How to Run a ‘Pipe Council’: Approach Pipeline as a Team Sport
Ed McDonnell, CRO at Asana, helps us understand why pipeline generation is a team sport.
[MUSIC]
Welcome to Pipeline Visionaries.
I'm Ian Phason, CEO of Caspian Studios,
and I am joined by special guest,
very special guest, and how are you?
I'm Craig Ian, how are you?
Excited to have you on the show.
We've done podcasts and shows and series past,
or bringing it for the first time to
Pipeline Visionaries, super excited to dig into it.
You have a new role?
Tell us a little bit about your new role to some.
Yeah, hey, thanks. It's so good to be here.
We have done this a couple of times,
and every time I get a chance to
collaborate and spend time with you,
it makes my day, so thanks for having me.
I just joined Asana,
which is just a wonderful company,
in the collaborative work management space,
as their global head of revenue in August,
after a wonderful 10 and a half year
career in time at Salesforce.
So it's new beginnings here in 2023 for me,
and I'm really excited about it.
Obviously, we're biased because we're Asana customers,
and so we use Asana to make this show,
we use Asana to make 65 PDB podcasts,
so we're biased, but it's such a cool company,
it's such a cool product,
and it's really exciting that you're in charge of revenue.
I'm curious just like coming into the job,
what, how has it been in early days?
It has been, oh my God, it's been a blast.
That's the best way to frame it.
It's one of those opportunities where you just said it.
Like every person I talk to when I said,
"Hey, what are you doing, Ed?
"I'm gonna go, I'm going to Asana."
The first thing I hear at a people is we love Asana.
Whether people talk about it for personal use
or professional use, I get a lot of love for the brand
and a lot of love for the company,
and that was, that's been so much fun
to just be a part of that type of community.
I'm learning a lot, and I'm in a build mode,
and so like that to me is just so much fun and such a blast.
I'm meeting amazing people, both At Asana
as well as with our customers and some of our partners,
and I'm getting to stretch and do different things again,
which from a career perspective,
it's been very fulfilling.
All right, let's get into our first thing,
that the Trust Tree is where we go and feel honest
and trusted and you share those deepest, darkest,
revenue secrets.
We know a little bit about Asana,
but who are your customers?
Who are the folks that you're focused on selling to?
Yeah, our customers, it's interesting when you look at it,
are 46% of the global fortune 2000 or Asana customers.
So our customers range from all different types of companies,
whether it's the London Stock Exchange,
whether it's some of the large professional services
organizations, whether it's companies in healthcare,
like are our customers stretch all different types
of lands and industries and they range from very small businesses
all the way up to the large enterprises.
That's what makes it interesting and exciting, Ian,
is this next phase of automation,
if you kind of look at the stretch of automation
that happened, whether starting with sales of automation,
then service automation, then marketing automation,
like work automation is here.
And Asana tackles that problem
and tackles that problem at scale.
Our customers are people like you just said,
you run your pod using Asana.
Just think about how you framed it that way.
I didn't ask you to frame it the way that's the way you framed it.
When I talked to customers, they'll tell us,
we run our campaign on Asana when I talk to marketers.
Like we run our campaign engine,
we run our creative process.
When I talk to CFOs, we run our SEC filings process.
When I talk to CHROs, we run our employee onboarding
and talent acquisition on Asana.
Like that's how customers spring it to me,
is that they're running these massive processes
using Asana as the tool that helps them do it
with productivity, with efficacy and with efficiencies.
And I think that's really cool the way customers both
describe their love for Asana,
but also talk about what they use it for.
Yeah, and obviously with those different types of roles,
obviously, so many different people
within the company can buy it, so many people can buy it.
They can swipe their credit card and buy it,
or you could go into more of an enterprise sale
and get it for the entire organization.
I forget the step, but basically there's so many different teams
that have Asana in one place and not others,
so it's a really unique sort of challenge
to look at from a CRO, I'm sure.
How do you think about structuring your team
to get into those buying committees
when they're so different?
Yeah, so it's interesting how you just frame that, right?
Everybody can use Asana therefore,
how do we think about running a GoToMarket organization
when you can solve lots of problems for lots of people?
And I think about that from a focus perspective.
How do you create focus for your account executives,
for your company?
We spend a lot of time on our ideal customer profile
and our ideal customer persona.
And when I think about, we just talked a little bit,
CMOs, marketers, how do they drive their creative
to campaign to execution process?
A CHRO, how do you do onboarding
and talent acquisition and talent lifecycle at scale?
If you're a CFO, how do you think about driving
all of your regulatory compliance
and reporting processes using a tool like Asana?
And I bring that back to how do you structure?
You have to be really good at partnering
with your product marketing teams
and with your product teams on developing that ICP,
getting very, very focused on that ICP.
And that's how we're thinking about it, Asana,
is how do we really get very focused around our ICP
and when it's not just the hearts and minds,
when the use case and show the productivity
that you can gain from the use case?
Where Asana's a little bit different
and what makes it so exciting is
we can then connect it horizontally.
So we are one of the only technologies
that can then bring that all together
and show you how work is happening
across an organization.
And how is your resource allocation?
Do you have enough resources to deliver on the projects
that are on tap for completion over the course
of the next 30, 60, 90 days?
How do you then bring it to life
that actually shows you how your human capital
is being utilized and whether or not
it is driving the right productivity across the enterprise?
That to me is like, yes, you can win the CMO
and the CHR and the CFO,
but now you can also help solve a CIO's problem
by understanding how you're resourcing,
how your human capital and how you were delivering
against what is important to the company.
Yeah, I think that you're sort of in that space where,
and I think that there's been a lot of tools like this
with like shadow IT type tools where it's like people,
a business unit just likes it, they go buy it,
you know, this is what they prefer.
Hey, I use my last company sort of thing,
which is all well and good.
But with Asana, you have this opportunity to say,
hey, but if there's other parts of the organization
that also start using this,
we can look at you like holistically as a business,
like sit down with your COO,
look at, you know, operationally,
how things are being done.
So by having it in the more departments,
it actually increases the use case and increases
like the quality of the data,
the quality of the information for the enterprise.
There's like other enterprise or technologies
where it's like, it doesn't get exponentially better
the more people use the software, right?
Like it's not just like, you know, like another software
where it's like, hey, there's more people on it.
Like, yeah, that's cool,
but it doesn't give you more data
and transparency in the entire business,
whereas this shows you how the entire org is working,
which is obviously crazy valuable.
Yeah, and when I go back to that thesis of,
work is the next stage of automation.
When you just think about processes
that have gotten automated across enterprises,
there's not a lot of,
there's not a lot of software categories
that can connect a CEO's vision and objective
to the company down to the human capital resource planning
that has to happen at the CIO level,
plus solve really important problems
for each of the CBOs direct reports.
I think that's like, oh my God, what a great problem
to be at the forefront of.
And as long as one of several companies
that get to do it and get to do it at scale,
and it's one of the reasons why I love the category
because I really do believe CEOs, they're direct reports,
and then CIOs are trying to connect
our company objective is this.
We want to grow a flyer, retain, be more sustainable,
whatever those big objectives are,
and they want their employees,
they want their human capital to say,
I feel connected to that objective.
I feel like my work matters.
I feel like I have a voice.
I feel like I can be productive and successful here.
And then you have a CIOs office that can look at it
and say, we are driving productivity at scale
with our human capital and with our employees
because I can see the work happening
and I could see how it is flowing through the enterprise.
Wow, that's big.
When you came in and you were looking at doing that ICP,
doing their persona analysis, looking at all that stuff,
seeing how different these are,
thinking about how do I budget for this?
You're like, well, if I'm budgeting to a CFO,
and to a CMO, and to a CIO, and to all these people
where all these different people live in all different places,
they consume all different information.
It's a very different sales cycle
for all of these different people.
How did you think about strategically
going after those personas from a revenue standpoint?
Yeah, I still think we're early days.
If you look at Asana and even others that are in our space,
I think we've all done a really good job
of acquiring users and acquiring companies
to do differentiated projects, work, cash work,
portfolio work.
Now, we're all at this really interesting
inflection point of, well, how do you scale?
And that's where I'm trying to spend some time,
especially in my first hundred days, Ian,
is what does scale look like?
And how do you put that type of focus
in terms of scaling a company that has been wildly successful
up until this point?
But is that an inflection point to now,
to now continue that growth path
from what is traditionally product led efforts
to much more B2B enterprise software motions?
And that's a really interesting as an thrall.
Yeah, I wanna dig into that a bunch,
like, you know, coming in, obviously this is your background,
you spent a lot of time at Salesforce
doing a very B2B enterprise play,
but using that playbook, obviously,
you're gonna come in with a lot of that expertise with that.
As you remit here, how do you look at an organization
that has a bunch of that really strong PLG motion,
that obviously you want that stuff to keep happening
and build out that enterprise muscle?
There's a bunch of organizations
that are looking at doing this now,
and I think it's like, it's very, very tightly
to be chatting about it.
Yeah, the first thing, what I've tried to do
at the beginning here, Ian, is celebrate it and recognize it.
It's hard to build a self-service motion as mature
and as evolved as Asana and what Asana has done.
You have to celebrate it
because it is absolutely part of our growth story
as we continue in our journey.
It's now connecting it to business outcomes
and how do you connect that to the business outcomes
of a CMO?
How do you connect it to the business outcomes of a CFO?
How do you help a CEO realize corporate objectives
down to each and every one of their employees
through the work that they're doing?
And that to me is a really fun problem to solve
and one that is very solvable.
So the product-led motions that we have here at Asana
are really successful.
And not many companies have been able to grow at the scale
that Asana has in a B2B software and lens
with that type of motion.
Now it's connecting that through the inflection point
and really going into some of our customers here
and letting our customers know that we're here for them
and that we have a relentless pursuit
for their success as well.
And how do we bring that together
where they see, like you just said,
we run our pothole of it.
I'll keep coming back to that since you opened with it.
It's how do we help Asana look at it and say,
how do we not just run one
but how we run all of our podcasts?
How does that motion, how do we create productivity
for all the stakeholders?
How do we connect the work that's happening
so that we can do it better as we go forward?
The other thing I think I really love about this
and I've seen this at scale over my career,
change management's hard.
Asana represents a way to change management
with technology as an enabler.
And that's unique 'cause if you change the way
that you wanna deliver a podcast,
you can add that into the project.
And now you're not gathering five all-hands calls
with all the stakeholders saying,
here's how we're gonna do it now.
It's driven through the technology itself
as an enabling lift and that to me is really unique.
When you could do change management at scale
with technology as an enabler,
that is something that I think is really impressive
from an automation perspective.
So back to your question to some product lead
versus that evolution.
I think this is where you start to see that evolution
is when you unlock use cases
and unlock business outcomes for enterprises
that might be using your technology
for a certain, for something,
but how do you show them how to drive business outcomes
from it is the real opportunity?
All right, let's get to our next segment, the playbook.
It's where you open up the playbook
and talk about those tactics that help you win.
How do you spend your money?
What are your three channels of tactics
that are your uncuttable budget items at?
(laughs)
Well, we're big in paid media, product lead.
So paid media is a channel
that we have to continue to invest in.
We are looking into other ways to connect with customers.
And so I would be very,
it would be hard for me to cut a vent
and that type of spend
that we can connect with customers around.
And then something I'm learning as a CRO,
Ian is enabling technologies
to help your AEs be successful, right?
Yeah, so the Revenue Technology Stack,
which is something, when you work at Salesforce,
it's real easy, everything's in Salesforce.
And that's a true statement, right?
And by the way, it's what makes them
such a wonderful company at how they drive the success.
Not everybody has that luxury
and you have to find other ways to drive productivity
and drive success of your field organization.
And so that would be another place
that I'm spending time investing with.
Paid media and event spender too,
that I am very religious about right now.
Well, and I think it speaks to like relationships mattering
and like not to say that in a PLG motion,
they don't matter.
Of course they matter.
Of course customer success or customer stories matter
and all those things matter.
But it matters in a very different way.
And I don't know, it's very different from that
versus like the executive briefing center
and this massive play where you're like,
"Hey, you have 15 different teams
at your company that use Asana."
Like we need to figure out a way to have a company
have a conversation that we can drive more value
if those other seven teams are on there
and that sort of thing.
It's such a unique position there to have that stuff
or our entire marketing work runs on Asana.
Like, why doesn't everyone else?
And like that's just the type of A.E. that you have to have
to have those conversations,
the type of like leadership,
I'm sure has to be very different who's in those calls
whereas not having with a PLG motion
like or even having some enterprise accounts
but not as many as you want to have here in two years
that developing those muscles I'd imagine
is something that obviously you know so well
from your background but how you invest your marketing dollars,
how you invest into those relationships
is very, very senior level and very executive level
and just very different from probably the way
that money was invested for the previous decade.
- Yeah, so you mentioned two things in that
that I have a lot of passion about.
How do you take the success of your customer
and the success of your account executive
and those are the two most important relationships
you can have as an organization.
So, you know, everything customer out
so how do we help a customer find their success
with our technology, with our organization
and with the way that we help them adopt and drive value
and how do you help your selling organization
in your account executive organization
be a trusted partner to those customers
and focus on the success of your own executive.
And if those are the two most important entities
and relationships that we can build off of
you drive a lot of success.
By the way, that's where Salesforce
was incredibly successful.
I mean, everything is about the customer
everything is about their field organization.
- But about something that you don't want to be investing in
or something that you don't want to spend money
or time investing in over the course the next year.
- Ooh, that's a harder question.
Nothing's credible yet.
- Yeah, I don't know if nothing's credible.
I do believe that we, you know,
every organization has to think through
what are the metrics that are important to them.
And if you look at us, it is about our entry
into the enterprise.
And so we want to make sure that we are investing
in ways that we are advancing our ability
to win the enterprise at scale,
win enterprise customers and be a customer first organization.
And there will absolutely be some things that fall off.
There will be redirection of spend.
There will be, I don't know if it's about spending less
or differently spending what you have
inside your budget allocation.
And so I don't know that I'm smart enough,
a hundred days in as to what we will turn off.
But I do know that we want to make sure that we're investing
in ways that we help our field organization be successful
while still acquiring users and customers at the same rate
we've been acquiring them through our product-led efforts.
And those will converge at some point
and you'll have to make different trade off the same.
- Yeah, it's interesting to think about
what are those levers and is interesting you started with
at the beginning of the conversation with looking at our SCP,
looking at our personas.
And I think that that's the thing that people,
we just had to do a fantastic episode
talking just about that,
just about working on ICP and operationalizing that
and how important that is and how important it is
to get every single seller on the same page,
to get every single marketer on the same page
around your ICP, around the personas you're going after,
what's the order that we're going after them,
who's the most important ones?
Like where do we need to win,
where do we, you'll win and expand and all that stuff.
And I know you're in the throes of all
that sort of planning right now,
but it's so, that's I think that the key there
is to start with those.
Otherwise, you are gonna just do random acts
of marketing, random acts of sales,
just chucking money at different things
that might not be layering up to that key persona
that you need to win.
I just, I've read a, BVC had a really interesting article
out a couple of weeks ago about sure
and how to reduce churn.
And the entire article was about getting your ICP right.
- Yeah, right.
- Well, acquire the right customer
and you help that customer adopt
and help drive a business outcome for your customer.
The likelihood of churn goes into single digits.
- Yeah.
- Right?
And so the work on ICP, like when you talk about
where do I, where would I prefer investing money?
It's investing in getting the ICP right,
in really defining it, in helping our AEs understand it,
helping our customers understand it,
helping our marketing teams really develop around it.
Like when I talk to Shannon, our CMO,
we spend a lot of time on ICP
and what does ICP mean and how do we get just really,
really good at it?
If you get your ICP right, everything flows.
Your customers are more successful.
So to me getting ICP right is all about customer success.
- Right.
Yeah, one of the things that I always talk about
in marketing is sort of like fight where you can win.
Like what are the things that only you can do
that none of your competitors can do?
And whether that's from a marketing standpoint
or from a product standpoint.
And one of the things that you all have,
which is so cool is you have
all this data of how people are working in their organizations.
And like arming your sellers with that information.
Like did you know I can teach you something
about your business?
Or did you know CFO that I can teach you something
about your marketing organization?
Like that stuff is so valuable to be able to,
or teach your CMO about their organization
so they can tell their CFO like,
"Hey, by the way, this is how I can save 6%
"and actually add 4% more pipeline."
Or some, you know, whatever that thing is,
that stuff is such an advantageous position to be in.
- We have something called the Work Innovation Lab.
It's led by a Stanford professor, Rebecca Heinz.
She's incredible.
And she's developed a way where we can
visually show you how work is happening
and connecting at your integrars.
Through like the way the dots move
and the way you can see the clusters
and who's working well versus who's not working well,
all through a graphical rendering, which is really, really cool.
We were sitting with a top
professional services organization.
And we showed them and they're like,
"Can you show us this regionally?"
And so we went to the next slide.
It's like, here's how the United States
versus Germany versus the UK is clustering.
And they pointed out, they're like,
"Well, how do we help this one region
"and the region was Germany?"
They're like, "How do we help Germany
"get more connected with their work
"than what we're seeing in the United States right now?
"What are those levers that we can go and pull
"and how can we work with your team to drive work differently
"in this region versus the United States?"
And I was like, "Wow, like all through a graphical representation
"based on what you do sit like,
"our Work Innovation Lab is doing some really incredible things
"on helping companies understand how work is manifesting
"inside of their enterprises."
How are you thinking about customer stories?
Obviously that being a huge part of sales sources,
go to market is getting those trailblazer stories out
in front of everyone.
And with the enterprise, it's so important
to get those stories out.
What are you thinking about it?
- I think we have to do more of it.
It's like, that's another area of investment is
how do we tell the stories of our story
through the lens of our customer?
And it's what Salesforce and some other companies
just do so brilliantly and so well is.
They tell their story through the eyes
and the lens of a customer.
We were just able to do that.
We had two customer events, one in New York
and one in London.
We showcased IPG as a media brands as a great customer story.
There's a great video out there telling the story of IPG.
We need to do more of that.
And we need our customers to tell our stories.
We need to show how work is both being automated
but how work is flowing.
And when you think about AI,
how we're given AI a seat at the table
with human capital not independent of it.
- Yeah, you know, what we say here at Caspian.
And we've done a customer story with Asana.
So we can maybe like it up in the show.
But we say like if it doesn't happen,
Asana doesn't happen, right?
Harkening back to the old Salesforce thing
that everyone would say,
you know, like if you don't put it in Salesforce,
didn't happen sort of thing.
And the reason why I started doing that
or why I started sort of instilling that with our team
is because from a marketing perspective or, you know,
I mean like either Caspian's marketing that we do
or the marketing that we do on behalf of our customers
through building podcasts was because so many things
in creative work like have a task and they have a subtask
and they have all those things.
So we built this like beautiful template
that we use, we have a show launch template
and we have, you know, episode templates and all that stuff.
And when you can tweak those things
and like get it to, you know, an 80 to 90% solution
and you can, you know, drag and drop a new producer
or whatever and look at this, like this thing.
And then you can tweak it for certain use cases.
And then you can say, well, this show is actually
like a narrative show.
So it needs to have this type of template and that stuff.
If you're not putting the data in,
you're not going to be able to get the data out,
but you could go back and look, you're like, hey, you know,
you're supposed to do this.
But then there are all these added tasks every time
we do this and it's like, oh, maybe we need to make
a template for that.
And just like how, you know, how work is flowing
in your organization to your point.
But if you don't sort of have that underlying
sort of mantra and the understanding that you can,
you know, operationalize those things
and you can, you can figure it out for your next campaign
or whatever.
When I interviewed back the day,
told Tim of, of Asana, it's like 115 point,
Asana project that for launching a campaign.
It's like, here it is.
I'm like, dang, you got to give me that, you know?
And like, that's the stuff that I love.
Like that's the stuff where it's so actionable
and getting those stories out and like how people use it.
Because that's what we're all looking for.
We're all looking at our peers.
How do we do this?
That's why we make this show.
Like how are our peers doing this stuff?
So take that again, so that this is how you launch a show
and just take that for any creative or attend process.
There is a template for every content process
that exists across many enterprise.
Now, if you want to add something or subtract something,
again, I go back to the change manager
that can happen through enable technologies, right?
If you want to add, you want to take that cluster
or five or six asks that you see happening and say,
this probably should just be two.
Let's take this cluster, create two new tasks,
put them into the project.
And now disperse that to everybody that's running the show.
You just created change and change
management through technology.
Again, versus putting people on a phone saying,
we're going to change this and here's how we're going to change this.
It's all enabled through the stakeholders.
And I think about like a London Stock Exchange
that's thinking about research and how they run research
and their research through Asana
and how that's all templated going out into their community.
Or again, I think about IPG and how they run
all of their media in all of their different brands,
leveraging Asana in the creative and content process.
Like all of those are great stories to go talent to be a part of.
We have a major sporting association
that leverages Asana across both their,
the association itself, but then in some of the member clubs as well.
And they just built a technology where,
and this is the coolest stuff ever, by the way.
So they've created a way when you walk into a stadium,
your face is the ticket.
Oh, that's amazing.
Incredible.
And they tested it at one of their clubs.
The entire process was run on Asana.
Just the development of the tech, the rollout of the tech,
the testing of the tech was all done through Asana,
connecting both the association, the technology organization
and the participating club
in making sure that that was a successful launch.
Let's talk pipeline here.
Obviously it's pipeline visionaries.
I know you're 100 days in,
so you can't give us all the secrets there,
but you've built many, many pipelines
worth lots of de Narrow previously in your career.
Can you give us some secrets that you got?
Some things that other revenue leaders can do
to more holistically look at their pipeline
to drive some results here
in a pretty challenging technology environment right now.
Yeah, I spent a lot of time as do all of my peers
that do this function on pipeline.
Ian, I can say where I think that it gets done well
as when it's a partnership across all your stakeholders.
You have to have an ecosystem internally
at your organization that treats it almost as a council.
Like it's a stakeholder council meeting.
You have marketing, so demand generation,
it has a seat at that table.
PMM has a seat at that table for content
in how we think about content inside of all the channels.
Sales programs, how are we enabling our account executives
to be successful?
Sales development, whether that be inbound or outbound,
how do we think about the pipe mechanics?
And then strategy, pipeline to me is a team sport.
It is not one person, it is not one function.
It is such a, it has to be the highest performing team
in your organization at cross-functional scale.
There's nobody works for each other.
Everybody's in their own worlds,
but they have to come together as a team
and solve a problem that every B2B
enterprise software company faces,
which is do we have enough pipeline
to go into the market to be successful?
And so I think the tricks are,
one, measure the right things.
So what are your demand generation funnel mechanics
and metrics?
Okay, great.
Which content is performing not performing?
Okay, how much of your pipeline
is generated through sales development versus marketing
versus the AE themselves?
And what do you want those to be?
'Cause every organization's a little bit different
as to how much they want each of those stakeholders
to develop into their pipeline.
If you're not producing at the right scale
or the right coverage model, why?
Like interrogating the why is equally as important
as getting all hopped up as to why not.
In too many companies and too many people I have found
spend time on why isn't something happening?
Like versus going in and saying, okay, it's not happening.
What can we do differently to actually produce
a different result?
'Cause you get caught up on poking on sales leaders
and saying, hey, you're not hitting your pipeline metrics.
Like why?
Well, what's wrong?
And that friction well, good and has to app in,
you also have to be really open to interrogating,
is there something about our messaging?
Is there something about our content?
Is there something about the way,
the tools that we're using?
Whether it's you could be using tools like an outreach
or a LinkedIn sales and an avigator or a gong,
like there's so many different tools available
to help pipeline or qualified, right?
What are the tools that you're using
to go and drive pipeline through all of your different
channels that are available?
So to me, the interrogation of it in a healthy way
with everybody having a seat at the table
and being a team sport is the way that I have found
to be very successful running pipe council.
How do you, I love that you call it the pipe council.
That's great.
How do you think about attribution?
I know this is something that every single marketer hears
and they cringe at, not that attribution is cringy,
but just how it's done to every organization
and how do you think about it?
- Oh, I think we should have attribution, right?
I go back to attribution for attribution's sake
isn't very helpful.
Attribution for measuring what's working versus what's not
and having a mechanism for interrogating that
and saying, okay, it's working.
What can we do more of?
It's not working.
Where is the problem and how do we unlock the problem?
That to me is what attribution is.
If attribution is simply used for a quote unquote ROI
on marketing, it's while important,
the most important thing is to figure out,
do I unlock more budget to make something go faster?
Or do I have a problem that I have to go and figure out
how to unstick it?
That's where attribution comes in
is much more interesting to me than ROI.
Not to suggest ROI isn't.
But no, I know exactly what you mean.
I mean, it's one of the things that I think like,
we've talked a little bit on the show about in episodes past,
but you have people who are very draconian
in the way that they think about their attribution model
and they're like, well, we're only doing first touch
or whatever.
And maybe that works for their business,
but then you start to look at other types of metrics.
Well, for example, it's like, hey, we've had, you know,
thousand people download our e-book,
but those aren't turning into deals.
And it's like, yeah, but a thousand people
are engaging with your stuff and like, perhaps there's other
things that we could be doing with that population of people,
or maybe they're the wrong population of people.
But like, there's something that's valuable in that of itself,
even if it's not, hey, this is an 10X ROI initiative,
but like we're driving like engagement in this stuff.
So things like that that I think if you're like,
well, it's only a first touch model.
And those aren't driving, you know, it's been three months
and we haven't seen the ROI, like that's where I think,
like you said, it's just attribution for attribution sake.
Yeah, and in most B2B and our price software companies
need to get to multi-touch.
Like that, you just, you have to have
a multi-touch attribution model so that you understand
how your content is flowing and how the engagement
across the funnel is happening.
But to me, that is, to me, that's a what's working,
what's not and how do you invest
versus how do you go back.
Like that's where that conversation comes in
and has much more scale and productivity
than just are we spending money in the right place?
Any other pieces of advice for marketing leaders listening,
you know, hey, a new CRO just came in,
how to partner, what are they looking for,
how to work with them successfully?
Very quickly educate.
Like help us understand where we currently are.
So like what's working with customers, what's not?
Help us quickly understand how the funnel
has been performing unbiased.
Like we're coming in so fresh eyes and so open-minded.
Like feed into that, feed into things
that have been on your mind, tell us.
'Cause we may just have a different opinion
or we may have a different insight
that we can bring to the table to collaborate on
that helps you as a marketer get to where
you wanna go faster as well.
It's the best advice I can give.
It's just leverage our eagerness
to be successful as quickly as possible.
And that relationship between us and you is so critical,
especially in the first 100 to 20 days
to just get off and running as fast as we can together.
You, one thing that just kind of struck me
in our conversation here as you were talking
about the importance of ICP and personas and all that
is just giving that breakdown persona by persona.
How are we perceived?
How are we looking?
What's level of market penetration?
Jennifer Johnson back in the day,
she on I think it was on this one, said
where she talks about how the CMO is the chief market officer.
And if you can bring insights from the market
to the CRO and like this is how the market is broadly behaving.
This is how we fit within that
and they're to the opportunities.
I just love that phrasing.
And it's everything from here's how the analysts perceive us
gives our customers perceive us.
Here's how you're selling organization perceives.
Like those are all the stakeholders.
Here's what we're hearing.
Here's what we've seen in bringing those insights early days
to somebody that starts and ahead of revenue role like I did.
Insights are what we're looking for the most in the first sprint
in helping to develop our point of view on where to spend time.
There's so many different places I could spend my time.
What is going to have the largest impact
in the shortest timeframe?
And that's where I think the relationship with marketing
comes in very quickly.
All right, let's get to our final site with Quick Hits.
These are quick questions and quick answers.
Just like how quickly,
Qualify.com helps companies generate pipeline
to tap into your greatest asset,
your website to identify your most valuable visitors
and instantly start sales conversations.
Quick and easy, just like these questions Ed,
go to Qualify.com to learn more.
Ed, are you ready for Quick Hits?
I can't wait.
It's my favorite time with you, Ian.
Number one, what's a hidden talent or skill
that's not on your resume?
Oh, I would say maybe my relatability.
I'm the son of a nurse and a police officer
from the 80s and 90s.
And I just, I can relate to a lot of different experiences
and a lot of different people out there.
And I don't know that I would have showed up on a CV.
My mom was a nurse too.
I shout out all the nurses.
Do you have a favorite book podcast
or TV show that you check out?
So non-business, I'm reading the James Carr series right now,
which was just made into a show
with a terminal list on Amazon Prime.
It's a Orber Navy Seal.
It's been a fun series to read
and just kind of get lost in.
A book that I read recently was the David Grohl autobiography.
The way that he talked about leadership
without talking about leadership
was my favorite part of the book.
I just, how he navigated everything through Nirvana,
how he got there, how he took risks and chances in his life
and where he's brought himself to where he is today,
how he made the first Foo Fighters record all by himself.
He played every instrument.
He sung every vocal 'cause he didn't have a band yet.
Like, I just, the leadership lessons in that book to me
are, it didn't, but really brilliant.
That's awesome.
What would be your advice for a first time CRO?
- Oh, deeply listen,
but yet act on things that you trust or gut against.
- And it's been wonderful having you on the show
for listeners, you can go to asana.com.
Obviously, so many marketers are already using SANA,
but if you're listening right now and you're not,
you should go check it out 'cause it's great.
Ed, any final thoughts, anything to plug?
- I would just plug that this is one
of the most wonderful podcasts out there
and spending time with you is always, always a pleasure
and I always really enjoy our time together.
So thank you for having me.
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