Keep Sales Strong During Cut Backs

In this episode of "How To Sell More," host Mark Drager discusses B2B marketing with expert Pam Didner. She unpacks the complexities of Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) and their importance in aligning sales and marketing teams. Pam's approach simplifies the concept of what makes a lead truly valuable, highlighting its impact on team synergy and conversion success.

Key Takeaways:

• The critical role of well-defined MQLs in linking sales and marketing efforts.
• Strategies for crafting content that resonates with and nurtures potential leads.
• The importance of balancing comprehensive marketing strategies with personalized touches.

Pam brings a wealth of experience to our discussion, with over 20 years in various marketing roles. Not just an expert, Pam is a seasoned practitioner, the author of three books, and the voice behind the "B2B Marketing and More" podcast and YouTube channel. Her insights are invaluable for anyone in marketing, from beginners to veterans.

Links to This Episode

• Apple Podcast
• Spotify
• YouTube
• Audible

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Key Takeaways

• Understanding and Defining Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) - Clarity in Definitions: Emphasizing the importance of having a clear, unambiguous definition of what constitutes a marketing-qualified lead, to reduce contention between sales and marketing teams.
• Effective Use of Content in Sales and Marketing - Differentiating Content for Sales and Marketing: Recognizing that content needs differ between sales and marketing. Sales-centric content should be more tailored to immediate selling contexts, while marketing-centric content can be broader and more brand-focused.
• Balancing Scalable and Non-scalable Marketing Tactics - Understanding Scalability Limitations: Recognizing that while scalability is essential, it has its limits. Not all marketing tactics can be infinitely scaled, and there's a point of diminishing returns.

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Top 3 Reasons to Listen

Boosting Sales Effectiveness: Learn how a deeper understanding of marketing strategies can lead to more effective sales processes and outcomes.

Content is King: Uncover the secrets of creating compelling, sales-driven content that resonates with both sales teams and customers..

Understanding MQLs: Discover the importance of defining marketing qualified leads (MQLs) and how this can transform your lead conversion rates.

Follow Pam Didner on Social

Website: https://pamdidner.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pam_didner/?hl=es#

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/pamdidner

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pamdidner/

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More About Today's Guest, Pam Didner

B2B marketer, fractional CMO, speaker, writer, & podcaster

Pam Didner is a seasoned B2B Marketing Consultant with extensive experience in various corporate roles including finance, project management, and global marketing strategy. Her expertise lies in simplifying complex digital sales and marketing challenges and providing tailored solutions to B2B marketing issues. She offers services in speaking/training, strategic planning facilitation, marketing coaching, consulting, content creation, and serves as a fractional CMO. Pam's approach focuses on understanding client needs and forging connections for impactful business results in the B2B marketing landscape.

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A Transcription of The Talk

Mark Drager: So Pam, you have, I don't want to age you, but I would say that you have decades of experience in B2B marketing.

Pam Didner: It doesn't matter. You can age me; it's totally fine.

Mark Drager: You have decades of experience. But your experience has touched operations. It's touched marketing, sales teams, and senior leadership. And you and I were talking a little bit before we hit record about something that's happening in a really strange time right now. It's strange because, in some ways, there's this economic climate where businesses and leaders are very hesitant to invest in new things. Yeah. On top of that, there are massive restructurings and layoffs. So we're in this weird economic climate where everyone wants more—more sales, more leads, more revenue, more profits. We need to cut expenses, but we're also not going to make investments because we're not quite sure what's going to happen in the future. Yeah. And this leaves leaders, business owners, and teams with fewer resources but higher expectations.

Pam Didner: That's true everywhere.

Mark Drager: And you were telling me that you've kind of whipped up, with your decades of experience, a way that we can think about turning this around in 90 days. How, in just a few months, we can really look at our company, our teams, our structures, and, I guess, reboot how we go about sales?

Pam Didner: Yes. So, Mark, you are totally right; you hit the nail on the head with everything. The key thing right now is you have to deal with the cards you've been dealt. And if you have a smaller budget, you likely also have less headcount. Well, that's just the way it is, right? So instead of focusing on what you have lost, you need to look at what you can do more with the existing or scaled-back budget that you have. My recommendation is always to look inward. Like, if you have been with a company for a long period of time, you kind of know, because you're seasoned, you're senior, right? You've been in the job for a while; you kind of know what works and what doesn't. What you need to do is to be very focused and prioritize. Get together with your management, understand what their expectations are, and get together with your sales team to understand their needs. Also, understand within the existing team—who just might have been reduced—what they can and cannot do. Gather only the information that you need. Okay, then prioritize based on the existing budget and existing resources that you have, and then determine how you can support them. That's the key. So, do that first to get things going.

Pam Didner: If you're going through restructuring, everybody will be like, "Oh my God," kind of shocked. The people that are left in the team, you don't want to rock the boat. I completely understand that; I've been there. The key is to try to still get yourself in the zone, understand what you can do, and then take it from there.

Mark Drager: Two thoughts come to mind as you're describing this because I've been in these types of meetings many times. First, shouldn't these types of check-ins and objective views between leadership, sales, marketing, advertising, and so on, be happening anyway? Even if there's not a downsizing?

Pam Didner: Yes, they should. But a lot of companies may not be completely aligned if you will. That's why they are still talking about sales and marketing alignment. Also, you have to understand a lot of people who were let go and take a lot of tribal knowledge with them. And a lot of support—say, you've been supporting sales for a long period of time—but that person left, then all of a sudden, a lot of tasks are stalled; they don't get done. So even if there was great marketing alignment and collaboration with the people who were supposed to do a job, they may not be there anymore. So things get stalled. Then you have to think about all those tasks that are currently stalling. What should you do about them? Are you going to prioritize them, outsource them, or deprioritize and say, "This is not our focus at this time"?

Mark Drager: And I have to imagine that asking your existing team to try and figure out in this new state, how we are going to do more with less while they've just watched all of their colleagues, friends, and departments get decimated... How do we help with the morale in this situation? Is that even relevant? Or is this like, let's just be objective and strategic and not worry about emotion?

Pam Didner: You know, that's a great question. I've been in that situation many times, especially working in the tech and tech stack segments. You have the booms, you have the busts, it's just the way it is. In the past 20 years, we've seen it all. And if you were the lucky ones, you got let go.

Mark Drager: Lucky ones to go. Now, let's...

Pam Didner: Fix all this. Yes. And a lot of the time, you need to go through that emotion; it's kind of like a grieving process. It also depends on the company. Some companies acknowledge the problem, and HR will help employees go through that. But there are some companies that are pretty tough, like, 'This is the way it is. The company's not doing well; we have to make these hard decisions.' So let's just move on. It depends on the company, depending on the culture. But as a person, obviously, the emotion is raw, and you feel it. When I've had to lay people off, I always suggest to those who report to me to take care of our team. Have conversations, be frank and transparent about what is going on, and what we can do. I think it's up to the leader to take that emotional challenge into consideration and build up the morale again to move things forward. But some leaders don't necessarily make that their focus. So, unfortunately, it depends on the company.

Mark Drager: As you described, being able to call everyone together, look at our resources, strategy, goals, objectives, our sales team, our marketing team, and the headcount and knowledge we have... I always bump up against this because I'm a visionary entrepreneur. I have conversations with my CEO all the time. And he always goes, 'Mark, we should work with what our team is capable of.' And I always say, 'No, I'm not going to accept that. I have higher expectations than that.'

Pam Didner: You want to push everyone out of their comfort zones. I get that.

Mark Drager: And so there seems to always be this gap between expectations, especially if we're reporting to leaders, or we have clients, or we have people in our lives who just don't understand how complex some of this is, how much time it takes, how much money it takes. As we're working with people through this reassessment of exactly what is possible, how much are we right-sizing this to the team? Or how much should we be? And how do we manage those differences between expectations that might be much higher than what our current resources are actually capable of delivering?

Pam Didner: That is a great question. In fact, I'm facing that challenge with a client of mine right now. They are planning for 2024, and the marketing team is asking for an incremental budget. Obviously, the CEO and CFO are hesitant, considering the uncertain economic situation in 2024. They're not sure they can allocate this budget, but at the same time, they want us to increase the number of leads for next year. More leads...

Mark Drager: I mean, we're aiming for ideally higher quality leads.

Pam Didner: Oh yeah, tell me about it. Exactly. The quality cannot suffer, no way. Right. A lot of that question, from my perspective, is dollars and cents. If the marketing team has been pretty good at attracting cost per lead in the past several years, they know how much it costs to bring in high-quality leads. It's a cost-per-lead issue at the end of the day; it's a money and cents discussion, period. Right? There's always a challenge, and the marketing team will say, 'Well, look at this data, we were able to drive the cost per lead down actually steadily in the past few years, but we feel that we've hit a plateau and this is how much it's probably going to cost. Anything lower than that, the quality is going to suffer.' Even with that kind of discussion, management is probably not listening. They still say, 'Okay, that costs too much per lead. I want you to bring that down more while also bringing the number of leads up.' So there's always an impasse when you start talking about this, always the impasse between the doers and, I hate saying this, the management and so forth. But you know what I'm talking about, right? So, at the end of the day, it's a compromise. Right? So, fine, the marketing team is asking for $1.7 million, which is a 30% increase from last year. With that, they are willing to hit more than 50% of the leads. So, a 30% increase for 50% more leads. But management says, 'Well, no, that's way too much of an increase in terms of budget, but I still want to hit the 50%.' And then there's negotiation; what kind of compromise you're going to hit. That's really the bottom line. The marketing team has to be comfortable taking the goal. And what we end up doing is we take on a stretch goal, right? So we still maintain the existing budget, take on additional LI but make that a stretch goal. So there are two goals that we are going after one is the existing goals, slightly higher than what we're going to do next year, and then is the stretch goal.

Mark Drager: When there's a situation like this, I think it's quite common for most leaders to look at top-of-funnel activities. That's true and tend to ignore sales enablement, working old leads, dead leads, referrals, and word of mouth. A lot of businesses let a lot of business slide, so focused on the new lead or the new sale, and they're completely ignoring account management, customer service, win-backs, whatever it might be. I love that term, win-back. When you're sitting down with these leaders or when those of us are negotiating through these strategies, should we be focused on other areas of sales as well? I feel like we should.

Pam Didner: We should, Mark, I 100% agree. There are so many areas you can focus on. If you look at the purchase funnel, marketing tends to focus on bringing new leads into the funnel. But not every single one of them will convert as you move down the purchase funnel. You brought up a very good point about accounts that have several touchpoints, or we've talked to them several times, but somehow the lead went dead or lost traction. Should we look into those accounts, and warm them up? And you brought up a very good point in terms of win-back campaigns. Win-back campaigns usually involve looking at existing accounts that haven't engaged with us or have been dormant for a while to see if we can wake them up. With that being said, there are other campaigns you can take a look at. What I usually suggest to my clients is we need to combine both. There are certain campaigns you run focused on bringing in new leads, but you don't do those campaigns every single quarter. You have to mix and match. Maybe for Q1 and Q2, bring in new leads. But maybe at the end of Q2 or the beginning of Q3, let's focus on dormant accounts, let's do win-back campaigns. So, it's a combination of both. That's helpful. You take into account the broader awareness and the new leads you need to bring in. But at the same time, if you bring enough leads in and the conversion rate is not high, then you need to start looking at existing accounts and see if there's anything you can do to bend the odds in your favor. That's how I see it.

Mark Drager: I love it. And with your experience in marketing, especially in B2B, I want to throw this line at you, get your gut reaction to it. Now, this isn't a hard one. But this is something that I've been rolling around in my head for quite some time. I was at a conference a few years ago, and I was listening to someone who had built a really large education business, got a television show, nice, did a few seasons of TV. He was talking about the success of doing these road tours where he would visit towns and roadshows. He did a roadshow, his business was blowing up with traditional digital marketing. The most interesting takeaway from him was this: he said, 'My business really changed when I started focusing on non-scalable tactics.' Non-scalable tactics like going on this roadshow are not scalable. It's a lot of his time. Being on the TV show is not scalable. He leads education sessions where he's on one-on-one calls with people, not scalable. Obviously, if you're working in an organization with 3,000, 10,000, or 65,000 staff, you want some pretty scalable activities. But if you're working in a small or medium-sized business, I often think people get distracted by trying to create version one of something to be infinitely scalable and ignore all the non-scalable activities in front of them. How does that hit you with the experience you've had in B2B?

Pam Didner: I'd like to address that in terms of workflow and automation. Right. So, on the B2B side, events are not very scalable. How many events can you do? There are only so many events you can attend 365 days a year. But if you send out emails, assuming you don't get penalized by Google, you can send an unlimited number of emails out. Again, assuming you don't get penalized.

Mark Drager: Assuming you have a warm list, yeah.

Pam Didner: So, with marketing channels, you always need to think through what is effective. And that differs from account to account, company to company. I worked with a client where email marketing works the best for them. The people they reach out to are viewing the edge. Those scientists read every single email they get. Email still works for them. You think I'm kidding? I'm not. But I also worked for a client where webinars are super effective in getting leads for them. Email marketing, for them, got poor conversion rates.

Mark Drager: Okay, so are those live webinars? Or did they automate this?

Pam Didner: That's a great question. They automate the process; they do monthly webinars. So they have an automated process in place.

Mark Drager: So actual real-time, but not live webinars?

Pam Didner: It's a recorded webinar. The problem with real-time or live webinars is there are too many factors where things can go wrong. In a way, you're putting on a live show. The Wi-Fi may go down, my mic might not work, or the lighting just isn't right.

Mark Drager: For the listeners, Pam is literally glowing.

Pam Didner: I actually thought this was a video recording. I have this rim light in front of me to make me look gorgeous. I just want everybody to know.

Mark Drager: I would say something complimentary, but my wife will get mad.

Pam Didner: Being able to process something you can automate helps build scalability. But scale is not limitless. At some point, there's a diminishing rate of return. Like, you can't do an infinite number of webinars, right? That's a diminishing return. But if you find the optimal frequency, do it every month, and you still get the number of attendees and leads you need. Great. When you're looking for scalability, you also have to tie it with what is the optimal frequency. It's not about scaling up to the sky; it's about finding what works best for you.

Mark Drager: That's great advice. And, you know, anyone who's tried to scale a Facebook campaign, digital campaign, or oversaturated an offer or audience, right, or allowed creative to stay in the market maybe just a little too long, it starts to fatigue. I remember having conversations with leaders where they're like, 'What's this ad fatigue you're talking about?' It's like, well, you can't show the same thing to the same people so many times. And so, gosh, these are all amazing points. So as you've been alluding to, you do have this 90-Day Revenue Reboot. We don't typically do pitches, but I am interested in knowing who is this for. What is it about? And how does it help?

Pam Didner: Yeah, so I created a program based on my experience working with many B2B companies over the past 10-15 years. This specific program is called 90-Day Revenue Reboot. It's really a sprint over a three-month timeframe. I know a lot of marketing organizations underwent massive layoffs, and a lot of things got stopped, or they aren't doing things that usually push leads regularly, and it's being stalled. The 90 Day Reboot works with marketing organizations currently undergoing massive changes, to see if we can work together, be very focused, and create a plan to rejuvenate and revive your marketing efforts.

Mark Drager: And if someone's listening to this and thinks, 'Oh, geez, that's me,' what company sizes or team structures do you typically work with?

Pam Didner: That's a very good question. Generally, it's usually midsize companies, and sometimes start-ups as well, because they can still benefit. And now they're like, 'Oh my God, I need to do something about it.' But you can't hire a lot of people back right away. So they try to rebuild a team to the point that they cut too deep, and I work with that too. So I would say start-ups to midsize companies, sometimes I work with enterprises that are just looking to tweak their marketing plan, and then see what else we can do to support that. Like I said, a lot of the time, I'm in the trenches. Although I'm a consultant, I'm a doer, working with the team and getting things done.

Mark Drager: What would be the top two or three things that you just see time and time again in your line of work?

Pam Didner: I would say a couple of things I've seen consistently. First, there's often a lack of a clear definition of MQL, which is marketing qualified leads. There's always contention between sales and marketing, like 'this is not a high-quality lead' and the marketing side worked very hard to get this lead. That contention is really about the definition of the MQL. Can you make it so clear and crisp that there's no dispute between sales and marketing? That's number one. Number two, I've seen a lot of times still content. The best way for salespeople to talk to any prospect or existing account is they share content. 'Hey, this is what people we did,' or 'Hey, this is the next generation of technology.' So, you kind of use content as the conversation opener to engage or re-engage with your prospects or existing customers. The marketing people need to understand that the content needed on the sales side is a bit different than the marketing-centric content. Sales-centric content and marketing-centric content are slightly different. You can't just create a list of marketing content and throw it over the wall to the sales side and say 'Use it.' You need to categorize it in a way that salespeople can understand.

Mark Drager: That's amazing. I was reading... Gosh, what was it... I was deep-diving into music history. I'm not a musician but for some reason...

Pam Didner: I spent a lot of time on the road or like, what?

Mark Drager: Like all of it, like, you know, the Beatles and The Beach Boys and all of the 60s. But I was reading about this recording technology that came out in the early 90s that allowed independent people to record multitrack onto SVHS tapes. And Alanis Morrissette's album, 'Jagged Little Pill,' was basically the only album to ever be recorded on this. However, I found the original marketing materials for these ADAT recorders. As I was reading it, I was like, 'Wow, it is so benefit-heavy and feature-heavy.' But as I was reading it, I was getting sucked in by these technical terms. I was like, 'Damn, I need to get one of these ADAT recorders from 30 years ago.' And I was marvelling at it. I don't think we write copy like this anymore. As you were describing the sales enablement tools, I was thinking this is what, back in 1993-94, everything was sold through distributors and salespeople. They made stuff to be able to sell the products, and we need more of that again.

Pam Didner: That's right. I hear you. I think nowadays, because of social media and also our attention span has been diminished dramatically. In the past, you would look at a template and read it, take your time to read it, and you'd say, 'Oh yeah, that makes sense. Maybe I should read a little bit more.' Now we don't do that. We just don't grab the template and read it. We look at it like, 'Oh, TikTok. Oh, 10 seconds. Oh, no, this is not good enough. Let me look at another video.' So our attention span has reduced so dramatically to the point that we dumb everything down. You have to dumb it down.

Mark Drager: Do you have to? I don't know. How can we start? Can we start a smart people revolution? Can we change the world and bring back actual information and details and teach people stuff?

Pam Didner: I don't know, I can't tell you. I can. The way I see it, for example, if you need to learn how to be a B2B marketer, you need to know how to think. You need to know how to think strategically and critically. The thinking process itself can be taught, but you need time to think. When I do workshops, I always tell my attendees, 'Come, think with me. Put your phone down, everything down. I'm going to make this workshop super fun. But you need to stay with me the whole time.' And I did not dumb it down. I make complex concepts simple to explain, but I don't dumb down my teaching materials. You have to make it fun to catch people's attention so they can stay with you the whole time. And that's very hard to do nowadays. So, do we have to dumb it down? Well, it depends. But for anyone out there who wants to learn a certain skill set, you have to put in the time. That cannot be dumbed down.

Mark Drager: I'm actually really encouraged by this. For those of us, like you or myself or anyone listening right now, if you're taking the time to dig into these things, and everyone else is being spoon-fed and wants everything easy, I think the gap between us ambitious marketers, salespeople, and leaders will continue to grow. So, I feel like I'm on the right side of history on that one.

Pam Didner: I agree with you to some extent until AI comes along.

Mark Drager: That's for the next time I bring you on. We'll talk about AI. But Pam, you've been so amazing. Thank you for sharing all of this wealth of information, which is great. I do have one last question for you, and I end every podcast this way. What is your number one tip or strategy to help us sell more?

Pam Didner: Oh, great question. I think the most important thing, and I only have one, is to understand your customers deeply. You cannot sell unless you understand your customers, their wants, their needs, their aspirations, and their desires. Understand them deeply.