The Transaction

By the way, what is that picture in the back of John's?

It's a Jackson Pollock, dude, Jesus.

No, it's not.

It looks like a map.

Oh, it says Jackson Pollock on it.

It looked like a map.

The reason it's behind me is because it reminds me that every time I stare at it, that is literally what my interior mental space looks like.

I feel like I'm looking at a picture of my brain, which is scary, but honest.

Oh man, actually, I love that.

That's a great quote.

By the way, John, how's Colorado today?

It is perfect.

We are, the width of my favorite season, which is autumn, is in the air.

Oh, look at you.

The heat of summer has broken.

And honestly, after, as soon as we've, I'm gonna break the third wall.

We're recording this podcast, everybody, on a Friday before a long weekend, and this is the last thing I have to do that's work-related.

Then I'm gonna go for a run, and then I'm gonna pour myself a whiskey soda and enjoy my weekend.

Look at you go.

Look at you, he's got an agenda.

I have an agenda.

This guy.

By the way, before we start, since you guys already commented, am I wearing the hat right or no?

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, you're technically wearing it right.

Now, are you wearing it well?

That's a whole nother topic, Craig, I mean.

You know, honestly, not since like third grade wearing a cowboy outfit, have I ever worn a cowboy hat?

I'm going to say a couple of things.

Hit it.

One is, I like how heavy it is.

It's nice.

Two, I'm not sure, are the sides supposed to flap up like that or down?

There's a lot of options.

There's a lot of options in the hat land.

You chose well, I think.

Okay, cool.

So we had our like, it's like summer or, yeah, I guess summer barbecue for work, you know?

And like they usually do something fun and they had a, like a cowboy hat customization table is pretty cool.

I didn't get it customized.

I literally just grabbed this thing off the counter in the kitchen just cause I didn't get one cause I didn't want to wait in line.

But it was a pretty cool gift idea.

Yeah.

Oh yeah.

So like legit, like steaming the hat and shaping the hat.

Oh, that's cool.

And they had little things to put on it.

Yeah, it was pretty cool.

But yeah, I figured John, in honor of you being in Colorado, I would put on my cowboy hat.

How's that?

You guys, I don't know if you know this, why would you care or know this about me?

But my whole life, I have been a singer songwriter and I've played in bands and, you know, next week, my wife and I, who I met through music, we're traveling to go play a radio show.

So I still do it a little bit, but along the way, a lot of my friends are more talented than me.

And, you know, singer songwriters, people in bands, and they, some of them are like really famous, or at least, you know, indie, indie rock, indie folk famous, and they get sponsored now.

And so like, you know, they have like Stetson coming after them and they get to, you know, yeah, man, they invite them to the Stetson or the Gibson Guitar Factory after hours and like walk around and pick the hat that you want, pick the shirts you want, pick the guitar you want.

And I'm like, man, they don't do this in B2B, but now they do, now they do, Craig.

Your company is like cool, like a rock band.

Oh man, I love this.

Craig, you're like, you're just devious grin with that hat is absolutely incredible.

It's kind of sinister.

It's like you're the corrupt sheriff.

Yeah, that was awesome.

He said there 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.

Hey, so really quick, guys, it's Friday.

We haven't seen John in a while, so I know we're having fun, but we should probably do some business.

Your thoughts?

Yeah.

Yeah, my thoughts are yes, but before we do business, John looks great and he's tanned.

He looks really...

John.

He gets pissed and beyond.

Jesus.

Yeah, I feel very less than right now.

How's your dead lifting even doing six hours a day?

Yeah, Jesus.

I don't know.

I think I feel like I'm getting set up here.

I don't know what the hell you're talking about.

No set up.

No set up.

It's pure envy.

Yeah.

This show goes in many directions, John.

I can tell.

Yeah.

Oh, believe me.

We're just getting started.

Well, if you guys really want to open the lid on Man Crush, I have a Man Crush on both of you as well.

I am a long time.

No, I'm serious, man.

When I wouldn't, you know, we have a podcast.

It's called Growth Driver.

Craig, you were in part of season one.

I'm coming for you, my friend.

And we had Craig already available.

And I am so glad to be here on your show.

I, you guys do cool shit and I'm glad to be a part of it.

Yeah.

So look, guys, John is, I think Intelligent Demand has been around for like 14 years, 15 years.

Incredible.

And, you know, part of the show is that we are trying to like, help people think differently about the playbook.

And I think every time, I mean, when I first met John and every time I met with John was always like, it feels like we could be doing something different here, Craig.

And so like of all the guys that we could have on this call, you know, it's a guy like John who, you know, has been a consultant in the game now, like I said, 14 years with his company, Intelligent Demand.

Great podcast that if you haven't listened to, sort of you'll get better insights into John.

He's not full contrarian because his group puts together these really amazing go to market operational platforms for folks has been running it for a long time.

And so it's going to be really cool for us to have today's guest John Common answer the fundamental question.

What's something the market thinks is right?

It could be approach methodology, best practices, whatever.

And they're actually wrong and they should be doing something different and what is that?

So John Common, today's guest is going to lead us down this path.

I'm going to be wearing a cowboy hat and we're going to go from here.

John, what do you got?

All right.

So I got this typically Rosenberg text message, short on context, but strong on to the point.

It's just basically like, hey, it's time.

Get on our pod.

And you gave me the setup about the question you just asked.

I've got three.

We can do all three quickly.

All right.

So one is about tactics.

Okay.

One is about professed versus actual alignment.

And then the third is about go-to-market motions.

And I think we could do all three if you want, but you tell me.

Okay.

We're going to go on three.

We like three.

Matt is a stickler for the guest to make sure they land the plate.

Oh, good.

Which is hard.

Which is hard.

So you gotta do all three.

Sometimes you guys forget what number three is, but he clearly wrote it down.

So I think he's going to be okay.

I got it.

Let's go with all three.

All right.

I'm actually enticed by all of them.

Yeah, me too.

Me too.

All right.

Number one.

And by the way, I'm assuming we're doing this together, guys.

Okay.

So we're going to we should be a team here.

So I was going to.

Yeah, I'm playing Fortnite on the side.

So I'm sorry if I'm distracted, but go ahead.

Yeah.

Thanks, buddy.

With friends like you.

Okay.

All right.

The the first one is there is a massive focus in our field on tactics because and rightly so the the the thing that I want to the myth that I want to bust is that if we just keep doubling and tripling down on tactics because that's where the rubber hits the road by focusing on tactics, we will improve effectiveness and efficiency.

And I'm here to tell you, after a decade plus of doing that, I think that's not where the next wave of efficiency and effectiveness unlock comes from.

It's not by cranking on tactics and more.

It is by going up the stack into the integrated growth plays and the aligned or misaligned go to market strategy that is guiding us.

That's the unlock.

So instead of beating your horses, your teams, your go to market teams, to go get the next 3% out of your blog or out of your marketing automation platform or go beat your paid media vendor, go look in the mirror and say, are we really good at executing growth plays and do we have an aligned go to market strategy that is pointing us where we win?

That's pretty profound.

I think, didn't we have, I think there's something akin to this, by the way, John from Congress, on the very specific sort of sales SDR guys, the good ones like Mark Kosoglow came on.

He's like, we just assumed that more meant better.

And actually more meant worse.

You got worse if you just kept doubling, tripling down like you said.

Yeah, well, and to that point, if your company happens to be one of the companies that wittingly or unwittingly is executing its go-to-market strategy and what at ID we call siloed heroics, by doing more, to your point, you actually might be hurting your brand more.

You might be pissing buyers off more.

You definitely will be wasting budget more.

And I would submit you'll be burning your people out and making them go want to work at a different company more.

I mean, I think it is really, I'm not just, I'm not trying to do a hot take here.

I don't really, I think hot takes are bullshit.

It is hot though.

But I really believe this, man, is that like what Ails B2B is not more tactics, it's more integration and more alignment.

Okay, so by the way, you did the, well, I don't want to do hot takes when you deliver a hot take, which is like a humble way of you actually delivering a hot take.

I'm lost.

But if you're not really like, what's an example of the double, triple down on tactics?

Like, is there like a, I mean, you've obviously seen it before, it was number one on your list, but like, give us like a before and after on that.

I think just so people, I actually am, I'm not sure that all the folks that are doing exactly what you're saying realize they're doing exactly what you're saying.

Yeah, absolutely.

That's well said.

They don't know another way.

All right, well, well, look, okay, I'm gonna chase this rabbit, but I want to be faithful to the fact that I got to land three planes here, so.

No, no, we need an example.

This is, don't worry, we'll get you there.

Okay, okay.

Matt will sabotage you along the way in hopes that you don't land the plane, but like I'm getting it.

Yes, that's right, right.

Okay, got it.

All right, so Craig, you do this for a living as it turns out yourself, so your answer is in your question a little bit.

Like, you're totally right.

Most companies that are executing siloed heroics get sucked into, they think the answer is doing more, and you're totally right.

Most CEOs, definitely CEOs and CFOs, but truthfully, a lot of CROs and even some CMOs have not seen the opposite of siloed heroics.

So what's the opposite of siloed heroics?

And we think it's cross-functionally aligned growth plays.

And one of the reasons, and there's different flavors, and we'll talk about it, because that's the third one that I want to talk about later.

Yeah, but the best example is ABM, ABX.

And what I've always loved, and one of the reasons why Intelligent Demand is so into ABM and ABX as a go-to-market motion is not only is it sometimes exactly the right go-to-market motion for your growth goal, but what I really love about it is that it is one of the best ways to actually teach an organization about the importance of what you're talking about, which is we got to get out of our silos.

We got to start coming together as a cross-functional growth team and say, what is our ICP?

Not marketing's ICP, not product's ICP.

So what is our ICP?

What is our positioning and messaging?

What is our value story?

And then you get the basics around a winning go-to-market strategy, cross-functionally developed, argue it out, piss each other off, disagree, land that plane into something that looks like an aligned, shared go-to-market strategy, and then take that into the next space, which is, okay, what is marketing got to do?

What is SDR got to do?

What is sales got to do to execute a end-to-end growth play of some flavor, one-to-many demand gen, one-to-few ABX, partner-led, whatever.

And so most companies haven't actually seen that.

And so in the absence of that work, I think my thesis is they use their org chart as their growth strategy.

And it goes something like this.

The board of directors and the CEO walk out of the annual meeting and they say 25% year-over-year growth, and then they skip cross-functional go-to-market strategy.

They skip cross-functionally aligned growth plays, and they pull out their org chart and it says product, marketing, sales development, sales, and customer success.

And these are stovepipes because it's an org chart.

And they go, okay, guys, 25% year-over-year growth.

What could possibly go wrong?

Go!

And they budget in silos, they execute in silos, and they miss their fricking growth goals in silos.

You know, the pod we just released with the guy named Ray Rike, who is a SaaS metrics guru, and Matt, I don't have the numbers at the tip of my tongue, but he basically said their research showed that when marketing had shared the revenue number, okay, it was like 38% of the companies that he surveyed, those were the top third of growth.

Yep, yep.

Marketing had to own the revenue number, and sales also had to own the pipeline number.

And so when the two of them were combined and they had shared sort of high-level metrics across the 38% of the 18,000 companies that he had surveyed that had that were the top 38%.

That was the difference.

Pretty amazing.

You know, that takes you, you like talking about the growth plays where we're multifunctional growth pays.

I have another comment in a second on that.

But he was talking about purely from a top-down metrics perspective and how that in and of itself, by making that a shared goal, forced both sides to just do, you're actually at a second plane to him because he was just like, I just want marketing to listen to the SDR and sales calls.

I just want like, because by doing that, now we're actually not living in the silos as you talked about, right?

Like now we're breaking out.

We are doing is saying, okay, now that you're doing that, now let's go create these growth plays together.

Yes.

You know, it's funny because I feel the same.

I do want us to break away from account based and account based marketing.

I know I was with you guys because I just I know what it it implied something to a lot of people that it was always one to few and enterprise.

And the truth is the integrated growth play is how you go to market now.

Yeah, that's right.

And by the way, even in like, Matt was in a scenario where he's got to get trials and like high impact downloads.

That seems like 10 years ago, which is like a gamma MQL good do it.

But in an inner that even that is an integrated play.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

There's different flavors for sure.

Yeah, totally.

And so, so like, you know, I think, you know, nobody ever asks me this, but like, if someone did, they'd say, you know, what did you learn from your experience, basically selling ABM and account based to all these companies?

I'd say I learned two things.

One is no matter what the ICP matters, almost as much as any fricking thing you can do.

I don't care if you're a volume business.

That was determined by the ICP.

And then number two was that this was always about integrated growth plays.

It was.

And like, and those are the two things we should take from that era.

I don't care what you call it anymore.

That's right.

I'm just like, there's an ICP, we all, that's where alignment starts.

I guess the third one, I definitely felt that when Ray was on, like, I'm like, I never believed I could get shared metrics across the finish line.

But man, large number are in that.

Yeah, that's, I would say that's coming out of the ABM era too.

Yeah.

Like, there was just all this awareness built around the integrated plays.

Yeah, I think that, I think what's also true though is, and we've all been around long enough to predate the massive rise of account based.

I'm 12 years older than you, just to remind you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I just would like to note that I've been a Salesforce user for 21 years.

All right.

Is that companies even before they were doing ABM, the successful businesses, really successful go-to-markets always had integrated growth plays.

I think if you wanted to break it down to something very, very simple and palatable for the audience, it's like when a prospect takes some kind of action, whether it's led by the marketing team or by the sales team, and then now that prospect falls into someone else's camp, does that person know what to do?

Almost universally, they don't.

They don't.

I'll give you an example.

Say it's a target account and they come and they download an e-book, and an SDR gets a note, hey, this account just downloaded an e-book.

Do they know exactly what to do as a result of downloading that e-book?

My guess is at probably 95 percent of businesses, they don't.

They're like, oh, I run some play in Apollo.

But it's like they don't know who that company is, why that asset would be important to them, what the supplementary content they should give them, what the messaging should be, etc.

What I can tell you is years ago when I worked at Marketo, even though we weren't an account-based business, regardless of what someone did, we always knew what the play was.

If they downloaded the definitive guide to lead scoring, we knew how to talk to them, we were going to give them a scoring talk track, we knew the supplementary content to give to them, we knew when to ask them for a demo, etc.

And today, I feel like that is the thing that is most broken, regardless of if you run PLG, sales led, ABM, ABX, etc.

People are not on the same page when an action happens, they do not know how to react and how to then take action against it.

They are not operating as if they are on a team.

I mean, that's a great way to say that.

And I'll tell you, and I know we got to move on after this, but my eyes opened.

Just kind of going back to what you were saying, is like, I don't care if we call it ABM or ABX.

It was like eight or nine years ago, I was running ID back then and really, really developing what became ID's quote unquote ABX practice.

And I was looking at the principles, really studying and trying to be rigorous intellectually about, what are the things that make ABM, ABX work?

Like it had a list of like eight or nine things, and it's exactly the stuff that you know.

So I was like, well, you're going to fail at ABM if you don't have your targeting right.

You're going to fail at ABM if you don't have the correct level of personalization.

You're going to fail at ABM if you don't think about marketing and SDRs and even sales, knowing what each other are doing.

You're going to fail at ABM if you use the same old crappy measurement, right?

So those are four of the, you know.

And then after I developed my little list of like, thou shouts, thou thou musts.

That's so, you know, by the way, it was so many sort of biblical.

I'm a Baptist, refugee of the Baptist Church.

Anyway, but I had that list and I stared at it.

And this was the aha moment, Craig, as I looked at it and I went, wait a minute.

That's not the list of things you have to do to succeed at ABM.

That's the thing.

That's the things you have to do to succeed at B2B growth.

That was the aha for me.

And I was like, oh, shit, ABM is just a way to get us to finally break through.

Yeah, anyway, that's right.

Yeah.

Okay, hold on.

I got this for you again.

We're actually read you a tweet.

Are you ready?

Oh, yeah.

Live.

I love this live live read.

Also, do cowboy hats make your head sweaty or I mean, they're pretty warm.

Yeah, I mean, I could see that it might help me if I'm cold.

Okay, so this is from a quote from Peter Thiel, right?

Almost all of the successful companies in Silicon Valley had some model of starting with small markets and expanding ICP.

Ready?

Amazon started with books.

That's a use case they started with.

PayPal started with eBay power sellers.

That was a bang to the world.

Remember that?

Facebook started with Harvard.

Airbnb started with renting air mattresses.

Tesla started with high end, very high end electric sports car.

If you want to be a one of a kind company where it's the only one in a small ecosystem, large existing markets, typically mean you have tons of competition and it's very hard to differentiate.

Monopolize your niche, expand concentrically from there.

Yeah, I've heard that called the bowling pin strategy.

Yeah, just I used it because I just I still get a little bit of pushback on the ideal customer profile thing.

And it doesn't have to be small, but it has to be specific and winnable.

And I think that's one of the things that's tough.

But like, you know, I, you know, so I just met with a portfolio company yesterday, their Series B, okay, just getting started.

I don't want to tell you the vertical, just so that doesn't come out, there's them.

They have 60 meaningful competitors already.

Oh, and like, I'm like, well, it's a winner to it may not be winner take all, but it likely will.

But to get to the winner take all the person, the organization that defines the right ICP, it beats the shit out of it is going to win in the near term.

Is there all going after everything?

And like, that's going to fail.

Anyway, sorry, I'm back.

Just thought you guys would enjoy that because you guys, I don't know.

Yeah, we do.

We do.

I enjoyed it.

Is you number two, John?

Oh, I see.

You see a transitioning often.

Yeah.

Okay.

Number two.

And these actually, these actually flow together.

I didn't think, I didn't realize they would, but I think they flow together really well.

So number two that I bring humbly to this party for your consideration is professed cross-functional alignment versus actual.

And here's my take on that.

I love this already.

Years ago, people would talk about alignment and then bitch about how they're not.

I think what's changed is that now people, I've noticed marketing and sales and products say they're aligned because I think they're, I think they, they know they're supposed to be aligned because they've, we have beaten it into them in the last decade.

But I think most of the time they are actually still not aligned.

We are dealing with what I'll call shallow or professed alignment versus actual alignment.

So what does shallow alignment look like?

It looks like the, you know, trust falls at the SKO and this like fuzzy social philosophical academic passing each other in the digital hallway.

Are we aligned?

Totally we're aligned.

And I'm calling bullshit on that.

And so what does actual alignment look like?

I think the key word is you are, you only get to say you're aligned at your company when you have operationalized alignment.

So you need to operationalize alignment.

So what does that look like?

If your sales, product, marketing and CS teams don't use the same words to talk about the same things, you're not aligned.

If you are not running cross-functionally aligned integrated growth plays, you're not aligned.

If you don't have role clarity about who does what, including SLAs and expectations at the role level within those growth plays, you're not aligned.

If your executives, if your growth executives across product marketing, sales and CS don't meet, I'm going to say at least once a month to talk about how their cross-functional alignment and cross-functionally aligned go to market strategy is performing.

If they're not meeting at least once a month on the regular, you're not aligned.

And then the last one is, if marketing and sales, and this is actually some of our clients are doing this, so this is not just bullshit.

If marketing and sales aren't at some point in the annual budgeting process, putting their budgets together on their own, and then walking together into the board meeting with already pre-aligned budgets, then I'm going to say you're not aligned.

That's how you operationalize alignment.

And we could keep going.

There's some other things in there.

But there is, I think we need to put our foot down.

I'll shut up in just a second.

We need to put our foot down and say, stop saying you're aligned if you have not operationalized your alignment, because it's not magic.

You know it when you see it.

Thoughts?

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

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

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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.

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Okay, I'm going to ask Matt a question as a follow-up to your really good, really good rant right there.

Matt, is John realistic as an operator?

Because me and John, you know, like, look, we're both advisors, so we live differently.

Yes.

But.

Oh, God, you can't buy that.

No fives, the S.

No, no, no, no, no.

He's not, he is, he is, he is correct.

And the best companies do exactly that.

But it's very hard to do that because it's people.

People are hard.

The hard, like, maybe I'm Silicon Valley a little jaded, but the people are the hard part of everything.

The process in and of itself is not hard.

What you just outlined feels like a no brainer.

Feels like a no brainer.

Hey, like we should have a shared view on who the best customers we want to sell to is and create an ICP together.

Yeah.

Okay.

You'd be like, hey, let's just review the last 100 or so customers we've closed.

Like we want more like that.

Yes or no?

Yeah, but, you know, but yeah, but right.

Cause sales leaders are always concerned about tam size and marketers are always concerned about, you know, making sure that they're actually running programs towards people that can buy from them, right?

So we want to narrow the field as much as possible and sales people want to expand the field as much as possible.

That's where that thing falls apart.

That's interesting.

From a budgetary perspective, I think the thing that will shock most marketers once, if they're a first time CMO or if they're a first time VP, is how much gargantuanly bigger the sales budget is than the marketing budget.

Right?

And I'm thinking of it from a total...

Yeah, total.

Go to market cost, yeah.

Exactly.

It's like, hey, if you're like a sub $20 million ARR business, your sales budget is going to be twice the size of your marketing budget.

And like, oh, but I need to run programs and I got to go to Dreamforce and I got to do this, I need some of that budget.

And the sales person saying, I need people, I need people, I need people, blah, blah, blah.

So that's where like the budgetary piece falls apart.

The other thing in the budgetary piece is sales leaders typically, not all, but typically, will be like, are you seriously going to spend 20 percent of your budget on content?

Seriously, right?

Like I need demo requests, I need in-person meetings.

Like you can't waste budget on that type of stuff.

And they have a tough time grappling with the concept of how to run like a really well-balanced marketing machine.

So they're going to be always focused on more budget goes into demand capture than necessarily demand creation.

And that's where that stuff falls apart.

I think on the team meets together on a frequent basis, when you have product people, unless you have really, really strong product managers, which like you could sort of look across the landscape of SMB businesses, they generally don't because they get held hostage by really great enterprise companies.

It's very hard to say sales marketing product, let's meet together and think about plays because what you traditionally get in smaller businesses from product people are people who are thinking about building products, not necessarily people who are traditional product managers who think about, we've built this product for this type of person, this is why it matters to them and these are the types of messages we need to put in front of somebody in order for them to understand the value and then ultimately purchase.

Yes, John is right, but what traditionally will make this stuff fall apart for smaller businesses is not actually that this is a bad strategy, it's the people involved in businesses that will screw this shit up.

Okay, you've said small businesses a bunch.

I'm putting words in your mouth on purpose to be a bit of a jerk.

I like it.

Does your letting them off the hook, which is kind of what you just did, lesson if I say, okay, let's get rid of the cohort of small businesses that are searching for product market fit.

So talk to me about post product market fit, let's fucking grow and scale.

So if that's the cohort, does that change any of your answers?

Because I mean, I work in the same world that you work in.

I totally agree that you just did a really great job of describing the behaviors that are the understandable problems that have to be overcome.

And I would say, I agree with you, especially in earlier stage companies that are kind of searching for product market fit.

They need some of that loose tolerance, because they don't really know that they found the right ICP or the right lock with their value product.

But the kind of clients that Intelligent Demand tends to work with are not startups.

It's larger enterprise organizations.

And that's where my rant comes from, which is, y'all, like, come on, come on, what do you want?

So I don't know.

That's my response to that.

My response to your response, I mean, we are, yeah, this is meta.

This is, I'm loving this.

I'm telling you, I'm going to go play that.

I got a Fortnite game brewing up.

It's going to be okay.

You go.

The snake is eating its tail, Matt.

It's, it's when the ball still starts rolling downhill a little bit, you actually see people start clicking into this stuff because they're like, this shit is happening.

Yeah.

And that's the right time for, for, I mean, really the right time for pulling it all together is as early as humanly possible.

But that is the time where actually behavior, like what you're, you're talking about starts to come together.

You're hitting your quarterly numbers, you're hitting your pipeline goals.

People are starting to leave really good reviews about your products on G2.

Like you're achieving product market fit.

You have people that are coming up for renewal and they're expanding their usage.

You know, that's when this stuff all starts to click.

And it's like, you know, you talk about this whether you're using a sports analogy or whether you're using a business analogy.

It's like when everything's going good, people tend to work together pretty fucking well, right?

But when things aren't so good or we just haven't gotten to the good place yet, that's where you typically have a lot of bad behavior because each part of that trio, which is, you know, or quadrio, I don't know.

Quartet.

Yeah, quartet.

There we go.

Customer success, marketing, sales and product, all think that they have the right answer.

I have the right answer.

So I think to your point, once you hit the, you start really hitting that growth inflection point, that's where people start to naturally gel together.

What I would say is the antidote for fixing that problem in smaller businesses is you have to have a CEO that really lays the foundation for, this is the way we have to do this.

And I'm not going to take no for an answer.

So we need a shared view on metrics, dashboards that everybody's working on, to John's point earlier, a shared definition of what everything is, very strong rules and swim lanes, so things like SLAs and who owns what and who's responsible for what, and sometimes that can be shared, but ultimately, for KPIs, you like to have a single person who's truly responsible for it.

And if you build that structure as a CEO at an early stage business, I think that the likelihood of success increases pretty infinitely, pretty infinitely.

It's when you get the siloed heroics that you're talking about that can often feel like the right thing.

Oh my gosh, you would never believe this.

BDR went out there and they sent a thousand emails.

They just, they drank a bunch of Red Bulls and stayed up for five days and did this thing.

Or the marketing team re-crafted the website in 72 hours or whatever.

These random acts of heroism actually don't build the foundational building blocks of a successful business.

In fact, they actually sort of move the company in a tangent towards, hey, if you just work outside of everybody else's work streams and do something big and heroic, you'll get really high credit in the organization for it.

Can I just make two comments?

I want to make sure we land the plane.

Yeah, please.

John, thank you for using the term.

Most of us that work for tech companies use called startups versus small businesses.

I thought Matt was talking about parakeet shops and donut shops.

What's what's using small businesses, bro?

That's wild.

You doing that purposely?

That's what I always say.

I feel like startup can mean anything pre IPO or pre revenue.

Okay, all right.

But I do feel like you guys tried to find a way to agree with each other there because I still agree with Matt on the problem at any size is still the people problem.

I don't know that it's fundamentally bringing people together as a small business problem.

So here's what I'll throw to you guys.

Alasso?

Oh, I wish.

No.

Well, let me answer this, both of you.

One of the things that I get pushed back on this, and it might be actually, I might talk myself out of saying this.

So let me say it, and then I might agree with you guys when you refute me.

But like the accountability thing is part of the issue.

In my accountability, since now in some ways, I sort of have the view from a different perspective here, which is how do I know if the other person's doing well or not?

When now, look, I, by the way, the reason I hesitated as I started to say that, I said, well, of course, you can, right?

When you get John in there, he'll set it up so we can look at these things.

But like, so I had this scenario where it was account based and the CMO came back and said, well, we're going to get campus.

We're just going to look at pipeline, right?

For now, like together.

And then the argument was, well, then how do how do we know what's working?

Right?

This is the positive track.

And in particular, from the marketing side.

But I think what was implied was, how do I know you're working?

So you know what I mean by that?

I do think the people problem is real, John.

I think you probably, I do think it's maybe slightly easier on product market fit because you do take out all, that does eliminate some of the factors that cause rifts.

Right?

But it doesn't eliminate them all.

And the people thinks always going to be an issue.

So I do still, so like, so what I took from, I was fun to listen to you guys.

I loved your list, John, and I agree with that.

And I think we should do it.

I still think that point is the problem is the people.

Yeah.

So let me, let me ask you this.

And again, I'm not here to, I'm not here to fight or anything like that, but.

Why not?

We are.

But it's good when we do.

It's Friday.

We have an outlet out on these songs.

When in business, you hear someone say, we have a people problem, remove the go-to-market piece of this.

Just make it universal.

How does any business culture or leader, when you have a people problem, how do you solve people problems, Craig?

How do you solve people problems in business of any kind?

Well, we have a people problem.

So what's the solution to a people problem?

That's a good question.

I mean, like if it's a problem with a person, right, then that's something where you might separate.

But if it's something where the people are having trouble getting together and they're good people, then it's often a leadership problem.

Yeah.

In many cases that is.

That doesn't solve everything.

But like what that does do is if the CEO says, this is how we're going to operate and the sales leaders still being an irascible dick, then that's a fireball.

That's a separate bit.

That's a reason.

The reason why I feel like it's a leadership thing, it doesn't have to just be the CEO, it should be the ELT.

We're going to work together and we're going to follow John's commandments here of alignment.

Now, you've set the tone for what will work as the proper person there.

I'd still say even when you have alignment, this thing breaks down the minute things start to go bad.

I agree.

I agree.

I agree.

I'll answer my own question.

I'm the founder and CEO of a business.

That's actually a people business.

And so, I've had to answer that question multiple times across lots of different use cases in the last 15 years.

Now, and the truth is, I've answered it imperfectly at best most of the time, so I don't have the answer.

But I can tell you after 15 years of people problems, generally speaking, when you have a people problem, one is you have to correctly admit it and diagnose it and say, we have a people problem and say it out loud.

That's the first thing.

Secondly, you got to go, well, I can just blame the person or people who are quote unquote doing bad, or I can be like, wait a minute, hold on, I'm gonna be a little bit more mature about this.

Do we have the right people in a well-defined role?

Are they managed clearly?

Do they have clear expectations?

Do they know how to set their priorities?

Well, you know what, when the shit hits the fan, I need to work on apples, not oranges or bananas versus pears, right?

So do I have a sense of priority?

Do I know my role?

Do I know the culture of this organization?

How do we act when the owner is not in the room?

This is how you solve people problems.

And I know I'm making it universal and you're like, wait, I thought we were supposed to talk about B2B growth, but I think it is related because you rightly said, oh yeah, John, we could do what you're recommending, which the world-class growth companies do, but then there's people problems.

And the way you said it to me, it sounded like you were like, and that's just the way it is, welcome to pain and suffering.

And I'm telling you, there is, you can solve people problems too.

Yeah, it's true.

If you are courageous enough and if you're willing, and honestly, man, now you're getting me fired up.

If you're willing to look beyond the quarter, because the other thing that's true about, like think about what I just said, well-defined roles, right people in the right roles.

Are the managers managing those people at all?

Are we building a culture of accountability and teamwork?

This is shit that will take potentially years, if you're being really honest.

And that's why nobody does it.

And we retreat back to Silent Heroics and go, and I should come on a podcast, and we're like, yeah, we could break through and do world-class growth, but you know how people are.

And I'm like, well, who's going to step up into the breach at their company?

And I know I sound like a firebrand right now, but who's going to step into the breach and lead?

All right.

Yeah.

All right.

Yeah.

I like it.

Here's what I'll say.

Here's what I'll say.

My guess is, and this is going to sound like I'm pandering a little bit, so I apologize, but my guess is John sees this kind of behavior because he's there.

And what's interesting is when you have a great services company that you're working with, who's got this sort of outside perspective and can see beyond political motivations like, hey, I'm in sales and I can't get there because of marketing, or I'm in marketing and I can't get there because they won't flip my fucking ops, whatever.

When you can actually look at the whole picture unbiased and make recommendations, and you've earned the trust of your client, the client listens.

I've worked with other companies like John's in the past, and actually when I have a services company in like that, it's usually the most harmony between sales, marketing, customer success and product because they can look at everything objectively and just diagnose the problems for what they are, instead of being the whiny marketer that I can be and being like, well, the leads are good, why won't sales just close them?

Why won't customer success just add on?

Like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

So sometimes like having outside services organization embedded, ingrained deeply into all the metrics can actually help you wade through that shit.

And so even if you do have a people problem, you have somebody who's at the center of it playing referee, who can just call balls and strikes.

Yeah.

I guess that's an umpire.

I will tell you, the other thing I would say that would accelerate the doing of this stuff is if I wasn't as busy as I am at Intelligent Demand, I would probably go to the two of you and say, let's start, let's start a CEO college.

Let's start a CEO growth college.

And we would, without blaming them, it's so easy to hate on CEOs, you know, but without blaming them, be like, look, it's not your fault, but you don't know how to lead organic growth.

And so at the end of this course, me and Craig and Matt are going to make sure that you know how to lead growth.

You don't even need to have your doctorate.

We're going to at least, we're just going to get you your GED in organic go to market so that you can put your company in a better position.

You know, and I, I've been thinking about that for a couple of years.

I just haven't gotten around to it.

All right, we got to land this plane.

Yeah, yeah, we're landing.

All right, number three, this is quicker.

So this one, I've been going around the country doing different go to market workshops for the last year or so, and we're continuing to do it.

And what I've noticed is we have started as a field to define the different ways you can go to market, the different go to market motions.

One-to-many demand gen, ABM, ABX is a motion, PLG is a go to market motion, customer led growth, community led growth, partner or ecosystem are near bound.

Right, okay, those six are the big ones.

And sometimes you get different flavors, inbound, outbound.

So in these meetings with CROs and marketing leaders, the topic of go to market comes up, and there is this tendency I've noticed for companies, they think the name of the game is, oh, we're supposed to do all of the go to market motions.

Remember, that's the first fallacy that I see out there.

And then the second fallacy is that they think they already are doing all of the motions.

And so here's my take on that.

I think companies, as part of the go to market strategy and integrated growth play process, need to separate their go to market motion choices into primary and secondary.

And a primary go to market motion at your company, it could be defined as follows.

If you don't make that primary go to market motion be extremely good, you will not pay your fucking mortgage.

So it's literally like, this is my ride or die go to market motion.

And secondary is we're testing, we're learning, that's how we get our stretch goal, right?

And I think when you think about it that way, you go, okay, for us to grow 25% year over year, because I'm in these workshops, I know how it often goes down.

Okay, big goal, 25% year over year growth.

How are we going to do that?

And then you go, well, we got to break that into acquisition, renewals of the base and cross sell upsell.

And then you go, okay, how are we going to do that?

And right there is when the dysfunction starts to creep in and they're like, the truth is, what they're really doing is acquisition focused one-to-many demand gen.

And then everything else is like episodic acts of like, a customer thing, a prod, a PLG thing, a weak and effective partner program led by Paul, the lonely partner guy, you know, like that's really what happens.

And so instead, what I would say is you step back and you go, which two, maximum three, I mean, maximum three go-to-market motions are the ones where it's like, we are going to get real good at these and we're going to be like, that doesn't mean we might not do a customary thing or a partner thing, but we're going to stop lying to ourselves that we're doing six go-to-market motions.

As well, because you're not, you're not, I don't know.

Yeah.

No, I agree with that.

I think you've got to have your, to your point, you've got to have your ride or die.

And then you've got to have the things that are somewhat opportunistic.

And maybe they turn into the next wave of your go-to-market.

But you can't try to do two things great, let alone four or five things great all at once.

It just won't happen.

Start asking with your port coast, start asking, how many go-to-market motions are you doing and how are they going?

And I bet you're going to hear like, oh, we're doing them all.

And almost said sometimes with pride.

And I think that's the thing.

You're like, whoa, don't be proud about that.

You're probably not doing six things well.

Just to be clear, if you do do one well, that does open the opportunity to do another one.

And then if you do too well, there does, I mean, now I'm getting into it, but like, there's plenty of companies that do, let's just for example, a volume-based, I mean, it's by segment or ICP in many cases.

You know, you might do partner for one part of your segment because that's how the buyer buys, right?

Now, how many times have we seen where they're like, hey, we're going to do partners and they bring on Paul and it's a half-hearted effort.

I think that's what you're guarding against.

And what I would say there is, I was on stage with Doug Pepper once and he was like, look, just get really good at one, then come to me with number two.

Yeah.

Just get really good at one.

Like sew nails, like you can nail it every time.

Well, and again, I don't know about you, I'd rather hit my growth goals year over year with the fewest number of moving parts.

So if I can stay with one forever, and then that's what I want to do, because that sounds easier to me.

So I think it's really driven by your growth goals and your go-to-market strategy that tells you which go-to-market motions you must be good at.

I guess what I would say is if you come out of that go-to-market strategy space and says, I think the only way we're going to hit our growth goals is if we do these five different go-to-market motions, someone in the room has to be like, do we have the right growth goals?

Who's going to do this?

Do we have the right budget?

Because just saying you're going to do something, these have massive downstream implications and ramifications on talent profile and budget.

Again, it's easy to sit in a meeting and be like, yeah, we're going to do customer-led growth.

You're like, really?

Okay.

How?

Who?

Who's done that before?

Yeah.

For real.

By the way, I'm going to mention one thing in our title last year.

Number one, number two, John, I have a recommendation for you that I've learned, which is I think a lot of the vendors and channel or service providers like yourself, that try to move organizations away from a way of doing something into a new one neglected one area.

So an example of that was moving from MQL City to ABM.

It missed one thing that would have helped everything, which is start, like as part of this process, you have to build the board deck.

I've seen this now, this doesn't work if you don't think backwards for how this is going to be presented at the top.

That's really good.

Why did I say number one and number two?

Because the line go to mark, it's great, but the part of the issue on everything is that the folks at the highest point are looking for accountability type reporting.

And, you know, so like I'm like John Miller's coming up with a new company, I'm going to be like, bro, build the board deck for like, how are you going to report what you're doing up to the top?

Like, look, guys, like, ABM is still tough because going in and going, you know, trying to share this at the highest levels, you had to work backwards from what would work for them.

So like I just saw a great ABM board deck.

The guy basically took deals in the fall in these cohorts and showed movement against each of these stages.

That resonated with them and trained them on it and said, here's where we're going to look at the business.

I look back on the ABM thing.

It's like, oh, we forgot to train the people that made the decisions on whether you keep your job.

That was a mistake.

I'll give you a software group that just killed it with that is like Intac, NetSuite, those guys.

Now you might say, well, they're like, they built FP&A that helped the FP&A guy do their jobs, but they built the way, they built the dex and the reporting that was delivered to the board.

And they wanted it that way.

And now it goes the other way, which is no, you go get these things to go report the way I want it.

And like, as you think about these things on alignment, a lot changes, like the accountability positioning that happens and ELTs and board meetings get changed.

And it's a forgotten piece that I guarantee for many of these places, it's conspiring again, success.

Yes, no, well-intended change hits the wall in the hallway on the way to the board meeting.

100%.

Yeah, that was better said.

That was more poetic.

Yeah.

No, you're I love that's a great piece of it.

I love work backwards from the board deck.

I want to I want a t-shirt that says that.

That's awesome.

I might I might be able to help you with that.

All right.

So we did it.

We did it.

And that was incredible.

That was really this smart conversation on a Friday.

I had so much fun.

Well, it's Friday.

I knew it was going to be John.

It's the hat.

It's the hat, man.

It's the hat.

Craig's hat.

Yeah.

Anyway, that was The Transaction.

John, thanks, man.

That was awesome.

That was amazing.

That was so much.

I had so much fun.

Thank you for having me on.

I appreciate you guys so much.

Thanks for what you're doing.

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.

What are you actually doing here?

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