AI Revenue Loop

"Alright.

Welcome to another episode of AI revenue loop where I interview, marketings and founders and business executive on their journey and how they think about and adopt AI to their business. So we have here with us Brandon Rutlinger.

He's the former VP of marketing at Chili Piper and currently a fractional CMO at some really hot company out of the Bay Area, Sidebar and then Noble. Brandon, can you just tell the listener a little bit about yourself? Yeah. Thanks.

A little bit about myself. Yeah. I, long story short, I I started off as a as an SDR and, was actually a sales rep, a quota carrying sales rep for a little bit. Oh, so you're on the other side of the the marketing and sales divide.

Exactly. And and I think that's why I I make a pretty good, marketing leader, and I've always got along with sales pretty well is yeah. Then on the other side, I've walked in their shoes.

I transitioned over to the marketing side. I got into tech. That's when I moved out to the Bay Area. Got started in marketing with a company right out of YC building everything from the ground up for them.

And then about a little over a year after that, John Miller, who's the cofounder of Marketo, left Marketo to start a company called Engagio. And then I was early on in at Engagio, so I was with Engagio.

And then that's why I got most of my and my best experience in in SaaS and building companies and building cultures more than I think about that almost as much as I think about anything else in marketing.

How do we build the right culture on the team so that we do have a high performing team? And then, yeah, I was with them through the acquisition by Demandbase, stayed on at Demandbase for a little bit.

And then after that, went to a few other companies. And like you mentioned, one of them being, my most recent start before going fractional was Chili Piper. But, yeah, I I do fractional marketing work and and consulting now.

You you you recently transitioned from VP of marketing from, Chili Piper to fractional, with bro at Sidebar and Noble. You describe yourself as a marketer who thrive at the intersection of technology and psychology.

How has that perspective guided your approach in this new role? And what lesson from Shirley Piper that you're applying to marketing at Sidebar and Noble?

Yeah. Good question. So I think business, especially sales and marketing, is all about behavioral psychology. I probably read more psychology books than anything. In college, I took more psychology classes than anything else.

Even though that really wasn't my my major, it was one of those things I've been endlessly fascinated about, organizational psychology, behavioral psychology, social psychology because at the end of the day, that's how we buy.

And that's also a big part of how you manage and you lead people on your team. That's all about the psychology.

So I think if you understand people and you understand the drivers behind why people act the way they do and realize that it's different for everyone, I think you can have, again, the high performing team who then can also, influence the market in certain ways.

So I'm always thinking about the person and then the psychology to apply that to them, whether that is, again, people on my team or, hey. This is our ICP.

This is how we should be thinking about marketing to or selling to this specific ICP. And then to answer the other question about what did I learn from Chili Piper, I think there was a lot that I learned from Chili Piper.

More than anything is Chili Piper is a pretty beloved brand, and it's pretty well known and respected brand out there.

And I had a good taste of that at Engagio, building that from the ground up, but at at Chili Piper, it's a much different brand and a different brand voice.

And I learned how different that was because Chili Piper is much more fun. It's much more engaging, more accessible.

And I learned everything that they did to create that culture from the beginning. Because I've been at a lot of companies who want to build a brand like Chili Piper, but just haven't been able to do it.

So a lot of the lessons I took from Chili Piper was, yeah, how do you build that brand from the ground up? Why did this become the brand that it is today?

Why do people really have that trust and affinity and love for that brand? I remember I first come across Chili Piper when I was talking to a a sales feeder at Proposify Scott, and he he mentioned Chili Piper.

And for a second, it's like, what is he talking about? It's like Yeah. Is that is that, like, a hot sauce or something?

And then, I actually looked it up. It's like, oh, wow. Okay. Alright. This is a SaaS company. But then, fast forward couple months, I saw your Salesforce event, Dreamforce event. Yeah. Yeah. Like, the hottest self Dreamforce event.

And you play to the the the hot sauce and the hottest team very well. Exactly. And then I I I didn't get to go there, but I went to the your booth in, at inbound, and then I got away with a a bottle of hot sauce.

There you go. Good. So yeah. So I think, like, it's probably a very hot dog. It like It is. It is. It is amazing.

I think it's a very good brand, but, like, I'm just curious, like, what or which company were that that kind of, you know, playful, funny, interesting brand would work well, and and then for some other brand, it will not work well to you.

Can you make the distinction? It really comes down to the leadership, specifically the founders. Right? They're so for those people who don't know a little bit back, sort of back to the piper, it's actually a husband and wife.

They're they're cofounders and co CEOs, so they run the organization and all the pieces of the organization together.

And they both have that mentality to always be pushing the envelope and doing things that are not traditional or conventional.

So I think that really is the foundation of everything that they do there, and they hire people with that same mentality.

So then people run the organization and specifically marketing and everything that is public facing for Chili Piper in that same way. So they they push the people, and some of the best ideas still do come from them.

I remember the best post that we ever had from the company account that had two and a half thousand engagements on the post itself and almost a million views, which is crazy for a company post.

Not in an individual post, like a company post. And it was an idea that was directly from Nicholas, the the one of the cofounders.

And it was he came to us and he said, it's it's April fools. He really likes April fools. Like, he's a fun guy. And let's actually play off of this thing that's in the in culture right now of going back to the office.

And let's say, hey. Everyone, we're going back to the office. Chili Piper is now moving to Chile, New York, and everyone has to report to the office and everyone posted about it. And I was like, oh my god.

I can't believe, like, this is gonna happen to us, but I guess we're gonna move to to New York now. And it was one of those things where a few people, including myself, thought, wait. Is this the right time to be doing this?

You know, it it could be insensitive to those people who are deal because they're I I know I have friends that have moved, and now they're they're big companies are telling them that they have to be back in office now, and they moved across the country or whatever.

Right? Yeah. So I was like, this could be very insensitive. And we played around with it for a while, and we we massaged it to make sure it wasn't gonna, you know, strike a chord with some of those people.

I'm sure it still did. But at the end of the day, like, if you're doing marketing to please everyone, you're not gonna please anyone.

And I do think the best marketing is divisive out there. So, yeah, that's all to say that, like, they're not afraid to hurt some people's feelings or turn people off, I should say.

Because it for every one person that's not happy out there, you'll have ten, twenty, 30 really happy people that resonate with that message, and that's the audience that you really care about, not the people who get turned off by you.

Yeah. Absolutely. One of the thing I learned from Justin, well, is just your content should either make people feel like, opt in.

Oh, this is my guy. I wanna follow him or opt out. Yeah. And if if you please everyone, then just yeah. It's Yeah. You're pleasing no one if you try to please everyone. You know? That's that's what I've learned.

So back on the topic of, leadership, I read one of your big surprise as a first time marketing pet is navigating internal politics, essentially figuring out like how to play the game to get cross functional buy in.

How do you develop those relationship building skills? I know that you read a lot of psychology books. Right? What advice would you give marketers stepping into leadership role for the first time on how they can develop their skills?

Yeah. Great question. So, yeah, the I I know exactly what you're talking about because I I think about this all the time. So, basically, one of my points is, like, you have to play the game.

And I know the word politics is often you you know, has a negative connotation linked to it. And to think about manipulation and people getting their way and, like, it's often Machiavelli.

But, you know, yes, that's that's the dark side of it. But I think it can also be used for good. And having I I don't remember where I initially heard the concept, but I love it. It's it's political intelligence.

And it's being able to play the game and, know which of your skills to really, you know, deploy in any circumstance to really influence others and, again, influence others in a good way, in a way for that benefits the business.

An example would be I'm doing ABM for the first time. ABM is a very cross functional go to market strategy. It's not something that marketing just does. So I do have to get buy in from other people, especially the sales side.

Right? But also onboarding and success and sometimes services because dealing with a big enterprise account on all those levels is a lot different than smaller accounts if you're SMB or even mid market.

Enterprise deals are a lot different. So you do have to, again, use that political intelligence to go influence people in certain ways.

So, yeah, I I'm really big on the idea of having that political savvy. And how do you develop it? I I I've been thinking about this a lot too.

I think it's it's really through experience. You know, I I don't know if there sure. There are things that you can do to learn what does sales want, how does sales really understand how are they paid, how are they incentivized.

Because I think at the end of the day, a lot of people's behaviors come down to the incentives and the the structures that are in place to drive those incentives.

So let's really figure out what they care about and those incentives, and then also for the CS side of things, also the product side of things.

Because, again, I've been at a company before where we were selling an enterprise deal, and enterprise deals, again, are a lot different.

So I think the structure and the infrastructure and the security, and the com the the governments the governance for enterprise companies is a lot different.

So you still have to deal with all the different pieces of the organization to make sure you're ready for true ABM. That's all to say.

I think there are some things that you can do, like understand the rest of the business and the leaders of those different departments. But then at the end of the day, I think you kinda you get that experience by doing it.

Any, psychology book that you think would be, must read for new head of marketing at a large organization? Yeah. Well, I mean, I always go back to Robert Cialdini's Influence. That's not like a classic book.

That is one of my favorite books out there. That's one that I revisit regularly. I think I have three different copies that I've marked up and that I've highlighted and reread over the years. That's that's a must for me.

Another one that specifically applies to leadership is called Turn the Ship Around, and it's about this captain who took over the worst performing ship in the US Navy fleet and in in something like two or three years turned it around to be the best performing.

So it's it's by lieutenant David Marquet. So Turn the Ship Around is another specifically for leaders and managers of teams that I would recommend. That that's another must read.

Yeah. I read the Robert Shradini influence book, a long times ago. I guess I need to go back and read that. My one of my favorite is Dale Carnegie. Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People. Yes. Yeah. That a classic one.

Yeah. Yeah. That that one kinda got me started in the self help book, boo, and then or whatever you wanna call that category. Yeah. Well, yes. That that is one of my classic all time favorites too. Alright. So, ABM versus demand gen.

You mentioned that there's no fundamental difference between ABM and demand generation. You call ABM just another flavor of dimension that doesn't even require a separate theme. Right? Could you elaborate on that viewpoint?

How do you integrate ABM tactics within the broader dimension strategy? And what mistake do you think, like, marketer do when they try to separate those those two? Yeah. So this is something that I have changed my tune on lately.

ABM, again, back in the Engagio days when ABM was taking off and we were one of the big three or four players that were competing in the ABM space, it was Engagio, Demandbase, term Terminus.

I think those were probably the three big ones at the time. This is 2015, '20 '16.

I did think, yeah, you need a separate team for ABM because because it was so new, when you needed dedicated functions, and you needed people who specialized in specifically what ABM is and then how it actually integrates into your systems and how do you manage it.

But since over the years, since it's become more of a mainstream, you know, go to market strategy for SaaS companies, not not specifically SaaS companies, but those are the companies I work with and sell to mainly.

It it is one of those things where, yeah, everyone knows about it, especially marketing leaders these days or demand gen leaders. I think it makes a lot of sense now to update your thinking about it.

And, yeah, it makes a lot of sense that it rolls into demand gen because at the end of the day, it more closely aligns with demand gen than anything else because that's what we're trying to do at the end of the day is ABM and your demand gen teams.

So I do think hiring a an ABM leader, someone that is dedicated a hundred percent to that is still a really smart thing to do, but have that person roll up to your demand gen head.

It still takes a lot of skill and a lot of knowledge and knowing how to run your technology and your systems and your operations to be successful at ABM, But a lot of those things now are just a natural part of the demand and function of Teams.

That made perfect sense. And then so recently, you start a new, new endeavor. You are now the cofounder of the forge. Can you tell tell the listener a little bit about The Forge for those that haven't, visited?

Yeah. Absolutely. Thanks, man. So The Forge is we are a marketing community for those ambitious marketing leaders who really wanna take their careers to the next level.

And we started it well, we being me and a guy named JK Sparks, who is just another really sharp marketing leader out there.

Currently, he does work for Circle, but he's previously been at Audience Plus and Hopin when that was the new big hot thing and, BombBomb, back when that was also a little bit more popular.

But, yeah, him and I he actually lives not too far away from me, and we've been getting together pretty frequently.

And then one day, we realized we both had a passion for helping the community and building around connection and helping inspire people to have careers and have jobs that they love.

I really do believe that good marketers deserve good jobs. I know plenty of marketers out there that are that hate their job, but they're stuck in their current job because either they can't find something else.

The market is so little tough right now for candidates, or they feel handcuffed in one way or another at their current company.

So we really started it to help those people. And, yeah, we launched it last week, so it is still pretty new.

And it will be it we will continue to evolve it just to make sure we meet the needs of those marketing leaders that are out there. But we do put together pretty deep dives of specific content or specific topics for our content.

So, for example, last week, we did a a real deep dive on, product marketing and specifically how to launch products, how to bring the products to market.

And when we're talking deep dive, 10,000 word blog post, that's, I don't know how many people put out 10,000 words, and that's that's just me in my writing.

And I think JK is also a guy that likes to get very in the weeds and very tactical with the writing side of things.

I'm not sure how I can miss that, but I'm I'm launching my product, in a month. And so yeah. So I need to, I know my weekend reading. So There you go.

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And, yeah, we we have we put specifically in this one. And this is another thing that we really wanna do for marketing leaders is we we put a lot of templates in there so that you don't have to reinvent the wheel.

So it's everything from messaging frameworks to actual launch checklists and everything else. So, yeah, I'll I'll make sure you get access to this.

Yeah. Amazing. So I I saw that a lot of company got really successful with, when they build a community of their customer. Right? What do you think the role of community in in the new world marketing with AI?

And, I heard that there's no more left in in SaaS other than community and Yeah. The founder brand or something like that. What do you think about that statement?

Yeah. I think there's a lot to that. I think it's hard to build a community. I think it's getting increasingly harder because a lot of companies want to build communities, but I still think there's a lot of opportunity for it.

When I think about community, I think it's about serving a very specific need out there. And that's what we really were trying to think about when we were launching the forge, and this is how I think about products in general.

But it's what is the what is the unmet need in a specific market right now? And I think companies and also communities that figure that out and can tap into that are gonna be the successful ones out there.

So because there are so many communities, why would someone join the forge versus I have to last week, someone compared us to Pavilion and Exit five.

And though I'd I never really thought about competing against them, I guess yeah. You're right. I am. Like, I'm a member of both of those. But at the end of the day, yeah, I I guess we are competing for that mind share.

We we do want people to come back to the forge and contribute to the discussions, ask questions, connect with other marketing leaders, and then, of course, read the content as well.

But, yeah, that's really how I think about it. What's the unmet need for a very specific person out there? And that's how you position yourself, and that's how you would, hopefully, attract the right people to your community.

So, I guess the I'm I'm also a community member of of exit five. So what would be your answer on how the force is different from from exit five?

I I want. To tell you how I want it to be different, and we'll see if it ends up being that way. So, yeah, right now, we're at a little over a 50 members. So not bad for one week, after launch.

But, yeah, exit five, I think they have, like, 6,000 or something like that. And I think they have a lot of early early marketing leaders, first time marketing leaders, or marketing leaders of a marketing team of one.

Right? I I think they do serve a little bit more of the startup community. Whereas if you look at the members in the forge, I think it is it leans more towards VPs that have a team underneath them.

You've been doing it for a little bit now, and, you just really wanna take your skills to the next level. I also have people in there. Yeah.

VPs looking for more VP roles. So from what I can tell right now, I think we are serving a little bit different of a market. Just, again, the the more seasoned marketing VPs, and that's where we're really just gonna try to stay focused.

And we'll see if it stays that way, and we'll see how we can really differentiate. Like, I know exit five and Dave launched their what is it called, CMO club or something like that.

Yeah. So they're really helping marketers prepare for that CMO role, which I think is great, and we're probably more competing with that than anything.

Although that's a that's like a course and we're not really doing courses or at least not yet.

I mean, we've talked about the idea of doing courses. So that's how I'd answer that. I'll let you know if if, what I see. Yes. We could say by spot of difference.

Alright. So one one thing I noticed is that you've been posting a lot of AI content, like, content about AI in in the force as well as, on LinkedIn. So I assume that you are a big believer in AI. Right?

So one of the the thing that you mentioned is that you said that future marketing leader will succeed by finding the signal in all the noise and even predicting where the market is headed. Right? How do you see AI helping with this?

Are there any AI powered marketing tactics or tool that you're excited about that will help marketing leader achieve this? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I I'm not the first one to say this, but I really do believe I forget why I first heard it.

But it's, AI isn't gonna replace your job. Someone who knows AI is gonna replace your job. So, yeah, I again, definitely not the first one to say that, but I that that's something I definitely believe in.

So if you're if you're not someone who is constantly every day thinking about how I can use AI to make my job easier, I think you're you're getting left behind and you're not, yeah, you're not preparing yourself for the future.

But I when I think about, when I think about using AI, I think a lot about the different types of things first that you should be using AI for.

I use AI for, like, editing, brainstorming. There's summarizing and synthesizing. And then I think there's also a lot of AI that can be used and stitched together for, like, automating processes.

But the the stuff that I use every day are just more the the former or the the first three things. So I do and I've been playing around with all the different tools out there.

I I have TETT. I I'm not paying for the pro version of it, the 200, yeah, $200 a month version. Although, I've been really tempted to because I've I've been loving it.

Been playing around with DeepSeek, been playing around with Cloud, been playing around with the Gemini, and all for and if you if you get to be using these, you know different ones have certain strengths, and they use different ones for certain things.

But every day right now, I am using it to help me create content better, to help me edit the content. So one thing that I'm terrible at is copy editing my own stuff. And Oh, yeah.

You I yeah. I'm so bad at it. I'm so bad at it. I can't tell you how many times I've published something and found the typo after I actually hit publish or someone Slacks me or or LinkedIn messages me. Hey. Yeah. I think you meant that.

So you just you spelled this wrong. So AI has been incredible for that. But things like putting together outlines for content is is something that I use it pretty frequently for or making sure messages land with my key persona.

So I have a lot of documents that I say as you know, it's all about the the prompt engineering, that gives you the quality answers, and I have a lot of documents that okay.

Here's the persona that I'm selling to right now. When you answer this question, you should be thinking about this person this person in mind.

And I also have prompts that or, yeah, things that I just copy and paste straight back into JettyPT or whatever that says, here's more information about my company or my product and our ICP.

Now given all this information that you know, now I'm gonna ask you a question. And then, yeah, you get your best answers by giving it more context. So where where do you go to learn the like, to stay up to date?

Because the AI world changing so fast, like, there's new tools coming out every day. Where where do you go to learn about, new AI? One of my main sources is through the Marketing Against the Grain podcast.

Are you are you familiar with Marketing Against the Grain? Yeah. From, I I can't pronounce the name, but from the folks at HubSpot. I think Yeah. Kieran Siedaghan and and Kip Bodner.

Yeah. It's yeah. You're right. It's it's the HubSpot. One is a HubSpot, one of the many HubSpot podcasts. They do deep dives on AI and more going through exactly what and how they are thinking about AI and using AI pretty regularly.

So that's one that I like to to keep up with. And then also following creators on LinkedIn and I mean, these days, a lot of AI pops up in my LinkedIn feed, so I try to stay on top of that as well.

But more than anything, it goes back to, I mean, just playing around with it, designate yourself. And then, of course, other podcasts like to talk about AI all the time, so I'll listen to those.

I feel like everyone listens to all in these days, but when I hear something new on all in, I'll go check that out. But if it feels like every podcast is at least talking about AI these days Yeah.

Absolutely. Which is great, and they should be. Because of that, I think one of the the thing that I keep hearing is that a lot of marketers and this is not just exclusive to marketer.

I think it's across the board, but, more so in marketing than than others is, a lot of marketer adopt or think about AI from the the place of fear.

It's like, will AI replace me? Right? So even if they adopt AI, they they would regressively kinda try different AI tools and and and not very, you know, wholeheartedly adopted.

Like, what what advice do you have for marketers so that they can adopt AI from the place of curiosity and self improvement and not not worry too much about will AI take my job.

Yeah. I I mean, I would just encourage people to go out and use it and realize how much easier it will make their job.

You know? And I I, yeah, I feel like though those are the people who haven't really got their hands on it and and played around with it as much to realize how it's gonna it's gonna 10 x their out output.

There's so many different uses for it, whether it's, yeah, ideating and brainstorming on campaigns or even, taglines or even emails themselves for your campaigns, drafting content and outlines for blogs or LinkedIn contents or whatever it is.

Like, especially for, like, research reports or a meeting that you missed. Just copy and paste the transcript of the meeting, and everyone has their, their meeting note takers these days or even, I mean, Zoom itself.

Most people are in Zoom, can do that pretty easily now. So summarize your stuff, and then it can analyze that and give it right back to you.

And then, again, editing and refinement, poke holes in your own writing to make sure that what you're putting out there is complete and there's no flaws in your thinking, that sort of thing.

But, yeah, it it's just like play around with it and figure out how it's gonna make your job so much easier. And then hopefully, they'll realize, oh, yeah.

You're right. I shouldn't this is not something I should be afraid of. And, again, I'll go back to the AI is not replacing your job. It's someone who really knows how to use AI and is embracing AI.

But I think it's kinda crazy that, like, even a company like Google and Gemini my my wife works at Google, and I asked her if she's played around with this Gemini stuff. And she's like, oh, yeah. A little bit, but not really.

And it just struck me. And then I asked her, is there any sort of, like, company wide training or portal that you can go to? And she's like, oh, that's a good question. It it they really haven't pushed that.

If I were Google, I'd be trained I would make every like, it'd be a company wide initiative to make sure everyone is using Gemini. Like, I was using Gemini I I showed you this yesterday. I was like, I was using Gemini.

My email was open. There was this long thread. I was like, I don't wanna read this whole thread. I I asked it to summarize the thread and then give me an update of where we're at with the status of this launch.

And then I was like, wait, is that the right date? Okay. I know there's a document in my drive somewhere, and I just popped up in Gemini.

I said, hey, Gemini, look through my Google Drive for a document about this launch, and tell me if this is the right date. And it was there's another date, and it said, here's the reference.

Here's the document that you're referencing. Yes. This is the right date. And then I thought, okay. Yeah. When was the first actual meeting that we had on this with the team that we're integrating with?

So I've just went back to it and said, when was our very first meeting that we had on this? And it pulled up my I looked at my calendar, and in five seconds, it was, hey.

This is the date, and these are the people that are on it. And Oh, damn. I see. All would have made me how long to do, but it was literally thirty seconds for me to do all of that right without even leaving my my email.

Alright. I gotta try it out. I I got it in April, but I haven't I haven't yet to try it. When I try to try to use Gemini for writing the email, isn't isn't that good.

So but Oh, I haven't I haven't tried to do that yet. Yeah. Being able to, to reference, like, data across, like, different services is probably is very powerful.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like, it searches all of your drive documents or your calendar or anything else connected to your your G Suite. Yeah. It's it's pretty crazy, pretty amazing. So you should, you should give, deep research a try.

Only available at with Chat CPT Pro. So it's $200, but I use it to do deep research on, like, persons or company. And, usually, it would take me, like, hours if I have to listen to podcast, if I have to read the news of the company.

But now it's just kinda like go through all of them, and it create one query would create, like, three it would take, like, ten minute sometimes twenty minutes to to answer one query.

Because it also goes Are you using that for your outbound your cold outbound emails? I use it to research account. Accounts. Got it. Yeah.

So, a company wide. What what worked really well is that it tell me everything about that company. Like, new initiative, it go through on the g two review. It tell me all the complaints. But then because it's public informations Yep.

It still doesn't go into, like, there's there will be some information that possibly cannot get, like, you know, internal initiative. You can only get that from talking with with people that is there. Right?

But I think I think it's just all about use this use it to, like if you're going after big accounts, larger company larger enterprise organizations, I mean, going back to the my my my mine still is, like, on ABM and target accounts.

Because, like, for me, the winning formula for for outbound is personalized relevance and and and timing.

And if you get those three things and, yeah, you could you can use deep research for things like my guess is, like, reading s ones or 10 k's.

And that's gonna give you so much information by reading that manually. It's time intensive, and I think that's why a lot of reps don't actually do that.

They don't learn how to read a 10 k. They don't learn how to read an s one, but everything that you really need to know is right there, including how how the executive team is, incentivized.

And going back to going back to what we were talking about in the beginning, that behave it's it's all about behavioral psychology and figuring out what incentives drive specific actions.

And I think it all comes down and down, learn the incentives and and understand why people act the way they do, and then you can more effectively cater your message to exactly what that is.

Amazing. Yeah. I have only target, company under two red people, so none of them has missed one yet. Yeah. I've got the yeah.

Maybe I should maybe I should go upmarket and then say that that Yeah. They get my money worth because I only paid them. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. Yeah. I mean, but but still, yeah, $200 in that sense, I mean, saves you so much time.

Right? Yeah. Just just one free. It would take me, like, two hours, normally, and now it take me, like I I wait for ten minutes, but, of course, I do something else. So just Yeah. Yeah. One problem. Yeah.

Alright. So I think on on the last topic, you mentioned this, at the beginning, like, aligning marketing and sales because one of the posts that I post I get the most impression is on how does the divide between marketing and sales.

And you are one of the rare people that work in sales and then turn into marketing. Right? Yeah. What specific about that that you feel, like, help make you more effective when you work with sales teams?

Yeah. Yeah. There there there's a few ways that I think about that. First is at a higher level, make sure you are are aligned around the same incentives.

Okay. I don't I don't think marketers should be comped on revenue generated, especially at companies that are doing bigger deals because they they don't have a lot of control after what happens after it becomes qualified pipeline.

So Mhmm. I think moving marketing's, the way you measure marketing success and the way that they're comped moves more down funnel into something more like, again, like qualified pipeline or pipeline generated from your marketing team.

So moving that closer, but also moving sales a little bit closer to things like they have to generate a certain amount of their own pipeline.

And Totally, guys. Yeah. Like, things like conversion percent. How many, opportunities did you open? Do you end up actually closing that sort of thing?

So I think moving there are the way you measure success for each a little bit closer, and then and then, making sure that those metrics and the KPIs are visible to everyone, and it's shared.

And you have very strong, clear definitions and SLAs, and all that stuff is ingrained within everyone on the team so that they know, and there's trust and transparency and visibility into all those things.

And I think that really is the foundation. And then going back to, like, speaking the same language as them.

So it's not marketing, talking about leads and sales, talking about accounts. It's, hey. We're talking about these accounts and the opportunities there we care about most.

And then there, it goes to more tactical things like QBRs you do together. Sure. I'll do my own marketing QBR, but then What's QBR? A quarterly business review.

Okay. Alright. Yeah. So what were our goals for this quarter, and how did we stack up to these goals? And what did we learn, and what are we needed to do different? And let's do those together as a sales and marketing team.

And then also things like campaign planning. I don't want marketing to come up with it with its own campaign and then launch it and then say, oh, sales, by the way, this is something that we did.

It's, hey. Let's do this together. Right? Like, marketing, I'm still responsible for coming up with the idea, but, like, let let's meet with the sales leader or the sales leaders and say, here's the idea.

Here's everything that we need for it. Is this something that you think your team can execute on right now?

Because I've been there have been plenty of companies I've been at where marketing has an initiative from the top down from the CEO. And it's like, hey, marketing. Go do this campaign.

And then sales ends up saying, wait. We're we're getting trained on all these other things. I can't be trained on a new campaign and a new thing that I need to be talking to my prospects about. I just don't have the bandwidth.

Otherwise, I'm gonna spend all of my time enablement in training sessions than actually selling. And sellers only get paid for when they're talking, like, when they're talking to prospects and they're closing deals.

Right? Not off the phone. It it's like that, analogy from Dizon Lemkin and and Aaron Ross's book. It's, planes only make money when they're in the air. Right?

Reps only make money when they're on the phone or communicating with their prospects. So, yeah, that that's that's how I I I think about things. But also, like, regular communication with your VP of sales or your your sales counterpart.

It's not, hey. We have a weekly one on one. And, I mean, you do need a weekly one on one. I do really do believe that, but it's not let me save everything for the weekly one on one.

The best sales leader that I that I, worked with, it was, hey. I got this idea. Do you have a second to just hop on a quick call or let me text you or something like that more than just, right, we just had our one on one.

I'm not gonna talk to you again until our next one on one. That that that just doesn't really work.

You know? Yeah. And and they seem seem that so many times. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And sometimes marketers, there's nothing they can do about it because sales really doesn't care that much about talking with marketing.

As much as marketing wants to talk with sales, sometimes those those sales leaders don't care to talk to marketers.

And that's why I put a lot of emphasis when I joined a new company on interviewing the head of sales and getting the head of sales involved and making sure it is someone that I do wanna work with.

That that's almost the more important thing than anything else. Am I gonna go along with this head of sales? One of the phrase I got get thrown out a lot is, become the marketer that your sale team love.

Yeah. So Love that. So so I mentioned that I I saw you mentioned, frequent communications move the, alignment closer together, not quite on a way where marketing get graded by revenue, but maybe pipeline generated.

Right? So not just MQL, but, it has been high quality MQL that turned into pipeline. And then anything else that you can think of, like, to become the marketer that's sales rep?

Yeah. I I really think that is that's the real, like, foundation of it. And even again, like, going back to I I think I understand this a little bit more because I've been a seller myself.

I don't think that's I don't think that's a prerequisite for having a great relationship with with sales. I think another thing too is I probably I I definitely read more sales books than I read marketing books.

And that's again going back to understanding what sales is going through and understanding what they're trying to do and understanding some of the tactics that they heard from John Barrows or Josh Braun or any of those guys out there.

It's a new book that I read. I don't know. It's about a year or two old at this point, but, like, the jolt effect. And I I brought this idea to the sales leadership at my last company, and they were like, okay.

Yeah. I think there's something here. They read it. Now we can collaborate together on how to figure out a sales and marketing motion that really have you have you read The Drolt Effect?

No. I have not. You're great book. I think it's okay. Yeah. Great great book, and it's all about how people need confidence in themselves and how to build confidence in the buyers themselves so that they can buy your solution.

Oh, that's one of the main, ideas in that book. See, that's very relevant right now. It's not necessarily that companies don't believe that you've accomplished these things with other customers.

It's they don't believe that they're gonna be able to accomplish those same things at their company because they're set up in any unique way or the processes or the way that thing decisions are made at their own company or their tech stack isn't built that way or whatever that is.

Right? How do you get in front of these objections so that they are confident in themselves that they won't screw things up, that they can actually get those similar results that the companies that are on your website are getting?

So, anyway, it yeah. It's Anthony's, I need to read that. Yeah. Phenomenal book.

Yeah. By by one of the same authors of the challenger sale and the challenger customer. Oh, yeah. Matt Matt Dixon, great follow on LinkedIn as well. Great guy. Definitely knows this stuff. Alright. Awesome. Amazing. Alright.

So, where can the the listener learn more about you where, you're super active on LinkedIn, but then any other source where they can learn more about your work and follow along? Yeah. LinkedIn is the the main place to connect with me.

Also, head to forgemarketing. tech is the the community that we were talking about earlier. So if you wanna join a community of ambitious marketing leaders, go to forgemarketing. tech. But, yeah, LinkedIn's probably the best place.

You you can also find the link there on my LinkedIn. Alright. Amazing. Thanks a lot, Brandon. It's been great chatting with you. Yeah. Thank you. Appreciate you having signing to read. Yeah. This was a lot of fun. Thanks, dude. Alright."