that he’s a great salesperson without telling anybody else what what he was doing.

Lisa  27:06

Well, he and his team, like, even customer service, when they, like, somebody would call and say, Hey, I got this code for a discount, and it is not working on the online store, and the customer service is, like, What are you even talking about? Like, I didn’t know there was a code.

Lisa  27:19

Like, so, like, there was this huge I’m going to come in and we’re going to, like, grow this company. But we did. He grew it based on numbers, not based on good customers, or, like, good service, or like, follow through, or short term, that short term, short term.

Lisa  27:34

Yeah, so it’s, it’s interesting when if you’re a leader, if you’re a sales leader, or even if you’re a sales person that’s new into sales, don’t be afraid to, in a very professional way, say, Hey, I heard this podcast. They were talking about this.

Lisa  27:50

I think it’s something that I’d like to consider us doing. Would you at least listen to the podcast? Because honestly, there are so many podcasts that I’ve listened to that I have shared with my customers.

Lisa  28:00

We talked about this. I said it this way. It makes more sense. But the way this podcast said is, just listen to this. And this is what I’m trying to say. Yeah, it doesn’t have to be from your mouth. It could be from somebody else’s mouth that they understand. A better way of describing how to see that gap. But the it starts with bringing a box of cousins, subs and, Yep, totally, and your Starbucks, and have at it.

Rob  28:21

So, alright, that kind of begs the next question. Next question, kind of for me, which is, if you could force a weekly meeting between marketing and sales, what do you think has to happen in that room and who needs to be in the room to make it worth the time? Like, what needs to happen to make it worth the time to be in that room?

Lisa  28:35

I would say each person from the marketing department, every sales person, and the heads of all the different divisions, finance, production operations, all of it, manufacturing plant managers, that kind of a thing.

Lisa  28:46

If I was going to make you do something, I probably wouldn’t do it on a monthly basis, but I would definitely do it on a quarterly basis, because you don’t know where the next great idea is going to come from. It’s not always a sales or marketing person, because I had a client in Ohio and they manufactured something, and I asked him to bring in the plant manager.

Lisa  29:04

What happened was he brought in he thought it was crazy. And I said, just do it once. He said, Oh my God. He had such great ideas. And I said, Yeah, he touches your product every single day. Physically touches it every single day. You don’t think.

Lisa  29:15

He said, an idea or two of how to market it, or like a new target audience to talk to, and I think that’s where we can also get rid of the ego. Part of it is, just because you’re not in sales or marketing doesn’t mean you don’t have good ideas. Yeah.

Lisa  29:29

So what I do in those meetings is, I call it the the rapid fire, and everybody gets a pen and a piece of easel paper and a wall, and they just write down as many dumb as I said, the dumber the idea, the better. And we literally just write as many stupid ideas you possibly can.

Lisa  29:44

We put that down, and then we just kind of look and we laugh about it, and then we go, well, actually, if we combine this idea with that idea, like you already mean. And so Yep, those are the people who I think need to be in on that meeting is because we’re a lot of businesses, overlook the fact that customer service talk to the customers, and.

Lisa  30:00

HR talk to the employees and all those division heads have a vested interest in the company succeeding as well. So maybe they have an idea. Maybe they don’t, but at least they’re on the same page as you, and they know what’s going to be happening at that quarter.

Rob  30:13

There’s a lot to that, and I would totally agree. The only thing I wouldn’t wonder whether or not it would be helpful to have it if you’re going to do this, the quarterly is good. I almost wonder in the beginning, for the first quarter, I would almost look at it monthly, for the reason of it sparks that, okay, we’ve got this synergy starting to develop, and you start to get to know each other.

Rob  30:31

Because anytime you’ve got a group of people that typically would have egos, now you’re going to ask them to get together, and the first time, they’re gonna be like, Okay, we’ll do this. We’ll try it. But if you do it for three months in a row, there’s going to be a little bit of a shift of, oh, this is, this is going to continue to happen, and I’m here for this.

Rob  30:47

Okay, then the attitude will start to change over the course I might, I might even say press it for a year, because to me, what you’re describing is something where they have to be comfortable with each other, right, in order to do that. And so if they’re not as comfortable, they should be comfortable, because they’re overlapping a lot of times.

Rob  31:04

But when you start introducing the marketing team and the sales team on top of the other leaders of the different divisions, that’s where you can feel like, Oh, this feels a little uncomfortable. I might not be willing to talk. Somebody might not be willing to say what they want.

Rob  31:16

I feel like one of the biggest components that needs to be in that room, and you kind of hit on a little bit it was real conversations, being brutally honest, too, in some forms, being like, open to having conversations. And that can’t happen immediately, but over time, that has to get transitioned into that.

Rob  31:33

I think one of the best, probably the most powerful, book that I’ve ever read was fierce conversations. I don’t remember who it was that wrote it, but if you Google it, you’ll find fierce conversations is very interesting in that when you want to create change in an organization, you have to have very brutally honest conversations and put in a nice way, it’s not where you’re attacking somebody or you’re not it’s asking all the right questions.

Rob  31:55

It’s it’s being honest about where you are with things. So if I’m running behind in my manufacturing side, you got to tell people, otherwise you’re like, the guy you talked about with this, with the sales or the marketing, where he was doing things out on his own right, and all of a sudden it was a surprise, when you had the order come in, you’re like, wait, we had that much coming in, and I’m not even ready to manufacture or send that out.

Rob  32:15

That’s a problem. And and so, you know, I think you’re right on what you’re saying and just getting the people, the right people in the room, and getting creating ideas, and having it kind of that kind of thing. I also feel like from a if you’re going to fix the operations of a business, you have to have all those other pieces, which is that fierce conversation component, obviously, we’re talking about sales and marketing, so not as heavy.

Lisa  32:38

And I would, yeah, but I would add on to that. I would add on to that, having a third party in there, like a sales and or marketing or business coach, or some kind of a third party in there to monitor, keep the peace, referee, I don’t know, like, you know, mediator, whatever it might be, because I can tell you right now, when I’ve had this, well, I call, Well, I like Crucial Conversation.

Lisa  33:01

Same concept, great. It’s a system. It’s a way of staying respectful, keeping your head, that kind of thing. Yes, I agree with you. Those books are great. It’s to let them speak, but then let them ask them to say it in a way that would be respectful. Yep, I think that’s totally Yes.

Lisa  33:17

Business is hard, and being a business owner is difficult, and sale, selling is hard. Marketing is hard. It’s it. None of it is easy. All of it, yep, but it’s so much easier when you all work as a team and you all because you’re all working for the same company with the same goals, is to grow the business, yeah.

Rob  33:35

And so, I mean, really, when what you’re even describing is like, just because you’re in agreement doesn’t mean you’re all aligned in the same direction. It just means that we all are accountable for doing the wrong thing if we do it wrong as a group, right?

Rob  33:49

So you have to you as a group, if you do this incorrectly, you’re all accountable for it. Well, it doesn’t matter whether or not it’s sales or manufacturing. Yes, there could be a problem and that individual that area needs to be dealt with.

Rob  34:01

But if you guys are communicating very well, something’s not going on and you’re not going correctly. So I feel like, yeah, there’s a lot to that. I think we can kind of wrap up saying that if sales doesn’t agree with marketing, marketing doesn’t agree with sales, we’re arguing about things, the only one that really loses is kind of the customer, right?

Rob  34:18

I mean, that’s really we don’t they don’t understand each other. We don’t understand the customer. Then, if we don’t work together, we can’t figure out what the customer even wants. And I feel like, if you’re gonna look at companies to invest in, and you see some of that stuff happening, even from a from a stock market, that’s a good indicator that they don’t understand what the customer wants.

Rob  34:34

When marketing doesn’t align with what the customer actually wants, something’s not happening. It’s not ticking correctly. So listen, I it’s been really good talking with you, and I really enjoy the time, Lisa, somebody wants to get a hold of you, because I know they, somebody might be wanting to do that when they listen. What’s the best way to get a hold of you?

Lisa  34:54

Well, there’s well, rebel girl marketing, com, R, E, B, E, L. Rebel girl marketing. Marketing.com. Is great way to do it. My books. My book is on Amazon called the Rebel Girls Guide to marketing, and it touches both on sales and marketing. And it’s also more of a workbook, so you have to apply it to your own business.

Lisa  35:13

Instead of just thinking about it in theory, you have to, like, answer the questions, like, how does this apply to me? Those are probably the two best ways. There’s a contact form on my website, but it at least gives you a feel for who I am and the services that I offer.

Lisa  35:25

And I don’t resonate with everybody, which is, I’m absolutely okay with that, but I always like to say this, if you know you need better marketing and you don’t know where to start, start with me. Start with strategy. Start with strategy.

Rob  35:38

Definitely, I totally agree. I’ve I’ve met many people over the years, and the ones that really approach things through strategy are usually the ones that, long term, stick around and stay stay in the business.

Rob  35:50

The ones that don’t have the strategy don’t understand the long term effects of their decisions. In short amount of time, they disappear. And it’s a shame, because sometimes they have great ideas, but they don’t make it so well.

Lisa  36:00

This was fun. I know you and I could talk about this all day, but we’ll let your listeners have a life.

Rob  36:05

It sounds like a good idea. I appreciate you being on. Thank you so much. Thank you. I will share the links in the show notes so that everybody can click on that if they need to again. Thanks for listening, everybody, and we’ll be back soon.

V/O  36:17

Thank you for listening to The Slow Pitch. Do you have a question about sales? Call or text your question at 608-708-SLOW. That’s 608-708-7569 or you can email them to Questions@TheSlowPitch.com. Slow Down and Close More.