Sales Lead Management Radio

This is the second part of the interview with Sean Doyle. We brought a couple of points back for context. We hope you take his points to heart regarding hiring a CMO, and the terminology used by Sales and Marketing - do they match?

4 Questions a CEO should know before hiring a CMO: You wouldn't hire your nephew out of high school to run your sales team, why do you do it to run  your marketing team and campaigns? 

"Here's another simple litmus test to sales and marketing have a common language, but what does sales call somebody who's at the point of action, they need a proposal. They want to know what it would look like to buy your product or service. What does marketing call that person? Just ask them those questions. If they don't even call a prospect the same thing, you don't have marketing alignment. If they don't understand what marketing alignment is at all, tell them, just Google it and start the journey. 

----more----

Here's a point that gets Sean fired up, "When I come into these great businesses that are doing everything well, they've, they've hired a CFO, who's a CPA and has worked at two or three companies and they get it. And they're really talented. They can do tax work, they can do audit work. They go out and they get someone to run their plant with 20 years' experience. And they get somebody to run the supply chain. That's been negotiating and navigating all the supply chain issues, really talented people. They bring in somebody to run customer service that knows the technical support. And then it comes to marketing and they say, well, you know, my nephew just graduated from, stop it. Stop. Just stop that. You would never do that with your accountant or anybody else on your executive team. Why do you hire that person? And then get frustrated and say marketing doesn't work." 

Here is the link to Sean's book: Shift: 19 Practical, Business-Driven Ideas for an Executive in Charge of Marketing but Not Trained for the Task  

Catch the episode that kicked off this conversation:

Guess what - your prospect doesn‘t care about you.

So agencies keep creating awareness and awareness and awareness. It's not helping. Our guest, Sean Doyle's firm helps companies with what has become like breathing and very obvious to some, but not too many companies. The way FitzMartin is better is the application of science. Understanding that this prospect list didn't need more awareness. They needed a reason to consider taking that step to plan. He tells a story about a firm they were helping. They needed to understand why should I maybe contemplate yet one more banker at my door? Why should I do that? So we created the whole campaign around that. They changed the voice, the group that did the, testing. They had this brilliant IP, but they kept talking about themselves. Well, guess what? Your prospect doesn't care about you. So the ad that worked so much that got that $800,000 deal, all it said is, do you want to reduce your workman's comp costs? It actually had nothing to the product has nothing to do with workman's comp the outcome of using the product is lowered workman's comp. And that was the motivator for the buyer. And they got their single largest deal because they talked about what mattered to them. 

----more----

Listen to the first half of this episode, "Guess What? Your Prospect Doesn't Care About You."

About Susan's guest:

Sean M. Doyle is principal at FitzMartin Inc, a leading consultancy focused on sales marketing and management, sales and marketing technology services, and revenue operations for B2B companies. Sean and his team at FitzMartin are focused on long-term value creation through a sales-first, scientific approach to driving revenue.

Sean knows that the split personality of marketing is inhibiting growth aspirations. Budget and impact conversations often become contentious: revenue operation marketers tout their ability to drive sales while brand builders argue for longer-term brand investments. The executive team thinks both struggle to demonstrate the near-term value. It is for this reason that Sean’s team believes a thoughtful and data-driven full-funnel marketing strategy can drive significant value.

Sean’s latest book, Shift, explores 19 practical ideas, grounded in the science of behavioral change, that can transform a business’s marketing efforts and, by natural extension, its profitability.

Do you try new skills, and if you aren't great from the start lose interest? Or, do you take it as a challenge to succeed by finding an alternative path? There is no wrong answer here, but you need to know which you do and why. VisionEdge Marketing's President, Laura Patterson gives us a great illustration as she talks about training for triathlons, despite being a weak swimmer.  Here how she applies this to our continuing conversation about changing patterns to break or prevent bad habits.

If you missed the first part of this conversation, you can listen here:

Changing patterns vs habits, and flipping the script because we can

In this episode Susan and Laura cover four actionable items to change patterns, versus changing habits. What can you control? Here are four ideas to take control and gain an edge in business and life. This was taken from a recent blog post by today's guest, Laura Patterson, President, VisionEdge Marketing. She and Susan drive through this hard truth list. You either embrace it and expand your effectiveness, or freeze in place with no desire to change your approach. If that's you, you can now choose to mix it up, or be left behind.

----more----

"The greatest teacher, failure is." - Yoda

1. Be Proactive. Participants register for a race. In triathlons, the registration list and course are published in advance of race day. This allows competitors to research the race and the performance of other participants.  We can also read about the course from previous race participants. Most competitors check out the course prior to the race. The pre-race research provides an opportunity to be proactive rather than reactive on race day. It’s vital for business leaders to make conducting research a habit. (Read the rest in the post.)
2. Plan to Win. Two contemporaries from the 20th century offer good advice when it comes to planning. “Plans are nothing, planning is everything” attributed to Dwight Eisenhower, and “failing to plan is planning to fail” attributed to Winston Churchill.  It’s easy for business leaders to get sucked into the vortex of the day-to-day. Lack of strategy and a plan is the equivalent of ‘winging it’. If you don’t currently have a cadence for business strategy and planning, now is the time to create one. Start by analyzing current performance and identifying why things play out the way they do.  This provides insight into your current patterns and an opportunity to analyze which ones are working, which ones aren’t and what adjustments are needed. (Read the rest in the post.)
3. Work the Scenarios. In triathlons unexpected things can happen – tires go flat, people crash, goggles can get kicked off during a swim. Scenarios help you consider possibilities and anticipate what might happen in your market and moves by your customers, competitors or partners. (Read the rest in the post.)
4. Train and practice. Successful triathletes like most competitors train and practice off and during race season – daily – except for a few days before the race. They leverage coaches and refine processes, such as processes associated with transitions and changing flats.  Serious competitors consistently look for opportunities to improve their physical performance as well as address equipment that might give them an edge.  They practice and train with new equipment. Experienced racers know better than to run in new shoes or ride a new bike for the first time at a race.  And they have training partners. (Read the rest in the post.)

Here is the post that inspired this episode:

https://visionedgemarketing.com/growing-your-business-takes-breaking-patterns/ 

Here is the episode Laura and Susan were talking about on Market Dominance Guys:

Not Getting Trained? Train Yourself! Flip the Script by Oren Klaff goes along perfectly with this episode:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07MPTXZ59/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i1

Laura Patterson's book: Fast Track Your Business - Customer-Centric Accelerate

https://www.amazon.com/Fast-Track-Your-Business-Customer-Centric-Accelerate-ebook/dp/B084CTKN6P 

----more----

Here is the full transcript for this episode:

Susan Finch (00:14):

Hey everybody. Susan Finch here, your host today for Sales Lead Management Radio. And I am really excited because I'm welcoming back a friend of Funnel Radio, a friend of Funnel Media Group, Laura Patterson, from VisionEdge Marketing. Laura had her own show with us. She does her own show now, because we taught you so much, huh? And now you've got to do it on your own. But I want to first before, Laura, I get you going, what prompted this... I know this sounds super old-fashioned, folks, but she sent me an email, and it prompted me to pick up the phone and spontaneously not schedule anything and just talk to her. I know these are radical ideas, and we forget how easy it can be to get a conversation. Because now look at less than 24 hours later, we're doing this interview in this podcast. So Laura, welcome. I am so happy to have this time with you and thank you.

Laura Patterson (01:12):

Oh, thank you, Susan. I enjoy talking with you and I appreciate the opportunity to be back. And I hope that this conversation will be helpful to all the people who are listening.

Susan Finch (01:24):

Well, you've been busy, since we last have had a lot of time together. Tell me about your book first. Let's give a plug for the book.

Laura Patterson (01:32):

Okay. Thank you for that. In fact, the last time we talked was right after the book came out. So that's been quite a while. The book, Fast-Track Your Business: A Customer-Centric Approach to Accelerating Market Growth, has been doing great. And I'm going to say how much I appreciate the people who have taken the time to do reviews. We have had some amazing reviews. Not all of them are on Amazon. All of them are on our website, reviews on LinkedIn, reviews on the site. I just am so grateful for people who have taken the time to let us know how much they find the book to be useful. And that was its intention to give people really practical things they can do. That's one of my personal philosophies is give people something that is actionable for them. Right?

Susan Finch (02:21):

Right.

Laura Patterson (02:22):

Philosophy's great. Ideology is great. But we're all busy. We need to be able to make things better. And so we have to give people things to do that.

Susan Finch (02:31):

Right. And your email tactic that I've come to admire and appreciate... And I will say it and you can correct me if I'm wrong. It's a mass email that is totally personalized. And so it goes-

Laura Patterson (02:46):

It's a chain.

Susan Finch (02:48):

A lot of them go to your list. And the only reason why I know is because I have two emails that each get one.

Laura Patterson (02:53):

Yes.

Susan Finch (02:54):

Otherwise, I would've never known.

Laura Patterson (02:55):

It depends.

Susan Finch (02:55):

Right.

Laura Patterson (02:56):

Right.

Susan Finch (02:56):

Okay. It depends.

Laura Patterson (02:57):

So the email that I sent that prompted this conversation did not go through a list.

Susan Finch (03:02):

No.

Laura Patterson (03:03):

That was a personal email to you.

Susan Finch (03:05):

And those on the site too, I could tell by the top. I could tell by the greeting, but there are other ones that are not, yet they have the warm feeling that I matter, that I'm on your list feeling. And I appreciate that. Even knowing that I'm not the only one who got it, it's like, "I like being on this list. I like what you send." And it's usually, it's never asking for anything from me. It's always given me something. And you were one of the most sincere people I know-

Laura Patterson (03:39):

Thank you.

Susan Finch (03:40):

That does this, your thoughtful interaction with me and engagement on social, the way you talk about others. And it's why I've always enjoyed working with you. So I wanted to say that publicly. I endorse what you do, what VisionEdge Marketing does. I think you provide so much in the way of valuable insights and sincere championing of your clients, with no ego ever.

Laura Patterson (04:09):

Yeah. Well, you can't get through graduate school and have an ego. But I left that around a long, long time ago. I was talking to a colleague and he was so kind to say so. I write all of our stuff, and so if you don't like it or you do like it, it's me doing it. So you can take it up with me. I have wonderful folks who help me package it up, because that's not my area of expertise. But our content, our emails, our videos, I'm writing that. That is my heart. And I care about the people that are in our community. And I actually think of the people. I don't think of it as a list. I actually do think of it as our community.

Laura Patterson (04:56):

And we are selective about our community. Not just anybody. We don't just want anybody in our community. We want people that will benefit from what we have to say, and we'll share. We'll share. We want it to be an opportunity. I don't know. I've been at this a long time. You've been at this a long time, but that doesn't mean I know everything. Of course not. I'm still learning every day. And I think that's one of the things we're going to talk about. And I loved your episode that, if you're not getting what you need in the company that you're in, it's okay to take your own initiative and go learn. We should all be learni

Digging into your company's data may seem like a task you can shove to the bottom of the priority list. Perhaps you delegate it to several people once a month to make sense of the numbers and put it into a story recap format with a bullet-point action list. They all use the same numbers, but are they all telling the full, accurate story? If not, you may not take the action that will either fix or continue the path to growth. Today, Susan welcomes Nick Amabile. His love of numbers, puzzle-solving, and detective work culminated at a young age and set him on the path to building DAS42. Founded in 2015, DAS42 is comprised of data analysts, scientists, business professionals, and engineers who provide end-to-end data services—including data strategy, tech stack integrations, application implementation, and enterprise analytics training. From this episode, you'll have a checklist of what you need to do and consider before you hire a temporary or permanent data concierge firm. 

----more----

If you like this episode, you may also enjoy the two episodes from Market Dominance Guys with Tom Zheng.

Giving Your Data the Sniff Test

and

Get Thee to a Data Concierge!

About Susan's guest:

Nick Amabile is the Owner, CEO, and Principal Consultant of DAS42, a US data analytics consulting firm that helps companies make better decisions, faster. Nick’s FullStack Philosophy is centered around the two components critical to achieving data-driven success: building an effective data analytics environment and building a data-centric company culture. He brings world-class analytics and big data technologies like those he used and built at leading internet companies, including Omaze, Etsy, and Jet.com, to his clients. Nick is passionate about and skilled at building internal teams and transforming companies at various stages of growth into data-centric organizations. 

----more----

The full transcript for this episode is here:

Susan Finch (00:12):

Hey everybody, Susan Finch here, your host today for Sales Lead Management Radio. And I am excited because recently one of our hosts, Chris Beall on ConnectAndSell's Market Dominance Guys, had on his data concierge, Tom Zheng. And Tom talked about the reality of how data gets skewed. Well, I recently became aware of Nick Amabile and he is the owner and CEO, principal consultant of DAS42. And it's a US data analytics consulting firm that helps companies make better decisions faster. And that sounds like a tagline and a pitch. We're going to dive into really what that means. And it ties so closely into what Chris and Tom Jane did. I wanted to continue that conversation from a different perspective. Tom's a single practitioner, Nick has a full company that can help solve these issues. And so I want to talk about is the fact that your topics, I know some of your specialties are why data is a leading indicator for strategic decisions, right? And growth.

Nick Amabile (01:15):

Yep. Yeah, absolutely.

Susan Finch (01:17):

And I also want to talk about data chaos, so welcome Nick. I'm so glad that you're here to talk about all the parts and some of us just glaze over and we shouldn't because it's so important. And what I want to talk about is data starts out for most companies. It is with rare exception, even at enterprise level, I've seen it too many times and where people can't even answer the questions about their data and data chaos. So, in the beginning, you like to tell people, it's true. your data is fractured, it's barely usable, it's unstable, it's just a mess or it's all there and nobody knows how to interpret it. And what else happens? Oh, we can get it from so many sources. And it can't be merged or related or how do we put it into something that actually can give us an action plan?

Susan Finch (02:12):

And so time gets wasted. It's like, oh, let's compare this to this. And here's a report and answer that well, what did you really telling me? And what are you telling me versus what you're over there telling me. Even though you guys have the same numbers, you both have different agendas, even in the same company. And the reports, usually by the time you get to them all after they've waded through all this stuff, sorted it to make sense for them, put them at the advantage, looking like the hero, the data's old. And by then you're already behind the game, right? To react to it.

Nick Amabile (02:44):

Yep. A hundred percent and so first off, thanks Susan for having me, really excited to be here. But yeah, what you're describing is all too prevalent. Small companies, large companies, old companies, new companies, we've really seen it across the board. It doesn't matter the industry or anything else. I mean, I kind of joke a lot of times that what we do is get folks off of spreadsheets. There's nothing wrong with spreadsheets but to your point, data chaos is having many different sources of data, many different types of data that can't be related into a holistic picture of the business. And I've worked as a practitioner in the analytics industry for a long time, not just as a consultant, but also internally at companies and face a lot of the same challenges that we help customers solve a DAS42. And really what it is is if you ask 10 different people within a company, just some basic questions about the business, whether it's how many orders we got yesterday, how many customers do we have? Those types of basic questions you ask 10 different people, you get 10 different answers, right?

Nick Amabile (03:34):

And that there could be any number of reasons. A lot of it is, as you said, and perhaps an agenda with somebody sort of reshaping the data. But typically it's really just a lack of consistent definitions and agreed-upon definitions. I mean, there are lots of different ways to spin the yarn if you will, and kind of slice and dice data, but there's really typically no transparency around how people actually define revenue or customers or whatever it is. But that's a lot of the work that we do. There's a great technology out there for data analytics, a lot of modern cloud-based technology that we work with. But 99% of the problems that we see, the challenges that we see customers facing are more organizational and process-driven than technology. So that's what we do at the consulting firm at DAS42.

Susan Finch (04:10):

Okay. So let's take this back to a little more personal level.

Nick Amabile (04:13):

Sure.

Susan Finch (04:13):

You are the president, the founder, the CEO, you are the head honcho that made all this up and invited people to do this with you.

Nick Amabile (04:20):

That's right. Yes.

Susan Finch (04:20):

That's what it comes down to. At what point some of your earlier experiences earlier jobs, we're all pups and we get our first jobs that lead us to where we are, as we know we're the sum of our experiences. When did you know that you wanted to get into the data, the numbers, and you knew there was a problem to solve. Tell me about when that happened.

Nick Amabile (04:42):

Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, I started my career in economic consulting doing quantitative and econometric analysis for litigation and antitrust. And that was really interesting. I mean, I learned a whole ton about different things-

Susan Finch (04:54):

Playschool it for the audience.

Nick Amabile (04:55):

Yeah. Right, right. So basically what that is is somebody gets sued for price-fixing or collusion and things like that. If they're a mergers and acquisitions, that's illegal things, right. So there are lawyers involved, but there are also economists who are experts at sort of defining what markets are and how people can be competitive in markets and got to calculate damages for example, or all this kind of stuff, right? It was very interesting. And I realized in that job that there's... For example, if you work with a really big company, they'll just dump all their manufacturing data, their pricing data, their sales data, and they just dump it out to us and then we'd have to sort of make sense of it. We'd have to put it all together, we'd have to relate it to each other. We'd have to run a bunch of analysis on it.

Nick Amabile (05:37):

So there was both a technical component of dealing with this data at a technical level. And then there's also a business component about understanding this data means. How does it relate to what we're trying to achieve and what the business is trying to achieve? So that was a very early experience that got me really excited about just dealing with numbers, dealing with data, and helping businesses use data. I since, from the consulting firm that I started, I started moving on to different startups and technology companies. And so I was a little bit ahead of the curve in terms of using some of these more cloud-based tools, big data technologies, and things like that. And I faced these problems in my own career. I was the head of business intelligence at Jet.com, which is an e-commerce company that sold to Walmart. And we had the same exact problem.

Nick Amabile (06:17):

We couldn't figure out how many customers we had, how many orders we had. This guy had a different spreadsheet than this other person over here. And so it was very disparate and disjointed. And really that was the challenge. And I think we

In Susan and Paul Furiga's penultimate episode in this series, Paul reminds us that for many organizations, the overwhelming volume and variety of social media seems to create one of the biggest storytelling roadblocks imaginable. And, it also creates some of the best opportunities even though social media is a double-edged sword. In this episode, guest Paul Furiga answers the question of what comes first, a story or social media.

----more----

About Susan's Guest:

Paul Furiga is the president and chief storyteller at WordWrite, having founded the Pittsburgh-based PR and digital marketing agency nearly 20 years ago in a candy-striped bedroom before growing it into a perennially top-ranked firm. Paul, who was formerly a vice president at Ketchum Public Relations, was honored in 2013 with the Public Relations Society of America Pittsburgh chapter's Hall of Fame Award for his impact in the region.

Before that, Paul spent two decades as a journalist, covering it all, from Cincinnati City Hall to Congress and the White House, as well as serving as editor of the Pittsburgh Business Times. As you can imagine, he has some stories to tell.

Paul Furiga tells us to walk the toothpaste aisle of any large grocery store and you'll be confronted by a confusing reality asking yourself the question, "Aren't most of these toothpastes pretty much the same?" In this episode we learn how developing the story behind your story is the true secret sauce to power your business to new heights. But a consumer purchasing something is a completely different experience than an employee purchasing on behalf of the company they work for. The story we tell needs to take that into account and adjust accordingly or there will be a complete miss on addressing the needs of the B2B buyer.

----more----

About Susan's Guest:

Paul Furiga is the president and chief storyteller at WordWrite, having founded the Pittsburgh-based PR and digital marketing agency nearly 20 years ago in a candy-striped bedroom before growing it into a perennially top-ranked firm. Paul, who was formerly a vice president at Ketchum Public Relations, was honored in 2013 with the Public Relations Society of America Pittsburgh chapter's Hall of Fame Award for his impact in the region.

Before that, Paul spent two decades as a journalist, covering it all, from Cincinnati City Hall to Congress and the White House, as well as serving as editor of the Pittsburgh Business Times. As you can imagine, he has some stories to tell.

Here we are tackling chapter six of Paul Furiga's book, Finding Your Capital S Story." You need to know the answers to these questions before you can create your story. 

1. What is your organization's purpose?
2. What is the market demand for what your company does?
3. What competitive position distinguishes you from your competitors? What really sets you apart?
4. Who is your client? It's not everyone. AND where are they?  What communication channels do you use to sell your purpose or unique position? 
5. What is your call to action? Don't leave us flat. 

----more----

Listen to this episode and catch the previous ones in this series:

• Storytelling isn’t crap, it’s biology.
• Carl, Joe, the Monomyth, and Déjà vu
• Learn How to Tell Stories From Wanamaker and The Three Tenors
• Regularly Adjust Your Company’s Story to Stay Relevant and Interesting
• When you stray from your archetype your story falls apart

In this fifth chapter, Paul explores experiences that led him to focus on storytelling for companies as a career and a passion. We're going to dig into the story of his own company, explore the application of the principles that drive your Capital S Story, and meet some common heroes that we're going to refer to as archetypes. Paul Furiga is our guest as we continue the series with him. He says, "In most organizations, you're a Capital S Story and your brand are lonely souls living separate lives inside your organization, and they've probably never been introduced to each other. And your story should drive your brand. They should be connected." Tune in for the episode of Sales Lead Management Radio, "When you stray from your archetype your story falls apart."

----more----

About Susan's Guest:

Paul Furiga is the president and chief storyteller at WordWrite, having founded the Pittsburgh-based PR and digital marketing agency nearly 20 years ago in a candy-striped bedroom before growing it into a perennially top-ranked firm. Paul, who was formerly a vice president at Ketchum Public Relations, was honored in 2013 with the Public Relations Society of America Pittsburgh chapter's Hall of Fame Award for his impact in the region.

Before that, Paul spent two decades as a journalist, covering it all, from Cincinnati City Hall to Congress and the White House, as well as serving as editor of the Pittsburgh Business Times. As you can imagine, he has some stories to tell.

Susan's guest, Paul Furiga, author of Finding Your Capital S Story, opens this episode telling us, "In the old days before smartphones and Twitter, I would say that a small S story is something you read in the newspaper, and it's in the bottom of the birdcage tomorrow. Now we don't read newspapers that much anymore. What we do is we look at our Twitter feed and then we swipe that story away. So it's the same thing. The point is that the stories that we consume most of the time, don't rise to the level of answering the most important questions about your organization. That's why we created this term called the capital S Story. And the capital S Story is a story above all other stories that answer these questions. Why somebody would buy from you, work for you, invest in you, or partner with you.  These questions get to the very nature and character of your organization. And that's why your capital S Story is a story above all others.

Join them for a continuing discussion of why your story drives your brand.