Goodbye Traditional Outbound, Hello Hyper-Personalized Content
Sarah Cascone, VP of Marketing at Bluecore, shares why she believes traditional outbound is fading away and how marketing is all about curating hyper-personalized content.
[MUSIC]
Welcome to Pipeline Visionary.
So I'm the amazing CEO of Caspian Studios.
And today I'm joined by a special guest, Sarah, how are you?
>> I'm good, Ian.
How are you?
>> I'm doing wonderful, excited to chat.
Marketing, excited to chat.
Demand, pipeline, all that stuff, your background.
And we're going to get into all that and what you're doing in Bluecorps.
So tell us, what was your first job of marketing?
>> Yeah, so first job I actually did events for a market research company
called
Worldwide Business Research.
They actually put on conferences in a whole bunch of different industries and
retail.
And in retail, they had a flagship couple of shows.
That's actually how I ended up finding the job at Bluecorps because Bluecorps
was one
of the sponsors of their retail conferences.
So came full circle.
>> Yeah, no kidding.
And flash forward to today, tell us what it means to be VP of Marketing in Blue
corps.
>> Yeah, loaded question.
But basically what we're trying to do and what I'm trying to do is make sure
our target
market knows who Bluecorps is and why we're different.
And especially in our market serving retail from the marketing lens,
it's extremely saturated.
So Bluecorps is an identification and customer movement solution for retailers.
And what that means is we help them turn their anonymous shoppers into known
customers
and move them through the purchase funnel with relevant comms to drive
incremental revenue
more effectively than any other customer data solution in the retail stack.
So really making sure we drive that message home and understand what's
different about the way
we do it is basically my job.
>> Let's head to the trust tree where we go and feel honest and trusted and you
can share
those deepest, darkest, pipeline secrets.
You talked a little bit about Bluecorps, what y'all do, where some of your
customers,
what types of companies and size of companies within retail are you selling to?
>> Yeah, so we exclusively work with enterprise and high growth director
consumer retailers.
So normally those who are doing a large chunk of their revenue coming from e-
commerce
and they have a pretty extensive product catalog and a pretty extensive
customer base.
Those two components together make it really complex to be able to communicate
relevant products
to customers.
And that's essentially the core of what we're helping them do to drive revenue.
>> Right.
And so these are a lot of names that people know. Steve Madden and people.
>> Yeah, Matt and Nike and Under Armour and Lulu and Georgia and Noble.
So Aloe Yoga is another one. A lot of those household names for sure.
>> What does the buying committee look like for when you're selling in?
>> Buying committee is typically the CMO or the CDO or so the chief marketing
officer or the chief
digital officer depending on who owns what channels usually the buyers are
responsible for email
or site or even the paid media channels. And there's usually strong influence
from the CIO
or the CTO and the tech side of the organization who are trying to manage and
wrangle the massive
tech stacks that these enterprise organizations have.
>> How do you structure your marketing organization? What's your marketing
strategy look like?
>> Yeah, great question. So we actually just kind of
rejig this about six months ago to really match our org structure to the
strategy that we set
out to do for a marketing team. >> Perfect time to talk about it.
>> Perfect time. It's fresh in my mind. So we basically have organic growth,
which is content,
thought leadership and PR. Then we have marketing ops, which is where all of
that gets distributed
channels paid, reporting, understanding what's working, what's not.
Field marketing, very important to us. That's where we do in market events,
conferences,
our community events. And then we also have an account based experiences arm,
which is basically
our version of an outbound SDR team that is very plugged into the other levers
I just mentioned
and doing one to one personal outreach and also leveraging a lot of the gen AI
tech that's out there.
>> Very cool. Any other thoughts on strategy or how you go to market there?
>> Yes. So our strategy essentially is to become known, respected and trusted
within our target
market. And the underpinning of that is actually what our CMO has coined, the
relationship demand
gen chain for turning overall demand generation into account conversion and
pipeline essentially.
And there's four main points in that demand gen chain. The first is the points
of view.
This is where my organic growth content, the leadership folks come in. This is
where we're
educating the market on our unique point of view on the problems that they're
looking to solve
through the lens of our key opinion leaders. So the retail experts that have
lived in
reads what our prospects and customers are going through. They work for Blue
core. That point of
view is coming through. Then there's points of entry, which is a lot of where
the demand gen and
the marketing ops team comes in, how we are engaging with that target audience
through the
various channels. We have a much heavier focus now here on LinkedIn and PR.
Then there's points of
leverage, which is anchored by the field and events team. We have a series of
events activations
that brings our target into our retail specific community, allows us to organ
ically access the
various personas, specifically the VP and above decision makers that we need to
get to in the sales
conversations within the buyer group. And then there's the points of conversion
, which is where
the AVX, the account based experiences team comes in. They're essentially the l
inchpin for moving
our targets along from points of entry and points of leverage, then into
meetings for the sales team.
So that's like essentially our funnel. Going from points of view, points of
entry, points of
leverage to points of conversion, that turns into pipeline. And we're measuring
everything along
that relationship to man, gen chain as we're calling it. I love that
relationship to man, gen
chain. That's a, that's a new one. And I really like it. You talked about pre
them raising their
hand and saying like, Hey, I think I need a solution for this. How do you think
of engaging
those folks that are ready yet to buy? Yeah, such a great question. And that's
where the
points of leverage in the events and community really come in handy. Because we
do recognize
that there are other outside factors impacting the urgency with which they want
to top them us
or don't want to talk to us. They might not be ready to buy. They might not be
in market.
So that is where this events and community programs come in handy because we
can keep them warm. We
can keep them part of the community that we built so that when they are ready,
it makes it really
easy for them to then have a conversation with us. That is how we develop that
overall respect
and trust to be earned to bring them into the pipeline. Okay, let's get to our
next site with
the playbook where you open up to a playbook and talk about the tactics that
help you win.
What are your three channels of tactics that are your uncuttable budget?
Yes, such a good question, especially now where marketing budgets are getting
tighter and tighter
and you really have to prove out value. So I would say the three channels or
tactics that are most
uncuttable for us right now is that field events and community budget. Then we
also have our
referrals tactics and strategy and then our LinkedIn stretch. Yeah, let's start
with community.
Okay, so community is actually something we started investing in right before
COVID and it's become
such an important major part of our strategy with the technology so saturated
in our space
and the fact that we're retail specific building a community around what we
stand for.
And I believe this for any vertical, any company, this is going to become more
and more important
when people are buying technology. People buy from people, not companies. It's
easy to walk
away from a tech vendor, but it's a lot harder to walk away from a community
that is anchored
with that tech partner. And in our community, we are not only providing a point
of view on the
most pressing challenges our market faces, we developed a referral network out
of it. And we're
also using it as a way to help individuals in the community find their next
role or if they,
you know, we're part of layoffs, which has happened a lot, especially in the
retail industry,
help them connect with other leaders to find a better fit. For us specifically,
we have two
pillars of the community, our executive community, which is BP and above. It's
called D to C collective,
the direct to consumer collective. And then we have coffee and commerce, which
is a little bit
more casual. Both of those we do discussions monthly. We try to bring in the
experts,
we try to bring in thought leaders. So we're always having some diversity of
thought there
and making sure we're talking about what's top of mind for the individuals in
the community.
Yeah, and what are like the different levers that you're sort of using within
the community?
What are these events look like? Yeah, so they are primarily virtual digital
discussions that
happen monthly. And the format does change where some of them are more open
discussion,
round table like some of them are, we're going to deliver some unique insights
or content that
you can kind of take back to your team. And then we do have once in a while, we
bring them in person.
So for example, we actually have one of our, I think it's our second in person
D to C collective
of the year next week for bringing a bunch of VP and C suite leaders across the
commerce and
retail organization to talk about composable commerce. This is becoming a
really hot topic
with them. So that's normally how we leverage them. And what's really great
about these community
events is that they sit in between all of the other conferences and in market
events that we are
doing, whether it's an email or a commerce next or an NRF. These are some of
the events in our
space that we go to. We have community events sprinkled in between those. So we
always have
something to drive our target market to that's not take a sales call with core,
because when
they're ready, they'll take a sales call, but we want to keep the conversation
going in a way that's
organic and beneficial to them. And that's why community is so important. Yeah,
I love it. And
I love that these are both series. So like, I, you know, we just wrote this
book. So I'll call
the sheer last content framework. One of the things we're talking about there
is like building an
event series that has a brand. And like, I love that the D to C collective for
this VP level
community that has a little brand, it has established 2020 on there. It has
this thing that y'all are
doing next next week dinner prepared by chef Lane Carnes, you know, all this
stuff. It's really cool.
It feels premium. It feels very executive. And it's branded and it has like a
feel to it that
feels unique. And it's ongoing. And it's, you know, and it's something that the
people can sink their
teeth into. And I think that so often people don't do that. And they sort of
make an event series
that's sort of just like a bunch of one off things that you're not really like
joining and
subscribing. So like there's some sort of tether there. And then there doesn't
have like a what's
next. It's like, Hey, well, what's next is in a quarter, we're gonna do another
one of these.
And I just love that y'all are doing that. And then you have, you also have the
coffee and commerce
one for the non sort of executive level, where it doesn't need to be quite the
exact same type of
a thing. And it's just varied and nuanced. And I love that sort of stuff. For
sure. Yeah. And I
appreciate it. And you know, it wasn't overnight. It took us a couple of years
and like test and
learn to understand how do we build this thing in a way that's really organic.
And I think
one thing that's helped us do that is we kind of seeded like members, if you
will, from the beginning
for their input on what they would want to see in a community. And we bring
them into like,
what is the content and who are the people you need to be talking to to make
better decisions in
your role. And now that's become just like on organic part of how we roll out
events, how we decide
topics. And we know it's working because we always have new people attending,
but we always have
repeat members coming back, which is so great. Because that tells us the
content is valuable.
We're constantly trying to get feedback from them as far as what else do they
need. And
it's been really fun to watch it grow. Shameless plug, we are hiring a
community manager. So
there you go. We need to help scale it and make sure we support the community.
Yeah, it's interesting to hear you say this. Essentially, if you were to say
sort of like,
what's your event strategy that basically there's this like owned events piece
and then the,
you know, industry events piece and that they go hand in hand. But there's, but
if you were to
look at it like holistically, it's like, there is basically an in-person event.
I mean, I don't
know if it's every month, but more or less, like every month that someone in
your community could,
you know, could go to. And I think that that's just such a good way of thinking
about it.
Like we always think about things in terms like content calendars and stuff
like that, or like,
hey, we're going to hit this one event this year, like super hard. And that's
going to be our
temple thing. But you need those other things throughout the year to keep the
conversation going.
Like you said, 100%. Yeah, we try and hit all of the most saturated areas in
the country where
our targets are based. So you'll see like even the women in retail event, we
just did a Pittsburgh
and a Columbus event. Both of those are hotbeds for retailers. You've got, you
've got Dick sporting
goods, an Aryan American Eagle in a Pittsburgh, and you've got the Asina brands
, a Victoria's
Secret, and all of these other brands in Columbus. So we want to make it easy
for these leaders to
come and join us. So we do try and make sure we have events scattered in our
top markets,
which is usually, you know, New York, California, those cities I mentioned,
making sure we're not
kind of skipping over everyone, especially because we recognize that budgets
are tight.
Not everyone has travel budgets. We want to make sure we can go to them. That's
another reason
to a lot of our community events are virtual. We want to make it really easy to
pop in and out
between meetings. And we do have the in person options as well, because there's
no denying
the value of an in-person connection. Well, you know, I think that the question
there is,
there's no, nobody is denying it. But the CFOs are questioning the R a lot. And
like, that's the
that's the tricky part that I think we're all in where it's like, in a
constrained environment,
it's like where you can't be everywhere and you can't do that stuff. But you
know that having in-person
conversations and getting your customers together is also like another part of
that. That's like
at mission critical, right? Like getting your customers talking and getting
them talking with
prospects is like mission critical. It's like, how do you do that and how do
you budget it and all
that? That's why I think that the blend of having your own events, at least you
control all the
variables and having a digital presence and having in person. And there's ways
to get creative with
that and partner with people. But it is a lot of time. It's a lot of people's
time to build that.
It is. So yeah, having that variety of options is huge. We also budget for
covering things like
travel for not just our customers, but prospects also recognizing that even if
they do have
the time, they might not have the budget resources. So that's another thing we
try and help out
so that they can connect with the community. We can connect with that.
Does it fit in demand? Does community fit somewhere else?
So it's a good question because it's kind of demand, but it's also nurturing at
the same time.
The way the relationship demand gen flows, it starts with this organic growth,
the content thought leadership, marketing ops and demand gen is like the
digital distribution and
also the halo effect for the events. And then the events kind of sits in
between where, yes,
it's also driving some of the top of funnel awareness, but it's also driving
that consistent
engagement and nurturing that builds that respect for who we are, the community
that earns us the
right to have a sales conversation that earns the right for the ABX team to
reach out to them,
and they'll actually listen and respond and be open to a call.
Yeah, my issue as, you know, as why this, I think field has been, field has
been flawed.
It should be a blog post for a long time is like someone goes to your event
that's not elite,
right? Like that's part of the problem is like it's not elite. Them going, them
wanting to hang out
with their peers and get a cocktail, like does not mean that they're interested
in your product.
So it was always kind of silly that field kind of fall under demand for me. I
totally get why
I'm not saying it shouldn't live under demand, but I just think of like, you
know, structurally,
it's a little weird. It paints a photo here where it's like community, like
community events being
one thing, but like webinars would be a demand for you know what I mean? It's
like, but what's
the different kind of thing? Yeah. Well, and we've spent a lot of time on the
marketing team,
kind of breaking that down from a measurement standpoint and what makes logical
sense. And,
you know, we've done a lot of scoring models and what, you know, what different
types of engagement
are worse and, you know, attending a webinar has a slightly different weight
than having a 30
minute conversation at an event dinner or something like that. So those are
nuances that we build
into how we've measured success of this strategy to make sure to your point, we
are looking at
the strong strongest buying signals and that's who are driving towards sales
pipeline.
Love it. And then your other uncutables, I don't know if you want to add any
flavor.
Yeah. Yeah. I'll add referrals is one and that's very related to community. And
the reality is most, at least in the retail marketing space, and I would say
this is true
in any space of anybody buying technology, they're looking to their peers when
they're evaluating
solutions and they're looking for recommendations. I think gone are the days of
like,
yes, there's a place for like G2 crowd and the forest reports and things like
that. But those
are small signals. People trust their peer network. So out of the community for
us has sprung an
organic or sorrow program where we have customers or industry influencers who
know us well, they
they've used our platform, they understand the value and they're willing to
introduce us to the
people who are trying to solve the problems that we solve for. And that
requires nurturing
on our end to make sure we make it really easy for those referrers to walk us
into certain
conversations. And that's another place where we've become respected enough
that we're trusted
to have that conversation. Let me just add real quick onto that. I think that
we did a really
good episode about analyst relations. And I think that my piece on sort of the,
and we've done a
bunch of great episodes with both GTUN and trust radius. So I think that there
's a ton of value in
those two things for sure. I think that they get you on the slide. Like that's
what's so
valuable is like you, if you're in the correct quadrant or if your G2 ratings
are really high,
or you win a bunch of things that way, it will get you on the slide in front of
the CFO, you know,
and say like, Hey, well, why was like, who's at the top right, you know, or
whatever, that'll get
you on the slide, which is great if you have that motion. But at the end of the
day, like you said,
what's going to fast track you from nobody even, you know, caring at all to
like, Hey, my pal uses
this, they said it's awesome. Here's their case study of how they actually did
it in their company
and how they're getting value, like from my friend, by the way, with with all
the wink, wink, nudge,
nudge stuff, like they can give me the real real about this whole thing. That's
way more value.
Totally. Yeah. And there is a place for analyst relations and there is that
validation. And
there's other ways in which that we have looked at analyst relations to like,
they have a lot of
free reports like the total economic impact report where they literally dig
into your business,
and they evaluate literally the total economic impact, not just revenue, but
time savings and
operationally what that looks like. And those are the type of things that help
with the conversations.
But to your point, when we think about accelerating, getting in the door with
the decision makers,
those referrals are like second to nine. Yeah, we had some metrophuros on the
show a long time ago.
He was like, we were talking and he was like, I will never, he's like, I will
never get a referral
and just ignore it. Like if one of my friends says, Hey, you should check this
out. We use it.
And it's awesome. He's like, I will always look. That's never, I'm never going
to delete the text.
I'm never going to, you know, delete the email. I'm going to, I'm going to go
check it out. And
I'm probably going to take a call because I trust my friends. And like, that is
the difference,
right? If an analyst tells you to do that, you're like, Oh, great, that'll be
good ammo to when I
to convince my CFO that we need to make this investment. You know what I mean?
Yes. Exactly.
Well said for sure. Okay. Third. So this is what I have less to say about
because we're testing it,
but I have a, this is to me like untapped potential. It's LinkedIn, like paid
and organic LinkedIn,
because this is where the decision makers are. And just like Twitter and
Instagram have become
so bingeable for the audiences that are on there, there's an opportunity to do
the same
with LinkedIn. All of our decision makers are on there. They're posting. They
're looking for
they're recruiting and they're looking for jobs, whatever it is. And the
content on there is kind
of hit or miss. So this to me is where we are going to start elevating our
internal retail experts
and our key opinion leaders to drive that top of funnel awareness, drive that,
that known,
respected, trusted relationship, demand, chain motion. So I'm excited to team
what to see what my
team and I kind of do with that over the next six months or so.
I love it. That is awesome. I wholeheartedly agree. We do the same thing in C
aspian. We've been,
we actually, I got that advice on the show and I can't remember who it was. But
we've been running
LinkedIn ads in concert with organic from my page for a while. And using like
our podcasts,
stuff like that in different clips and all sorts of different stuff there. But
yeah,
I know it's, it like absolutely works. Like it provides a really nice halo and
like you hear,
like, because we had, you know, we produce like 65 different shows. So we run
this play for a
lot of people. And when you give and a subject matter expert, especially
someone on your internal
team, something like a series or a podcast or whatever, an event series that
they're hosting,
they get hit up all the time when they go to events and stuff like that and go
like,
Oh, you're the podcast guy or like, you know, like, oh, yeah, like I saw, you
know, whoever was on your
show and nobody, they're like, those didn't show up in the comments. Those didn
't show up in the,
you know, in the clicks, it's just those people that LinkedIn just favors
getting thought leadership
from human beings out in front of their peers. And that's the way the algorithm
works. And if
you're making good stuff, like they accelerate that, if you make bad stuff, you
see your posts,
they don't do as well. And it's like an absolute winning strategy. And if you
combine that with
paid, and then you can sort of follow them all around LinkedIn, it's like it
works crazy well.
And LinkedIn adds are crazy expensive too. So there's a downside to it, but the
organic stuff is,
is really nice. Right. And for us, I think like, if we feel really strongly
about the content
that leadership are putting out, like we're going to risk the dollars because
to your point, we
think the reach would be exponential if we get some of the LinkedIn ad units
are really good.
Some are kind of funky, especially the ones that are like the top right unit on
desktop.
Those ones are kind of weird. We've seen mixed results with that. But some of
the other ad units
are so, so good. I talked to we recently had Clary on the podcast. I was
talking about
how their ads have seen them for so long. And they just stand out and they pop
and it's like
unmissable, right? And if you tell the right story, like you will get the view,
you will get the
impression and it's really good. Whereas there's just other places where you
can serve ads where
it might not be the case. Yeah, it's funny. Clary came up when we were looking
at like,
who were the B2B companies that are doing this really well? Clary was when that
came up as we're
looking at like, what do we want to test here? So yeah, it's funny. The fact
that you saw it,
like they're doing it right. Yeah, we are. That's like, everybody knows the Run
Revenue campaign.
They're like, great to hear. Awesome. Yeah, but I totally agree. I mean, like,
so many people on LinkedIn and so many executives, like you said, it's just
from a recruiting
standpoint, from a thought leadership standpoint, they know they need to like,
get information out there in front of people to build their teams to do all
that stuff,
how you build your career now, you know, agreed. So yeah, those are my
incredible events community referrals LinkedIn. Okay, what about something that
maybe is not
working or fading away or just something that you don't want to invest in next
year?
So this is, I think traditional outbound is fading away. That is why our, we've
kind of pivoted our
entire SDR team into this ABX account based experiences role. This goes back to
in enterprise,
where tech solutions are oversaturated. Most prospects are not buying from just
like a cold call
or a cold email. So the way we kind of integrate the SDRs and the AVX team
really is what they are
into that relationship demand gen chain totally elevates their value because we
're becoming known
and respected in all of the activities we're doing between thought leadership
events and community,
which gives them the ability and the time to curate their outreach based on the
very specific
research they're doing on the specific company so that they can speak to
exactly what the person
that they're going to email is is feeling the pain that they're feeling who, if
we're doing our
job right, has heard our point of view all along has been part of our community
. Now they want to
take a call with us. So it becomes so much more about the individual contact
and individual company
that they work at and how that AVX team is able to curate it to speak directly
to them after they've
had all this contacts from us in the upfront top of funnel activities. That's
becoming really valuable
and a lot of the new gen AI tools with me and my team are still learning are a
big part of that
where we can see, okay, if we're talking to in a parallel retailer, this is
what an apparel retailer
is cares about generally compared to like a health and beauty retailer. And
then that's something an
AVX manager can copy edit for the specific person that they're speaking to. And
that just
accelerates like true one to one outreach. So goodbye, like cold calling and
blast emails from the
SDR hello hyper personalized curated that's built right into the marketing
engine.
I couldn't agree more. I think it's it's ludicrous that we just blast
thousands and thousands of emails at people's email boxes. Like there's just a
better way. I
just was talking to CMO that said that basically a bunch of their marketing
budget got cut and
their their CEO hired a bunch of outbound reps. And it's like, could you
imagine a worse way to
spend your money? Then let's just send more emails because that's free. You
know, it's like,
I mean, it's not free because you just put a 10 person head count on it. They
're just gonna
yeah, 10% count with very minimal results. And you're also pissing off your
customer pay.
Yeah, and you're driving people crazy. Well, and this is why we're so focused
on measuring
the strategy versus the channel. Yes, we're looking at the channel and things
like LinkedIn,
we want to dial up. But when we're looking at how they're engaging with the
programming,
it becomes a lot easier to justify budget to the CFO. Totally. And not to say
like emailing people
is bad or reaching out as bad or any of that sort of stuff. I'm referring to
someone taking
list of 10,000 accounts breaking it between their 10 salespeople or their, you
know, VDRs and just
emailing them 50,000 times in creative ways. There's there's nothing to warm up
the market
like before that. So it's gonna be really hard to break sure.
Any other thoughts on on plays or budget items or or other stuff or stuff you
're excited about
or anything there? We should definitely dig into like, since you're kind of
just talking about it,
how we measure success. Let's do it. Okay, because this is something we talk
about literally every
single day. And at the end of the day, everything has to tie to pipeline,
meaning meaningful meetings
generated for the sales team with qualified contacts and accounts. With our
model, this relationship
to their gen chain approach, this means looking at what is being prospects from
those points of entry
to points of leverage to points of conversion and understanding what the trends
are. So like I said,
less about the channel, more about the strategy. So we can see that, for
example, nine times out of
10, if a prospect attended a community event, they we book a sales meeting with
them. Or if they've
engaged in a LinkedIn ad about this topic, they immediately end up in a
community program. So it's
like, what are the what are the levers that we can pull to move them along
those points in the chain?
And that's what we're measuring and going back to even what we were talking
about earlier, as far as
like a two second meeting at an exhibit booth, doesn't necessarily mean they're
a lead.
That's the the badge scan.
The badge scan.
That means nothing. And that's also another reason why we've actually pulled
back investment
on exhibiting at events, which we can also talk about. But reality being, how
do we how do we assign
meaningful weight to the intricacies of what's happening at the points of entry
points of leverage
points of conversion, downloading something is going to weigh more than I click
something on the
website, for example, going to a community event and having a conversation
during that roundtable
weighs more than I signed up for the event, but I didn't show up.
So we're literally looking at those intricacies to be able to understand what's
working and what's
not. How do we accelerate? What are the things the levers we can pull to
accelerate things on that
chain and drive up those those sales meetings?
Yeah, I think it's just about rephrasing thinking of like not thinking of your
customers in a binary
way of like, does this get them closer to buy? Yes or no? And thinking of like,
are they showing
intent to be part of your community because they want to learn? Is this someone
who wants to be
closer to their peers? Is this someone who just seeks to learn information?
They've checked out
like three webinars and two white papers and whatever else or like every time
it's about sustainability,
they attend. So clearly they have an interest in sustainability. So could we
engage them in that
way? That's where I think that so much of like what we've missed traditionally
is just trying to
say that like all of these, you know, intent signals equal sales intent, where
it's like, no,
they equal a desire and a need to be part of a community that can serve them in
many different
ways. And like, we can be that for them. And then, you know, we can also ask
them sales questions
like, hey, are you ready to buy our stuff? And it, you know, and then slot
easier that way. And I
think just so many people like each of those steps in traditional marketing was
like,
Scam badge, that's a lead webinar. That's a lead, you know, download a white
paper. That's a lead,
like that's not showing intent to buy unless it is like a, hey, you know, a
demo like, yeah,
so you watch our demo video like sounds like you want to buy something, you
know, like, that's
obviously very high intent. Right. Well, and I think it's humanizing and adding
just some logic
and even just applying it to our own experiences. When I'm like, Googling
something and reading
an article, it doesn't necessarily mean I want to buy your solution. But yeah,
well said.
Okay, let's get to the desktop. Where we talk about healthy tension, whether
that's with your
board or show, your competitor, or anyone else, it'd be had a memorable dust up
in your career,
Sarah. Oh, I've had a see you. So you're from Jersey. I mean, I feel Jersey. We
were very direct.
Well, actually, technically, I'm from New York, which is probably even worse.
So it's true.
Lucking, letting it's left on said. Yeah. So there's no running from us. But
yeah. And I think where.
So, I mean, this dust up as a marketing leader, this dust up comes in every
role, every year.
It's the dust up between marketing and sales. There is always a finger pointing
situation.
You're going to find yourself in where we're doing all these to drive leads and
drive
relationships and get your meetings. And now we through them over the fence to
you. And where are
they going? How are they converting? Because those two are so inextricably
linked. So there was a
dust up, I think, about a year or so ago, between me, my leaders and the sales
leaders, where,
you know, we had some very aggressive growth targets we needed to hit. And we
were hitting
some friction points in being able to get there. And what it came down to is I
pulled my peer and
in sales aside and just what had a very transparent conversation and level set
against the fact that
like, I'm pointing fingers at you, you're pointing fingers at me, we're having
circular
conversations, and we're not making enough of a debt in these aggressive roles.
And we need to
acknowledge and remember the fact that our team success, the company's success,
it's inextricably
linked. And if we don't start getting on the same page and working together
instead of like
an integrated way instead of running in parallel, we're not going to be able to
achieve our goals.
And this was like a series of conversations. It wasn't just one conversation.
It was between me
and my peer, and then we brought our directions to the conversation. And I
think it started,
it was a little bit of like a therapy session at first, where there's an airing
of grievances.
And then we all come to the table and realize, we want our teams to be
successful. We want the
company to be successful. What do we need to change to get there? And that kind
of like clearing the
air and just starting fresh was so important and game-changing for what the
impact we were able to
make on pipeline. And we basically were like, we need to do planning together.
We need to make
sure we are running towards the same goals. Marketing can't have goals and
sales can't have
goals. We have to have goals that exist together. And we need to have an
agreement on the strategy
on both sides of the coins for how we're moving things through the funnel,
through the marketing
pipeline, into the sales pipeline. And what's the operating rhythm with which
we're going to check
in with each other on what's working, what's not, so that we can pivot where
necessary. And
this was huge for us. It just changed the way we were thinking about marketing
and sales. And
it was an important learning for me. And it's something I've gone back to time
and time again,
as leadership changes or strategy changes, where we have to go back to that
level set and remember,
we're all here trying to do something good. Let's work together. First of all,
I've also been
at Bluecor for like 10 years. So like since Bluecor has existed, basically. So
I already have a
reputation that precedes me, but it's not to the point now where you I've
become a verb.
Like it's like we're not getting to the point or if we're we're veering off
track and get caskoned.
And get caskoned so that we can focus on the right things. And but yeah, it's
fun. I think
people appreciate it. I don't know how I haven't gotten caskoned yet, yet today
, but now I'm even
more on my first. Okay, let's get to our last segment. Quick hits. These are
quick questions
and quick answers, just like conversational marketing when qualified, you can
go to qualified.com
to learn more. Because qualified prospects are on your website right now, you
can talk to them
quickly with qualified quick and easy, just like these questions go to
qualified.com to learn more.
Sarah, are you ready? I'm ready. Number one, you have a hidden talent or skill
that's not on your
resume. Yes. So for me, it's ruthless prioritization. So no matter how much is
on my or my team,
I can see the big picture of what's most important and why and clear the way
against any distractions
or shiny objects. And it's funny that you asked this now because this actually
just came out of
a discussion I had with my CMO recently. It's one of those things, like
everyone's got a hidden
talent that is obvious to everyone else, but it's so innate to you and who you
are. It's not even
something you recognize unless it's brought to your attention. And I think that
's also a good
learning in that way. It's great to survey your peers and your boss as far as
what they believe
your superpowers to be so you can lean in on that. But that's my ruthless
prioritization.
Do you have a favorite book podcast TV show that you've been checking out
recently?
Yes. So the shows I watch are mostly trashy reality TV where I can turn my
brain off. But
my favorite book right now, which I'm in the middle of, is grit by Anne Thiuk
worth. So I've
always believed in the power of grit, which as she defines as this combination
of passion and
perseverance over raw talent. This book unpacks that. But people who have grit
are basically in
the face of anything able to figure things out, persevere, keep moving, fall
down, get up.
And those are the type of people I love to work with. And I love to hire
because regardless of skill
or talent, you can do almost anything with that quality, in my opinion. So
highly recommend.
I have to finish it. It's like halfway through when I love it. I'm recommending
it.
Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's great. If you weren't in marketing at all or business,
what do you think
you'd be doing? Probably be a stay at home dog mom. Love it. I've got two pit
bulls who are
handful and I love them. But yeah, I don't know. It's a business. It's hard to
picture myself
doing anything else because I absolutely love what I do. Marketing to me is
just like
got this human psychological element to it that I'm just very drawn to. So yeah
, I guess
stay at home dog mom is my second alternatives. What would be your best advice
for first time VP
of marketing? Who's trying to figure out their pipeline strategy?
Tap your community. Community is like, I think the most important thing in
business period,
no matter what role you're in. I think I've been able to grow because I've been
open to
talking to others, getting their feedback, never assuming that I know
everything.
And honestly, that humility, it's kind of funny. You think it's the opposite
that the higher
you go up in the chain, the more sure of yourself you are. I think it's almost
the opposite. Like,
it's the more unsure you get and the more you realize you don't know a lot or
you don't know
everything and you need to surround yourself with people that help you build
and that that
humility is huge. So I would say always staying humble and grounded and tapping
your community.
That's how you can can rock a shit up, ship up.
And you can rock it, ship up and also shake your head and your lappy little dog
ears.
Probably always a welcome sound in the proverbial pipeline visionaries studio.
Sarah, that's it. It's been fantastic chatting with you today. For listeners,
you can go to bluecore.com and if you're in marketing for a D2C company, boy,
do we have
some sweet communities for you to join. And so check that out. Any final
thoughts? Anything to plug
here? I don't think so. I think we covered a lot. Thank you so much for having
me in. Yeah, likewise.
Thanks so much for joining and we'll talk soon.
This is a test comment.
This is a longer test comment to see how this looks if the person decides to ramble a bit. So they're rambling and rambling and then they even lorem ipsum.