Transcript
WEBVTT
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Hey be to be growth listeners.
We want to hear from you. In
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fact, we will pay you for
it. Just head over to be tob
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growth podcom and complete a short survey
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time. That's be tob growth podcom, letter B number two, letter be
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growth podcom. One entry per person
must be an active listener of the show
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to enter, and look forward to
hearing from you conversations from the front lines
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and marketing. This is be tob
growth. Welcome back to be tob growth.
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I'm your host, Benjie Block,
and today I am joined by Faton
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Juca Phaton. Welcome into be to
be growth. Thanks, Benjie, thanks
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for having me. I appreciate this. So you're bringing us a unique vantage
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point today, man, because you
are the operating partner at some Mary Equity
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Partners, which is a mouthful.
Some people can be like, what exactly
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does Faton do? So let's start
there, because you bring a very unique
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perspective. You sit in the unique
seat where you're getting perspective on man a
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vast like variety of companies in a
time of extreme growth. Right. So
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just give me a backstage pass.
What's your daytoday like? What are you
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working on? Sure, thank you
for having me. My name is Poton
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Zuoka. I'm an operating partner Sumereu
eguy partners. It's a growth equity firm
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focus in mid market technology companies,
specifically invest in in bb says or based
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in San Francisco, California, and
we're focused on founder operated businesses with significant
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growth potential. So that that's that's
where I work. I am a recovering
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former operator and the different, unique
point of view to this where we have
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value creation team at Sumero, so
ceremer value creation teams come Brat is a
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team inhouse of professionals ranging from vice
president all the way to manage and directors,
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and we're all full time employees and
everyone is a former operator, from
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CEO's on down, and we usually
are very strong in one a few functional
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areas and then we bring that experience, those learnings, that thoughtful pattern recognition
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to our portfolio companies, working closely
and very collaboratily with our teams to achieve
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the growth objectives that we've set for
different companies are different, different goals.
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So that's the background of the firm
and where my role is on the firm
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and how I engage with portfolio companies. Let me ask you this when,
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because you're working with portfolio companies,
like, what are some of the common
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obstacles that you see these companies you're
working with? What, like, what
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are they facing? Yeah, so, because we focus on lower middle market
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tech, a lot of the portfolic
companies that we invest in, our founder
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let and the founders have done a
great job, great amount of hustle and
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effort to get the companies from zero
to this point and usually by the time
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they're getting ready to accept investment with
us, they are they want to professionalize
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certain functional areas and and certain leadership
roles. And so part of the challenge,
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and part of, you know,
where we help, is to show
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what great looks like for companies of
this scale about to hit the gas and
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hypergrowth mode. And so at the
end of the day it's all about people
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and it's a people business. So
finding the right people in the right place
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and the dynamics and how the team
is being structured those are usually some of
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the key levers and also presents the
most challenging also the most opportunity for this
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to be successful. Hmm, okay, so let's talk about a little bit
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of what you do specifically, because
essentially you're wearing multiple hats. You've got
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to be able to multiply yourself and
your learnings. You're speaking while we can't
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see the audience right it's like you're
speaking to a room full of marketers right
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now and they're going to resonate with
that where it's like, man, I
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need to basically be able to clone
myself, multiply myself, multiply my learnings.
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But you've had to do this,
and so I wonder what are some
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of the ways that you've had to
multiply and kind of scale yourself in your
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work? Sure, yeah, so
a little bit more context as well,
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and I'm going to get to that
point. And because we have an active
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portfolio, ten to twelve companies at
a time. Yeah, so it's superpose.
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It's a marrow. My focus is
driving growth of the across the portfolio.
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Companies specific to go to market.
So this this also includes marketing and
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sales. I have a very hands
on approach with portfolio companies has spent a
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lot of time with the companies.
I've also served an interim roles for them.
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So logistically how this works is that
if a portfolio company doesn't have a
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marketing function or sales function, of
served that role is interim head of marketing
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for a couple months while we've built
infrastructure, we have hired people and that
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gives us enough time to hire a
full time a better version of myself to
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as a permanent replacement. So that
could be part of the job. Also
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working multiple environments, like you said, but always focused on what can I
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bring from a digital marketing lead generation, sales operations, pipeline management, pricing,
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channel strategy, common management. These
ares are the areas that I focus
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and the question what you're asking is
like, well, you know, those
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are a lot of different capabilities within
go to market and you have a portfolio
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companies like car to you be effective, and this is where we've developed a
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set of sort of repeatable processes across
the different portfolio companies. That that how
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do you help or folic companies with
the thoughtful powder recognition, and we do
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it through growth programs. So we
have created a program of coll it of
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continuous engagement that's designed to drive these
business capabilities to be transformed to so they're
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more effective and performing better and in
a way that they can be worked together
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in a collaborative manner with the with
a functional leader, and be able to
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drive drive results. I don't in
the industry people might call these playbooks.
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We shy away from that. Were
in this and I explain the difference is
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nuance or not play books in a
sense that they are not you pose on
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anybody. Like when I think of
playbook, think of a football playbook,
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plays being called and that's what's me
extually during the field. If these are
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are a collection of best practices that
we're working closely with the management. So
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usually had a marketing or head of
sales or even somebody like had of REV
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opposite is reporting to head of marketing
about moving a certain function. They're not
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imposed on anyone. If a portfolio
company has its own approach that is successful
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and scale book, we are more
than okay to give the management the flexibility
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to stick around with what works right. I love that you're clarifying that right
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from the the top of this conversation
too, because one of the things here
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at be to be growth that we
really stress a lot is the need for
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mindset shifts and not just here's a
one, two, three, do this
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exactly this way, this best practice
and then you're done, wash your hands
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of it, but instead, like
what do we need to adopt right like
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what's the mindset that we should take
on, the wisdom that's necessary to grow
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in scale, something instead of just, like you said, a playbook where
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it's just do this exact thing,
coach calls the play and we're done.
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So thank you for clarifying that and
I love what you're saying. Pattern,
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recognition, repeat a processes, continuous
engagement. Those are things that we're all
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thinking about and you're doing this in
a in a very unique way. Anything
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else you want to add there?
Yeah, thank you for opportunity to a
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little bit in dolls on this.
So you could have playbooks for anything.
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Of Growth Programs. We focus on
the points of maximum impact, like can
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we really drive this? Because that's
what's going to drive the growth as a
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company? And then, because you're
working with people and and you have very
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capable people on the other side,
they are running their teams and but they
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only need this an area in certain
part and that that's when they've reached out
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to you or you've identified and then
you're working with them. So the growth
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programs are a very pragmatic and action
oriented ways on how the management can improve
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that specific business process and our firm
we're very proud working collaboratily in a partnership
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with management. So we these growth
playbooks are widely share. Their incredibly helpful
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for the executives that want them and
the you. We receive a lot of
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positive feedback. Management teams appreciate the
dedication to share in these best practices in
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a collaborative approach to the value cuation. Yep, okay, so let's go.
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Let's start to go a little more
practical here and just maybe give us
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a little bit more detailed context around
what one of these growth programs might look
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like, because people are going to
have in their mind right some and idea
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of what a playbook is. A
lot of businesses are going to have something
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like what were are alluding to here, but your approach is different and it's
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unique in some ways. Give me
some context around what a growth program really
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looks like, right, so let's
focus for let's go deeper in marketing.
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One of the most helpful and successful
frameworks to marketing for us has been revenue
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marketing. It's a term that's come
up in the last couple of years and
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I can slay what that means to
us and how we help or folid companies
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through this framework to be able to
achieve their growth objectives. In a nutshell,
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revenue marketings everything should funnel to revenue, so everyone's goals are tiled the
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sales goals, which is to generate
revenue. And the Revenue Marketing Framework has
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played a significant rolling growth for our
companies and we'll continue to increase this and
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increasingly right. And so how do
you achieve this? We show that and
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we can help the companies, you
know, realize this. The first we
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commit the small improvements. So what
does it mean like? Can we break
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up every process we currently have in
focus on improving those processes by one to
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two percent? So it's the additional
marginal gains. So if we were to
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map out of framework at a high
level, without considering any acronyms here,
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what are the repealable processes that we
relently focus every hour, every day,
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every month, and then we increase
can we improve those two white one percent
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a week and then it's just like
the law of compounding interests. If you
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have this one, twenty fivezeros growing
in one percent every day, you have
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a million dollars by the end of
the year. That's the the approach that
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we do. Such just a commitment
to small improve it's okay, and breaking
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up the processes that are important to
revenue. Let that's sort of level zero.
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The second there's a foundational elements that
we'd like to have a linement on,
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and so this is what is the
steady stream of feedback and collaboration and
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goal setting with our sales and support
teams. So marketing is at the center
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of this. What feedback and what
collaboration can we have with sales and support?
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The key is that we not only
want to align on the initiatives,
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but we also want to align on
the goals with those teams. This is
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why it's, you know, revenue. It's a little bit higher level.
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And then we have these revenue maps, which allows the strategically prioritize these initiatives
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focused on revenue and the revenues,
not just to get new customers, you
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know, protecting revenues also and reducing
charn it's also a revenue initiative. So,
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just just for your listeners, then
we're like, do we have the
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systems and tools in place? Like
this is an important step for us to
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maintain this operational excellence later on as
we're optimizing. And we also look at
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the people. Does does every role
have clear ownership and responsibilities? And this
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actually harder in marketing than it is
with with with you know, in sales,
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because in sales your quota unusually,
it's kind of what drives your performance.
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When in marketing it it's sometimes harder. So then we come to the
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playbooks and what is like, Hey, the foundation of every campaign we're going
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to launch is centered around these playbooks
for success and become a they become a
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checklist, a guy that allows to
execute faster and more productively. And then
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we will like, okay, if
we have a camping that it's mostly around
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brand, and then means like organic
search is important. What is the best
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in class SEO takeaways that you can
you can show me, and this would
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be a two page very bulleted format, like have you considered this? Listen
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this. It's not that the person
on the other side may not know those
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or them it might take him a
little bit longer to go find them out.
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It's the idea to reduce the learning
to very practical what you need to
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so you can execute this in the
context of the bigger framework for drive the
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results. Hey everyone, if you've
been listening to be to be growth for
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a while, you know that we
are big proponents of putting out original,
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organic content on Linkedin, but one
thing that's always been a struggle for a
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team like ours is easily tracking the
reach of that linkedin content. That's why
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we're really excited about shield analytics.
Since our team started using shield, we've
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been able to easily track the reach
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to manually log it ourselves. It
automatically creates reports and it generates dashboards that
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are incredibly useful to determining things like
what content has been performing the best,
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what days of the week are we
getting the most engagement and our average views
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per post. Shield has been a
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All One word for a twenty five
percent discount. All right, let's get
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back into the show. Not that
the person on the other side may not
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know those or them. It might
take him a little bit longer to go
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find them out. It's the idea
to reduce the learning to very practical what
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you need to so you can execute
this in the context of the bigger framework
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for drive the results. That was
said really well. I want to get
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to like where that sort of playboat
growth program takes us in a second.
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You said something I want to discuss
because you're working with multiple companies, so
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you've worked with all these marketing teams
or those that like it's hard to define,
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is what you said right? With
sales easier, we got quotas,
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we got some things we're working with. Have you found some common threads,
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though, within revenue marketing specifically,
where you're like, okay, these are
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the sort of key objectives we find
ourselves coming back to. Some of the
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key metrics are goals that drive this
yes and this quat question. You come
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back to what drives you. What
is this? What is a strategic direction
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of the marketing team? These are
there's three things were looking at. What
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are the buyer insides, the market
insides on the company initiatives, and I
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can explain briefly on them. By
our inside we're looking at what is our
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ideal customer profile, which becomes a
foundation of our campaign messaging, the audience
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targeting, and we also met out
the bias journey in a set by SEP
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to ensure that the campaigns on the
website support this bier behavior. This is
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important because that's exactly who sales should
be selling to and there is any confusion
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around ICP, their out bond function
is not going to work. As you
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know, they're going to have a
lower connection rates and not, you know,
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not being able to sort of be
on the same same level as a
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marketing team. The second thing is
marketing site. So this includes the standard
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projects like competitive analysis or, you
know, digital audits for all the competitors.
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What are their marketing gaps? What
are our marketing gaps? To be
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able to win more with with less, and this is a Measu a little
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bit of Seo and sem having been
great example of this strategy playing out,
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because we can capture economic demand without
having to overpay or compete with a competitor
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that it's got a much bigger budget. And doing that analysis you can find
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out the lawler tails on the Internet
where your customers may be, and that
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alignment is very helpful with sales because
once you find that mql or that lead
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and you're passing it on, sales
need to be prepared to nurture at through
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their funnel, because there were they
were aligned with you. Thank you for
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breaking that down. I think it's
important and you see right this pattern recognition
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of like what's most important. So
it's fun to like go down that road
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a little bit with you because you
can point it out some of the unique
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things are working on there. Okay, so let's let's jump back into gross
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programs. In these essentially, again, we don't want to just call them
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play books because we want to think
differently about him. But when you're working
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on these, you've gotten to the
point, you've got past some of the
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structural things, the conversations that need
to take place. Now you're actually working
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on one. What does that look
like as far as how you're building it
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out, and is there any sort
of like core questions you're asking yourself for
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like a template that you're working from, like what does that look like?
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Yeah, it's great question, just
to bring the conversation full. The growth
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programs is where the programs that you
know Sumeria is created, right, and
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you know for portfolic companies, these
are, you know, very pragmatic action
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oriented. When I was diving deeper
into a revenue marketing and a MBA specific
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playbook on what best some for us, Seo looks like. That would be
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more of a traditional playbook, of
because you're just looking this Yo, the
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growth playbook and higher level was just
the revenue. Yeah, so you were
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asking about you know, what is
the structure of these? Usually one of
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the most important things on the playbook
is is the principles point of view,
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and the principles point of views usually
the author or the collection of authors that
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have worked on on this, and
that's where you have people that have done
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this at a high level working together. Be like imagine then, see if
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you just wanted to learn something about
you might have been interviewed for a new
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job and you're looking to learn something. It could be just, you know,
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maybe the just six, and you
have a friend who's in a logistic
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space and you want to have coffee
with them. You know, I hit
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what are the things that I need
to know, like, you know,
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just like get me up to speak
quickly, the most important things, of
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giving you bullet points, like hey, these are the six things. If
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you know this, you will do
well in understanding this. And so that's
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exactly what this section of the growth
playbook is, whereas it's a principle's point
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of view. Why are you even
writing something like this? Why even creating
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something? And so the best of
principles, like a this is important because
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it's all ties to revenue. This
important because it ties to customer science,
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faction or ties of this. As
a result, it will impact the growth
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of the company. So that's usually
the piece, the the most important part,
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and it's about two paragraphs long.
And then you go into the actual,
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more of the bulleted form, out
of the practical of you or like
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when doing something. So consider this
and this and this, and that's that's
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where those are very helpful because,
you know, busy lives, we usually
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struggle from context switching. You might
be, you know, dealing at a
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higher level with this company here personally
there, but if you have to go
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deep into something, if you have
this that's able to help you out,
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it just makes you more productive and
you're more efficient. Yeah, okay,
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there's a lot of value here.
I want to ask if you kind of
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followed questions compared to a typical length
of like a playbook. When I think
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of that, I think it's a
usually in my mind it's a little bit
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longer. My eyes started to start
to glaze over a little bit because I'm
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just like I'm going to have content
fatigue and I'm going to be like,
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okay, thank you for this re
source, but now I have so much
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and part of what you're saying is
if we can keep it simple and really
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bake it to what is absolutely necessary, that's going to help tremendously. Right,
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absolutely good. I started my career
and management consulting and one of the
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knocks, and that is a you
create a lot of exits it on the
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shelf. That's the opposite of what
this is. This is trying to be
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that, you know, practical,
very pragmatic, action oriented way for how
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management team can improve a specific business
process through this, you know, collection
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of thought, all powder recognition,
not just photon creating it, but people
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like me who have done this at
a higher level for companies of this size.
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So that's also important. You could
have a you know, digital marketing
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and pressing and packaging or customer retention
growth playbook for a company that is a
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two hundred million dollars growing it you
know, fifty percent. That's different than
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a company that is a thirty million
dollars growing at, you know, eighty
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percent. It's just the way that's
going to be consumed and the resources available
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to execute that are different. So
it's also within the context of how they're
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going to be used and consumed.
Okay, this might be hard for you
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to estimate, but at this point, having done this, like how many
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of these do you feel like you've
been a part of building? And I
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would love to get like some context
there, because you've done this repeatedly.
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How many of you worked on?
And then what would you say is some
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of the Roi you've seen from this
format? The number of playbooks will work
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to the firm are, you know, more than fifty, and it's all
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like the major areas that we all
think are important to the business. HMM,
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the value of them is immerged enormous. For our company. Majority of
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the growth in our portfolio companies comes
from organic growth. Add on Ma's is
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one of the levers that we had
value to, but two thirds of the
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growth is coming from organic growth and
that could be attributed to the efficiencies that
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are portfolio companies are creating and growing
and this is a part of that.
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Not taking credit for all that,
but it's part of that and it ties
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to that big number of them as
order the growth coming from from this kind
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of work. Yeah, any specific
examples or companies you've worked with where they've
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implemented something like this and come back
and been like man, this was a
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lifesaver. Yes, and and by
the way, this is one of the
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companies where we hired the head of
marketing and is an action absolute rock star
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that I've learned so much from him
that he's actually helped me shape some of
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this thinking and be able to take
it from, you know, help other
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companies with it. This company is
one of the things that in marketing that's
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important. Those is what is the
contributional marketing to close deals, again,
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pie to revenue, not impressions,
you know, conversions, all those are,
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you know, important, nonsense,
but that's one of the big numbers
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for bb says not not direct consumer. That would be a different aim.
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And the company was, you know, struggling between eighteen to twenty percent of
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closed business coming from marketing. We
took it from that to fifty percent.
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Wow, yeah, what that means
is that marketing is we were doing it
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this efficiently, so it was able
to obviously feed sales with all the leads
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and and the business and we would, you know, less pressure on them
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to be able them to do their
own prospecting. So the ship change with
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what we're allocating resources and it's not
have a few other companies that are approaching
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the fifty percent mark. For us
that seems to be a sort of a
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best in class, you know,
marketing contributing some of the close deals.
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Maybe other companies out there that are
doing much, much better than this,
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but you know, we would we
would be happy with that kind of goal.
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The percentage growth is incredible and I'm
glad to spotlight an example there.
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I think that that's important for us
to be thinking about. I wanted to
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do this as we start to take
this conversation home is if you're putting yourself
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in your learnings from this sort of
structure and all the work that you're doing.
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If we were to drop you into
a marketing roll right if we were
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drop you it like, let's say
there's a CMO listening to this or a
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director of marketing and they're going,
I want to implement something similar to this
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playbook model. What where would you
tell them to start? Is there something
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that they can do from their vantage
point that's similar to this that they could
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execute on? Because we always want
to leave with something that maybe maybe you're
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listening this in your car right now
or you're on or run and you're going,
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Oh, I love what he's saying. Obviously, in his context he's
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working with all these companies. I'm
working in one, but what would you
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tell people to do? What would
you tell people to a playbook that they
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could make or a place to start? If Ben's a very important question.
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I'm going to introduce slightly new concept
on this and take away, which was
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one, is that alignment with the
other functional group, so of sales and
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customer support usually are very important for
marketing to be aligned. And what initiatives
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you're working on there will move the
goal and revenue. So that's one.
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Even being calmed on closed deals is
something we highly recommend for revenue teams,
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not on on generating leads. You
might be generally, which is great.
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That's part of the process, but
what matters is all the business closed.
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That's when you have zero friction between
marketing sales, when you have that kind
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of alignment. I'm in sentence.
And then three is we didn't get chance
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to talk about this early warning system. It's something that you know, how
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do marketing teams get to be this
efficient and be able to get the point
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where they can just dial knobs and
be able to optimize their spen so for
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every one dollar put in the system
that can predictably generate, you know whatever
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their freshold for Roi is. And
this is the early warning system I want
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to bring about. And there's some
tools in the market that just I can
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reference one later if you want me
to. They're just coming about. To
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this is setting goals and perform almost
thresholds on your metrics and and everything in
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there is measure and optimized. For
example, you might be running campaigns in
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real time and you have signals for
email open rates and you know how different
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the visitors are be having in different
websites and you have this campaign here in
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this campaign there. It becomes so
big to manage that in real time that
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this early warning system, once you
set the thresholds, it alerts you what
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something might be broken or something is
overperforming, because you can get surprised on
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the positive side, and then,
based on that, it's a real time
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as war analytics that you can act
on that. For example, you might
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have their email campaign is opening rate
is below two percent, which is just,
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you know, crushing. You can
take that in real time and not
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have to wait a couple days because
you've been alerted, and assign it to
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the email marketing manager with the right
task and so there it's a follow up
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through that. Or you may have
a campaign that's performing better than what you
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thought. Maybe have a fifteen percent
roy in this and then you can't maybe,
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maybe I should allocate more resources to
this, because this is working really
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well so that that early warning system
is is part of what is mentioned tools
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and systems earlier, but it enables
this early warning system so you can be
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able to optimize in real time data
driven decisions on every single metric and you
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know, yeah, that's that's another
one of those takeaways that I'd like to
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leave the market on leaders with.
Yeah, I like that as a base.
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To have something in place as an
early warning system is is important.
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Is there? So we set that
as like the foundation, basically, is
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what you're saying. Beyond and then
beyond that, maybe there's some specific systems
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or structures with around these playbooks that
we can put in place, but you
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have to have that kind of first. Would be what you're advocating for.
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That's right. Well, I love
this. Is there anything else you want
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to add on the playbook side of
things that you think maybe it's that we
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often overlook or something that we should
start doing as we leave this episode in
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this conversation that we've had? Yeah, start small, right. Goes back
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to originally what I'm saying. Be
Okay with small incremental movements of one to
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two percent and CONSISTENC of wins.
If you're trying to make big overhauling changes,
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it can be daunting. You need
a lot of sake coolers right away.
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That's what causes a momentum. Try
to optimize for small gains, but
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do it consistently. You're going to
find bigger and greater benefits. It's good.
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Let me ask you one more follow
up question because I just thought of
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this too. But as you're working
on the playbook specifically, have we,
393
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but you've been using just written format, like quick bullet points, and that's
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all you do. Is this is
just a very format driven question. Are
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you using video at all to teach
and do some of this like bullet pointed
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work that you want to point out, like ways to do things, or
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is it all just written so that
people can kind of pull up a dock
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and that's that's the end of it? Our work programs are in written form.
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They're not something that you just give
somebody to implement. It's yeah,
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we also have a discussion around that. It's part of my job and my
401
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team is we're like in working so
andso companies like this is what the best
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practice is to work for this context
for you, we could try to tweak
403
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this a little bit, but again
it's an important concept to have. Video
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could work. We actually have a
portfolio company called three hundred and sixty learning.
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It's an at test space. Is
An elmask that helps companies create contact
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in this quickly. At eight minutes
and it's very engaging in social it's something
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that thought about creating someone growth programs
in that way, since it's even more
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easier to consume on the other side. I'm not there yet, but yeah,
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that's a good point. Now,
totally fair. I just I'm always
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interested in how you're executing on it
and I love the this version and how
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you're talking about it because again,
your personalizing Hey, for your company and
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Miss Stage. This is what works
and that totally makes sense. We actually
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had joey chance, she's market at
three hundred and sixty learning. We had
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her on just a few weeks ago. So good reference there as we start
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to close here. But love this
conversation. How can people stay connected to
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you and the work that that you're
doing summer equitycom on the informations on the
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website. Always looking to partner with
ambitious entrepreneurs and see where we can help
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each other. Phatony, it was
so great to have you here on B
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tob growth today and we really appreciate
you stopping by. Thank you very much,
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but we're always having conversations like this
here on be to be Gross,
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we want to help you in your
mindset and with your own innovation. There's
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a lot we can take away from
this episode, some really key conversations to
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be having, some ways that we
can take this playbook idea and even just
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the simplicity of bulleting it and going
hey, this isn't mandatory, you don't
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have to do it exactly like this, but we can all kind of take
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and learn. I love what was
given away here. So maybe this is
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00:30:26.200 --> 00:30:30.799
your first time listening. Go ahead
subscribe to the podcast on whatever podcast player
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00:30:30.839 --> 00:30:34.200
you're listening to this on. If
you have questions for me, I'd love
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00:30:34.240 --> 00:30:37.240
to connect with you on Linkedin.
You can just search Benjie Block talking about
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00:30:37.279 --> 00:30:41.359
marketing, business and life over there, and we'll be back real soon with
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00:30:41.400 --> 00:31:15.359
another episode. Keep doing work that
matters.