Cracking the Code: Unified Sales & Marketing Revenue Strategies

B2B Marketing Perspectives episode, hosted by Steve MacDonald: How to capitalize on the potential of aligning sales & marketing to promote growth in your company despite a challenging market environment, with special guest Morgan DiGiorgio of DirectMail2.0.

0:00 [Music] 0:05 welcome everyone to the B2B marketing 0:06 perspectives podcast I'm Steve McDonald 0:08 your host and we've got a really special 0:10 tree today because we have Morgan D 0:12 Georgio on Morgan is the SBP of sales 0:15 and marketing at a martech company 0:17 called Direct Mail 2.0 and here's a 0:20 couple of things that I'm just GNA give 0:22 you as a pretext to what you're going to 0:24 hear today Nal is Morgan overseeing 0:27 sales and marketing so Morgan gets to 0:30 decide if I was going to run sales and 0:32 marketing together how would I do that 0:35 and there's so much talk in the industry 0:37 about the the the friction between 0:40 marketing and sales but if you had the 0:43 opportunity to run both Marketing sales 0:46 together how would you do it well we're 0:47 gonna hear that from Morgan today but 0:50 also Morgan you're G to talk a little 0:52 bit about the irony in your very 0:54 business model right and and and how 0:58 that plays into a a marketing and sales 1:01 strategy that you use in the company so 1:04 with with that as a crescendo maybe tell 1:07 us a little bit about yourself beyond 1:09 that brief introduction sure thank you 1:12 for having me Steve I I'm really happy 1:13 to be here uh just to expound a little 1:16 bit on my background I I do have uh over 1:19 18 years of professional experience in 1:22 various business sectors where I've been 1:24 possession in several leadership roles 1:27 whether that was sales marketing 1:29 operation 1:30 uh ownership I I am a co-founder of a 1:32 Technology based Medical Group uh but I 1:35 have had the opportunity to play the uh 1:39 oversight role of sales in conjunction 1:42 with marketing in a couple of different 1:44 Industries so I'm pretty well versed in 1:46 that regard and and I'm happy that I get 1:48 the opportunity to do that in this 1:50 organization as 1:52 well so I'm dying for you to tell us all 1:55 about kind of this irony in the business 1:57 model right uh what is does that mean 2:01 sure so there's historically been a 2:06 proverbial tug of war so to speak 2:08 between offline and online channels 2:10 right whenever we're approaching a 2:11 client as a marketing company or uh if 2:15 there's different marketing agencies 2:17 that are vying for those marketing 2:19 dollars or budget from a client we're 2:20 always trying to talk them into putting 2:22 more budget into what it is that we are 2:24 selling right maybe that's Direct Mail 2:27 which is offline or maybe we're talking 2:29 about digital so we actually we are a 14 2:34 technology marketing automation company 2:37 that actually sells digital marketing to 2:40 printers and mailers so we don't 2:42 actually print or mail anything and and 2:44 typically in the industry of Print and 2:46 Mail digital marketing is a big no no 2:49 because these Print and Mail sales reps 2:51 are always buying for the same marketing 2:52 dollars that the digital agencies are so 2:55 it's just so ironic that you know us not 2:59 printing or mailing anything we work 3:01 within an industry that typically does 3:04 not like their clients to utilize 3:05 digital marketing but they buy a license 3:07 to resell a digital marketing product to 3:11 their direct mail 3:12 customers that is a really interesting 3:15 challenge right selling into a market 3:18 that's predisposed to not want to do 3:20 what you're selling correct sign me up 3:23 for that sales job 3:25 right so that then lends itself to okay 3:30 if that's the kind of the state of the 3:32 industry and the challenges the irony of 3:35 what you're trying to do there tell us a 3:38 little bit about how you bring marketing 3:41 and sales together and and I'll see that 3:44 with something that you said before we 3:46 we kicked off uh the recording here and 3:50 it was about how content was a way that 3:54 you started and actually grew the 3:57 business so with that intro I'll let you 4:00 take it from there right well so just in 4:04 telling my my story about uh the irony 4:07 of our organization its Inception our 4:10 our target market our ICP right and and 4:13 what it is we're selling to them uh when 4:16 we started this organization we started 4:18 to create and and Market content that 4:22 was relevant to offline marketing we 4:25 started talking about how affluent and 4:27 how effective offline marketing is which 4:30 is the complete opposite of what it is 4:32 that we're selling we're selling digital 4:34 marketing but we are selling digital 4:36 marketing to integrate with direct mail 4:37 to make Direct Mail better but in order 4:40 to be able to capture our audience's 4:41 attention we had to go out there and be 4:43 cheerleaders for direct mail and so we 4:47 started creating content that was 4:49 putting out statistical information 4:51 about the effectiveness of mail you know 4:53 not digital right we sell digital 4:55 marketing you think you would think that 4:56 we would be going out and talking about 4:58 how effective digital marketing is and 5:00 this is why you should want to buy and 5:03 resell our platform but we were talking 5:05 about the effecacy of mail and what a 5:07 powerful tool mail was and it started to 5:09 grab the attention of the print mailers 5:12 that would potentially be a customer of 5:15 ours so grabbing their attention is what 5:18 you have to do right and what a lot of 5:21 typical companies do with your product 5:23 your technology that you're representing 5:25 right we know a lot about that we're 5:27 subject matter experts in that we can 5:29 talk about that all day long and 5:31 obviously as soon as somebody knows 5:33 they're going to want to buy right so 5:35 it's easy for marketing to produce a lot 5:38 of product marketing level content right 5:41 but what you're talking about is the 5:44 epitome of saying first and foremost I 5:48 need to serve my audience I need to 5:51 educate my audience I need to let them 5:53 know I understand their industry and let 5:56 them know that I actually understand 5:58 that in a way that I have a point of 5:59 view that adds value to what they're 6:02 doing so tell us about the marketing 6:07 Power hours that you did and and what 6:10 that was and how that worked and 6:12 throughout the conversation here we're 6:14 going to constantly be connecting 6:16 marketing and day-to-day sales 6:19 activities because what you were just 6:21 talking about could have been put into 6:23 the category of lofty brand thought 6:26 leadership add value takes time time 6:30 right we need to have 6:32 patience but you are doing all of that 6:35 building your brand establishing 6:37 expertise by getting into 6:39 conversations and that content is used 6:41 very specifically in the sales group on 6:43 a daily basis so you're not talking 6:47 about doing something that we've got to 6:49 wait a couple years to benefit from 6:50 you're talking about something that that 6:52 is hitting all stages of the buyer's 6:54 Journey so these marketing powwow sorry 6:57 oh yeah no wor 6:59 uh well so we've always tried to seek 7:04 ways that we could really be of service 7:06 to the industry uh or ways that we could 7:08 just be helpful in general not just to 7:11 our existing customers who we call 7:13 Partners but to the industry as a whole 7:16 anybody in the print and mail industry 7:18 and the industry has suffered a 7:20 significant amount of challenges over 7:22 the last few years several businesses 7:25 did especially postco but the print and 7:27 mail industry suffered some significant 7:29 impacts for a couple of different 7:30 reasons uh one one of the first things 7:33 to go during an economic downturn 7:35 typically is marketing which I feel that 7:38 you should be out marketing everybody 7:40 else in an economic downturn due to all 7:42 the opportunities available to you uh at 7:45 that time but uh so people perceived 7:49 print and direct mail to be more 7:51 expensive than digital so they had a 7:53 more challenging time as their customers 7:54 were pulling back on budgets not to 7:56 mention the fact that we had supply 7:58 chain issues they didn't have the 8:00 ability to get paper so even if a 8:02 customer wanted to run a direct mail 8:04 campaign they they couldn't even get the 8:06 paper to fulfill it it was just they 8:08 were getting hit from all Ang angles and 8:10 this is actually carried over um even 8:13 into today's current time and space uh 8:16 and in addition to that uh USPS uh was 8:20 in such a large deficit then in addition 8:23 to them not being able to get the 8:24 supplies they need to be able to fulfill 8:26 their jobs USPS keeps increasing the 8:29 cost of postage which is adding costs on 8:32 top of everything else so they've just 8:33 been getting pummeled with so many 8:35 different challenges in the industry but 8:37 during coid when they were experiencing 8:40 quite a significant amount of pain we 8:42 thought to ourselves from a marketing 8:44 perspective why don't we put together a 8:46 venue or Forum where people in the 8:48 industry can get together and they can 8:51 share the challenges that they're 8:53 experiencing and all of them being their 8:55 own subject matter experts can share the 8:57 solutions that they're implementing 8:58 within their organization hey this is 9:01 where I'm getting paper hey I have a 9:02 resource here and we called it a print 9:05 powwow now that was the marketing 9:09 element to it I mean we were not 9:11 garnering any type of uh you know 9:14 revenue from that it wasn't a sales 9:16 webinar we were just facilitating 9:18 something uh to be of service and be 9:20 helpful that everybody can get together 9:22 and share Solutions now from a sales 9:25 perspective we were able to take that 9:27 content that was shared and and we were 9:29 able to have our sales reps either take 9:32 that to our existing partners that 9:33 they're working with so our account 9:35 managers and they could share that 9:36 information if they didn't have an 9:38 opportunity to join or they could take 9:40 these little tidbits of information and 9:42 they could utilize it in the prospecting 9:44 process hey I don't know if you're aware 9:47 we're running these print powwows some 9:49 really useful and valuable information 9:50 was shared I thought that I would share 9:52 it with you here and try to open the 9:53 door to extending that conversation or 9:56 prolonging that sales 9:57 cycle so so the way that you can take 10:03 content like that and extend its 10:08 value tell me though in one aspect what 10:12 do you think that did you were the 10:15 facilitator right so you weren't the 10:17 subject matter experts you were the 10:20 facilitator of this but what did that 10:22 have in terms of an impact on your 10:25 perception as experts in the industry oh 10:29 well it it definitely was another notch 10:31 on our belt in terms of positioning us 10:34 as a thought leader in the industry and 10:37 we we do tend to go out and seek 10:40 resources so that we can provide 10:43 Solutions or things that we will help 10:46 overcome those challenges so we did 10:48 provide a little bit of our own input 10:50 that we had garnered or gathered from 10:51 our own resources within the industry um 10:55 but it was just another you know like 10:57 I'm like I said not on the belt so to 11:00 speak uh that really helps solidify us 11:03 as a thought leader in the industry 11:05 we've done several things to uh try to 11:09 expound upon that whether it's 11:11 formulating relationships with the 11:14 United States Postal Service now again 11:16 we don't print or mail anything why 11:18 would we have a relationship with the 11:19 United States Postal Service well we've 11:22 created these relationships at uh with 11:25 some of the the very high level leaders 11:27 in the organization so that we can build 11:29 technology and create solutions that 11:31 align with some of the challenges that 11:33 they're experiencing in the industry 11:35 like for example we're experiencing 11:38 postage increase T increases twice a 11:41 year it's getting harder and harder for 11:43 our customers to want to pay for Direct 11:46 Mail because you keep increasing the 11:48 cost of postage we can't get paper the 11:51 the cost of paper is so high so we go 11:54 out and we create technology that aligns 11:57 with postage incentives that USPS rolls 12:00 out so that these mailers and their 12:02 customers can use our platform send out 12:05 mail and take advantage of postage 12:07 discounts or maybe we're on the board 12:10 for the postal customer Council and we 12:13 make sure that we're in the know of all 12:15 of the Intel going on in the industry so 12:17 that we can pass that along to other 12:19 print and mailers or we can utilize that 12:21 internally so that we can put together 12:23 marketing pieces or sales sales 12:27 prospecting or sales outflow cence um 12:30 and and we've just really interwoven 12:32 ourselves in the industry in almost 12:33 every aspect that we 12:36 can so smart 12:39 so these are typically things that some 12:44 maybe seweet leadership in in companies 12:46 would say you know that's not our core 12:48 competency that's not what we do but 12:52 here's my takeaway from what I'm hearing 12:53 you say is that you have Digital 12:56 Services that you're providing that 12:58 enhance 12:59 you know the services of the the the 13:02 direct mailers the printers that you 13:03 serve but you're creating a whole second 13:09 value proposition behind the product 13:11 that you actually offer and that is the 13:14 service component right that is the 13:16 knowledge that is the expertise that is 13:19 the advice that is your brand right and 13:23 you do that through content and then 13:25 that content is sliced into various 13:29 sizes bite-sized pieces and shared on a 13:31 daily basis through sales correct that 13:35 aligns with I have to tell you because 13:37 it's so exciting I have a a call with 13:38 the CEO tomorrow but he's the CEO of two 13:41 International companies and was a a CMO 13:44 at his previous company and and the 13:47 whole idea was what do CEOs want from 13:50 their CMOS and this number one thing 13:52 that he said was exactly what you're 13:54 doing he said I want my CMOS to add 13:57 value that we provide from our company 14:00 that can be value from the actual 14:02 product itself right it can be value and 14:05 how you 14:06 serve and you had told me that you you 14:09 you have a point of view of a service 14:11 heart that your goal is to look at how 14:14 do I serve my customers and my prospects 14:18 because if I do that then everything 14:20 else falls into place 100% 100% no one 14:25 likes a Salesman they don't right you 14:29 know they can smell a Salesman from a 14:31 mile away nobody likes that but when you 14:34 go about your sales Cycles as you're 14:38 you're putting yourself in a position of 14:40 where you can be helpful and you can 14:42 actually help your 14:44 prospects that is going to initiate a 14:46 conversation that is going to get their 14:48 attention and you know I I just I just 14:50 want to say one other thing too is that 14:52 you know we can say any person or any 14:55 organization or anyone can say that they 14:58 care about their audience or you can put 15:00 a CEO on some YouTube video dressed up 15:04 in a suit talking about how much he 15:06 cares about his customers and the 15:07 organization and that's great okay it's 15:10 one thing to actually say something but 15:12 it's another thing to take action and 15:14 actually do it don't tell me what you 15:17 are or what you like or what you care 15:20 about show me show me go out and do it 15:25 and when you do that you are just going 15:27 to basically initiate an element of 15:30 Attraction within your organization that 15:33 it will just help your marketing and 15:35 sales funnels 15:36 tfold so tell me then now your SVP sales 15:41 and marketing you have that point of 15:43 view what are you saying to the 15:46 marketing department to fulfill that 15:48 promise and then what are you saying to 15:50 the sales 15:52 department and and potentially together 15:54 too like tell us a little bit about how 15:57 you train your teams in order to deliver 15:59 on that promise sure so I I mean from a 16:02 marketing perspective right I mean 16:04 there's innumerous things that we could 16:06 be doing as an organization right but I 16:09 tell them that I want our marketing 16:11 efforts to align with the core values of 16:13 our organization and of how we're being 16:15 of service to the industry and 16:17 positioning ourselves as a thought 16:18 leader so what events can we go to that 16:22 we can add value not just go there and 16:25 you know do a sales a sales presentation 16:28 and talk about our company where can we 16:30 go and provide some educational content 16:32 maybe we throw in a piece here or there 16:35 about our organization or or Tech stack 16:37 but I want speaking events that are 16:40 educational in nature I want content 16:43 going out that is educational in nature 16:45 we do webinar series on a monthly basis 16:48 we of course do here and there do a 16:50 webinar series that talks about our our 16:53 product and our service offerings but 16:54 for the most part we ask the industry 16:56 hey what are you guys interested in 16:57 hearing about and we'll go out and we'll 16:59 find experts in the field and we'll put 17:02 on a webinar that doesn't have anything 17:03 to do with Direct Mail 2.0 just so that 17:06 we can provide educational content and 17:08 then from a sales perspective we utilize 17:11 this content to follow up with our sales 17:14 prospects whether in the channel you 17:16 know we share it with them and and how 17:18 can we help you implement this into your 17:19 organization and then from a prospecting 17:21 Cadence hey I would really love to share 17:24 this information with you and can we 17:25 have a conversation about this you know 17:29 yesterday I was talking to a gentleman 17:31 and he uh he founded and runs a 17:35 marketing attribution company so he's 17:37 all about tying marketing and 17:40 attributing IT to how it influences 17:42 pipeline development 17:44 revenue and from across all of their 17:46 clients he said on average so there's 17:49 less and there's more that from the 17:53 first touch point to a closed sale is 17:57 192 days 17:58 six and a half months and then he says 18:00 you know in a in a more core ABM 18:02 environment it can be a year right so 18:06 your sales team is in a situation where 18:10 I don't know what your average deal 18:11 closing rate is you don't have to talk 18:13 about that but it's long right so your 18:16 salespeople are constantly having to 18:19 think how do I keep in touch and it 18:23 can't be through a sales message and 18:26 every touch point when I'm taking from 18:29 what you're saying is also is building 18:32 their credibility as an advisor as a 18:35 server somebody that who's there to help 18:39 and he said the first touch points the 18:41 first series of touch points have 18:43 nothing to do with a company agreed 18:47 right and that's what you're echoing 18:49 here yeah but you're actually executing 18:51 it right sure I mean think about it how 18:55 many emails do you get a day that you're 18:58 just delete delete delete delete you 19:00 know hey just checking in with you hey I 19:03 just wanted to follow up that that's not 19:06 going to get anybody's attention but hey 19:08 we put together this 14-page white paper 19:11 with a ton of relevant content and data 19:13 that I think that not only would be 19:15 viable and useful for your organization 19:17 but also something that might be used as 19:19 a sales tool to pass along to your 19:21 clients hey I thought I'd share this 19:23 with you do you have some time where we 19:24 could review 19:25 this that's impactful that is going get 19:28 somebody's 19:29 attention well it's a so this is our 19:33 actually Mantra or our point of view 19:35 that we stole from a Forbes magazine 19:37 article somebody else said it very 19:39 eloquently and it was content marketing 19:42 solves problems thought leadership 19:46 Sparks 19:47 conversations right so you're GNA spark 19:49 a conversation when you're serving 19:51 someone and and it has to be worthy that 19:54 content has to be worthy of them saying 19:56 I'm going to spend my time reading this 19:59 or watching this or attending that event 20:02 so I'm D to ask you this question 20:04 because I ask it at every podcast 20:07 episode that we do right and I think I 20:09 know what the answer is going to be by 20:11 what you've been saying here but if you 20:13 could rate literally put a rating of one 20:15 to 10 on the importance of content in 20:20 the overall success of your company the 20:23 overall growth and success of the 20:25 company one not important at all take 20:28 it's vital where would you put it in why 20:32 10 10 it's a 20:35 10 before you even start marketing or 20:40 sales funnels all you do is put out 20:43 content that's first it's first and 20:45 foremost it's content and then you 20:47 inject the content in in between the 20:50 sales and marketing collateral that 20:52 you're sending out so it's one of the 20:54 most important 20:56 things and would your sales if I 20:59 individually called up and I was talking 21:00 to somebody in your sales team and I 21:02 said how what's the importance of 21:03 content into what you're doing and how 21:06 effective it is as a 21:08 salesperson what do you think they would 21:10 say I would say that they would they 21:12 would say it's a 10 now in all 21:14 fairness they are marketing and sales 21:17 consultants and so they're marketing 21:19 experts so they are going to say it's a 21:22 10 because they're knowledgeable about 21:24 that um they're selling a mtech solution 21:26 yes correct in fairness in all fairness 21:29 but um they understand that as a core 21:33 competency within our marketing and 21:35 sales funnels within the organization 21:37 and they know how important it is and my 21:39 sales team heavily relies upon us to uh 21:42 put out that content marketing so that 21:45 they can take advantage of it on their 21:47 sales lines so without it they would be 21:49 screaming at me hey where where you know 21:52 where's our marketing where's our leads 21:54 you know what are you guys doing over 21:55 there you know when you were talking 21:56 about you know the the sales vers 21:59 Marketing in the ring aspect right they 22:02 they would they wouldn't be very happy 22:04 right well I think this is a tribute to 22:07 you running both organizations because 22:09 as a B2B industry um the the the stats 22:15 are that over 55% almost 60% of thought 22:21 leadership content that B2B buyers don't 22:23 think it adds any value wow and really 22:26 that almost 60% of sellers say that the 22:31 marketing content that they're getting 22:33 from marketing doesn't have any 22:35 value W so that's the industry that's 22:39 the that's the foundation that we're 22:42 talking about here and I can't tell you 22:44 how many times as a fractional CMO I've 22:46 been in organizations where they are 22:49 they are literally second-guessing the 22:52 value what are we getting out of our 22:54 content marketing wow well you know not 22:57 to our own horn here or anything but uh 23:01 I think that statistics and numbers uh 23:05 get people's attention and and what I'd 23:07 like to share is that the entire 23:10 Foundation of our organization from the 23:13 infancy stages until now was created 23:16 around this content marketing strategy 23:19 and approach and positioning ourselves 23:22 as thought leaders within the 23:24 organization and we have had 152 % 23:28 threeyear growth we've had double 23:30 digigit growth over the last three years 23:33 um you know we've been on the Inc 5000 23:35 the last three years and we started in 23:38 2016 and as you continue to grow as an 23:40 organization it becomes more and more 23:42 challenging to maintain that type of 23:45 growth so you know from a revenue and 23:49 growth perspective I would say that it's 23:51 working quite well for our 23:53 organization this is where we need to 23:55 put up on the screen time to take notes 24:02 so one of the one of the last questions 24:05 that I want to ask here is you know 24:08 we've talked about a lot and um pretty 24:14 amazing the results that you just 24:16 articulated to us if you were gonna say 24:20 here's the one 24:21 takeaway if you're running Marketing in 24:23 your organization you're working with 24:25 sales you've got to talk to the CFO 24:28 about what you're doing right you've got 24:30 to say Hey you know it's your CEO this 24:34 is why I'm doing what I'm doing right 24:36 what's the what's the one piece of 24:39 advice the takeaway that you'd want us 24:40 to 24:41 have yeah I I I think that it's just so 24:45 important that you're having these 24:47 conversations with the other departments 24:49 within your organization because I could 24:51 see how if I was only managing marketing 24:54 I might have the ability to get tunnel 24:57 vision right right I'm employing uh the 25:00 best practices for marketing from my 25:02 standpoint and what I think is going to 25:04 be effective overall for the 25:06 organization but I think it's so 25:07 important to kind of take your marketing 25:09 hat off and talk to that VP sales or 25:12 have some conversations with some of the 25:14 sales reps ask their opinion ask them 25:16 what they think would be valuable and 25:18 and really just take yourself out of 25:20 that so that you can get that feedback 25:22 and start employing some of that into 25:24 your marketing 25:26 funnels so you what my one sentence 25:29 takeaway from this whole thing is is 25:31 when you said if I wasn't doing that 25:34 sales would be screaming at us oh right 25:39 yeah I mean if if they yes they would be 25:42 unhappy that is uh I think that's every 25:46 CMO listening here saying I want my 25:49 sales team screaming for the content 25:52 that I'm creating to help and to serve 25:54 them that is overall serving our clients 25:59 and um so very valuable insights Morgan 26:02 if if people had questions uh and they 26:05 wanted to get a hold of you would 26:07 LinkedIn be a good way to do that 26:10 absolutely sure okay fantastic we'll 26:13 we'll make sure that's up on all of the 26:14 recordings and everything this is GNA go 26:16 up 26:18 online and just thank you for sharing 26:22 your insights like your print powwows 26:25 you have just done a powwow and shared 26:27 with the rest of the community and 26:28 that's what this podcast is all about so 26:30 thank you for for coming on today and 26:32 doing all of that yeah thank you so much 26:34 for the opportunity it's been a pleasure