The Transaction

So two things, though, that came from the pre, the glass reflection that we were talking about on my glasses is insane.

I mean, look, you guys don't even need to look at your computer.

You can just look at the Earth's reflection.

It's pretty bad.

Yes.

Okay, I'm just gonna level with you as a friend.

And then two is, so why are you bitter today?

What happened?

Not bitter, just feel a little salty.

Oh, salty, sorry, salty, salty's different.

I don't have time for bitterness.

I spent too many years there.

But yeah, just, you know, it's Friday.

It's beautiful here in upstate New York, which this time of year, you never know what you're gonna get.

But it's like 80 degrees and I literally, my first time outside was about 15 minutes ago.

And just some of the stuff I keep reading online, I just shake my head.

I'm like, what are we doing here?

What's going on?

So it's just got me in a little bit of a mood.

Oh man.

You know, I'm shooting a part of Class of Bourbon to get ready for that.

That's exactly, yes, that works.

That's been done before.

By the way, side note, so my brother lives in Japan and he'll identify, you know, originally it was like cool whiskies.

This last time he brought gin and it's Suntory, which I'm sure you guys know.

Sure.

You know what I'm taking off?

I can't even do this with glasses.

And it is amazing gin.

Like you can't even understand it.

So I will get more and get you guys out for this.

Yeah, I'm not a gin fan.

No, I feel like I'm drinking a pine tree.

I mean, well, you aren't either delicious too, but yeah.

And could you I wasn't done reading the scores.

Could you put your glasses back on?

Yeah, I want to see all the Yankees are doing.

From ABM to PLG, from Meddic to Meddpicc, the world of business is constantly evolving.

We'll cover the who, what, where, when, why, and most importantly, how you get The Transaction.

I'm Matt Amundson and he's Craig Rosenberg.

Let's get started.

All right.

So by the way, Matt, you know, so Carlos on our intros, I do these intros and it's really funny because Matt just squirts in his seat because I always just over compliment.

But this one, there's two things you need to know about today's guest.

So one is how I met him.

He tells the story better.

So I'm going to just lead him down the line just for your enjoyment.

So we were at Serious Decisions.

And, you know, I met someone, Caleb Mikulis, who's just amazing marketing salesperson.

I don't know, Carlos and her had met at a different point.

She's like, well, you got to meet this guy, Carlos.

So I see him and I walk up to him.

And I was just, I don't know, I was just mixing it up.

I walk up and I go, hey, did I just walk up and say, hey, do you know who I am?

Yeah, you shook my knee.

Oh, right.

I said, hey, I'm Carlos.

And you just, without even saying who you are, you said, do you know who I am?

And I just remember thinking, like, I don't know who this guy is, but who does he must think he's really something.

And then I gave him an out and I said, hey, I said, no, I don't.

And you said, really?

You don't know who I am?

And I was like, wow, this guy is a world class asshole.

I knew at that point I was, or maybe I hadn't figured it out quite yet.

And I just said, and then he said, no, I'm just screwing with you.

And I was like, I don't care if we ever do anything together.

I like this guy.

Totally screwing with me off the bat.

I'm like, I think we're going to be long time friends because anybody who does that, I like them.

And by the way, now that I know you, the fact that I was able to get you, I'm very proud of that.

But yeah, and then the second thing was just like, you know, when when he was pregnant with the twins, she got like a blood clot in her leg and it was it was treacherous.

And like Carlos called me every day and, you know, it was so supportive.

And it was like, I remember at the end, like we went through everything and he had bought the boys these really cool sort of wood like, you know, for their birth these it was this amazing sort of hand painted wood boxes and like, so I call him and I'm like, hey, Carlos, man, I don't think I could ever do for you what you did for me.

And he goes, Craig, I just want you to know, I don't keep sport.

And it was, oh, and like I have now when, you know, that was like truly inspirational to me.

And when I help people and they say that I just have lived life now without keeping score.

And so that is my two stories on today's guest, Carlos Hidalgo.

Carlos also, Matt and I were sort of reminiscing before we came on, like really one of the thought leaders and true thought put into the the entire movement around marketing automation and demand gen.

You know, I remember originally when I met you were a Silver Pop reseller.

Then you called me and you said, I'm changing my game.

I'm going to open up to everything and took in all the other marketing automation vendors.

And then, uh, and knew it is kept growing and growing.

That was really like you, you sort of your brand and that sort of grew together.

Just this like amazing thought, thought leader, because I think thought leader gets turned around like Carlos.

Like you always spoke truth.

You spoke truth to power.

I remember like I'd be like talking to Carly's like I called Phil Fernandez and told him this is ridiculous, what you guys, some of that.

He was like this guy, man, he has the opinions that I think a lot of people that were truly in the game were thinking, but that the like content marketing around demand, Jen and marketing automation didn't, you know, support.

So he's always had a bit of a it's not a contrarian streak.

It's just a reality streak, which makes him perfect for the show.

So today's guest is my buddy, Carlos Hidalgo.

Thanks for having me.

This is I'm glad to be on.

And when you're you have a father who's Cuban and a mother who's Irish, you you come out of the womb with opinions.

When you're not afraid, you're not afraid to share them.

So I don't know if I'm always right.

I've learned a lot.

I've been around for longer than I care to admit.

But honestly, the work we did together way back, I'm drawing a focus, was a blast.

And I've just always appreciated our friendship and been able to bounce things off you.

I remember when I left, when I was considering leaving Inuitish, you were one of my first calls where I was like, hey, here's what I'm considering.

What do you think?

And you were like, are you nuts?

You can't do that.

But it was a good move.

I'm glad I did it.

And God's been good to me.

And I count our relationship as one of the highlights of my career.

Take that, Matt.

How's that feel?

I mean, it feels great to just be in the digital room with all this love and affection.

You're just caught, you're like in a bromance sandwich.

Yeah.

Let's, well, on bromance here and ask you our key question, which is what's something that the market thinks they're doing right or is right?

It could be anything in approach, best practices, methodologies, whatever.

And actually, I'm just going to say it, they're wrong and they should be thinking about it differently.

So what is it or what are those things and what should be maybe thinking differently?

Yeah, there's a few things that come to mind and one of them probably for you, based on our conversations, isn't going to be that big of a surprise.

So in no particular order, I still see the market just in whiplash mode, the shiny object syndrome, chasing everything, you know, AI, new technology, new methodologies, et cetera, et cetera.

So that to me has led to actually a decline in, I think, the value, especially from a marketing perspective.

I'm seeing more and more where CMOs, I just again saw it this morning, you know, always back fighting for the seat at the table.

And I'm like, well, if we would stay the course and get a little bit of focus and think like a business instead of just a marketer, which means being coin operated, maybe we wouldn't be back trying to fight for the seat at the table.

So I think that's one.

I think two, it's a lack of alignment across, with other groups in the organization.

You know, sales is a given.

To me, if you're still talking about marketing sales alignment, you've got bigger problems.

But it's, how are you aligning with the business as a whole, finance, IT, strategy, from a business strategy perspective?

And then I think it all starts with, you know, really understanding your customers.

And the number of conversations I still have of companies who are spending an inordinate amount of money on campaigns and brand and web design and content.

But you ask them, so who's your customer?

And they say, well, we serve a market anywhere between 250 and 5 billion.

Maybe the segment.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, okay.

Well, yeah, that's a segment.

That's not your customer.

What's important to them?

How do they engage?

And so I think those three things together, and it's probably a culmination of conversations I'm having, the work we're doing with clients today, and then what I'm seeing out posted on LinkedIn or blogs.

And part of me gets really frustrated because I feel like we've been talking about the same thing for 20 years.

Other parts of me just say it's difficult.

So I think brands still are looking for shortcuts.

And I also think there's the third aspect there of executives who don't really understand what marketing is doing, which is partially the fault of marketers.

And so they're just asking for more and more and more and thinking it's an easy button.

Yeah.

All right.

Let's go with number one.

Yeah.

This, you know what Carlos just made me think about?

I've walked.

There's a question for both.

Yeah.

Hold on.

I'll put on my glasses.

They can see my notes.

No, I'm just kidding.

So one is, did marketers get a seat at the table?

One.

I'm going to ask both of you guys.

Actually, let's just start there because Carlos is saying, and we have, by the way, had the same conversation for 20 years.

We just had a whole bunch of other stuff with it.

But are we saying that we made it to the seat at the table and then lost it?

Or are we saying after all that time, we never got it?

Which one do you guys think it is?

Matt, I'll let you go first.

Yeah, I think, first of all, I think that we did get a seat at the table.

It just depends upon what seat at what table you're talking about.

Are we far more active in a boardroom than we used to be?

Absolutely.

If you're talking about B2B, then that's a change.

If you're talking about B2C, B2C, it's always been there.

We're focusing on B2B here, obviously.

I think, in general, yes.

I think the amount of engagement that marketers have with boards, with customers, and amongst the sales cycles, I think it's a different ball game than it used to be.

I think marketing automation played a huge role in that.

Now, I've seen cracks, lots of them.

More and more, we're seeing the CRO, who also runs the marketing department.

We're seeing demand gens start to slide under the sales organization.

There's definitely cracks, and I think when a market is tricky like it is right now, the expectation is that the marketing department can create magic from somewhere, whether that's an influx of demo requests or whether that's some incredible brand campaign that's going to captivate the hearts and minds of the addressable market that you're trying to attack.

I think there's been a lot more pressure put on marketers, and things are not working all that well as people are shifting their strategies a lot faster than they used to.

As a result, what's the one thing that everybody, regardless of if you're an engineer, a salesperson, a back office person, thinks that they can do, everybody thinks that they can be a marketer.

Oh, sure.

Yeah.

And I agree with that.

I think there was a seat at the table.

I know not too long ago, I was speaking to many CMOs, helping them with their board presentations, sitting down with their counterparts in sales and looking at revenue analytics, helping with forecasting, all of these things, really thinking like a business.

And for whatever reason, I think that has started to, we've started to lose ground.

And like you said, demand gen under sales, that's insane.

You know, I'm seeing this, you know, move all of your, maybe not all, I'm probably exaggerating.

I'll blame my heritage on that.

But I think it's the shift of, oh, you got to put everything into brand and not really focus on demand.

Where if demand has done the right way, you're actually going to improve your brand awareness.

You're going to improve your brand engagement.

So this either or discussion by vendors who, quite frankly, should know better, promoting that message.

So I think that's part of that whiplash game is so many CMIs are like, well, now we have to go over here.

And they're playing a game of whack-a-mole.

You know, I spoke to one the other day who said, I'm moving so fast and I'm spending here.

I'm spending, and I said, but what do you, what are you basing that spend on?

Well, the board wants to see outcomes.

So you're hedging your bets on the roulette table, hoping that your number hits.

And if it doesn't, you're screwed.

Yeah.

Or your budget gets cut and so does your head count.

Yeah.

Yeah, so maybe you got, all right, I'm going to add a wrinkle, but first I'm going to take what you guys said.

So we, so the CMOs got the seat at the board table.

They're still have the seat, but they're fighting the wrong fights with the board, right?

Or with the ELT, whatever that might be, right?

Like, and so like, if we describe being at, having a seat at the table, that's sort of as a equal or peer.

And like now it's, that's where we're fraying, right?

Is that right?

Because it's not like, I mean, we're still, the marketer still is, I mean, it's actually, you guys are describing this thing where they're being counted on for things that they can't do.

And then what Carlos is also describing is, their reaction is to do worse in reaction to that.

That's a terrible combination for the seat at the table.

Yeah, it's a hot seat at the table, reminiscent to what potentially Brian Dable for the New York Giants is sitting on this week.

But what I consistently see is that the timeline for marketers is shrinking further and further.

And CMOs are not getting the opportunity to think long term.

And so, if you don't get the ability to build a brand campaign and then combine that with demand gen and then build assets and do events where that whole campaign unfurls over a longer period of time, but you're like, hey, in two weeks, we need a 50% increase in demo requests.

You're going to end up doing the wrong things.

You know that they're wrong, but you'll do them because you have to because you're under so much pressure.

And I think that that is what I'm seeing pretty consistently is like, what can we do this week that's going to turn things around?

It's like, well, you know, I mean, I can up my spend on Google or on LinkedIn ads, but outside of that, there's not a lot of stuff I can do to really stem the tide as a marketer inside of a week.

I mean, you can do stuff this week that maybe will impact pipeline three to four months down the road.

Exactly.

Right.

I guess that's what's lost on me is CMOs need to be evangelizing and literally educating the ELT or the board on what good marketing looks like.

You mentioned B2C.

I think CMOs and B2C have done that traditionally.

But B2B, it's like I get in this seat and I can't even take 90 days to get a lay of the land.

I talked to another marketer who said, we had a new VP come in, VP of Marketing, and instantly just started axing headcount in their first week.

I'm like, in the first week, you don't even know your way to the break room, let alone who on your team is a high performer and who isn't.

It's this reaction, this panic of, I've got to do all these things, again, coupled with an overarching message from some vendors and people in the market who are like, oh no, everything's new.

Well, not everything's new.

Growth doesn't go out of style.

Growth has always been the goal.

It's what is your role in growth and how are you going to align with the organization to make sure that the investment they're going to make is going to lead to growth.

And if you can't prove that and if you can't show that, well, then you don't deserve a seat at the table.

I wish I could transition off that because that was kind of a mic dropy, right?

Yeah, it was.

Yeah.

So I'm going to ruin it because I do have this other part to this story line.

This is an interesting one, which is in the panic of let's call it the last year and a half.

Everyone just, I mean, bombs were dropping on marketing.

They were like, go.

Or, I mean, if you did a survey of 100 marketers, CMOs who had their jobs, a large percentage would be unhappy.

All right.

So what was your second?

Do you remember?

I think it was just the lack of alignment across the organization.

Those things go hand in hand, right?

So thinking of that, you're still seeing this, because I'll just make it very clear.

Carlos was beating that drum, and I'm talking like those Japanese drums, boom, boom.

So God, I can imagine that you're a little salty, because you're still having that conversation is what you're telling us.

Yeah.

I'm still seeing articles.

How to align marketing and sales.

To me, that's table stakes.

But speaking, we spoke to a brand not long ago, and they wanted to do ABM.

So I said, well, is your sales team, what discussions have you had with your sales team?

Well, we haven't talked to them.

So why are we even talking?

Because we engage with you, you're going to pay us a lot of money to craft this strategy.

Well, we'll get them on board once you guys come on.

I'm like, that's not how this works.

And I'm talking to somebody who, their role in their organization is to improve the digital maturity of the organization.

I'm like, but you're trying to move forward to spend money on an ABM strategy without engaging sales?

Like, you know, it's, and that's not an isolated conversation.

No.

So to me, that's table stakes.

But then you think about, are you aligning with customer success?

Because customer marketing should be front and center of every CMO's agenda, just because it's, you know, just because you're acquiring new logos doesn't mean you're growing market share for what he's leading at the rate.

So that retention, that upsell, that cross sell.

And yet I speak to CMOs, VPs, even directors of marketing.

And again, it's this isolation marketing kind of does what they do.

And even within their own groups, campaign teams aren't talking to events teams.

Events teams aren't talking to the digital teams.

Content lives somewhere else.

And it's no wonder that we're not as effective.

And again, from my perspective, because I'm a fossil and I've been around for a long time, it does feel a little bit like Groundhog's Day.

Matt, do you feel like in your last couple of gigs, like how was the alignment or how did you handle what Carlos just described?

Well, I can tell you the places where I was my most successful were the places where I actually had not only a good relationship with the sales leader, and that's usually not a problem for me because I'm a pretty sales focused CMO.

Yeah, you are.

But where I was really at my best was when I had total alignment with finance and the product teams.

And that's a hard nirvana to find, because as a marketer you sort of like, everybody talks about lack of alignment between sales and marketing.

But to have really great marketing, you have to be in strong alignment with the product team.

And to do really great marketing, you have to have strong alignment with finance because you have to run really efficient with CAC in mind programs.

And I think that those are the places where actually you stand maybe even a bigger chance of losing your gig.

If you are not in sync with what product is building, why they're building it, if you're not helping them inform what through the voice of the customer, what we should be building.

And then if you're out of line with the finance team and you're overspending or honestly, I see this all the time, underspending, that's how you get yourself thrown out.

And I just want to mention something really interesting here.

So when we started this, we're like, we're not going to talk about the old school stuff like sales marketing, alignment, all this stuff.

What's been really interesting, Carlos, like over the last month, we've had folks that have been in the game for a while and in their consultants or their AJ, right?

Working with lots of companies and they are bringing exactly what Carlos just said back to the table.

Yes, that is nuts.

It is nuts.

Yeah.

What I love about what both of you guys are saying is your well, first, Carlos said something really important.

You're a business person.

Okay, that's I mean, you know what I mean?

And by the way, that's I think why Matt is so successful.

He's he's sales centric, but like he you know, when you talk to him, he actually we rarely he, you know, like let's say Matt's at a CMO gig.

I'll call him.

He doesn't go.

Oh my God, we ran this campaign.

He's talking about the business, right?

And that's so that's one.

That's a way you think about your role.

And then two is like you guys are just talking about.

You guys are saying, whoa, like sales, like Carlos said, that's table stakes.

You know, are you aligning with the organization, mappers of product and finance?

That's you know, these are things that so not only are you.

Is there a frustration that since 2008, you've been talking about alignment.

You want them to expand the alignment.

So like, we got, it's like get that sales thing going, so you can go aligning with the rest of your work.

It's crazy because like I didn't think we'd have to keep talking about this.

We do.

I think Matt, I want to give Carlos that stat shit.

I don't have it on the top of my head from Ray.

Oh, I know it.

Okay, look at this one, Carlos, ready?

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Yeah, so Ray Rike, you know Ray?

I know the name.

Don't know a person.

Amazing guy.

You should, the metrics this guy's putting out are amazing.

So it was 18,000 SaaS companies that he had as part of the survey, right?

And he did some survey on how many of the sales and marketing departments shared goal, like had shared goals, right?

Whether it was the marketing department having an ARR goal, the sales team having a pipeline goal.

And of all those companies, there was only 34% that had shared goals.

But those were the 34 fastest growing and most successful businesses.

So it was good to hear.

Like, I mean, you know, so yeah, I mean, what do you think of that?

It's incredible.

Well, it's incredible.

But again, I thank not to, you know, our buddy, Matt Hines, that one time called me the grumpy old man of marketing.

Oh.

But I also come at it with a sales land.

But I think there's two things.

It's underscoring the fact that this isn't easy stuff.

And what I tell marketers is, look, if you want to align with sales, first of all, stop trying to defend yourself when they give feedback.

Just listen to them.

I love that.

Secondly, involve them in your planning.

And what I mean by that is just don't create campaigns and then have a lunch and learn to tell them everything you're doing.

Speak to them about what they're hearing on their calls, why they're losing, why they're winning, what their obstacles are.

So you can have that view of the customer back to shared goals.

You start making a part of your compensation packages tied to revenue for marketers.

Sales all of a sudden sits up and says, oh, now they're acting like we are because we're coin operated.

And then for God's sake, stop wasting their time with stuff.

There's always so many hours in a day I can sell.

And when I have a full pipeline, that's all I'm focused on, even here in my business.

I don't want to waste my time reviewing content, things like that.

Make it easy for them to go out and do what they do best, which is go in and go win business.

If you do those things, sales is all of a sudden going to say, all right, there's a little bit different vibe here, and they're not going to push against you so hard.

Same with the product teams.

Matt, you talked about the Nirvana state.

My word, not yours.

When I was at McAfee in 2001, this is what we did with the sales team, and then I was part of the product management meetings, and we both shared information back and forth.

And we were part of this little $60 million business unit.

And by that interaction of working with sales, working with product, also working with finance, we shifted some things on inside sales and made them more account managers focused on the customer base, not trying to land new customer acquisition.

In year one, we closed an additional $12 million in incremental revenue.

I would have never happened without complete alignment through the organization.

And people may go, oh, well, that's $60 million business.

We're in a multi-billion dollar business.

It can still be done.

Marketing just has to take that first step and start saying, look, we want your feedback, no defense, doesn't mean we're going to incorporate it all.

Yeah.

And then lastly, a comment.

And Craig, you've heard me say this probably since before 2008.

A common shared view of the customer.

Yeah.

Understand who they are, how they buy, what they do after the purchase, who is involved and what's important to them.

If you can align on that game over, you're going to win a heck of a lot more than you lose.

By the way, that was great.

And just going back to Matt, since he's like our guy just had to do this a couple of times on site.

So like one thing Matt was always talking about was how now more than ever, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, Matt, I just done this out there.

As a CMO, he was looking at roadblocks in the sales process.

And so he's like, dude, I'm not looking at when I pass it to him only.

I'm looking at like, where can I support sales when they either hit latency or full roadblock in the sales process and looking at that data.

That is where, like the thing that you said, I think is really important is in that case, Matt would be able to go to sales and say, look guys, I see what's happening here.

Here's what I want to do to help.

That is what those guys want to hear.

And it could be, and since Matt builds a relationship with the rest of the organization, there might be product.

There's these things where that relationship now, by looking beyond, just looking at the entire revenue cycle, one, that's, he finds ways where you can really help him go sell.

And then two, with the alignment you have with the rest of the organization, because it's not always, well, let's go do this new messaging track.

But would you say, Matt, like, I mean, one, that was true, right?

Yeah, that is true.

I think the way I put it was, I'm looking much further down the sales funnel than I ever have in the past, which is, as a marketer, I always think about how do we get things to opportunity stage and then how do we get things to close one?

And then as they become a customer, how do we kick off our life cycle marketing?

But then I started looking at, oh my gosh, like, what does it take in order to get from qualification to validation?

What does it take to go from validation to technical win?

What does it take to go from technical win to proposal, and then contract and then close one?

And where are we getting stuck?

And where we were getting stuck is at this point in the deal cycle, which to me was signaling, okay, well, we don't have a messaging problem because we're getting people through the door.

We actually don't have a discovery problem because we're getting the larger buying committee into our next calls.

Where we have a problem is getting to technical win because we've got this product feature that we're missing.

And that's where I'm going to the product team and saying, hey, we're missing this.

Our competitors have that.

That seems to be getting everybody in their buying committee very excited.

We need to start developing this.

And that's what I've talked about when I talk about like marketers need to be working hand in glove with the product team to be informing them through the customer's voice, what's happening, not only in the market, but what's happening in our sales cycles and help steer the product roadmap in order to win more deals.

That's cool, man.

You guys both had stories on like how these things go and get put into action.

That's amazing.

And what year did you say 2001, Carlos?

At McAfee, yeah.

That was 23 years ago.

I know.

I know I don't look like I'm that old, but I really.

Well, Mad was born in, born men.

So like we're, we're in good shape.

Yeah, I was, I was in college, but thanks.

All right.

So I, I, I actually, it is incredible.

Yeah.

I forgot about the Ray Rike one.

You should check him out or listen to the episode we had with him because he has, he brought up alignment.

We weren't expecting it.

And it was because of the shared goals thing, which I think was really like amazing.

And actually your reaction was, well, of course.

Yeah.

And that's how I, that's actually Carlos, how I should have reacted.

But I didn't because of what we're talking about, which is like, can I prove it?

Can I just bring up one other thing on alignment before we go?

I hate to do this because we have a third topic.

It's your podcast, man.

Go for it.

Oh, you know, Carlos, see, that's, that's, you're so, I mean, I love it.

That's the kind of alignment we like around here.

It's Craig's world.

I'm just, I'm just living in it for the next few minutes.

Don't you know who he is?

Yeah.

I, I learned.

Yes.

You know, it's anyway.

Okay.

But can I just go back to this for both of you guys?

Because the thing I, the issue with all of the things we're talking about, it's always a people problem.

Yeah.

Yep.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But we're talking about it through the lens of the CMO, which let's pretend we're talking about the top CMOs.

And we're talking about what they need to do.

But look, like I'll give me the, if the sales leader can blow this whole thing up, right, and the relationship up.

So that's always for me, like when I'm talking about alignment, the people part is just really hard.

Now, we've had this conversation before, Carlos, but when you guys were talking, I'm like, this all sounds great.

And then you run into the people to try to bring this thing all together.

I don't know.

Any thoughts on that, you guys?

I do, and going back to my time at McAfee, so my first day was sales kickoff.

And so wanting to get to know my sales counterparts, I grabbed my, at lunch, I sat down at the Western VP's table with he and his team.

I still consider Mike a great friend.

We haven't talked in a while, but I introduced myself and said, hey, I'm part of the marketing team.

And Mike is a South Side of Chicago guy.

I grew up, born and raised in Chicago.

And he said, I'll be honest, marketing's never done shit for me, and I don't expect you're going to do anything better.

And I was like, I was so caught off guard.

Yeah.

While I just said, well, I hope I get the chance to change your mind.

So I went back and I just took a look at the historical performance before I got there.

And this wasn't some huge marketing team.

I'm not trying to throw anybody under the bus.

Yeah.

No, that's good.

He was right.

That there was not, in the data that I saw, there was not one deal that closed that I could find traced back to any marketing, forget sourced or influenced, marketing involvement.

Wow.

Well, I called him and the East Coast VP, we were at another event.

And I said, can we just do dinner and drinks?

We ended up shooting pool, which I suck at.

And having some beers.

And I told him, Mike, you told me this, he apologized kind of sheepishly.

I said, you are actually right.

So how can we change it?

And I said, you guys tell me, because I'm new here, you know, still feeling my way around.

And I said, but I know enough to know if I'm going to spend a dollar, it's got to come out some way, you know, as a multiple.

And the only way that's going to happen is if you guys can close deals.

Yeah, it took us a year to get to a point where we had shared reporting.

I started to be invited to QBRs.

I started to do, salespeople were asking me, hey, where I'm going on this road trip to visit customers, would you like to tag along?

And the year to the day, we were at another sales conference, Mike stood up and made a point of calling out the marketing department and literally went like this and said, marketing, you've won my heart.

And he told that very same story.

And so again, just like everything with people, change doesn't come quickly.

This is why I think it's so important for marketers to go, if you need to apologize, even if you weren't the one responsible, ask sales what they need from you, same with the product team and the finance team, and then start to make it happen and set milestones that are achievable.

So in a year you can look back and go, is it perfect?

No.

But did we make a lot of did we gain a lot of ground?

Yes.

It got to the point in my three years there, I wouldn't have salespeople coming by our office and say or sending an email to the marketing team, hey, thanks, guys, we just closed another one that came from this campaign.

Yeah, that's cool.

Right.

Takes a long time, but it sure makes for a much better work environment.

But you're right, it's the people.

And at the end of the day, people just want to be heard and they want to be seen and they want to be understood.

If you can do that as a marketer with your sales team, your product team, your finance team, you're going to enjoy your job a whole lot better.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, my advice here, honestly, is like know who's your customer and then know who's your vendor internally.

And make sure that you have good relationships there, right?

Like sales team is your customer.

So treat them as though they are your customer.

Listen to them, have conversations, do exactly what Carlos said.

Take them out to dinner, take them out to drinks.

It's in 2024, listen to their gong calls.

Like make observations, think about ways that you can be helpful.

But then also, as the marketing department, you're also a customer of other departments in the business.

And don't be a servant to a customer.

Also, be a customer to a supplier internally, which means like, if you have a great finance team, they should be helping you.

If you have a great FP&A team, they should be helping you and they should be supplying you with information and presentations and data that help you be more successful.

If there's a rev ops team, same story, right?

Like you don't have to just be a servant and then you also don't have to just be the end of a supply chain.

Like recognize that you're both, build relationships appropriately in both ways.

So because I'm feeling salty, I like what you said except the beginning.

Yes, finally.

Sales is not the customer marketing from my perspective.

They're partners and the customer is the customer.

All right.

So they need to work together to really help drive engagement with their customers, both pre-purchase, leading up to what we call value creation, and post-purchase value expansion.

The reason I get so irritated on this whole idea that marketing serves sales or sales as marketing's customer is because we still have a lot of the knuckle-dragging sales mentality in organizations, where really the customer should be driving the strategy of every organization.

Marketing all of a sudden shifts and says, I'm going to work at the behest of sales.

Well, then I'm going to be blasting out campaigns, uploading lists from Zoom Info, using marketing automation as a spam cannon.

So I think we've got to be careful and say, these two groups need to align, understand they have separate roles that they define and how to engage, acquire, and grow customers.

Yeah.

I won't change my position.

Well, that's fine.

I do like that argument.

I think we're talking about semantics, though, because there are customers, customers of brands that I work for that I absolutely love.

And I want to make them happy and I want to make them expand and I want to put them on stage and I want to do all kinds of stuff.

But I don't obsess about them.

I think the thing that when I talk about sales being the customer of marketing, it's that I need to have an understanding of what sales needs in order to be successful so that the business can be successful.

But I don't ever want to feel like I'm a cog in a wheel or the marketing department is creating some cog in some wheel or anything like that.

It's really just like if I know and I think of them the same way I think about a customer, what they need in order to succeed, then that's just the mentality.

And I know that the idea of sales being the customer of marketing is fraught with a lot of harsh feelings and things like that.

But I don't think of it as a negative position.

I just think of it as if I'm building this really great go to market process that has the ability to flywheel, then there are pieces that feed into other pieces.

And as long as those things are operating harmoniously, the whole company is successful.

Yeah.

So I would say depending on the environment of the company, choose your terminology wisely.

I would agree with you there.

Because I don't...

Marketing can operate effectively if they're not getting what they need from sales, which is insight, data, right?

Making sure the data is clean, data is updated, both structured and unstructured.

So I can go in and really understand more about the customer so I can create the campaigns and the content and invest in the channels that are going to engage them effectively.

If sales is saying, well, we're not going to give that to you, marketing is working in a deficit.

So that's why I think it's an equal partnership that goes both ways.

Yeah.

You know, Matt, had you not gone on a three-minute, you know, it was, well, two and a half.

Okay.

My response to Carlos, I had the perfect opportunity to transition to make sure we land the plane.

Oh, yeah.

Because the other thing he had led us down the path towards the customer.

Yeah.

And that was like a big another, you know, and it's funny if you took the three things Carlos brought up, these are three things he's been talking about forever.

So that's I can see where the saltiness comes from.

But the customer alignment, which is described as like a true definition of the customer, not a segment, not a wide one, like the example you gave.

And then everyone aligned against it is a missing piece here in being successful and making good decisions.

We've talked about it a lot through the podcast.

Let's just hone in on this.

And in order to land the plane, we got four minutes.

So Carlos, just so you know, Matt gets, when people do the list in the front, he is maniacal about making sure that we quote unquote land the plane and get everything out.

So, but I sort of described what you described.

What would you add to the issue around customer, like understanding and embracing the customers?

What else should we be thinking about there?

I think it's a continual, it's a continual thing you have to do.

It's a continual discipline.

Because customers are changing so fast.

Their sophistication continues to evolve.

So, you know, you have organizations now, we see organizations who, well, we defined our ICP, we don't need to do any persona work.

So, what do you, I mean, I literally talked to one not long ago who said, we're actually going to go ahead for the last half of the year and invest in campaigns, see what sticks.

And then from that, we'll start to develop customer profiles.

Yeah.

I'm like, wow, that's a risky bet.

Call me when you're looking for your next gig.

But I almost see this push against it of, well, we don't really need to know that.

We just got to get to market quickly.

Well, again, that's a shotgun approach, throwing stuff up against the wall to see what sticks.

So understanding that at a granular level, who's part of that committee?

What roles do they play?

What roles do they play across that purchase journey, both pre and post?

Because that'll give you the insight of what content you need to create at what stage of the journey, regardless of how long that purchase cycle is.

So I think it's really important to have that insight, but I'm seeing now, it's ICP definition, campaigns, move to market, and throw everything over to sales and let them sort through it.

Well, that's not sales jobs.

Sales aren't lead qualifiers, they're salespeople, and they get paid a lot of money to do what they do, so let them do what they, again, let them do what they do best.

Matt, we have the time for you.

Please go ahead, I will be, hold on, let me set my clock, Tyra, go.

Everything Carlos said is right.

Oh, yeah, you know, for that, but I will say, actually, I have this really interesting thing, so I primarily work with Series A, now Carlos is this, and it's interesting, you see from the founder that built something for someone, it's a lot different than just building the product and figuring out to someone.

It's really pretty cool, you know, like we have one, it's for the Chief Accounting Officer and people have to support him, and it's like he built the product for them.

Now, what you guys are describing is really interesting, which is the transition from everything walked in his or her head.

Yeah.

And everyone in the org needs to understand how they walk, how they talk, like what they care about.

And that's, you know, he's totally a game on that, and that's something that he's working on.

So taking what basically what you guys said of bringing up, and it is really interesting where I could see, like let's say out of, you know, X amount of series A companies or early stage that I've seen, there's a real advantage to the founder that built it for someone.

Totally.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And, you know, we could take that though.

And I, you know, like if I said, well, because Carlos was saying, look, I could still take a call and just be like, who's your customer?

And just being like, okay, you don't know your customer.

Those are probably bigger.

So I mean, this idea, right, that I'm starting here on series A is the same thing, you know, back here with, you know, series D, public, et cetera, which is like, you know, who is this for?

And that we could still do, even though there's this hidden advantage where you build it in the first place for someone.

Sometimes you do have to take a step back.

I just have this other funny story where Topo, they used to do briefings and this one company briefed me because they created all these new features.

They were so excited.

And I felt so bad because I didn't know how to ask this.

And I just said, why did you build this?

You know, because I knew they're, I mean, they worked with us because I knew their customer.

And I was like, that just showed what Carla, you know, and so all the themes that we talked about here, which is, hold on one sec, all the themes we talked about here, which are like alignment, you know, bringing everyone together and like having everyone on the same page, on the customer that we serve allows us to make, you know, really good decisions there.

So anyway, threw that in there.

Okay, that was awesome.

That was great.

Yeah.

Enjoyed it.

I also noticed, holy cow, I look like I'm a ghost.

No, no, you look very alive.

That sounds so vain, but I looked at myself, I'm like, I look so pale compared, I mean, especially Rosenberg, are you working now or do you just come in for the podcast and then go to look at the view?

Look at the view behind you.

Oh, Matt lives there.

You're probably sitting there with one of those sun things up on the roof, just waiting for your podcast, doing your push ups.

I mean, it's a member of my I still got kids in the mixer, man, so baseball field is a baseball field football field tan.

But yeah, no, you don't look like a ghost, but I know I don't wear one of those sun tan things, but but I should notice he didn't say that he's also working, so at least we know that.

It's in the lie.

From listen to this podcast guys.

Anyway, all right, we as you guys can tell someone's coming in my office, so we have to call it.

But that's what we try to do.

Carlos is just get our people that we respect on and have a great conversation.

So this was all we wanted and it was great, man.

Yeah, that was awesome.

It was awesome.

And reasonable.

I honestly, guys, like I just think the stuff you're bringing up is reasonable.

It's not crazy highfalutin BS.

This is like real stuff.

So thank you, brother.

That's The Transaction.

That's what we try to do and we really appreciate it.

Awesome.

Thanks, guys.

Appreciate it.

Thanks for joining us for another episode of The Transaction.

Craig and I really appreciate the fact that you've listened all the way to the end.

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