MMS #82 - How CMOs Can Elevate CEO Personal Brands with MJ Smith

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Mastering Modern Selling relationships

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social and AI in the buyer-centric age.

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Join host Brandon Lee, founder of Fistbump, alongside

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Microsoft's number one social seller, carson V Heddy and Tom

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Burton, author of the Revenue Zone and co-founder of LeadSmart

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, as we explore the strategies and stories behind successful

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executives and sales professionals.

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Dive into business growth, personal development and the

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pursuit of excellence with industry leaders.

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Whether you're a seasoned executive or an aspiring leader,

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this podcast is your backstage pass to today's business

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landscape.

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This is Mastering Modern Selling, brought to you by

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Fistbump.

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Speaker 2: Everybody, welcome to episode number 82, mastering

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Modern Selling.

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Carson, great to see you back Now.

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We've lost Brandon, but I think we've got a really good

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replacement for this week.

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Mj Smith, welcome.

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Hey, thank you for having me.

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So yeah, brandon, I think we'll be showing up here, possibly on

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the comments.

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I know he really wanted to make it, but he's stuck, I think, in

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Atlanta Airport or some airport somewhere along the line, so

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we'll try and do the best without him.

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I think today's episode is going to be really interesting.

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And, carson, I answered your take before we introduced MJ.

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People love practical experience.

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We were just talking.

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I think there's going to be a lot of practical stuff here,

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like really stuff.

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You should be taking notes and ready to apply.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, you know what I think as we've prepared for the

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episode.

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One of the things that jumped out at me is not only the unique

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nuances of this particular episode and MJ's talk track, but

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really, to your point, that practical application things

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that we should and could be doing and changing within our

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way we leverage social and the way we go to market, the way we

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work with marketing today all of those things so really excited

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to dig in.

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Speaker 2: And Brandon's here, ok, good.

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Speaker 4: I was going to say we , we had a heckler last time.

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So I think, brandon, if we don't get that, heckler.

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We're going to need you to do some of it, yeah.

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Speaker 2: Oh, he will, He'll get it started.

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And if you're out there.

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Please let us know if you're out there, where you're from,

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where you're listening from.

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So, mj again, welcome, tell, welcome.

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Tell us a little bit about your background and kind of what

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you're doing, and I think we'll have a really good foundation to

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kind of kick off the conversation.

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Speaker 3: Cool.

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Yeah, I am a B2B marketing leader.

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I've been working with industrial buyers for my whole

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career, so I started in-house at manufacturing companies in like

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hybrid product management and marketing roles and increasing

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levels of seniority within a large FTSE 100 manufacturing

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company called Halma.

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Last role I held there was VP marketing inside of one of their

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subsidiary operating companies and then made the jump over to

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SaaS and startups and right now I'm leading marketing and sales

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development at Colab Software.

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And that background in manufacturing comes in handy

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because Colab makes software for mechanical engineering teams

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building some of the most complex products in the world.

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Speaker 2: Wow, so you've, and they're a venture funded tech

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company.

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I mean, would you consider Colab, your traditional sort of

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tech company?

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That you know Silicon Valley tech company?

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Speaker 3: Colab has a lot of shared goals with your typical

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Silicon Valley tech company.

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You know the whole triple, triple, double, double, double

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thing, but we are headquartered out of Newfoundland, Canada.

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And so I think, because of that , it's a very different culture

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and a very different part of the world.

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Speaker 2: Well, I think I'm just going to set the stage.

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When we were talking before, you said 19% of your qualified

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pipeline is coming from your CEO's LinkedIn activity.

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Do I have that correct?

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Speaker 3: Correct Shout out to Adam Keating.

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Speaker 2: All right.

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So let's start with that, let's start with the 19%, and then

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let's unpack that and kind of take us through, first of all,

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how you're achieving that, but maybe more importantly, how you

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got there and how you're maintaining that.

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Speaker 3: Cool.

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Well, first of all, how do we know that?

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And there's actually a very simple trick, which is we just

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set up a custom opportunity source in our CRM which is

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called Adam's DMs, and so any opportunity that is sourced by

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somebody reaching out directly to Adam, either in his LinkedIn

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DMs or straight to his email address, gets categorized under

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Adam's DMs.

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So that's what counts in that bucket, and I would say it's

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really a two-step process for generating that interest that

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comes directly to him as opposed to via one of our company-owned

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channels.

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The first thing is getting the leadership team, the exec team,

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the whole company around rallied around a really exciting

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company narrative and, first and foremost, that is the narrative

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that really comes from the CEO.

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So if the marketing team isn't telling the same story as the

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CEO, then it's gonna be really hard for the marketing team to

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help the CEO create content on their personal LinkedIn.

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And then, second, just translating that into whether

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it's written posts or mixing in images or providing videos and

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product content, just creating a steady stream of stuff that

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they can post about.

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Speaker 4: So I got a question.

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I find that statistic fascinating and I love the fact

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that you're tracking and quantifying it.

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How did it come about?

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And also, like, how involved is he in the day-to-day of

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constructing the strategy and what is the strategy?

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I guess it's kind of a three-prong question, but I'd

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love to know kind of the evolution of it.

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And then also like, does he have different formats and

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styles for different days?

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Like you know, we've obviously got a lot of sales folks and

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sales leaders that are taking this in, and obviously some

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C-levels, and you know, I think some of them have reluctance or

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hesitancy around posting, but also arriving at a strategy is

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probably what they struggle with most.

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So I'd love to hear more about the evolution of his strategy.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I think, if you go back to kind of the

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beginning, he saw other CEOs and other like leaders, even a

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professional services businesses , doing this a lot and he could.

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I think he just kind of had a bit of an intuition like hey,

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I'm interested in these people because they're posting, and so

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I think it was just that intuition of of hey, like you

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can create just an initial spark of like human interaction by

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being present on a platform like LinkedIn all the time and like

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LinkedIn has such scale that like, if you're creating human

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initial spark of human interaction at scale, like that

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must be valuable.

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So I think that was just his initial intuition.

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So he invested in it and it was , you know, it was kind of

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sporadic, right Frankly, like in it and it was, you know, it was

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kind of sporadic, right Frankly , like.

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Sometimes it still is, but at first it was kind of sporadic.

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But actually when I joined Colab and he was doing this before I

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joined Colab when I joined Colab , my mandate as I think the

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mandate of many CMOs, heads of marketing, is when they join a

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fast, growing venture funded SaaS startup is to build

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repeatable pipeline and actually at the time that that I joined,

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we didn't really have many repeatable pipeline sources at

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all Right, that's my job to build those but the most

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repeatable of them was Adam's LinkedIn and you could see how

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when he had more time to post or he was putting more energy into

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it, we got more pipeline from that source, and when he didn't,

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we got less pipeline from that source.

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And the pipeline was way up and down right Signal to noise in

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those early days is crazy.

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And so these days, obviously there are other repeatable

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pipeline sources that are up and running alongside his LinkedIn,

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but, to be honest, in the early days it was the number one

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source of pipeline for the company.

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Speaker 2: Incredible.

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And who is the primary?

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You know your ideal customer profile.

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Is it an engineer or a tech person?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it would be like a director of engineering

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or a VP of engineering inside of a large manufacturing

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organization.

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Speaker 2: Okay, Okay.

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So was he then, even prior to then, I assume targeting that

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sort of persona, right Going after those people, building his

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connections, building the relationships and targeting his

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content, the stuff that would make sense for that persona?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean early on he was like again, he was

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operating like a lot on intuition, you know, like, but I

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mean you founders often build the whole company around

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intuition in the early days, right, like I've perceived that

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there's a problem here.

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Adam was a mechanical engineer before he founded the company,

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so he has experience with the pains and the problems, so a lot

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of it is just like sharing the personal stories, and I think a

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lot of founders do this on sales calls every day anyway, right,

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and they do it when they're speaking to investors, and so it

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was really just like digitally replicating those things that

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you do a person to person anyway .

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Speaker 2: Interesting.

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So let's you came in right or you know, he was kind of doing

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it sporadically.

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As you said, it sounds like you've definitely formalized

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things more and I know you talked a bit about even paid ads

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and amplifying it with paid and so forth.

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Kind of take us through what is the playbook right now and how

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it's working and obviously how you've probably structured it

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more but expanded it since you've.

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You know, come on.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, so I think there are basically two types,

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two or three types of content that are in his content mix.

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First type is what I'll call like strategic narrative posts,

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and so Colab invested a ton of time and energy in building a

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consistent, really well thought out strategic narrative, which

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is basically, you know, it answers the question why change

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and why now, and we used Andy Raskin's framework for this.

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So he has a really, you know, famous, popular post.

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You can find it on Google If you type in best sales deck ever

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.

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It's about Zora's strategic narrative and it breaks it down

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into these different parts.

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We use this framework to build our own strategic narrative.

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I work directly with Adam on it , and so basically, we are all

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aligned as a company on why we believe our customers should

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change, why now, and how our product actually helps them

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achieve the change that they need to achieve right now.

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And so, because we put in that work up front and that didn't

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exist.

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Speaker 2: Before you got there right, when he was kind of going

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sort of I won't say ad hoc, but more sporadically the first

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thing you did was kind of put a structured, clear narrative

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around the ICP.

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Speaker 3: Yes, and so maybe not the first thing we did, but

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like we did it, we wrapped it up .

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We actually tried to do this twice.

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The first time it was not nearly as successful as the

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second time, but we wrapped up that exercise and we launched it

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to the company in December of last year, but we it was kind of

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in the works from like October.

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So Q4, you mentioned the stat of the 19% of qualified pipeline

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that was the Q4 stat.

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We started posting bits and pieces of it as it was kind of

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coming across the finish line as early as October of last year,

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and so this is like a two or a three page document.

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It's like a written narrative and you know it helps all areas

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of the company right, like we use it for our sales deck we're

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going to, you know we're about to launch a new um homepage in

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the next couple of weeks, um, so it is the backbone of the

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homepage.

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So it's that, like the LinkedIn side of things is not the only

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reason that we did this exercise , but because we did this

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exercise, everything is just so much easier.

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It's really easy to create compelling content that's

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aligned to um messaging that the leadership team and the

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founders really believe in and why they're building the company

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and we feed this stuff in a product as well.

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So because we did that, we can, as a marketing team, create

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like kind of like beginnings of posts for him, and he always

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cleans it up and makes it into his own words, but he's almost

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always aligned with the messaging, because it's

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messaging that he and I really worked closely on and that just

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creates like a consistent stream of messaging and insights.

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So that's the first category, and there are two more

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categories that we can touch on, but I'll pause there.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, well, there's, I mean, and there's a lot of

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questions that are coming to my head right away, but is this

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predominantly like?

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Is he doing video?

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Is he doing written posts?

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Is he doing all of the above Kind of what is the mix in terms

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of just the type of content?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, so predominantly written posts for

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the strategic narrative stuff, and it will often be sort of

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exploring a concept or answering a question and then explaining

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it through the lens of our strategic narrative.

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So, as an example, a question that we might answer in a

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LinkedIn post from Adam is why do engineering teams keep

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telling us that all their people are so burned out?

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Well, like, here are these things that have been evolving

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in the engineering landscape for the last 10 years that are

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actually producing burnout.

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Right, and here are some practical steps that you can

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take to to address that.

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And you know, maybe there's a small tie into how we build

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technology and why we build technology and why we can help

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companies make this shift.

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But that's a great example of a question that can be answered

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through the lens of why change?

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Why now?

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Speaker 4: I love how you called that out, mj, and I think you

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know it kind of weaves perfectly into the tapestry of

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storytelling and what resonates with your target audience.

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You know I'd be curious of any other ways that you're

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leveraging technology or even AI and automation.

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Like what are you, how are you thinking about leveraging it?

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You know, because what I love about what you said as well is

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how it really you're staying authentic to his voice, right.

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So you know, even though you're giving some prompts and things

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of that stature, you know he's putting the polish and the human

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touch on it and I think that's so important.

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I have found that you know, a lot of times, like I'll do, I

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have my own show, I have a you know video series that I'll do,

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and a lot of times I'll even ask AI for a potential storytelling

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prompts and that might be the topic that I utilize that day

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for that post.

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I can go back and I can take the transcript to a show that I

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might have been on before and I can now excise that part of the

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transcript what I said and turn that into a post and, in essence

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, repurpose that content in a way that's very time effective

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and efficient, because I don't have to think of a net new thing

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to say, but I can post it like it's net new and it's my words.

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So I'd love to know, like, how you're thinking about leveraging

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some of these technologies, because you can't use them

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absolutely, but you can absolutely, you know kind of

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weave them into your strategy.

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I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I will be the first to admit that I probably

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haven't thought hard enough about this.

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But one thing and I've been trying to push myself in that

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area more Insight Partners is one of CoLab's primary VCs and

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they have run some really excellent workshops on this,

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which is frankly any thinking that I have done in this area

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has absolutely been prompted by the amazing resources that they

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have provided, sources that they have provided.

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The one area that I have been experimenting with is around

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like AI does a good job of like summarizing like huge volumes of

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data and picking out, you know, the trends and the patterns,

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and so I think you could feed AI right like a stream of comments

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that happen on all of the LinkedIn posts, right Across

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many LinkedIn posts, or you know just unstructured data of posts

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from people in your ICP, and say you know, can you summarize

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this into like some themes?

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And then that might become one of those questions, right?

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So I gave the example of why are engineers so burned out?

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I think you could use AI to put in a bunch of unstructured data

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and have it feed you back some questions or lenses through

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which to write about your strategic narrative.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting, this strategic

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narrative, kind of as a manifesto right, for everything

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that you're doing in the organization and then, like you

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said, you can not only summarize it but probably use AI to even

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create derivative works and other things that can come out

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of that to potentially give you more content over time and maybe

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not use it as is, but it gives you a starting point right.

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It gives you that jumpstart for the things that are there.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think what I've been struck by the

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most it's like this is a very hard project, right, because if

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it's not good enough, then it just won't function this way.

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And I told you know, we tried it twice.

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The first time we failed, so I have some personal experience

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with this being a hard project.

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But since we got it right, it's just it's really easy to write

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a sales landing page, right.

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We created a, we went out and surveyed 250 engineering leaders

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and, you know, generated a bunch of data, like, we wrote

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the survey questions using the strategic narrative as an input.

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We went out and surveyed 250 engineering leaders and

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generated a bunch of data.

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We wrote the survey questions using the strategic narrative as

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an input.

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Creating the content that went into the report using that data

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was so much easier, because there are just these really

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great points that resonate, that explain a lot of what's

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happening in our customer's world that you can just keep

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coming back to again and again.

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They just it really explains what's going on in an insightful

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way.

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Speaker 2: So I know you said there was kind of the first part

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, what are the second and third?

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I think there were two more parts that you were-.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, so we talked about strategic narrative posts.

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The second piece is like just like what's going on with him

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right Day to day.

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So it's like a mix of you know, when he gets inspired and he's

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visionary, as I would imagine most most founders CEOs kind of

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are, he'll just write a post completely from scratch and

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those posts always do the best.

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And you got to check your ego at the door right.

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The CEO's own original content will always outperform the

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content created or assisted by the marketing team.

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But I think what maybe a lot of marketing teams that want their

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CEO to post don't understand is that you can't rely on the CEO

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creating the stuff from scratch for 100% of the posts posts, and

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the only reason he does this is because he also kind of enjoys

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it.

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So we have the advantage of him kind of enjoying it, but we

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also don't force him to create all the content from scratch all

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the time.

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This is maybe only 15% of his posts.

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Speaker 2: So 15% of his points of the visionary type post are

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only about his posts.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, just like he gets inspired by something that

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he heard on a customer call and he'll write about it, or he'll

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rant about it.

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Or he'll like go visit someone and he'll post a picture, or

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he'll post something about the team.

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So whatever he's excited about at the moment, that'll certainly

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provide a significant portion of content right 15, 15, 20

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percent.

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Speaker 4: It sounds like a lot of this, too, is via LinkedIn,

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mj, right Like so.

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There's a lot of posting that's transpiring from the CEO.

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Are there other avenues by which he's getting the message

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out and replicating the message?

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And I guess what I mean by that is a lot of times I'll try to

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tinker with different platforms and mediums, depending on who my

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target audience is.

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So I may have a very similar post or video that may go to my

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podcast or may be distributed via Twitter or X, or could be a

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Facebook post, uh, commercial page, or something along those

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lines, or my blog.

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Are there other mediums that you've seen, maybe have really

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worked well in these situations or have not, like I?

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Just I'm always interested in the process, the creative

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process, and what you've kind of tinkered with and how you've

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learned yeah.

00:20:07
Speaker 3: So what's been interesting for us is, um, what

00:20:12
we have kind of done as a fairly small company we raised a

00:20:17
series A in 2021, is we kind of just focus on dominating one

00:20:23
channel, so we don't distribute Adam's content on very many

00:20:29
other channels, and, I actually think, really focusing our

00:20:33
resources on the one channel, linkedin and it's not just Adam,

00:20:36
it's also the LinkedIn company Page, organic, and the LinkedIn

00:20:39
paid.

00:20:40
But we put a ton of energy and focus on that channel and, as a

00:20:43
result, the qualitative feedback is really interesting.

00:20:46
So obviously, there's quantitative feedback in terms

00:20:50
of we be at a conference or a trade show and a prospect will

00:20:55
walk up to you and be like oh, colab, yeah, I love what you

00:20:57
guys are doing on LinkedIn and I think if we were trying to be

00:21:00
on more channels at once because we're a small team, I don't

00:21:04
think we'd be creating that effect of like oh my God, this

00:21:07
company is everywhere on LinkedIn, so I would do it again

00:21:11
the same way.

00:21:12
But I also think that larger marketing teams should think

00:21:16
about being on more than one channel yeah, makes sense, love

00:21:19
that back to the content, kind of mix up.

00:21:23
Speaker 2: Does he post things that are personal?

00:21:26
I don't know if he has a family or what his personal life, but

00:21:29
does he post things that are, that are in his you know, I know

00:21:32
, know Brandon's very passionate about the importance of mixing

00:21:36
things up with personal posts and personal things.

00:21:39
How is that?

00:21:39
Or does he do that?

00:21:40
And if so, how does that work?

00:21:42
Speaker 3: Sometimes Adam's personal story is like related

00:21:48
to the company story.

00:21:49
So he lost his father to cancer when he was in his late teens.

00:21:55
His father was an engineer and that's kind of what inspired him

00:21:59
to go into engineering, and he's talked about that publicly

00:22:01
on his LinkedIn.

00:22:02
He also, in his copious free time, organized a charity

00:22:06
basketball tournament in his father's memory.

00:22:08
That was hugely successful and, over the course of, I think,

00:22:12
seven or eight years, ended up funding an entire new cancer

00:22:16
wing of the hospital in Newfoundland.

00:22:17
So he speaks about that.

00:22:20
Speaker 2: So, yeah, I guess it helps if you're just like a

00:22:23
really big hearted human and can share all those amazing things

00:22:26
that you accomplish in your personal life as well really,

00:22:36
you know, analyzes as well, but he's found on his posts that the

00:22:38
personal ones get way more engagement, way more reach

00:22:39
generally than the less, more professional ones.

00:22:41
And I didn't know if you had seen a similar thing at all with

00:22:44
with some of the stuff you were doing.

00:22:45
Speaker 3: I think that's probably the case.

00:22:47
I post a lot on LinkedIn myself and I almost never post

00:22:52
anything personal.

00:22:52
So I think it depends, like, really what you're, what you're

00:22:56
trying to get out of it, but I think, and I think it depends on

00:22:59
your personality, you know.

00:23:00
But I think the the benefit of sharing things that are more

00:23:05
personal is like back to how we kind of opened the episode that

00:23:08
like part of it is just human to human connection at scale right

00:23:12
, and showing the human side of yourself is what kind of prompts

00:23:16
that connection.

00:23:17
But I do think you can overdo it on the personal as well.

00:23:21
Speaker 2: And another question back to content again.

00:23:23
So obviously we're streaming this show on LinkedIn, so it's a

00:23:28
form of LinkedIn.

00:23:29
Do you do live shows and things like that on LinkedIn as well,

00:23:34
with him or others, or is that something you're looking at

00:23:37
doing?

00:23:37
And if so, again, how has it worked or not worked?

00:23:40
Speaker 3: So we've been doing a recurring webinar series.

00:23:46
We haven't tried streaming it to LinkedIn yet.

00:23:50
We alternate the format.

00:23:54
It goes keynote panel, keynote panel, um, so the panel has

00:23:58
multiple experts from industry, um, and those are always fun

00:24:02
because, um, people like to hear from other people like them, um

00:24:06
, and we also get to learn from the guests.

00:24:08
So we'll do the keynote and the panel on the same topic, we'll

00:24:11
do the panel, we'll learn from the guests, and then we will

00:24:14
take everything we learn from the guests as well as everything

00:24:16
we know internally, and then we will build like a really robust

00:24:19
keynote with our point of view, based on all of those insights

00:24:23
on the same topic.

00:24:24
And Adam just delivers that himself.

00:24:26
And so the panel is great because you get to learn from

00:24:29
people and it generally has a bigger audience because there's

00:24:33
multiple guests that people are excited to hear from.

00:24:46
The keynote is great because it creates a ton of repurposing

00:24:48
content, because we control the narrative and the POV more when

00:24:51
it is a single speaker from our company talking and those are

00:24:54
two webinars, basically One's the panel and one's the keynote.

00:24:55
Yeah, you do those.

00:24:56
What?

00:24:56
Twice a month or Two a quarter right now.

00:24:57
We recently brought on a head of content and we might increase

00:25:00
that.

00:25:03
Speaker 2: But that's up to her.

00:25:04
So do you see in the future doing more video or live?

00:25:08
Do you see that as kind of part of the playbook moving forward,

00:25:10
or do you think?

00:25:16
Speaker 3: what you're doing now is a good, solid foundation,

00:25:17
just continuing to do more of the same.

00:25:18
One of our core marketing beliefs is that there's

00:25:22
basically two ways that you can increase the amount of people

00:25:25
that are interested in talking to you.

00:25:27
One is by reaching new people that you haven't reached before,

00:25:32
right.

00:25:32
So how do we expand the audience?

00:25:33
That goes back to Carson's question around how you're

00:25:34
getting on other channels.

00:25:35
Not everybody is on LinkedIn and certainly not everybody's on

00:25:38
LinkedIn every day.

00:25:39
But the other way is increasing the quality and the depth of

00:25:43
that content, because we really believe that there are probably

00:25:46
people in the audience that have seen our stuff a bunch of times

00:25:50
but haven't converted because they haven't seen the right

00:25:52
stuff or the right depth of stuff.

00:25:53
So I'd say we're making investments in both of those

00:25:57
areas, right, and I see live, I see video, as some of the ways

00:26:02
to drill down into a greater depth of content and maybe reach

00:26:05
some of those people that we haven't quite put something

00:26:09
compelling in front of in their point of view just yet.

00:26:12
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean two big themes that are jumping out at

00:26:14
me today is, you know, one, just the value and the almost

00:26:19
necessity of having not only a CEO but executive leadership

00:26:24
prominent and present on the LinkedIn platform.

00:26:27
The other I loved what you said , mj, about dominating the

00:26:31
platform.

00:26:31
You know, figuring out where's your audience and invest there.

00:26:35
The beauty of LinkedIn is that it isn't just one singular area

00:26:39
by which you can meet customers.

00:26:41
It's not just through the power of the post.

00:26:43
You've mentioned a number of other areas with the company

00:26:47
page and doing the ability to do live events and stream, the

00:26:52
ability to leverage video content.

00:26:54
We talk on this show, too, about that mix of personal.

00:26:57
I've found some of the posts that get the best traction.

00:27:01
For me are ones where I might make some leadership analogy by

00:27:05
posting a picture of my kids and talking about the importance of

00:27:08
family and how you invest in relationships with also how you

00:27:13
invest in the relationships with your teams, things that will

00:27:15
resonate with others who also happen to be parents and happen

00:27:18
to be in leadership, and that just happens to be my target

00:27:21
audience as well.

00:27:22
So I love what you said about dominating the platform.

00:27:25
Are there any other areas of the LinkedIn platform or even

00:27:28
sales navigator that you found exceptionally helpful, because I

00:27:31
know I use both of them a lot, and especially even when you're

00:27:34
looking at like what content is resonating with folks.

00:27:37
You know I try to bake a smart link into just about everything

00:27:40
I send out so that I get some telemetry on what are they

00:27:43
reacting and responding to what's working.

00:27:45
This didn't really resonate.

00:27:46
Why?

00:27:47
Maybe it was way too specific or focused.

00:27:49
I could run this more at scale, or quite the contrary.

00:27:58
If I needed to drive a more focused conversation, maybe I

00:28:01
need to change my strategy and style.

00:28:03
Have there been any other ways that you've learned from

00:28:07
leveraging different facets of LinkedIn?

00:28:10
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:28:11
So we also obviously do a ton on the advertising side of

00:28:15
LinkedIn and then we do quite a bit with Sales Navigator, with

00:28:21
our sales development team.

00:28:22
So advertising is a way to test even more messaging at scale,

00:28:29
right, because if you're just using organic, then you're

00:28:32
inherently limited by your organic reach and you know, like

00:28:37
your first and second and third order kind of connections and

00:28:41
so, depending on what your CEO's network looks like or your

00:28:46
executive's network, whoever you're building, they might not

00:28:49
have, you know, the right people in the audience or maybe you're

00:28:52
trying to penetrate like a new market that you know you're

00:28:55
starting over from scratch, right.

00:28:56
So the advertising can give you reach and kind of give you data

00:29:00
at scale.

00:29:00
Like what are people engaging with?

00:29:01
And we've actually found just people liking or commenting,

00:29:07
certainly, or reposting.

00:29:08
People do this, they repost ads .

00:29:11
But even just a like of an ad, like it, is a pretty decent

00:29:17
intent signal of like hey, they're philosophically aligned

00:29:20
with us.

00:29:20
We run a lot of ads that are basically just probing for

00:29:22
philosophical alignment and so that kind of hacked together

00:29:29
intent data, if you will, from the ad platform is informative

00:29:32
to messaging.

00:29:33
It can be informative to ABM, right, like hey, a lot of people

00:29:36
from this account seem to be interested in this message, like

00:29:38
maybe that's how what we should use in outbound, right?

00:29:40
So so that's one angle on the ad side.

00:29:43
And then the sales development team is.

00:29:46
I'd say we'd have a.

00:29:47
We have a very like a senior level and advanced sales

00:29:52
development team.

00:29:52
Like they.

00:29:53
They do a ton of personalization.

00:29:55
We like really train our sales development team on like

00:29:58
business acumen fundamentals.

00:30:00
Like we really try to equip them to truly understand the

00:30:03
business processes that are going on for our customers,

00:30:05
rather than just like giving them scripts and having them

00:30:07
read off.

00:30:08
So it's a bit more of a career and not just like a job that

00:30:12
burns people out type of thing.

00:30:14
So they use SalesNav to do account research, prospect

00:30:18
research, you know, and then do some degree of their outreach.

00:30:23
But they're also using other channels as well.

00:30:26
Speaker 2: I think that's a good way to.

00:30:27
You mentioned ads, right, but what are you doing in addition

00:30:32
to what the CEO is doing organically?

00:30:34
What sort of other flanking actions, whether it's ads or

00:30:38
even other people internally to amplify, kind of take us through

00:30:42
that a bit more, because I think it kind of you know the

00:30:44
ceo is kind of the top of the pyramid, right, and then it

00:30:47
moves out from there yeah.

00:30:49
Speaker 3: So, um, on linkedin specifically, we use uh, we do

00:30:53
ads right and so we'll do, like single image ads for the most

00:30:56
part, conversation ads too, and then we also use the thought

00:31:01
leadership ad products so we can actually boost our CEO's

00:31:04
organic posts in the ad platform .

00:31:05
We don't do that for every post , but we certainly do it for

00:31:08
some.

00:31:09
And then we have a LinkedIn company page, and somebody told

00:31:14
me something a long time ago which I has really resonated and

00:31:17
stuck with me, which is, when you're doing a lot of ads and a

00:31:20
lot of organic posting on a platform, the company page

00:31:24
itself should sort of function as a result of seeing activity

00:31:27
from people at the company or an ad from somebody at the company

00:31:37
.

00:31:37
So like, what kind of content is on there for them to see and

00:31:41
how is that company page set up in order to basically convert

00:31:44
them to take the next step of perhaps going to your website to

00:31:47
continue to explore further?

00:31:49
Speaker 4: Give a shout out to my friend, mike Giannotti, who

00:31:51
jumped on the Twitter feed.

00:31:53
Mj, this is fascinating to me and I keep hearing this

00:31:57
recurring theme and I know that you're obviously very passionate

00:32:00
about the ability of marketing and executive leadership and

00:32:06
sales being able to work closely together.

00:32:09
I shared with you when we were in the green room prepping for

00:32:13
this episode that I've had a lot of success in working with

00:32:18
marketing very closely as a seller and a sales leader over

00:32:21
the years, and it's been integral to my success because

00:32:24
we're after the same goals.

00:32:26
We're able to work in tandem.

00:32:28
I'm able to be an advocate and an evangelist for what they do

00:32:32
and create, but also helping them stay at the pulse of what

00:32:34
matters to the field so that we can add value for each other.

00:32:38
I'd love to hear your thoughts on.

00:32:40
You know how should organizations today be thinking

00:32:45
about this, because there's some change management involved here

00:32:48
, right?

00:32:48
You know this isn't necessarily a comfortable muscle for a lot

00:32:52
of folks to have.

00:32:53
You know their executives posting to you know have

00:32:57
marketing and sales be working so closely?

00:32:59
I mean you shared with me earlier that you know you've

00:33:02
even gotten involved in some deals, so I'd love to hear more

00:33:05
about your journey and your experience in that regard.

00:33:09
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think there are like underlying obstacles in

00:33:14
most cases when there's not sales and marketing alignment,

00:33:17
and so I think the first step would be like diagnose what's

00:33:20
really going on.

00:33:20
I think one of the ones that I've seen is that, a lot of

00:33:25
times, like, an org will have very senior sales talent and

00:33:30
very junior marketing talent and very senior sales talent

00:33:33
doesn't want to work with very junior marketing talent, right?

00:33:35
So I think one of the first questions a lot of organizations

00:33:38
need to ask themselves is, like are you hiring, um, people in

00:33:43
marketing that are senior enough that they can be a partner to

00:33:47
your sales talent?

00:33:48
Um, I think, um, sometimes, uh, like, companies don't like, or

00:33:59
the people in the roles don't necessarily respect or think

00:34:03
about, like, the depth of experience that their

00:34:05
counterparts have, right?

00:34:06
So, for example, um, I see people say a lot, um, like

00:34:11
marketing should be the most knowledgeable about the customer

00:34:14
in the whole business, right, and I think, on the surface,

00:34:17
like, oh yeah, it seems like something that's hard to argue

00:34:18
with, right, like marketing should know a lot about the

00:34:20
customer.

00:34:21
However, it's hard to know more about the customer than someone

00:34:24
who spends their entire day talking about customers, right?

00:34:27
So I think that's almost that.

00:34:30
That just saying that almost reveals that you're maybe like

00:34:34
not respecting where your counterpart is coming from,

00:34:36
right so?

00:34:37
So I think marketing and sales should have both have deep

00:34:40
knowledge of the customer, but kind of in different ways, right

00:34:42
Like?

00:34:43
Sales has a depth of knowledge that comes from speaking to

00:34:46
customer after customer after customer.

00:34:48
Um, that can sometimes be skewed by the last five

00:34:52
conversations they have.

00:34:53
It's more at like the surface, it's like really boots on the

00:34:56
ground, specific problems that we're solving.

00:34:58
But that is a depth of knowledge that you it just

00:35:01
doesn't make sense to have.

00:35:02
As a marketer, right Like, your job isn't to talk to customers

00:35:04
all day.

00:35:05
Marketing, I think, should have a broader knowledge of the

00:35:09
customer.

00:35:09
So you should talk to customers one-to-one.

00:35:11
But there are other data points that go into that.

00:35:13
There's market research, there's competitive analysis.

00:35:15
You probably spend more time thinking through all the angles

00:35:19
of certain kinds of messaging.

00:35:21
So I think having an understanding and respect for

00:35:25
the type of customer expertise that each counterpart brings to

00:35:28
the table, and marketing making sure that they are doing some

00:35:32
direct one-to-one talking to customers, because you can't

00:35:35
function without it can make marketing and sales a lot better

00:35:39
partners to each other.

00:35:41
Speaker 2: Related to that are your KPIs for marketing in

00:35:45
alignment with sales?

00:35:46
Are you, you know?

00:35:47
Is your bonus or your outcome based around the revenue of the

00:35:51
business?

00:35:52
Or, you know?

00:35:52
Because a lot of marketing areas is like, well, how many

00:35:54
leads can we get, or how many MQLs can we get, and that right

00:35:57
away creates misalignment.

00:35:59
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:35:59
So we do two things from a metric standpoint to create

00:36:03
alignment.

00:36:03
The first one is we have really well-defined entry and exit

00:36:07
criteria for all the stages in our sales process and I think if

00:36:12
your pipeline numbers are not actually predicting revenue,

00:36:16
then it's not necessarily the fact that you're bonusing people

00:36:19
on pipeline, it's that you define pipeline in such a way

00:36:23
that it doesn't predict revenue.

00:36:25
So at Colab I think I mentioned when we were doing the prep for

00:36:28
the call, like our stage one to stage two conversion rate is

00:36:31
between 40 and 50% because it's really hard to even get into

00:36:35
stage one for the way we've defined it right and because of

00:36:38
that, because those criteria are tightly defined and it's a hard

00:36:41
bar to clear even early stage pipeline is a predictor of

00:36:46
revenue here and so as long as you've done that work, then I

00:36:51
think you can align marketing and sales development to

00:36:54
pipeline, and I would argue you should, because it's actually

00:36:59
it's a lot easier to understand to connect the dots between the

00:37:03
behaviors you need to do today to hit pipeline targets and it

00:37:06
creates a quicker feedback loop.

00:37:08
So as long as your pipeline is accurately predicting revenue, I

00:37:12
think individual contributors in the marketing and sales

00:37:15
development team should be bonused on pipeline I.

00:37:18
I am bonused a hundred percent on revenue and I think that's

00:37:23
also appropriate because in my role as the CMO, I can impact

00:37:29
revenue.

00:37:29
So things that I do, functions that I lead, don't just generate

00:37:34
pipeline.

00:37:35
They actually, you know, I do competitive positioning, I help

00:37:38
with sales enablement right, like there's things that I do

00:37:41
that I help the product right, I give insights on how to build

00:37:45
the product right.

00:37:45
So I do things that end up contributing both to the

00:37:49
pipeline number and the revenue number and therefore it's

00:37:52
appropriate for me to be going to start revenue.

00:37:56
Speaker 2: That's an interesting and when you know.

00:37:57
You pointed out a couple of things there about being, you

00:38:01
know, the KPI being pipeline, when you can actually measure

00:38:04
the pipeline with some certainty and predictability, right,

00:38:08
because then you actually have something that you can base some

00:38:12
prediction around.

00:38:12
But then going one step further with revenue, that's an

00:38:16
interesting one.

00:38:17
Carson, I mentioned your take on that.

00:38:18
Do you think that that's the right sort of common KPI to

00:38:23
align sales or marketing, or is it kind of getting the pipeline

00:38:27
well-defined or the stages of the pipeline well-defined and

00:38:31
then being able to kind of bonus or measure based around the

00:38:34
pipeline?

00:38:35
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, look, it's probably not a one size

00:38:39
fits all answer because there's going to be a lot of nuances to

00:38:42
that, but I do think that the closer you can align those, the

00:38:49
more you're creating and fostering that culture where

00:38:53
sales and marketing can work together.

00:38:55
And what I mean by that is, yes , I believe that the evolution

00:38:59
over time I've definitely seen the, you know, the emphasis of,

00:39:03
you know, creation of quality leads and where these advance in

00:39:05
the pipeline.

00:39:06
But then again, like what was the strength of the process by

00:39:10
which they identified these leads and created these leads?

00:39:13
We need to further refine and evolve that to make sure we're

00:39:15
getting quality leads to sellers .

00:39:17
You know, I I'm a seller and I go into my CRM and I see these

00:39:20
leads that were generated by marketing and I call down on

00:39:23
them and I get literally nothing out of it.

00:39:25
That's not productive for either side.

00:39:28
So you know all the more reason why I think it is important to

00:39:31
have KPIs where you're aligned around the common theme, which

00:39:33
is ultimately revenue and growth , where you're aligned around

00:39:35
the common theme, which is ultimately revenue and growth.

00:39:38
I even look at some of the marketing folks that I've worked

00:39:41
with over the years and there is a lot of credence to that

00:39:50
revenue component, as in.

00:39:51
I know that a lot of them have been compensated based on

00:39:52
revenue that they can show an influence of.

00:39:53
It's very challenging from a marketing perspective to say,

00:39:56
hey, we generated X amount of revenue.

00:39:57
That's pretty impossible to do because that's very broad.

00:40:01
You know, as MJ talked about today, there's so many different

00:40:04
ways that you can put content out there in a way that will

00:40:07
influence and we've all read the statistics that say that you

00:40:10
know it could be five touches or eight touches that ultimately

00:40:13
generate that, that call to action.

00:40:15
So you know, a customer might have seen something from MJ's

00:40:19
company page, then they might have seen a post from the CEO,

00:40:22
then they might have seen a post from her and around that time

00:40:25
somebody may have dialed them or emailed them.

00:40:27
I'd be hard pressed to say, and then the salesperson gets the

00:40:31
deal.

00:40:33
I'd be hard pressed to say that marketing didn't influence that.

00:40:35
So being able to show, more importantly, the marketing

00:40:39
influence, those leads, that organization, these mediums

00:40:43
where purchases are being made, and we can track that and trace

00:40:46
that, that's all the more important because I would say

00:40:49
revenue that is influenced by marketing is a very important

00:40:52
metric, um, and then obviously revenue.

00:40:55
All up is the uh, the rule by which we are all governed here

00:40:59
in sales.

00:40:59
So I do think that that is the ideal scenario.

00:41:02
The closest closer that you can tie those together In some

00:41:05
cases it's very hard to do it but the more that you can make

00:41:09
them revenue based and also to make sure that you are giving

00:41:13
marketing its due.

00:41:14
The last thing that you want to do is ignore the fact that

00:41:20
marketing is likely doing a lot to influence and educate even

00:41:24
passively educate some of the customers that might become

00:41:28
lower hanging fruit for our salespeople to pick off.

00:41:31
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's worth acknowledging that in this

00:41:37
conversation.

00:41:38
I think most people understand the risks of over indexing on

00:41:43
pipeline and under indexing on revenue, which is exactly what

00:41:46
you explained.

00:41:46
Like, if there's a bunch of MQLs, you call them and nothing

00:41:49
happens, right, that's, that's a big risk, right, we're all

00:41:51
wasting our time and it's probably the bigger risk of the

00:41:55
two.

00:41:56
However, I think what really gets talked about is the risk of

00:41:59
over-indexing on revenue and under-indexing on pipeline, and

00:42:03
I think the longer your sales cycle, the bigger that risk is

00:42:08
right.

00:42:08
So if you have a three-week sales cycle, that's not really

00:42:10
that big of a risk because you're still going to get that

00:42:12
rapid feedback loop.

00:42:13
Like I'm an SDR, I book a meeting three weeks later it's

00:42:15
either revenue or it's not revenue.

00:42:17
Like that's actually a feedback loop that I can use to shift my

00:42:20
behavior.

00:42:20
But if I'm an SDR and I book a meeting and then nine months of

00:42:24
sales activity happens and before I find out like the

00:42:28
outcome, it's not a fast enough feedback loop and I don't know

00:42:33
if it was the quality of the opportunity or all of the things

00:42:35
that happened in the nine months in between that actually

00:42:37
drove that outcome.

00:42:38
So that's why I think at least for you know company selling

00:42:42
enterprise software.

00:42:43
You need to actually hedge against that risk as well of

00:42:46
over indexing on just revenue.

00:42:48
And so, like I said, I'm on 100 percent revenue.

00:42:51
My team is 80 20.

00:42:52
So 80 percent pipeline, 20 percent revenue.

00:42:58
Speaker 4: And find good ways to leverage MQL as an example,

00:43:00
like me dialing one or five or 10 of them and going you know,

00:43:03
oh for the room, there may be a high viability of that.

00:43:06
But if I start to, as a seller, even take those MQLs and find

00:43:12
meaningful ways to engage them, you know I've added them into my

00:43:15
newsletter lists.

00:43:16
I do my own homegrown webinars and will grab specialists to be

00:43:21
the star of the show.

00:43:22
I'm just going out and doing demand gen, but I've built lists

00:43:25
over time in the thousands.

00:43:26
I have a list right now of over 8 MQLs that I've gone out

00:43:30
and accumulated, sometimes manually in our tools.

00:43:33
But it's worth it because I can broadcast messages, I can get

00:43:37
in front of people very quickly and it's a probability game.

00:43:41
You know, if I'm dialing an MQL and nobody answers, that might

00:43:43
have been a quote unquote, waste of time.

00:43:45
But if I can message 8000 of them in one shot and get

00:43:48
hundreds to show up to a webinar , even if they don't purchase

00:43:53
immediately, it's a touch, it's a nudge, it's them being

00:43:56
advanced in the funnel.

00:43:57
And I've absolutely had deals where we looked at the purchase

00:44:02
order come in.

00:44:02
We're like where did this come from?

00:44:04
What happened here?

00:44:05
And we went back and found that this customer was on every

00:44:07
webinar we ever did, even though a seller never talked to the

00:44:10
person.

00:44:10
So there's a number of ways that you can intelligently

00:44:13
leverage MQLs.

00:44:15
I always find that anytime you've got an ability to touch a

00:44:19
customer, there's value.

00:44:20
Speaker 2: Just find a way that you can maybe do it more

00:44:22
effectively at scale if you find that there's not quote unquote

00:44:26
quality in the initial outreach what the MQL is and treat it the

00:44:37
way that it should be treated, not as qualified, high intent

00:44:41
pipeline, which is clearly different than what you're doing

00:44:43
there.

00:44:43
So, as we wrap up here, I have two quick questions for you, mj,

00:44:52
that I think probably a lot of people are on people's minds.

00:44:54
One is a lot of people we hear all the time my customer is not

00:44:56
on LinkedIn, they're not there.

00:44:58
They're not LinkedIn, they're not there, they're not listening

00:44:59
, they're not watching, they're not watching posts.

00:45:02
So my question would be is what would you say to them?

00:45:05
And then, secondly, is if we can convince them that their

00:45:09
customer is there, what would be one thing that they could do

00:45:12
right now, like if they leave this show you would recommend as

00:45:15
like a first step to kind of put people in that direction?

00:45:18
Speaker 3: Yeah Well, I mean you can actually find out if that's

00:45:22
true or not, if your customer's on LinkedIn or not.

00:45:24
You can.

00:45:24
It's going to cost you a little bit of money, but go in, like

00:45:29
set up a LinkedIn ads account.

00:45:30
It's probably worth finding out right.

00:45:32
Is your customer on LinkedIn or not?

00:45:33
If you're basing a major business assumption on this, I

00:45:35
don't know.

00:45:35
I'll spend 2 bucks to find out.

00:45:37
Go into LinkedIn ads, set up.

00:45:40
You know LinkedIn ads has insane levels of targeting right

00:45:44
Job title, industry, company name, company size, all this

00:45:47
stuff.

00:45:48
Speaker 2: Put together the audience.

00:45:49
Speaker 3: That actually describes your ideal customer as

00:45:51
close as you can, and it'll tell you how many members match

00:45:54
those criteria.

00:45:55
Okay, let's say it's 90.

00:45:56
You haven't figured it out yet, by the way, because maybe there

00:46:00
are 90 people in the audience theoretically.

00:46:02
The next step is how many of these people actually log into

00:46:05
LinkedIn within a 30-day period, and it's far fewer than the

00:46:09
total audience size, right?

00:46:11
So let's say you have an audience of 90 people, run a

00:46:14
couple ads for 30 days and look at reach, which is a metric

00:46:19
that LinkedIn ads will tell you about, and it'll be below the

00:46:22
threshold of the total audience, because inevitably, not

00:46:25
everyone in your audience logs into LinkedIn every day.

00:46:27
But you will then have literal data that says okay, my audience

00:46:31
is 90 and 25% of them saw my ads in this 30 day period.

00:46:36
Speaker 2: Now, you know how many of your customers are on

00:46:38
LinkedIn right.

00:46:39
That's a great hack and you can use the LinkedIn objective of

00:46:44
reach right, so it's inexpensive because it's the reach camp.

00:46:48
The reach objective is generally less expensive than

00:46:50
conversions or other things that are there.

00:46:52
So put your list in there, see what your reach is, and that

00:46:55
gives you an idea of the percentage that are likely

00:46:59
touched.

00:46:59
I think that's what you're saying and I think that's a very

00:47:02
that's awesome.

00:47:02
That's a great hack.

00:47:03
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you can find out and then, once you know, I

00:47:06
guess, what do you do with that information, right?

00:47:07
Do we like, do we want to go the paid route or the organic

00:47:11
route, obviously paid?

00:47:14
you're hacking the numbers game by paying a little extra money,

00:47:18
right, you're in front of people more often and it's guaranteed,

00:47:21
and so if you need fast results , that's probably something to

00:47:24
consider.

00:47:25
Or you go the organic route or you do both right.

00:47:28
The organic route, I think, gives you that human-to-human

00:47:30
connection.

00:47:31
It gives you, like, a depth of content that you might not

00:47:35
convey overpaid.

00:47:36
It's more of a long game, certainly, but you can speed it

00:47:41
up by proactively going out and connecting with your ideal

00:47:44
prospects.

00:47:44
You can't do that too much or else LinkedIn will put you in

00:47:47
LinkedIn jail for being spammy.

00:47:49
But, yeah, go out there and start connecting with people,

00:47:52
just so that they see your content and building that

00:47:55
community.

00:47:58
Speaker 2: That's great, Awesome Carson.

00:47:59
Any final questions before we.

00:48:02
Speaker 4: No, I want to give MJ the last word.

00:48:03
Mj, anything else that you think our audience would benefit

00:48:07
from, just from your experiences and the experiences

00:48:09
of your organization in the topics that we talked about

00:48:13
today.

00:48:15
Speaker 3: I think, if I could summarize some of the stuff that

00:48:17
we've been digging into, like, every marketing and sales work

00:48:22
kind of keeps running into the same things, right?

00:48:24
Whether it's alignment challenges or I can't get my CEO

00:48:27
to post on LinkedIn I think the best thing you can do is do

00:48:32
that.

00:48:32
Five whys exercise.

00:48:33
Why is your CEO not posting on LinkedIn?

00:48:36
Because they don't have the time?

00:48:37
Why don't they have the time?

00:48:38
Right?

00:48:39
Diagnose the root cause and figure out what you can do about

00:48:43
that.

00:48:43
Right, In our case it was let's really align on the messaging,

00:48:47
which is something that the CEO definitely is worth his time,

00:48:51
right.

00:48:52
And then, because we're so aligned on the messaging, we can

00:48:55
do some of the work on his behalf.

00:48:57
Right, and he actually wants to use it because, again, it's

00:49:01
aligned with thoughts and feelings that he has about the

00:49:04
market and it also helped us everywhere else, right.

00:49:06
So that's an example where the answer to that question it's a

00:49:12
little bit deeper and maybe more nuanced than people would lead

00:49:17
you to believe in like an influencer LinkedIn post about

00:49:20
this topic.

00:49:21
So look for those root causes in your business, because most

00:49:25
of the time it is complex.

00:49:26
That's why every organization on the planet seems to have the

00:49:28
same set of challenges.

00:49:29
You know they're hard to solve.

00:49:31
Speaker 4: Really, there's a lot of our partner organizations

00:49:34
that I'm hoping are watching this today.

00:49:36
There's a lot of C-levels CEOs that could and should be out

00:49:42
there.

00:49:42
It would have a tremendous impact to their organization.

00:49:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, MJ, thank you Really really good stuff.

00:49:50
You definitely delivered on the practical like we talked about.

00:49:53
I think these are some really good stuff.

00:49:54
I know I'm going to go back and listen again and take some

00:49:56
notes.

00:49:57
So thank you, and we'll keep an eye on collab.

00:49:59
We'll follow.

00:50:00
I want to see how this all kind of plays out.

00:50:02
Speaker 3: You can follow Adam.

00:50:02
You can see what he posted out.

00:50:04
Speaker 2: I'll follow him.

00:50:05
Yeah, and what is what is Adam's?

00:50:08
Adam Heating, we're on LinkedIn , okay, okay, and the company

00:50:19
any pages?

00:50:19
Collab software?

00:50:20
Yep C-O-L-B Collab software.

00:50:20
Okay, that's awesome, We'll check it out, all right.

00:50:22
Well, thanks everybody.

00:50:23
Hope this was enjoyable and valuable to everybody.

00:50:24
Carson.

00:50:25
Speaker 4: Absolutely.

00:50:25
This was great, MJ.

00:50:26
Thank you, Audience.

00:50:27
Thank you and until next time happy, modern selling.

00:50:39
Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us today on Mastering Modern

00:50:41
Selling.

00:50:41
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