Strengthening Your Sales Relationship
Leslie Henthorn, CMO at Ironclad, shares about strengthening your relationship with sales, even when you have a strong inbound pipeline.
[MUSIC]
Welcome to Pipeline Visionaries.
I'm Ian Faze on CEO of Cast Me in Studios.
And I am joined by a special recurring guest now, Leslie Harri.
>> How are you?
I'm doing great Ian, how are you?
>> I am wonderful, so excited to chat with you again.
We're going to dig in super deep on all the cool stuff that you all been doing
at
Ironclad and much more.
And today's episode is always brought to you by our friends at Qualified,
go to qualified.com to learn more.
So, Leslie, what's been up since we saw you last?
A lot of cool stuff going on at Ironclad.
You're selling to new people.
You got all sorts of stuff going on.
>> My gosh, what hasn't been going on?
And I think that's the bigger question.
It feels like I talked to you 10 years ago, not about a year ago.
So either time is moving a lot faster.
I'm just aging really quickly.
I think a lot's been going on.
It's one of those things when I talked to you, I was approaching six months at
Ironclad.
And a year later, first of all, I've learned so many lessons, so many lessons.
But I'm really proud of the work that the team has done to get us moving and
getting us marketing in a much more high volume, get things out the door,
try new things and experiment.
But we've also seen our Go to Market team really deal with market trends and
nail some enterprise logos this last year, which have propelled us into a new
buying committee and a lot of different focus areas that were not top focus
areas.
Or if they've been tried before doing it with a lot more strategy and
thought behind it than just throwing up a website and saying we meet this
person's need.
Right, like actually telling the story, explaining the product, understanding
where we sit in the market against competition, those kind of things taking
a deeper step back.
So I would say this last year for us at Ironclad, as from a marketing
perspective,
we also had AI everywhere.
>> Yep.
>> And I think every CMO out there has tried to just understand how to ride
the waves of that crazy generational shift in how we describe what the
technology does.
So gosh, I could go on all day of all the changes.
But the bottom line is we survived the year, we thrived, we learned, and
we hit pretty much most of our goals, which was exciting for me.
I'm definitely a numbers driven person.
So that's where I'm sitting today.
>> Yeah, and it seems like for y'all, I think from the space in general,
first you have AI powered contract management software.
You have something where the stuff that you're able to do isn't just for legal,
it's for business teams, it's for sales and procurement and IT and finance,
marketing and HR.
And everyone is in this little world.
And I think we all know that contracting and
these processes are changing so fast and to use a tool like Ironclad is the
perfect
sort of reason for you to step in and say, have you thought of doing this?
>> Yeah.
>> So it seems like it's such a obvious AI use case.
And it seems like you being at the front of it is probably pretty exciting.
>> It is exciting.
It is an obvious use case.
It's funny, I feel like Ironclad and for those listening who don't know,
we basically think of ourselves as the way to make and manage digital business
contracts.
So we're in the category of contract lifecycle management.
You think about creating contracts, editing them,
sending them for signature, managing vendors, approval.
We really feel like contracts are digital assets that can help your company
with the data that's stored inside of them.
So when you think about AI, AI is all about how you're going to harvest your
data.
And when we looked at our base, I mean, first of all, we had that going for us,
but we also had the trend that legal was one of the first professions.
That really has been in the forefront of AI adoption in a lot of ways.
You saw them showing up on Forbes, CNBC, everywhere you could be.
I think I'm really lucky because I have a CEO and co-founder Jason and
Kai who both have a lot of vision around this.
But we looked at our own metrics and it's funny, a year from now,
or a year into this, we launched an AI assist product that was really trying to
red line contracts.
We've got a generative AI chat bot, which I know folks are saying they all have
We really worked on the percentage of accuracy and
are still are working on that to make sure that it's something that is pal
atable
for any user across that lifecycle.
We've believed that our AI has saved an estimated cumulative 29 years
for customers across the contract, upload, review, and redlining process in one
year.
>> That's so crazy.
>> And we've had over a billion contracts processed on the platform.
But when we look at the metadata extracted and
used to help customers with their contracts, whether they're tagging them or
trying to get red lines, we think there's been 10 and a half million
predictions made.
25% of the Forbes AI 50 list are ironclad customers.
And it's because we're just in the right place at the right time, Ian.
You can say we did a great job at marketing.
I think we held on and did our best with marketing as things were changing as
quickly as possible.
And I hope every CMO and marketing leader totally can relate to that statement
cuz
it really has been a hold on.
And I think on a personal level for me going into this year,
I think I always feel like when I walk in the room,
I'm doing the best to give the advice that I have for how we create awareness
and
get that story out there about what we can do with what's hot in the market.
But in general, I think a lot of CMOs, including myself, feel like there's so
much more you could do if you could predict where this was going.
Or if you had customer stories, if you had this or that.
And so that's where I kind of look now is, how do we walk the talk and
build trust from a marketing perspective?
Luckily, I've put out some numbers that help us get there, but it's not easy.
It's been a hard trend to keep up with.
>> Yeah. >> It's not a trend either.
It's like a shift in everything, yeah.
>> Yeah, yeah.
When I think that for a lot of us who spend time in contracting as we do in
marketing,
we're looking at contracts all the fricking time.
>> I am.
>> And you think of how big of a pain they are and then having to figure out
who in
procurement and this and that and whatever.
And it's like, how many times in your career as a marketer have you said to
a vendor or somebody like, hey, it's going to take you like a month to get you
in
the system and we'll figure that stuff out.
And that's not even counting the legal stuff.
And the idea that that stuff is cut in 80% is like saving everybody so
much fricking time I'm here for it.
>> It's so true.
Thank you for saying that.
I agree.
Actually, as we look at these logos that we brought in this last year and
how we talk to different personas, we've been mostly focused on legal and
the go-ops.
And I have intuitive, wonderful humans inside Ironclad who started as lawyers
but I can rely on for understanding the psyche of those personas.
But as we get into procurement and we talk to that audience a little bit more
strategically as a marketing leader, I'm like, let me tell you, I understand
working with procurement.
I understand trying to have 100 contracts through in a quarter.
Like you understand the challenges there.
And it's one of the reasons I love marketing at Ironclad because it is such
a pain point.
People want to run for the hills when they hear about contracts in terms of
any company I worked at.
>> Oh my gosh.
I say that to our finance team and our legal team all the time.
I'm like, I just don't want to ever deal with it.
And I think that that's like one of my back in the day when I was in there.
One of my battalion commanders sat down after we had an exercise in the field.
And I was basically essentially like the HR.
And so he says, he's like, you know Ian, I didn't hear from you this whole week
That's how it should be.
>> And I always reflect on that.
>> I'm so funny.
>> It's a very weird thing.
But it is funny, right?
It's like going to the doctor, right?
It's like you only go when you have something wrong.
It's like you only are upset at the contract process when something's going
wrong.
And if you move seamless process, presumably using your client, then you're not
going
to be all huffing and puffing about it as I want to do.
>> It's true.
And then also like when it's a bad process and you can't get the information
you need
when you need it to make better business decisions.
I mean, you really want to blow it all up.
And I think for me, the challenge is telling that bigger story.
How can you, once you've fixed your contracting process, now what are you going
to do with
that data?
How are you going to, I as a marketing leader want to understand all of my
vendor approvals.
I want to understand the money that I've committed to.
I want to understand the obligations that I have out there.
These are the things that make us better at operating and also save the
business money,
help us run faster.
So I think give us control.
All of those things, understanding where your business is spending is a huge
one.
But then also looking around the corner as to what's working and how you tie
that back
to pipeline is a big one.
So I see a big future in contracts in general for everyone, especially as like
the market
gets harder profitability is something you need to be thinking about.
It's just, it makes good sense.
So anyway, I won't make this a commercial about contracts, but I do think like
this
year with trends and AI and things like that, we've had a moment, which is
really cool.
And momentum as a marketer is everything.
Right.
Yeah, well, and I think it's a perfect segue to our next segment here, the
playbook.
And because I think it influences the types of plays that you're running, right
So it's like, this is, you know, you had the before sort of AI boom and now you
have
the after AI boom.
So the way that you message, the way that you go to personas, like everything
has changed.
And we'll dig into that here in the next segment.
Okay.
So yeah, tell me about sort of like, how does this change to your channels?
How does this change your tactics and the plays that you're running?
You know, I think in general, where we've been really strong is demand coming
inbound
from digital marketing sources.
Our SEO has been high in our respective keywords.
We've had a good like paid advertising strategy.
But what we've really had to expand and understand better and we've had a great
organic social
strategy.
The influencers that we've had with Mario Carroll and Alex Sue and legal ops
has really
helped us with like growing just fans and champions internally, which have
really helped.
And I don't take any credit for that.
I think that that's ironclad secret sauce before I got to the role.
But when I look at it now, it's how are we maximizing a lot of the things that
we're
doing across channels in.
And you know, one of the things I thought was interesting is we were ignoring a
lot of
different folks in that enterprise buying cycle, not ignoring, but not speaking
to them the
same way we speak to legal with that kind of love and understanding.
And that's changing a lot this year.
IT is becoming more and more involved in many of our conversations as you look
at the tech
stack.
And so understanding our event strategy, our industry events game, how we're
getting
eyes where the people are and what influencers we can leverage in those
communities that
are actually using the product and want to speak to it.
You know, you can't fluff this stuff up.
You got to have people that truly believe in what you're doing and really
understand
that you have the best product in the market.
And so that has been a big change for us.
We also have tried to grow closer to sales and really support outbound in a way
that marketing
hasn't before.
I think when you have a strong inbound funnel, sometimes your sales
relationship isn't as
strong as it should be.
Yeah, you might be watching conversion and you might be watching how things are
moving
forward to pipeline.
But it's easy to go like this after that.
And when you start to understand that new business shouldn't drive your entire
company
strategy, that customer adoption, cross-sell, understanding the logos you want
to go after,
this is something we've really been working on.
And so putting up a field marketing organization, really trying to understand
how we get AEs
to get their own pipe at how we support them.
What is our outbound campaign messaging and plan?
Where's our ABM strategy?
How are we using customer stories at every stage of the mid to bottom funnel?
What are we doing to help them close deals?
I think those are the areas where we've really been focused on building new
motions, new
organizations and some new channels.
I love it.
We'll dig in on all that stuff.
So you mentioned the influencer piece.
I think this is something like it's such a best in class strategy, something we
see with
a lot of our customers in terms of you all have been cranking on a really cool
podcast,
30 plus episodes.
You have a host is an influencer, Mary, who you mentioned.
And why did you want to run this?
And even the term influencer, I know, is very like who knows what that even
means.
But in this case, she is someone who is influential in the space, hence the
influencer.
And also you're putting her at the center of a content initiative.
Yeah, I think in general, when you look at some best practices from B2C and if
we're
just all on our own social platforms, whatever they might be, Ian, I don't know
about you,
are you on TikTok right now?
I try to say it is way too addicting for me.
So I try to stay out there as much as humanly possible.
Yeah.
Well, that's the whole point.
It's funny because when we, so Mary was doing a podcast, had done a few before
I came in.
And I think when we looked at content in general, we didn't have anybody
leading content and
we weren't leveraging a lot of the activities.
And my first strategy last year was just get everyone as busy as possible.
So everyone's doubling down on where they're at, right?
Like in order to get good at marketing, you still have to be marketing and then
you can
hone and be working smarter and harder.
And so blowing things up a lot was the strategy.
That's not super, like doesn't sound super smart, but it's really like if we
know this
works and people are listening to it, let's do it.
But let's not just do it on that channel.
And that's why I asked about social because what I'm really proud of the team
for was
taking Mary's podcast, thinking about how we do it more efficiently internally
versus
externally.
And that was a big move for us.
And when we moved it internally, now we could actually start to have some
thoughts on the
content versus just being Mary who understands the community.
But how does that content relate to our message and the story we want to tell?
How can we use our own internal influencers, if you will, to be on that podcast
So if we're talking to IT, let's get more IT on people speaking with this legal
department,
let's get the cross love going and then let's slice it and dice it.
Let's put it on TikTok.
Some of our best producing, our best produced pieces of that podcast are TikTok
videos that
have crazy engagement on just 10 seconds of that podcast.
And I love it.
I think if it's crazy addicting for you in your personal life, it should be
crazy addicting
to you in your business life, right?
So that's kind of what we've been thinking.
And so now it's how do we take that?
And how do we think about other folks that we can put up on a pedestal?
I really believe that in marketing, it shouldn't be just you telling your story
And I think that's where Mary is so unique.
She built a whole industry recognized organization around this legal ox persona
So she was doing that before Ironclad came into the picture.
And that's kind of what I look for in this moment.
I know you and I were talking before the podcast about how you think about
almost celebrities
in their fields doing things that make people really pay attention.
And that's what we're trying to do.
Because at the end of the day, we're just people making decisions.
We're not like the head of IT doing this, you know?
Yeah, I like to think about community.
Yeah.
This is one of the chapters in my book, the serialized content framework.
I better get on that, Ian.
I know, right?
I'll send you the free copy.
Please, I want it.
You can download for free.
But one of the so one of the chapters about community.
And so the book is primarily about building serialized content.
But when I was sort of like, well, I have to put a chapter about community
because community
and content are sort of intermixed.
And my whole thing on this is like your community, they'll be there before you
got there and
they'll be there long after you're gone.
100%.
Right?
So it's like this group of people, they already exist.
They already wear the t-shirt.
Like, you know, if their t-shirt says legal ops or if it says, you know,
marketing nerd or
whatever, it's like, you're just, you're just coming in.
And providing additional resources or content or things to like feed the
conversation or
help them meet up or help them sort of come up with ideas.
And I think that so many people sort of like get that wrong that it's like this
thing already
exists.
Now your communities end up being very like you have your customer community,
you have
your user community, you have, you know, your customer advisory board, like you
have these
other micro communities within that.
But there's this like, I call it a total addressable community.
But this like, there's this big, you know, this big, right?
I like it.
This big community that, that like people try to like go after the whole thing
all the
time.
And it's like, that's probably really hard.
But the fast track is to find influencers that are already known in that space.
And like people just aren't really doing this.
And then the final thing I'll say on this is that the algorithms want that.
They don't want your brand.
And like that's the big difference.
100%.
Like they want her to talk.
And they want people to engage with her.
They're like, you know, and LinkedIn like reserves 80% of its traffic for
people, not
for brands for that exact reason.
So I totally agree.
And it's funny where I really learned about the heart of community was at Twil
io because
that developer community, there was, I think we had at one point the developer
of Angelism
team was like over 60, 70 people around the world just going to different
language, user,
like different language groups and different, you know, how or what's the
Python community
saying?
What's the Java community saying?
And so when you think about that, it had nothing to do with us, but we're
supporting
them doing the work that they're going to do either way.
And that just happens naturally.
Like you don't have to force it.
It's not all about you.
And that really is like at the end of the day, I don't want somebody like if it
was
Caspian Studios just talking about Caspian all the time and Ian is just talking
about,
you know, marketing marketing, like, but you're relating to people.
You're meeting them where they are.
Like you're giving advice to how to do things differently in a different way to
think.
And I think that is so important.
So I just, I can't say that enough.
I don't, I don't, I love TAC.
I hadn't heard that before.
Total addressable community.
I'm going to steal that.
It's a TAC.
Yeah, you can.
You got lots of TAC to build in different areas.
Right.
When we talk about content, no, I totally.
So when we talk about content, I always talk about like, okay, well, what's the
minimum
viable community within your tech?
Right?
So it's like, it's just like startup world, right?
It's like, you could sell to anyone, but who are the ones where you want to
focus and,
you know, and deliver that stuff.
And like that's the important part is like you can go a mile deep with Mary on
the legal
ops community because that's her community.
And then if you make multi channel, multi format content in all the different
places where
people consume that stuff, you're probably going to do really well.
And that's what she did.
We're in the playbook.
You didn't even know.
I didn't even know.
Well, the thing is, is I'm not, it's so funny.
Like you, I'm sure you, when you talk to different people, it's, I'm not always
like
going to use the quote unquote industry terms.
But I think in general, you know, if you're watching the data and you're
watching the metrics
and you understand how things are performing, you just keep trying to repeat
what's working
in those areas and that runs the model.
But it is, it's really interesting because I see it happen a lot.
I'm sure you hear this a lot.
That piece of what you just said about who specifically in the community and
going deep
with them is I think the real crucial piece to success on that, no matter how
much content
you put against any because even internally I've seen this happen, even this
last year
and we're working through this is like we've landed a couple of really good
opportunities
where we've sold our SFDC integration and it's been to a sales team.
And so the word is we're going to go after sales now.
We're going after sales, but we're really not going after sales.
Sales leaders are not the ones picking up technology necessarily that's going
to help
with the contract review process, right?
That's probably rev-ops and sales-ops and/or sales enablement.
And it's deep into those communities trying to build tech stacks.
We're now I'm like, how do we help them make the business better and make them
the champions
that really improved and A.E.'s day, right?
But it's not sales.
And I always think that's really interesting.
You have to keep fighting that.
What specific group inside is happening, which is 101, but at the same time it
's not because
it's hard to define that unless you really get to know them.
So the antithesis of that, and I've talked about this a bunch and also part of
the reason
why I wrote this silly book was because a lot of the stuff just didn't have
names.
And I was trying to figure out the names for all this stuff.
I love that.
Yeah.
And I'm like, I have to write a book with all these thoughts.
But one of the things that I think is really fascinating about once you start z
ooming in
on these personas and you start getting closer and closer and closer to what it
actually
is, the antithesis of this is what we hear all the time.
And when you make a show, it's like you have to get specific on this.
What we hear all the time is let's make a future of work show for CIOs and CMOs
and
CDOs and whatever.
And every single time I go, do you ever as a CMO, do you ever listen to
anything that
IT, like would you listen to an IT podcast?
They're like, no, like why would we make a show that features, you know, all
that stuff
at the same time?
It doesn't make any sense.
Like what we really want to do is just tell the one person whose job it is to
do the thing
and then like create everything for that person.
And so I think when you think about content that allows you to like frame it a
little
bit easier, whereas like when you're selling it, you're like, well, of course,
sales wants
to buy this.
Like it's like, no, a sales person doesn't.
He wants to close his quota.
Like this month.
Yeah.
He wants to stay in the same tool and not think about this little thing that I
'm trying
to sell him or her.
Like that's never going to happen.
So it is interesting.
It's we have taken a step back this year to really think about like the
messages that
matter and who we're telling them to and how we can then work smarter, but also
take the
lessons from the other messages, campaigns and double down on what's working or
what's
not in these communities.
Because I think that community love gets you so much further.
Yeah.
Anyway, I'm curious how you think about that.
Like this is one of the things that I sort of we've had some we've had like
customers
who have made like three or four or five shows or whatever and they, you know,
different
persona of a shows and sort of like the idea is like if you close your eyes and
wave to
Magic One, you woke up the next day and you had like all these different series
for each
of your key personas that and like you had control of that like quote unquote
community.
Yeah.
Right.
It's like you had that if like just tomorrow you owned CIO.com and CMO.com and
you know,
like whatever, right?
Yeah.
Like what would you do then?
Right.
And so, you know, you don't have that stuff.
So how do you how do you think about shaping?
You know, these different, these different groups that they don't think about
your problem
24/7.
They probably think about it five minutes a year, but it is something that's
part of
their life and contracting is literally every once everyone's like this.
Totally.
Yeah.
I think you flipped the question and you think about their problems related to
this little
thing or to their day, right?
And I think that gets back into what you were just saying about community.
I mean, when I look at first of all, sales and marketing, like, I can't do my
job without
sales closing business.
And no matter how much demand I bring in, if they don't close at the end of the
quarter,
neither one of us win, right?
It's the same thing if I put myself in a sales person's position and I think
about how many
things our internal organization is asking sales to do.
Just our internal out or not even customers.
Just think about how much, you know, most of us can sit here and go, yeah, well
, we sent
that slack and we sent that email and we told you guys, we told you what was
going on, right?
It doesn't matter because at the end of the day, if finance wants them to
follow this in
forecasting and or deals desk and ops is asking them to do something new and
how you use sales
force.
And then as they go to close the deal, they have to go into a new tool to
actually get
that contract closed and review and then their sales leaders come into them
saying, when
did this happen?
Like I'm trying to think of the psyche of the day and I don't matter in the
psyche of
the day, but you know what?
I know that closing a deal matters in the psyche of the day.
So how do I make that my storyline?
How does closing a deal happen faster?
And who am I saying it to?
I'm not saying it to the sales rep.
I'm saying it to the ops person who has the relationship with the sales rep who
can tell
that story in a way that I never could to them because they don't care about me
or
what I'm selling, right?
So I think about it like that.
And how we're taking that is we're doing I just did this with my team a week
ago right
before the end of the quarter.
We did a three day session of messages that matter and got into the psyche of
what we
think is happening with this persona as they're looking at doing their day job.
What story could we tell them?
And how does that layer into maybe the feeling or the bigger brand messages,
but is a lot
more direct to them?
Not as subtle, not just trust or connection or this, that other, but like what
's the team
sport happening between sales and legal that we know we can speak to legal with
and we
have enough folks working with legal that we can tell that story and kind of
just mapping
out what those will look like and then the tactics underneath them.
I think one of the things I know that we've I believe I shouldn't say I know
that sounds
kind of crappy like we're so good.
But one of the things I believe we've done well in this last year is telling
those stories
with humor.
One of our best performing social posts was Alex Sue who's a community leader
on this
woman Mary's team who I've been talking about and just him talking about the
sales and legal
partnership and he's the legal guy.
He's a former lawyer and he's talking from his perspective on video about how
sales will
treat him at the end of the quarter and how sales will call him probably 35
times in
the same day and he'll just kind of sit there and he'll tell sales what to do
and then they
don't do it and then they both kind of like get frustrated with each other.
Like those moments are the best things ever because people know you're not
lying like
you're just telling the truth.
This actually sucks and we look at each other this way you know.
We were we were on a call with our our lawyer who's me lawyer and sales.
We were on a call the other day and he was like just so you know our lawyer
said this
just so you know with Ian everything is ASAP I'm like no it's only an ASAP for
you.
Hey you're one of those people Ian.
Yeah I know I was like I was like that's not true.
It's only you that I need everything ASAP.
Everyone else has normal timelines.
Everyone has normal timelines but I need this contract tomorrow I got to get
this vendor
on I got to do this right like we all feel it so I think you know when I'm
looking at
this year we did a lot of great work I mean I'm really proud of the team but I
think now
it's like as we're kind of expanding the sales ops rev-offs procurement IT we
have to work
smarter across that and really think about what's what's really one for us and
those
things have been great moments in the last year so that's how we're looking at
it.
I love it.
Any other sort of things that you're thinking about sort of investing in and
experimenting
in in 2024 where's your where's your 10% tweaks and ads and things like that.
You know I'm curious what you're hearing on the podcast from different leaders
and I really
am so when I think about 10% investments I've got some things that we're really
seeing
as promising we're looking at like things like connected TV going a little bit
deeper
on YouTube and some different social investments and then I'm also looking at
when you think
about the search generative experience coming and we get a lot of traffic with
our SEO wins.
How am I how am I thinking about awareness a little bit differently I mean I
know we're
all kind of like don't know what this is going to mean but it seems to be
showing that B2B
marketing we're going to take a little bit of a hit in SEO so how am I thinking
about
awareness in other areas I think that's where I'm really trying to put some
investment in
dollars not just like outdoor awareness but like when I'm really trying to hit
from a
top of funnel perspective if that changes a little bit how am I thinking about
whether
it's airport placement or YouTube or where people are listening at night and
what they're
doing content comes in there from a podcast perspective but those are things
that we're
really trying to play with and then I think the other place we're trying to
play with
is how are we going to actually take on the trends in the market when it comes
to AI to
make conversion better so I have a great ops leader who's thinking about
conversational
email for us we just we just kind of reorged and have our SDRs are putting into
marketing
this year we didn't have that last year so how are we going to help them with
demand
how are we going to help them do things faster with quality how are we thinking
about using
AI tools to help with our product marketing and messaging like those are some
things that
we're trying to figure out right now in terms of investments and experiments.
Yeah that's exciting you know and and I'll say this that I think that you know
we're all
trying to figure out you know people know like trust right like you know how do
we how do
we get people to know us and like us and ultimately trust us and I think that
some of the things
that you know you and I were talking about before we got on there is that sort
of like
we that sometimes less people or you know making something more targeted or
more personable
or more personalized or whatever it is that those things are going to you know
get accelerate
that sort of like trust building type thing and that stuff is more experiential
and experimental
it's like both of those things so it's just an interesting sort of time to say
like well
if I can't talk to every single person with one thing like how am I talking to
different
people very differently.
Yeah and then how are you how are you capturing those other people with things
that could
be helpful but that create action points that then tell you when you should
engage with them
right I think we were talking about earlier and this is before we started but I
have noticed
coming into this role the tactics and strategies that worked during the COVID
years don't work
the same way anymore you can't have over produced highly produced content and
just a thousands
of people's in attendance like I'm burned out on that crap anyway I don't know
if anybody
else is not crap it's been wonderful and thank God for it because it kept us
all employed
but like you know but when you think about it now I think people want you to be
much
more real I think the short like very intentional conversations ways that you
're one to one like
I love the field marketing activities with the sales person in their accounts
like whether
it's personalized whether it's swag whether it's being an industry events like
something
that makes it stand out a little bit more like you cared which sounds silly
like do we have
feelings do we care this much I mean we better because I think it's a different
iator if you
if you can and you can show that really really well and it shows up in metrics
like we've
seen really small attended more bespoke focused content do better than thousand
person webinars
in general from a pipeline and moving the business forward yeah I agree to yeah
no I
agree to we have to it's just like you know the more the more unique the use
case and
personalized and all that stuff yeah you just get someone who's like way more
engaged and
you get more engagement in the in the chat and all that stuff yeah Leslie it's
wonderful
chatting with you as always for listeners go to go to ironcladapp.com to learn
more they
got a sweet little section on there don't let contracts slow down your
campaigns for
all you marketing people don't let it be fun all thoughts I would just want to
say to
all of my marketing peeps who are part of my community like keep showing up I
feel like
this has been a crazy year and you know lots of market changes lots of shifts
when it came
to technology I hope everybody keeps showing up and having fun with it because
if you're
not having fun anymore then it's just it's not going to be good like we got to
enjoy ourselves
take care of it yourselves too I feel like every leader I'm talking to you
right now
is burned out with whether it's AI or something else and at the end of the day
like good marketing
is really hard it's subjective so give yourself a break and keep trying and
hopefully find
the things that make it joyful that's that's all I could not agree more like it
it can
be fun and yeah and and it's so so fun when it is well it is and thank you Ian
for giving
us inspiration I can't wait to listen to some of your business fiction podcast
stuff I'm
really really excited about this so appreciate you having me back I love I love
talking to
you yeah likewise talk soon thank you okay bye
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