The Transaction

Craig Rosenberg: By the way, what do you think of Matt's haircut, Jon?

Jon Miller: I think it's fine, it's high and tight.

Jon Miller: I like it.

Matt Amundson: There we go.

Craig Rosenberg: High and tight, but you know, sometimes when people get a haircut, they look younger.

Craig Rosenberg: Like you look in your 20s.

Matt Amundson: Oh, well, thank you.

Matt Amundson: I think it's the good lighting.

Craig Rosenberg: Me and Jon don't have the benefit of what you have.

Craig Rosenberg: Like, we're just...

Matt Amundson: Well, you guys are in 1080p and I'm in 720, so it sort of blurs all my lines, which is nice.

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

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

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

Matt Amundson: Let's get started.

Craig Rosenberg: By the way, Jon, where are you right now?

Craig Rosenberg: I mean, I was just thinking, shoot, I'm doing the podcast from my house.

Craig Rosenberg: We're like maybe two minutes from each other or no?

Craig Rosenberg: Are you in an office these days?

Jon Miller: We're trying to do office days, Tuesdays, Thursdays.

Jon Miller: So I'm currently at the Space's Clock Tower in San Mateo.

Jon Miller: You know, the one above the sweet green.

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah.

Craig Rosenberg: Oh, how is that place?

Craig Rosenberg: I've been looking at driving by it forever.

Jon Miller: It's all right.

Jon Miller: It's a little sterile.

Jon Miller: But they're being really flexible with me in terms of trying to accommodate what I need, which is kind of like an office for one day a week.

Jon Miller: It's pretty non-standard.

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah.

Craig Rosenberg: All right.

Craig Rosenberg: So everyone just want to do our usual lead in on the guest.

Craig Rosenberg: And like we talk about B2B famous, not B2B fabulous.

Craig Rosenberg: Matt, don't worry.

Craig Rosenberg: You know, what's interesting is John's notoriety came about when notoriety, there was like scale in notoriety.

Craig Rosenberg: You know what I mean?

Craig Rosenberg: Like B2B was like, it was basically if you spoke at shows and got quoted in newspapers, like a PR effort and then speaking.

Craig Rosenberg: But John like had, you know, at the beginnings of Marketo was taken to market this whole new way of thinking at the time when blogs and social and all these things came about that could really flywheel your content and your point of view.

Craig Rosenberg: And so it's like really interesting.

Craig Rosenberg: You know, when, when John sort of came to market as the co-founder of Marketo, it was an incredible time in B2B.

Craig Rosenberg: And because, you know, the whole idea of everything you guys were doing at Marketo was so new and interesting.

Craig Rosenberg: And it was like most of the stuff I did with him, not talking about Marketo, he was talking about the new way of doing things, which was really interesting stuff.

Craig Rosenberg: And so I've been friends with Jon like you forever.

Craig Rosenberg: It's just cool to, it's always been cool to know him.

Craig Rosenberg: And it's been cool to follow him and to learn and to watch the evolution of Jon.

Craig Rosenberg: So I always tell everyone this.

Craig Rosenberg: So Jon got us on the MQL lead tracking, like lead everything thing.

Craig Rosenberg: Then he's like, well, wait a minute, like if I'm trying to get into the enterprise, I need a completely new point of view and brought AccountBased to Market.

Craig Rosenberg: Really one of the best guys to listen to and to follow in that regard.

Craig Rosenberg: And now he's in sort of phase three of Jon.

Craig Rosenberg: And so, you know, as we at The Transaction try to help people understand the new playbook, there probably is like in the three people in the world that are most suited to have that conversation.

Craig Rosenberg: And one of those guys is Jon Miller.

Craig Rosenberg: So Jon, welcome to The Transaction, man.

Jon Miller: Thank you.

Jon Miller: You know, every time somebody says like, oh, I've known you forever, it's really just decided how old we're getting.

Craig Rosenberg: No, I know, I know.

Jon Miller: I was thinking about this.

Jon Miller: You know, there's been more time that I've known you than the time between the movie twins coming out until I met you.

Craig Rosenberg: Jesus, now you're killing us here.

Craig Rosenberg: I love this.

Jon Miller: So we've known each other a really long time.

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah.

Craig Rosenberg: And so like this, and by the way, you know, the Transaction started because Matt and I were just talking B2B and we're like, let's go record it.

Craig Rosenberg: And it's like the same thing with you.

Craig Rosenberg: It's like there's, you know, when we're talking business, there's always something to learn.

Craig Rosenberg: So it's really cool to just be able to record this and share this with everyone.

Craig Rosenberg: So the question that starts every Transaction podcast is this.

Craig Rosenberg: So what's something that the market thinks they're doing right?

Craig Rosenberg: It could be approach, best practice, methodology, whatever.

Craig Rosenberg: And they're actually wrong or not thinking about the right way.

Craig Rosenberg: And what is that and what should they be doing differently?

Craig Rosenberg: And so to you?

Jon Miller: You know, I like to encapsulate it epitomized, you know, which is that marketing is not a gumball machine.

Jon Miller: And I think, you know, too many people, and frankly, we taught too many people that you can think of marketing that way.

Jon Miller: You know, they can be like, here's some money, here's some investment, and you're going to use it to run your campaign.

Jon Miller: And I'm going to get gumballs out.

Jon Miller: I'm going to get MQLs out or opportunities out.

Jon Miller: And that, you know, it's a very, you know, it was a very deterministic sort of approach.

Jon Miller: You know, money in, campaign's out.

Jon Miller: And as a result, we sort of, you know, got addicted to like this sugar rush of MQLs.

Jon Miller: You know, thinking like, I can just keep putting my quarters in and I'm going to keep getting these MQLs out.

Jon Miller: But that's not, I don't think that's the way buying works.

Jon Miller: Maybe, you know, maybe it worked that way in 2008 or 2010 when we were building Marketo, you know, and there was less noise and less competition.

Jon Miller: You know, fast forward to today and, you know, what's happened is we've been just, you know, bombarding buyers kind of with the same tactics, you know, and as we spend, when we send more content and more emails, more touches, you know, we're not building relationships, we're burning them.

Jon Miller: So, you know, I think we're seeing the effect of these mindsets today.

Jon Miller: We're seeing lower SDR productivity, we're seeing missed quotas, we're seeing slower growth, you know, we're seeing poor marketing sales alignment, and ultimately, you know, we're seeing high CMO turnover, you know, so there's lots of ways to describe, you know, what's going on, but I think fundamentally is your point of view, is just that, you know, playbook that, you know, we helped preach and define at Marketo, and you helped to help, you know, preach and define.

Jon Miller: It's just not working as well anymore.

Jon Miller: And I think it is time for something new.

Craig Rosenberg: I think Matt literally just had this conversation in front of me yesterday.

Craig Rosenberg: Would you say, Matt?

Matt Amundson: It's possible.

Matt Amundson: We were at football yesterday.

Craig Rosenberg: There's always that analogy.

Craig Rosenberg: So, but I want to dig into, like, as you described, I mean, SDR productivity, I'd say.

Craig Rosenberg: I mean, is it true?

Craig Rosenberg: I don't know.

Craig Rosenberg: You guys confirm this?

Craig Rosenberg: I guess all of the sort of past playbook productivities down, but it seems like SDR productivity has taken the biggest hit.

Matt Amundson: I think that there's some truth to that.

Matt Amundson: I don't have the numbers to back it up.

Matt Amundson: The thing that I'll say anecdotally about SDR productivity is, there are best practices that exist in sales development, and Craig Topo helped really illuminate and evangelize a lot of what they were.

Matt Amundson: Things like, very tactical things like the Triple Touch and whatnot.

Matt Amundson: I just don't see that type of behavior anymore.

Matt Amundson: What I see is people load up a sequence or a cadence into Outreach or SalesLoft.

Matt Amundson: It's the same for absolutely everybody.

Matt Amundson: It really feels like gone are the days where you'd see people hop on LinkedIn and be like, look at this email that I just got from a BDR.

Matt Amundson: What I think is above, not just the fact that marketing isn't as effective as it was using programmatic email marketing and BDRs aren't effective as they were, is really what we touched on on a previous pod about the creativity element.

Matt Amundson: Because these workflow tools are so prominent now, people are just like, well, I can just build a 12 email sequence or a six or seven email slash call cadence in my workflow tools and they don't have to be great.

Matt Amundson: They just need to tell people what we do and the right people will see it and respond to it.

Matt Amundson: The reality is, even the right people may not be seeing it and they're certainly not responding to it.

Matt Amundson: To me, it feels like that creativity piece is lost, but I think that there's a huge opportunity using some of new technology today to actually increase that creativity piece.

Craig Rosenberg: The other thing I was going to say is like, so there was the, when I, you guys might disagree with this.

Craig Rosenberg: I don't know, but like, so, because I was on the outside looking in, there was the Marketo point of view, which was very MQL focused, lead nurturing, email centric.

Craig Rosenberg: Then there was the HubSpot play, which is beat the living crap out of the blog.

Craig Rosenberg: That doesn't work either.

Craig Rosenberg: And just the volume blog doesn't work.

Craig Rosenberg: As much it's like, how many 300 to 500 blog posts that don't say anything are being created still with people sort of aiming from the old playbook that we just have to increase the amount of 300 to 500 word blog posts out there.

Craig Rosenberg: That's another one, as I think about things that we sort of got ingrained in our head that are no longer working.

Craig Rosenberg: I mean, there's a lot, but...

Jon Miller: What else doesn't work are my bread and butter of writing big, meaty definitive guides.

Jon Miller: We built Marketo's brand and frankly, probably a big part of Engagio's brand on writing this 200 page, really valuable, if I may say, content.

Jon Miller: You know, that we would then give away and then also repurpose into a bunch of different formats.

Jon Miller: Fast forward to 2024, those tactics aren't working either.

Jon Miller: You know, there's, again, there's partly the changing buyer and millennials and just different tastes for how people want to learn and all that kind of stuff.

Jon Miller: But I still think it just comes down to the core.

Jon Miller: Or even what Matt was saying, it's like marketers and salespeople will overuse any tactic to the point of saturation and therefore destroying the tactic.

Jon Miller: You know, and that's what's happened here.

Jon Miller: And in doing so, we've lost sight of, I think, the core fundamental, right?

Jon Miller: Matt was saying it's creativity, which I think is part of it.

Jon Miller: But I think the true, true core fundamental is kind of a mindset of what's right for the customer.

Jon Miller: Does this actually add value?

Jon Miller: I think that's more than anything else, what got lost in this sort of gumball mentality, more volume, more, more, more approach.

Craig Rosenberg: I just before I transition you into the, like the pillars of what we need to be thinking in the way today, I do want to tell you guys that in like trying to think when this was 2008 maybe, do you know what guys know Gretchen DeKnikker, right?

Craig Rosenberg: She was at Genius and she had just left Genius, and I was like, how's it going?

Craig Rosenberg: She's like, here's the thing, we're creating a machine that will eat the ability to even use the machine at some point, because we're trying to do marketing automation.

Craig Rosenberg: Essentially, that's what you guys are saying.

Craig Rosenberg: These tools that we built, they were almost like temporary, because we just beat the living crap out of them and defeated their effectiveness at some point because we beat the living crap out of them.

Craig Rosenberg: Anyway, just wanted to throw that out for you, Gretchen, just a heads up, I had never told Jon that one, because Jon was so...

Craig Rosenberg: Remember how focused Jon was at Marketo?

Craig Rosenberg: There was things I never messed with that guy on.

Craig Rosenberg: I mean, I always wanted to learn from him, but man, there was things I just like, was like, this guy, there's nothing going to stop this guy.

Craig Rosenberg: So now, Jon, let's transition.

Craig Rosenberg: Like, if you were going to sort of set us up to be thinking about the big things we should be thinking, you know, I got the like, like the big sort of conceptual idea that we have to go back to be thinking about the customer.

Craig Rosenberg: But what are the other key areas that we should be thinking about today in the new playbook?

Jon Miller: Yeah, I mean, this is going to be implications of everything I'm talking about here in terms of how we measure and how we do attribution and how we set our budgets and all that kind of stuff.

Jon Miller: You know, but how do we think about the mix of brand versus demand?

Jon Miller: But the more I thought about, the more I really have realized, it comes down to, you know, is this resisting kind of the short-term thinking and more focusing on kind of long-term, shifting from quantity to quality.

Jon Miller: And ultimately, it's about treating buyers, you know, as people, not, quote unquote, leads to be nurtured or kind of deals to be created.

Jon Miller: You know, and this sounds, even coming out of my mouth, I can be like, wow, this sounds pretty squishy.

Jon Miller: You know, and so I think, you know, but it does start to like imply, I think some kind of true kind of fundamental things that we've lost our approach on.

Jon Miller: You know, there are things that people talk about today that are best practices that fall right out of this, right?

Jon Miller: Like, you know, yeah, you know, create content, sure.

Jon Miller: But are you creating content that's so valuable, people would pay for it?

Jon Miller: You know, so that you can actually build community around subscriptions.

Jon Miller: And we've seen the rise of these paid sub stacks.

Jon Miller: People are doing like, it can be done, right?

Jon Miller: It's just a different approach, you know, making it easy for people to try out and experience your products, whether that's a free trial or a product led motion, or just like a demo, click through demo or something, you know, making it easy for them to get pricing and packaging information and then connect with sales on their own terms, right?

Jon Miller: How many companies are actually doing that?

Jon Miller: You know, that's right by the buyer.

Jon Miller: Thinking about building community around your products, you know, and for your prospects.

Jon Miller: Some companies are knocking out of the park by doing that, but, you know, not everybody's doing that.

Jon Miller: Then after the sale, right, how much of your marketing budget and resources are being invested into post-sale advocacy, customer success, retention versus kind of new business, right?

Jon Miller: These are just examples of, if you really start with a principle of do right by the customer, these other things kind of fall out of it.

Matt Amundson: It's interesting, because I hear people all the time saying, hey, we're customer-centric, we're customer-centric, we're customer-centric, and almost none of them are doing what you just espoused there.

Matt Amundson: And oftentimes, those are always the things we're gonna get to that next quarter, and then we're gonna get to the quarter after, right?

Matt Amundson: Because we're so intently focused on new customer acquisition that we forget all of those pieces because maybe they don't look good in a board deck, maybe they don't ensure that, you know, your sales team is hitting quota at a high enough clip on a quarterly basis, and they're hard.

Matt Amundson: They're also very difficult to execute.

Jon Miller: We're gonna have to talk about this.

Jon Miller: Not that it's not just as hard, it's this goes against the grain of what CFOs and CEOs and PE companies are expecting for marketing.

Jon Miller: And I think moving companies is going to be challenging.

Jon Miller: And yet, at the same time, I don't think there's alternatives, right?

Jon Miller: You know, because we can't keep doing more of the same, right?

Jon Miller: We all know the definition of that.

Jon Miller: But I also don't want to under emphasize or underestimate how hard it is, right?

Jon Miller: Because of the expectations of marketing and the quarterly pressures, and, you know, what the PE firm expects, all that kind of stuff.

Jon Miller: You know, I think, you know, the other, you know, issue is, you know, I think that there's been so much time, you know, that the gumball mentality of the old playbook focuses so much time and energy into time and talking about the tactics of marketing.

Jon Miller: You know, and like people are like, oh, are you running enough webinars?

Jon Miller: And like, you know, have you optimized this SDR sequence that we sort of don't spend enough time on kind of the core fundamentals?

Jon Miller: Like, do we have product market fit, right?

Jon Miller: What is our competitive positioning, you know, versus everybody else?

Jon Miller: And perhaps most importantly, what is our reputation, right?

Jon Miller: When we're not in the room and people are talking about us versus the competition, like, what do they say?

Jon Miller: All those things have a bigger impact on, you know, your go to market, you know, than actually the quality of your demand gen programs.

Jon Miller: I like to say, you know, if you have great product market fit and a strong positioning and a strong reputation, you know, you can get away with really mediocre demand gen and you'll still create lots of pipeline.

Jon Miller: But even the best demand gen team in the world will really probably suffer if those fundamentals aren't in place.

Craig Rosenberg: That is the truth.

Craig Rosenberg: So, you know, what's funny is like, well, first of all, this is the reason we have sort of joystick driven CMOs and boardrooms is because of you and Matt, Jon, just as a heads up.

Jon Miller: I mean, you were involved too.

Matt Amundson: No, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Matt Amundson: Don't absolve yourself from this.

Jon Miller: I think my part of the blade.

Craig Rosenberg: But I do like this term.

Craig Rosenberg: I mean, essentially, you're describing reputations a new piece to marketing or maybe not.

Craig Rosenberg: But this is marketing and go to market.

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah, because there was there was a time where you were right, though.

Craig Rosenberg: Well, I'm not sure this is exactly how you said about something I took from this was like you could stand up.

Craig Rosenberg: You could actually copy other people in your markets, topics and run webinars and get 300 people, let's say.

Craig Rosenberg: You could.

Craig Rosenberg: You could drive and without what John said.

Craig Rosenberg: Now you can't.

Craig Rosenberg: And that, I think, you know, is really interesting and a big change, you know?

Craig Rosenberg: And but what your guys are calling for, well, what John's calling for, the mat was nodding.

Craig Rosenberg: And I'm by the way, I agree with.

Craig Rosenberg: Okay.

Craig Rosenberg: What we are calling for is that's classic go to market marketing and those things.

Craig Rosenberg: They not only were lost, but like now they're required.

Craig Rosenberg: And then on the customer thing, I'm not sure what happened there.

Craig Rosenberg: Like where we lost sight of what the customer finds valuable.

Craig Rosenberg: Is that just because everything work before?

Jon Miller: I mean, that was maybe part of it.

Jon Miller: But I think it's more like there's so much pressure on the short term and deliver some number and I got to hit this quarter, that it just creates a dynamic to optimize for the short term over what's going to do be right in the long term.

Jon Miller: And I think just you turn that crank for 40 quarters over 10 years, and you end up with something that's like, sure, you're running the program volume because you need to run that much volume to hit your number.

Jon Miller: Like in Marketo, we used to do this, like, oh, it's the end of the month or the end of the quarter.

Jon Miller: We don't have, we haven't hit our MQL goal.

Jon Miller: So we call them catch up campaigns, like, well, let's just blast something else out.

Jon Miller: And like, we would do it, and you know what?

Jon Miller: We would hit that MQL goal, but fine.

Jon Miller: So we did maybe that quarter, we hit our number, but I think over enough time, you keep doing that kind of thing without the quality behind it, and eventually you start to hurt your ability to make that number as opposed to helping.

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah.

Matt Amundson: I think one thing that was really true about the definitive guides from Marketo, and probably the reason why, and this was true for Engagio as well, was also true for brands like Outreach and SalesLoft.

Matt Amundson: And it's not often true for other brands.

Matt Amundson: Is definitive guides that we did at Marketo were essentially a textbook on how to do marketing now.

Matt Amundson: And there was a whole group of people that didn't know how to do it, right?

Matt Amundson: Because there was a massive change going on in the B2B marketing space.

Matt Amundson: And Marketo and some other brands were at the forefront of that.

Matt Amundson: And so somebody had to go educate the market.

Matt Amundson: Engagio, same thing.

Matt Amundson: Now we've shifted to account-based marketing.

Matt Amundson: Great, I understand why this is valuable, but I don't know tactically how to do it.

Matt Amundson: And that's why the Big Guide works there.

Matt Amundson: I think in other businesses, it doesn't work well because as revolutionary as you think your product is, it's kind of not, right?

Matt Amundson: It's just kind of not.

Matt Amundson: It might be slightly better, it might be slightly cheaper, it might give you a 10% efficiency gain.

Matt Amundson: But transitioning from the world of using Bronto to going to a full powered suite of MarTech tool like Marketo is a real change.

Matt Amundson: And then shifting to having an account based platform is a real change.

Matt Amundson: So I think one of the things that people lose sight of is, hey, do I have a great product?

Matt Amundson: Is it selling well?

Matt Amundson: Yes, that's awesome.

Matt Amundson: Does it need a definitive guide to reeducate the masses on the sea change that our product is creating?

Matt Amundson: Maybe not.

Matt Amundson: Maybe not.

Matt Amundson: And that's where shorter form content like videos or, let me just get you into the product so I can prove to you that you're going to see the same level of value from a cheaper product or whatever, are actually a better fit.

Matt Amundson: So I think some of the things about Marketo that people tried to copy didn't work because their products weren't massively changing the market.

Matt Amundson: And so I think all marketers need to be realistic about what Jon said earlier, which is what does our customer really need?

Matt Amundson: Right?

Matt Amundson: If I'm trying to make, you know, deploying a landing page 50% easier, do they need a 100 page guide on how to do that?

Matt Amundson: Probably not.

Matt Amundson: They need to see how the product works and how it's better than whatever the incumbent system that they're using is.

Matt Amundson: So we have to not necessarily just take other people's playbooks and run with them, but we have to think about what's best for our customer given the product or service that we're selling.

Craig Rosenberg: How do we, on the earlier point you made, we know the relationship damage that we do, but what are other ways that we can build better relationships with the customer?

Craig Rosenberg: What tactics should we be thinking about now?

Jon Miller: Well, you know, I'm sort of struck by anybody listening to this, right, today, right, is engaging with an incredibly time-consuming, rich form of content.

Jon Miller: Right?

Jon Miller: Like, you know, like, people are talking about, oh, all our buyers only have the attention spans of goldfish.

Jon Miller: There are going to be lots of people who are listening to this whole thing.

Jon Miller: Yeah.

Jon Miller: And I think that's an example of, you know, you can create content, you know, it's long-form, deep and engaging.

Jon Miller: It's got to be about, you know, speak to an audience and deliver kind of a certain level of value.

Jon Miller: You know, obviously, we're not talking about any products here, but most content shouldn't talk about the products, right?

Jon Miller: I mean, that's just the best practice, you know, that that everybody knows and not everybody follows.

Jon Miller: But, you know, we go, it goes back to that reputation point.

Jon Miller: You said reputation is a new thing, by the way, and like, actually, to me, reputation is just a sort of a more CDO friendly word, you know, named to the word brand.

Jon Miller: Yeah.

Jon Miller: And we can talk more about that.

Jon Miller: But, you know, how do you build your reputation, you know, in the marketplace today?

Jon Miller: I think what a lot of people are doing is they are relying or purposely using the founder or other people in the company, you know, to sort of, you know, almost build kind of their personal brands.

Jon Miller: And that seems to work.

Jon Miller: You get to know a company and you start to build a positive view of them because of what that executive is sharing, you know, specifically on LinkedIn but kind of on other channels.

Jon Miller: The other tactic that seems to really be resonating, you know, here in 2024, is companies that are producing research that is based on their proprietary datasets.

Jon Miller: You know, and I think the two best examples out there today are Gong Labs and then Carta.

Jon Miller: Those companies are doing a great job building their reputations, you know, with useful, valuable content that, again, only they can produce from their datasets.

Craig Rosenberg: That's interesting.

Craig Rosenberg: So, but the people part equation of reputation building, I mean, isn't that what we started this show?

Craig Rosenberg: Isn't that what Jon Miller did at Marketo?

Jon Miller: To a degree, I think it does feel slightly different, right?

Jon Miller: I mean, like, at Marketo, I didn't even put my name on most of the definitive guides.

Jon Miller: Like, those were Marketo's definitive guides, not mine.

Jon Miller: I think to the extent that I got well-known through any of that, it probably took time.

Jon Miller: And it certainly wasn't deliberate.

Jon Miller: You know, I think whereas today, partly because my new company is in stealth, like I'm building, I'm doing a lot of my thought leadership under my own name and my own brand.

Jon Miller: Yeah, I'm sort of building it under me.

Jon Miller: That's different, you know, in terms of the intentionality of kind of how I'm approaching it.

Matt Amundson: The Transaction is presented by Ringmaster, the go-to branded podcast team.

Matt Amundson: You know, when Craig and I were thinking of starting this podcast, we had all the ideas in the world.

Matt Amundson: But you know, all the ideas in the world won't get you a great podcast.

Matt Amundson: That's where Ringmaster comes in.

Matt Amundson: They handle the creative, book guests, and do all the production for the podcast so we can focus on what we do best, talk to one another, and our amazing guests.

Matt Amundson: To discover how your company can leverage B2B podcasts to deliver outsized ROI, visit ringmaster.com today.

Craig Rosenberg: Got it, okay.

Matt Amundson: I think it's right because right now, Jon Miller the brand is bigger than the brand that you have from Stealth, and regathering your followers and re-engaging your followers is the right way to prepare to take something from Stealth into public.

Jon Miller: Yeah.

Jon Miller: The question is, when I was CMO at Demandbase, would Demandbase have been more successful if I had built more Jon Miller brand there, right?

Jon Miller: Or versus kind of working on the Demandbase brand.

Jon Miller: In retrospect, perhaps.

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah.

Craig Rosenberg: I mean, I don't want to dig into that, but certainly one of the competitors in the space had people associated with the brand.

Jon Miller: Yep.

Craig Rosenberg: And so I think that's really interesting.

Craig Rosenberg: We are big on that right now here, Matt and I.

Craig Rosenberg: We had Adam Robinson on who's like the textbook now in terms of building reputation on LinkedIn, including using negative reputation to build even more of a following.

Craig Rosenberg: And then we had his consultant that helped him do it, Alec Paul, who came on and talked about this stuff.

Craig Rosenberg: We've seen it now in action.

Craig Rosenberg: I think this LinkedIn, I think, you know, it's funny, we're doing our framework.

Craig Rosenberg: I'm like, LinkedIn.

Craig Rosenberg: Like, well, that's just one of the social channels.

Craig Rosenberg: No, it's not.

Craig Rosenberg: Like, it is a one of the most important platforms for everyone to figure out their strategy on.

Jon Miller: Well, the other big piece, I think, is community.

Jon Miller: Communities.

Jon Miller: And I think that there are a lot of companies that really want to do that and relatively few who have cracked the code.

Matt Amundson: Yes.

Jon Miller: I like what Anthony Connaught is doing with Audience Plus around community.

Jon Miller: And I think one of his secrets is that community, a big part of that is in-person events.

Jon Miller: And yeah, it's old school, right?

Jon Miller: But if you put together a really good set of in-person events, you build community.

Jon Miller: And then had you can parlay the in-person event into the online community and kind of vice versa.

Jon Miller: I don't have all the secrets, but when I think about building reputation in 2024 and 2025, those are my three pillars, right?

Jon Miller: Personal brand, content based on proprietary research and community.

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah.

Craig Rosenberg: So cool.

Craig Rosenberg: So on number two, on like Carta is a really good example.

Craig Rosenberg: You know, when we have questions on stuff like equity, we want to find out what Carta said.

Craig Rosenberg: It's like there's the research there also.

Craig Rosenberg: This is again, in my opinion, this is what you guys did at Marketo too, which was like you became the trusted source of information on a particular topic.

Craig Rosenberg: Yes, I follow the Carta research as well.

Craig Rosenberg: I mean, it's my life in that they're just amazing at it.

Craig Rosenberg: But also, man, like when we get questions, like we sort of verify what Carta says.

Craig Rosenberg: That's, that's reputation.

Jon Miller: Yeah.

Jon Miller: Now, Carta also had some bad breathes for kind of what they were doing.

Jon Miller: You know, that matters too.

Jon Miller: My point is that matters too.

Jon Miller: You know, and like stuff is, stuff takes, it's really hard to move the needle on.

Jon Miller: I mean, like, just an example, if I may, like, you know, demand base, I think even today still probably has a reputation of being expensive.

Jon Miller: Right.

Jon Miller: And that literally comes from like 2018, 2019, when, you know, they thought they were the premium brand and they were overcharging.

Jon Miller: You know, and like, I know for a fact, like that doesn't, that didn't continue until like 21, 22, 23, but the reputation stays.

Jon Miller: And it's very hard to move the needle on that stuff.

Jon Miller: And without, you know, massive amounts of time and energy and effort.

Jon Miller: And markers don't spend enough time understanding their reputation and then being proactive about how to really think about moving it.

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah.

Matt Amundson: Yeah.

Matt Amundson: And I think that's true for all ABX platforms, is they all have the reputation of being expensive.

Matt Amundson: And you talk to startups and they're like, hey, I'm not adopting it because, you know, it's going to, they command too much budget and, you know, I need to allocate that towards something else.

Matt Amundson: So I think, I think that is definitely the case.

Craig Rosenberg: But to Jon's point, it's not true.

Jon Miller: Sorry, just to be precise, I would say ABM platform as a budget line item is a big thing and the entry level price is higher than what most startups can bite.

Matt Amundson: Yeah.

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah.

Jon Miller: But I was more referring to demand basing as relatively more expensive than even some of the competition.

Craig Rosenberg: Sure.

Jon Miller: Yeah.

Jon Miller: Just as an example, reputation is hard and even all Carta is amazing content, and a little bit of bad PR can still hurt that too.

Matt Amundson: That's true.

Jon Miller: Yeah.

Craig Rosenberg: But to your point, they know what, for example, I need or a portfolio needs, and so they've built that.

Craig Rosenberg: We had, do you know JJ.

Craig Rosenberg: Scherck?

Craig Rosenberg: John-Henry Scherck, by any chance?

Craig Rosenberg: Really good SEO guy.

Craig Rosenberg: We had him on.

Craig Rosenberg: Matt, he was talking about, like he had a company he was working with from a content perspective, and they did, I think, international tax.

Craig Rosenberg: And so they built the content to be, not just old school SEO, where it's like, what is this?

Craig Rosenberg: And showing up on Google, but to be the place that people went to verify they were doing the right thing.

Jon Miller: It's building on that a little bit.

Jon Miller: The other thing that we haven't talked enough about, I think, is just literally the nuts and bolts of positioning.

Jon Miller: I talked to so many marketing executives and CEOs even, and say, okay, what is your company, what do you want planted in your customer's mind, that they think of you as the best at compared to the competition?

Jon Miller: And it's got to be like one or two or three words.

Jon Miller: Almost no CMOs or CEOs I talk to can really articulate that, and even more so, and have every other single person in the company say the same thing.

Jon Miller: And how can you expect to move your reputation brand in the marketplace, which will have this massive magnifying effect on everything else that you're doing, if you can't even get that crystal clear and articulate?

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah, that has been true.

Craig Rosenberg: That is an amazing observation.

Craig Rosenberg: Wait, go back.

Craig Rosenberg: What was number three before you added that one?

Jon Miller: When I thought about building a reputation, I talked about personal brands, content from research and communities.

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah, communities.

Jon Miller: Yeah.

Jon Miller: And then I'm saying positioning is almost like even a foundation below all that.

Matt Amundson: When you think about positioning, John, do you think about the classic, like is, does, means?

Matt Amundson: Do you think about the means part, right?

Matt Amundson: Like where it's like, what does this mean to the user?

Matt Amundson: Like it's like HR made simple, like rippling is HR made simple or something like that.

Jon Miller: Yeah.

Jon Miller: I mean, yes.

Jon Miller: And, you know, what I'm really getting at is the, how do we, how do we reconnecting to our buyers' reptilian rights?

Jon Miller: You know, what, what is that kind of, you know, how can we differentiate from the alternatives and kind of therefore own a distinct place in the buyer's mind?

Jon Miller: Right.

Jon Miller: In their words, not our words.

Jon Miller: And again, like you can, there's all these big boring examples, like, you know, when you think of Apple versus Samsung, you think of something, right?

Jon Miller: You have a feeling that you could probably put into one or two words, right?

Jon Miller: If you think of BMW versus Volvo, you think of something, you know, that you can kind of put into some words.

Jon Miller: And yet, you know, we can't do that for our own companies, usually.

Jon Miller: So yes, there are formal positioning frameworks and messaging docs and all that kind of stuff.

Jon Miller: All of that's important.

Jon Miller: And I'm not denying any of that.

Jon Miller: But it's, I'm sort of almost more talking about this more fundamental thing.

Craig Rosenberg: Interesting.

Craig Rosenberg: All right.

Craig Rosenberg: So I was going on the community thing just really quick, you guys.

Craig Rosenberg: And then we'll go back.

Craig Rosenberg: I promise.

Craig Rosenberg: I'm just sort of digging in here.

Craig Rosenberg: So one thing I sort of have to combat, I'll just give contextually, is like the, you know, automatic assumption that the definition and ability to evaluate community is in a digital.

Craig Rosenberg: I, you know, I don't know that apps people used to be like jive and get satisfaction.

Jon Miller: Now they're just a Slack community.

Jon Miller: And next thing you know, you have like 12 different slacks are logged in to and you don't have to check any of them.

Craig Rosenberg: But I do think that's an important differentiation, which is like if you take Anthony or even, you know, some of the other descriptions you had of community, like live events are community.

Craig Rosenberg: And then when you say like Anthony brings it to the website, because he's bringing these folks that want to talk about what he's presenting in on, you know, via video and whatever, whatever that has on audience plus.

Craig Rosenberg: And that is community building, which also sort of ties back to everything as well.

Craig Rosenberg: And I think that's really important.

Jon Miller: You know, probably a great example of community, you know, even though it's quote unquote from the old school playbook is the Marketo Marketing Nation, which was, you know, people, more than anything else, people fell affiliated to that.

Jon Miller: Like I'm in the nation, I'm part of the nation.

Jon Miller: And there were five pillars to what we did to sort of build that, you know, one was the user conference and the in-person events.

Jon Miller: You know, one was the little physical digital community.

Jon Miller: And those were probably the biggest things, but it was also, we sort of put our whole partner ecosystem under that umbrella.

Jon Miller: You know, so we kind of had community go through that.

Jon Miller: We included a bunch of our content resources under that.

Jon Miller: And then lastly, this part never did much, but the ability to kind of actually share best practices in the product.

Jon Miller: And collectively, that was the marketing nation.

Jon Miller: In many ways, probably in the early days, people bought Marketo because it was easier and cheaper than Eloqua.

Jon Miller: By sort of the later days, people bought it just because they felt part of the marketing nation.

Craig Rosenberg: I agree.

Craig Rosenberg: The other thing on the market, you had these really cool things that I remember you and I were on some tour, John.

Craig Rosenberg: It's like, and you had a marketing nation meeting and there was a local user group in marketing nation.

Craig Rosenberg: They had users that ran the meeting.

Craig Rosenberg: John was actually a guest.

Craig Rosenberg: He was the co-founder.

Craig Rosenberg: He was a guest and there was real ownership.

Craig Rosenberg: It was amazing.

Craig Rosenberg: I remember it was amazing.

Craig Rosenberg: I went to it because I was with John.

Craig Rosenberg: I mean, it was like 20 people at the time.

Craig Rosenberg: You guys were growing.

Craig Rosenberg: Now it's like a small amount, but that's where you start.

Craig Rosenberg: That was a huge win.

Craig Rosenberg: And then there was two folks, I don't remember who they were, but they ran it to John.

Craig Rosenberg: And that was incredible community ownership of that.

Craig Rosenberg: That was, I mean, old school user group type play there, but like real.

Matt Amundson: There's a couple of things about those.

Matt Amundson: One, they were the Marketo user groups.

Matt Amundson: We called them mugs.

Matt Amundson: And like actually the small size was a good thing because there was intimacy to it and there was real conversations happening there.

Matt Amundson: One, you have to remember like this was in the city of Atlanta, right?

Matt Amundson: So it's a city that was like not the Atlanta that we know today just yet.

Matt Amundson: It wasn't the tech hub that it's become now.

Matt Amundson: So getting 20 people out to that who are all Marketo power users and all wanted to share information from one another, in a weird way to me, it's like that's better than getting 100 people who just came for, you know, the fruit tray and the free beers at the end, right?

Matt Amundson: Like these were people that were having hardcore conversations about like real marketing ops topics around how to build this, how to build workflow between Salesforce and Marketo, etc.

Matt Amundson: And that is like as much to me, a part of the component of what the market, the Marketo marketing nation was, is that it wasn't fluff.

Matt Amundson: It was people that were really talking about this stuff.

Matt Amundson: And I think there is something to be learned from that, that can still be applied today because if you have these really strong in-person events, it actually makes your digital community, I think, thrive a little bit more because you know what you get when you go to the event, you know the people, now you know them by name.

Matt Amundson: And so you actually feel comfortable talking about them in a somewhat anonymous function on Slack.

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah, that's really cool.

Craig Rosenberg: I think there's a lot there, but we'll move on.

Craig Rosenberg: So back on the positioning, but like, so John, I get the problem, but like, what's, how do we get people to to realize this two to three words on how we're described against the competition?

Craig Rosenberg: Is there like, like, so you're in that scenario and they can't do it?

Craig Rosenberg: What do you do to help them get there?

Jon Miller: Well, I guess I start by saying, I think that's a bigger part of the CMO and the marketing leadership's job than it has been.

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah.

Craig Rosenberg: Okay.

Craig Rosenberg: Got it.

Jon Miller: And I'm guilty of this.

Jon Miller: You know, as a CMO, you come in, first thing you think you got to do is like, revamp the website and then like change the demand gen programs.

Jon Miller: Right.

Jon Miller: But like, you know, did you get this positioning right first?

Jon Miller: Yeah.

Jon Miller: And you can change the color is all you want.

Jon Miller: Or redesign the logo all you want, but get that positioning right first.

Jon Miller: So, you know, and again, I think the real elephant in the room here that I alluded to earlier, you know, is can the CMO actually have the time and space to do that properly in a world of MQL expectations and short-term pressures and PE firms asking for MQL counts, all the other, you know, stuff that's out there.

Jon Miller: I think it's, I think we're going to actually see a change in kind of the marketing leaders who are the most successful, you know, whereas the last 15 years sort of celebrated the most, you know, operational and quantitative CMOs who could really build and tune the machine.

Jon Miller: I think, you know, you would, you probably think I'm going to say, what we're going to need for the next 10 years are like the right-brain creative CMOs who can do the brand of the messaging.

Jon Miller: But I don't think that that's it.

Jon Miller: What I think we actually need, you know, for the next 10 years, the CMOs who are going to really excel at collaborating with their peers and leading the strategic dialogues around these business fundamentals, who can have conversations around how is marketing changing?

Jon Miller: Sorry, how is buying changing?

Jon Miller: How is go-to-market changing?

Jon Miller: And what does that mean for the role of marketing?

Jon Miller: And what does that mean for the way we should be even, you know, measuring and investing in marketing?

Jon Miller: And ultimately, you know, I buy into this whole trend of, you know, not even calling the CMO the Chief Marketing Officer, but calling them the Chief Market Officer, to sort of move it away from sort of being about a function and into being more about, you know, focusing on the strategy.

Craig Rosenberg: Well, you pull that out now at the end of the show, like a mic drop.

Jon Miller: Well, that's not my idea.

Jon Miller: Other people have talked about that.

Craig Rosenberg: I know, but once you're on board, it's a lot different, man.

Craig Rosenberg: That's amazing.

Craig Rosenberg: End of the show, just dropping a bomb.

Craig Rosenberg: That's incredible.

Craig Rosenberg: Now, I like it.

Craig Rosenberg: I actually was telling Adam Needles this morning, you know, we were just talking about the show and how we're trying to redefine things.

Craig Rosenberg: Like, well, I can tell you right now, I actually don't think you need a CMO anymore.

Craig Rosenberg: I think you need it.

Craig Rosenberg: By the way, don't worry, CMOs, he does mean you should exist.

Craig Rosenberg: He thinks it's bigger with a bigger point of view there.

Craig Rosenberg: And I think that's really interesting.

Craig Rosenberg: So dude, you're doing a lot of thinking on these things.

Craig Rosenberg: You're going to go change the world again.

Craig Rosenberg: So we're looking forward to seeing what you do there.

Craig Rosenberg: And it's been awesome just sort of going through these things with you and talking about this stuff.

Craig Rosenberg: But I feel like we're just sort of, you know, kind of just at the beginning of this conversation.

Craig Rosenberg: And every time I talk to you, it feels like you're taking these ideas to market and learning as you're coming back.

Craig Rosenberg: And the way you're talking about it is continues to be not CRISPR, because that sounds like you were all, you always had a good point of view on this, but you're learning from like how people are behaving today as you go on and take this to market.

Craig Rosenberg: So we definitely want to have this conversation with you again, as you continue to learn here.

Craig Rosenberg: And certainly as we start to think about the, to continue to think about the changing playbook.

Craig Rosenberg: I would say, by the way, one thing, and I brought this up the other day, that I do think about a lot, I'm just going to throw this out here, is when we think about radical change and playbook change, I think the vendors, service providers, whoever that are changing the playbook, I think one thing that they miss in the go-to-market side that I think is really important, is in many ways, this won't be exactly the way I'm thinking about it, because I'm still crisping this up, but like started working backwards from the board deck.

Craig Rosenberg: I still feel like ABM, we trained the market, we spent so much time trying to train the marketers to get off the MQL tip, but we didn't realize that that reporting had to go to someone up top that we actually trained to follow us by scoreboard.

Craig Rosenberg: And so I'll give you an example, John, like one of the really cool things you said, and by the way, AJ Gandhi said this to us on the pod, and he's PE, was like marketing will take time.

Craig Rosenberg: Like you do need to put these sort of fundamentals in the new playbook into play.

Craig Rosenberg: And so one thing to think about, and certainly everyone should think about is, how do we position that?

Craig Rosenberg: Because you will have to report on that to the ELT and to the board.

Craig Rosenberg: Like, what does that look like?

Craig Rosenberg: How do we make our case on that level, I think, is something that's really important.

Craig Rosenberg: And now that I have this sort of purview, I'm like, man, like if you want to change the way, we have to spend a lot of time with the functional leaders to help them think about the change.

Craig Rosenberg: We have to enable them.

Craig Rosenberg: We can't just go, here's what you should report on, because that's them, right?

Craig Rosenberg: We have to say, here's how you should present.

Craig Rosenberg: This is what we want to present to the top level.

Craig Rosenberg: Just a thought, I think I brought it up the other day.

Craig Rosenberg: I think it's really important, man, now that I'm seeing it.

Craig Rosenberg: As we think about this new playbook, what does that mean for how we present what we're doing on the highest of levels?

Craig Rosenberg: So anyway, I leave you with that, Tidbit.

Craig Rosenberg: What do you think of that, Jon?

Craig Rosenberg: Is that stupid?

Craig Rosenberg: Is that bad?

Jon Miller: I think it's exactly the conversation needs to happen.

Jon Miller: It needs to happen in the market, right?

Jon Miller: So that the boards and CEOs and CFOs kind of evolve their thinking, right?

Jon Miller: It's part of the reason I'm talking about this a lot.

Jon Miller: Yeah, can I help marketers everywhere by sort of changing hearts and minds of investors and executives?

Jon Miller: And I think the marketing leaders themselves need to sort of figure out how to have those Socratic conversations, right?

Jon Miller: Don't come in and say, you know, oh, we're changing how we're measuring marketing.

Jon Miller: We're not using NQLs anymore, right?

Jon Miller: Start up and say, but like, you know, like, hey, you know what?

Jon Miller: This isn't working.

Jon Miller: We need something different.

Jon Miller: You know, like, like it does.

Jon Miller: It seems like buying is changing.

Jon Miller: Let's brainstorm together.

Jon Miller: How should we measure marketing in this new world?

Jon Miller: You know, and like Socratically take them to sort of end up at the right place.

Jon Miller: Because because as you said, until the born deck changes, until the metrics change, marketing can't change.

Craig Rosenberg: Yep.

Craig Rosenberg: Perfect.

Craig Rosenberg: All right.

Craig Rosenberg: Cool.

Craig Rosenberg: Well, that was awesome, man.

Craig Rosenberg: And looking forward to having you on the show again with new learnings.

Craig Rosenberg: Really appreciate it.

Craig Rosenberg: And that's what we're trying to do on The Transaction, is talking about different ways of thinking.

Craig Rosenberg: So thanks for coming on, man.

Jon Miller: Thank you.

Jon Miller: Thank you.

Matt Amundson: Thanks for joining us for another episode of The Transaction.

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

Matt Amundson: What are you actually doing here?

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