Things so much for joining us on the next CMO podcast. Sean would love to learn a little bit more about you, your background and what fits Martin incorporated. Kelsey and Peter, thank you so much. It's been a privilege to be here. Y'all got just an amazing podcast. The all adds so much value your ideas, your thinking, and just great interviews.
Thank you for, for doing this podcast is great. So my, my background, so, wow. You know I was born a Yankee and a 19. Oh, you don't want that much factory. It goes far back is as appropriate John. So not a little after birth, but that's fine. So I've been doing this marketing thing for probably 30 years and that has seen a great journey from a creative development, creative design.
Into what really excites us now. And that's working with executives of middle market emerging, middle market companies and helping them figure out these things, these rev ops [00:01:00] things, marketing operations stuff, organizational design. And one of my favorites is the application of behavioral science. To the sales cycle, to the sales journey.
And that is just great fun. We love working with the executives. Usually we're working with a CMOs, sometimes a CEO sometimes as VP of sales sometimes. And you know, on the best of days, working with a CFO as well. So we our advisory services. And some people we help with technology implementation and then for a few clients will actually still help with execute a creative vision.
But yeah, that's, that's a nickel. Well, that's great, great background, Sean. And we were really excited about this conversation with you because of some of the great work that you've done. And, and in particular, around this area of sales, alignment, and organizational design and system design, which is really on the top of minds.
A lot of our listeners, we [00:02:00] know. So let's dive in a little bit into some of the organizational and system design stuff, because I think that's really topical for people. So you obviously work with a lot of companies, you call them sort of emerging middle market and people probably going through a fair amount of growth.
So when they engage you, when a client engages you and says, help me figure out how to design a marketing or marketing or sales alignment. What are the problems they're trying to solve when they come from? Oh, gosh, you know, it's interesting. I'm so I'm getting to be an old man. Kelsey don't differ from the here.
Or I guess this would be a good time argue, right? Argued. I'm not an old man. Yeah, I didn't hear her arguing by the way. Over the years, I think I would say 95% of all problems are communications. Right? So. It doesn't matter what the business is as a matter what level and you know, the integration and having a system that really what it supports is.[00:03:00]
Communication good. Having clarity, having clear objectives. And I think that I was told something once and and it kind of hurt at the time because I'd taken some in passionate position. And one of my advisors said, you know, Sean, there's more than one way to do things right. Often. So I would say most of sales and marketing alignment comes around having chosen.
One position. Now we, we base our position when we teach, when we help, we don't want opinions. We don't want I like, in fact, I refused to allow the phrase. I like something to be said in my office because I don't really care what you like. Right. I need to know a foundation. And I think most business owners are frustrated with marketers who live in.
And an opinion I want to science. So we have based all of our thinking around the trans theoretical model of behavioral change. And it is a model of how anybody changes [00:04:00] in any type of behavior from unaware, but really pre contemplating is the right behavioral science term. I used the word unaware because that's what most of us think about Mara.
But even more than unaware, you can have a perfect brand awareness. Everybody in America was aware of the Edsel. It didn't change anything. Right? Awareness doesn't solve all the problems. So many emerging middle market companies are moving from this model of let's create awareness and see how sales happen to understanding needs to be more depth.
So we go from pre-contemplation through to an exchange relationship, the behavioral science calls. A cessation of behavior, right? So you're trying to quit smoking, for example, anybody who smokes today, there's no way they're unaware of the dangerous, right. You're choosing, you're just having a break.
Can we just haven't contemplated the change all the way through to quitting smoking and then even telling other people about. How great it's been [00:05:00] quit smoking. Why do I do that? That's a weird thing to talk about in today's day, right? Smoking. Well, the reason is the science was studied based on smoking because what works for Chelsea?
It didn't help. Peter, what helped Peter quit? Didn't help. Kelsey didn't help me. So what the scientist broke through and said, let's look at the trans theoretical, right? Okay. I'm gonna get a little wonky here. Give me a rim. So this trans theoretical model, like we looked at all the behavioral sciences per Chaka, Norcross Clemente with a scientist and they identified the aha moment.
There's nine different processes. That help people move through these stages. So in business, let's put this in business terms. We've got a consumer decision journey, probably not a single one of your listeners. He doesn't know what a CDJ is, right? Consumer decision journey, idea, popularized by McKinsey.
And they've got a great job, but what was missing and current me as the marketer, as an advisor was understanding why, what works to move people through [00:06:00] the CDJ at different stages. Didn't work. Easiest example is let's create awareness, let's raise consciousness of a product or a service. Let's say we're talking about a company that needs marketing planning and budgeting software.
For example, like they might know that that exists, but they don't know how it matters to them. Well, pre contemplating is that doesn't know how it matters. You can create all the awareness you want for. But you can't, if you don't understand how it matters to me, it doesn't, it's not relevant. Right? So there's different techniques.
There's helping relationships. There's public commitments, private commitments, as countering as environmental controls. There's all these processes at the behavioral science show work. So to alignment, there's aspects of marketing that lean heavily on some of these science processes and there's aspects of sales that lean on some processes [00:07:00] and they're later stage different place.
So the way we take anybody, the journey we've taken anybody on this, understand the consumer decision journey, unless identify words and language we're going to use for each. Then let's look at these processes and codified everything marketing's doing and codified everything that sales is doing and map it out.
We call this a sales barrier analysis. And by doing this map, we identify gaps and barriers in the process that are getting in the way of your customers. So we want to make sure that we can help that marketing and sales is. So again, marketing and sales, right? The, and is the critical thing. And then there's this common language.
There's six stages there, nine processes. So we can get people to talk through this. We do a say retreat, but we've got the marketing team and a sales team. We're working together with the executive team as well. We literally physically walk people through it. We'd say, Kelsey, you're [00:08:00] going to be the sales person, Peter, you're going to be a marketing guy and I'll usually get the seat and go and say, you're going to be at customer.
And we walked through a deal physically. We mapped this out in the room and people can see, and the Houston language, then all of a sudden the marketing and sales alignment works because who did I put in the middle market? Is there, here? Sales is over here. It was in the middle, the customer. So if you all align around the customer, And the sales and marketing and up aligned.
So many people try to figure out how to get sell to marketing, to work together. Forget it, forget that, just get sales to align, to customer marketing, to aligned to the customer, and guess who ends up aligned marketing and sales. So just kind of have an opinion, got to take a position if you don't want to use the transtheoretical model of behavioral change, but.
But I think it's incredible. I've used it for 20 years where we see $243 ROI for every dollar clients invest in us. And that's, that's also science, right? That's [00:09:00] math. That's not my opinion. It works. The science works. Okay. Y'all asked me my favorite question. So I got excited and I went too long. No, no problem.
So if I, if. Try to tease out a couple of the core points there that you were making. Sean, I think the, the issue around alignment between sales and marketing, as it relates to the way that the teams are organized, tends to be around maybe a lack of understanding of, or empathy for the customer and maybe a different kind of.
Approach or alignment between sales and marketing when it comes to the customer. So one of the, one of the things I find causes that problem, I'd love to hear your view on this is that marketing is often organized in expertise and responsibility. So expertise. [00:10:00] So as an example, some, someone is a really great events manager.
Someone is a really great. Content writer, but that doesn't always solve the problem because there isn't an alignment around accountability of result and the result could be around customer success or business success or something else. So how do you see, how do you see marketing organizations changing over time when it comes to relating to results versus expertise?
Oh, yeah, that's a great question. You really should have given them an easier one. Peter, come on. I think the answer there is a journey from crashed thinking to strategic thinking. It's a journey from. The doers of stuff. I think too many marketing departments are just the doers of staff.
You know, like when you, you mentioned the event we worked with a $300 million software company that has locations in 19 countries last year, [00:11:00] maybe the year before. And their, their marketing team did the annual users conference and did a little bit of. That was it. And then sales bludgeoned their way to sales.
Right. They just had to go out and pound it. Right. And just go crazy. And they had some technology support to that. But marketing shifted under the tutelage of their last CMO into a company that enjoyed apartment that started with its relationship with the SVP of sales. Right. And it started around strategy.
And then it moved into measuring. So I don't have to create measurements y'all that, you know, if you you are strategic, if you're at least having a dialogue, if there's not a standard, here's an easy test for every lesson there. Is there a standing meeting between your SVP of sales and your CML, assuming you have those two roles and if not, why?
I think I can probably guess for those of you [00:12:00] who say no, I think the answer probably is your SBP is sales. Doesn't take your CMR or your marketing operations person. Seriously. So you've got to ask, does your, does your marketing person get it? Do they want it? Are they capable? You know, we, I see constantly, I just see constantly people go out and hire a marketing person because of the idea of blue sky and art.
And then they get frustrated. They can't sit at the executive table and have a real conversation with the CFO, or they can't look to the SVP of sales and say, you know, we're, we're spread too thin. Here's core markets. Here's projections of where this is going to be even a growth and you can't sit down and have that kind of conversation.
In fact, that's, that's what I see as the victory. I don't want to, I serve as a fractional CMO. One of my favorite long-term clients. Yeah. The SVP of sales there invited me to work in quarterly [00:13:00] plan to launch a new line of business. And the SVP of sales came to me that has to do. I was like, Aw, this is awesome.
Like this guy gets it. He's I've, I've won his heart. Maybe. I don't know. I want to spark that. Yeah. Maybe I want his head. Right. And that's enough. You know, he he allowed me to do that kind of thinking, and we were explored 120 different areas and we looked into a narrative down. Identified EBITDA growth.
And we looked at what could happen, where we equipped, where would we, where can we find channel sales? Where do we not have to stand up a new organization? Like that's marketing talk down, you know, that's, that's good stuff. Now we can create alignment, you know, out of that. So it tell you how to build a watch.
Yes. The first question I threw a bucket of water on you graciously tried to say, okay, there's hydrogen. There's oxygen. And then I think I just did it again. We, you were complete with your [00:14:00] answer. Let me put it that way. And this concept of this concept of focusing marketing on things that are relevant to sales is, is of course very important.
And I think most marketers these days, at least intellectually understand the importance of, of that kind of alignment. There's an interesting line. And that is the idea of marketing should be in service to sales, but not especially subservient to sales again. And that, that line is really important to understand.
And, and one of the most important factors tends to be time horizon because the sales time horizon tends to be this month or this quarter. Yeah, very importantly, because they're the fuel and engine for growth for the business and marketing needs to think a little bit longer term strategic salespeople [00:15:00] do too, obviously.
So how do you see that? How do you see that relationship between marketing and sales? How do they keep that a healthy relationship where marketing is really focused on fueling sales growth, but not especially subservient to. Yeah, that's brilliant. So we're going to need to schedule a follow-up conversation failures of the chief revenue officer.
Cause that's really what you're talking about. That phrase got so hot, right? That two years ago, maybe three years ago. And we've got to have this integrated system, the way we're going to do that is have one hit. Well, when you have one hit. Revenue, the CFO, the CMIO is always going to give more power to the sales function than marketing, just out of the needs for cash.
Right? You've got to have that cash so that I believe that failure of the chief revenue officer concept is that what you end up doing is subjugating marketing to sales that you just said, and [00:16:00] from there marketing becomes weak and you actually retreat. Once you go back to when you were. You know, a $5 million company are trying to figure out this marketing thing or a $10 million company, and you were trying to build a, a real department.
So the marketing function has to have that view. We as human beings kind of lean back into science a little bit as human beings, we, we respond to nothing more greatly. Maybe the pain. That's some interesting science at a U Cal Berkeley that talks about all of us have financial pain, strategic pain, and personal pain.
And if you can lean into those three types of pain as you're selling, if you're marketing that you're going to have the most empathetic response, you're going to have the most understanding come out of it. It's a great test of your own marketing. Look at it. You see answers and articulations about your customers, strategic, financial, and personal pains.
Do you see. Promises that your [00:17:00] organization is making that solve those and you see proofs that's another failure of marketing often is the proofs. And I actually short aside as if there's a shorter side with me is I'd had a sales person come to me and say, you know, we need more numbers. We need more numbers in our to market proposition.
And we ended up uncovering an amazing amount of energy savings and amazing amount of carbon, tons of carbon dioxide, that reduction, I mean really articulate proofs of our, of our organization, our clients positioning. And those are, you know, we need numbers, right. And numbers that our truth is actually the exact headline of the email he sent me.
Are we doing that well? So in this battle between sales and marketing the financial pain always wins for sales because also your competent design is built around what revenue, short term revenue. So if your comp design, and then now you've just moved into my personal name, right? If [00:18:00] I, if I do anything that puts our cash or doesn't realize cash for three or four years, it might be the best thing we can do.
But it doesn't help me get paid. So comp design enters into this pretty effectively. I'm not an expert on comp design, but I've seen that time after time drive media and behaviors. So that's another goal of, of having those two roles separate and equal and at the table. Right. So you don't I've never sat at an executive team where accountant.
Was not on a par with manufacturing or software development heads or or whatever. I mean, this, the executive team, the whole goal of that, right, is that it's sort of a benevolent dictatorship right on with the owners represent the dictator or the CVR privately held. And you have to have equal this, a good CEO once equality.
And in those two roles, you have to get it. [00:19:00] Otherwise you get a misbalanced equation. This balanced thought should work together. Misbalanced what, and the importance of sales and marketing alignment and being both at the same table, what are some. You know, symptoms those early on symptoms that people can catch of that misalignment starting to happen.
Hmm. Really good question. You can ask, tell her to ask easy questions. Listeners must love you. I well respect is just the easiest one. No, if you're not, if you're not getting respect, not never seen respect happening fast, I've never seen respect happened because of CBR demanded it. You know? If I'm, if I'm talking to a marketer I think the fastest way to get respect is to get getting the guys for tourists, the woman's sport tourist, and go ride, go ride the rail man.
You know, go learn what it's like to sell. I can't tell you how many times I've come back from riding with seven. And sat down in front [00:20:00] of the implementation team or the rev ops team and said, y'all as marketers, we thought we were crushing sales hell. Even use our stuff because of this, that and the other.
And there's such, I sat in the sales meeting, he goes a value prop that I've never even heard. Like you've got it. So there's no communication going on you. And it's going to be marketing's job to step. Sales is he going to do it? It's going to be marketing's job to step forward and dive into that other area and give them the respect first.
And then. That relationship in front of that respect, they might start listening to you. And then that's where I come back to the science. Kelsey, you got to have a position that's built on something more than your opinions as a marketer. If you're going to elevate marketing in the world, you've got to have science.
You can't say I like I like is meaningless. I like this, this personal stuff. I have to be scientists, not promoters. Right. Peter, we actually have that written in the [00:21:00] next T-Mobile. I love that. I need to get that book. We're going to get that book. That was a blog. That was a fuck. Exactly. Yeah. I know. W we're Kelsey brings that up.
It's a, it's an important point that we like to make all the time that marketing, I think, can fall into this trap of. Positioning in spinning. And it's most important to really understand, like you said, it's sort of like your comment about I like this. The, the, the important thing to understand is really what happened, what the results are, and actually clearly articulate what really happened in look at the data.
Because just because you like something, you have to understand what works and what doesn't work. And and I think marketing people sometimes go back to that marketing training and try to make something look as positive as it is when what's most important is to really understand what happens. So you can make decisions based on [00:22:00] those data points to that end.
I'm going to give you one of my best secrets. And a personal secret too. Right? So my personal secret is I'm, I'm, I'd thrive on respect. I want people to respect me. I want people to like me, and that's a terrible thing for somebody who's in the counseling advisory role. Right. So I have to battle that constantly.
Well, one way I battle it and one way I can. This earning respect and one way every marketer can do it, or one way a CBO can inflict on marketing is to do a voice of the customer program. Research and insights is vital. And I think research and insights as much as I want to see cheek revenue operate you know, chief revenue officers go away.
I think the, the rise of the research and insights people should have. And what a great way does a couple things. One, it forces re-evaluation your, your executive team is going to go research and insights is [00:23:00] marketing. Well, marketing is getting the traction. Marketing is understanding the customer. So here's the deal.
I offer a simple research and insights program. And I think last time I checked, it was like $9,000 something under $10,000. It's a diagnostic it's initial. Stage diagnostic and the $9,000. We're going to talk to three current customers, three lost customers in three prospects, and every CEO I've ever met, or every market is all in back to doing this for 30 years.
I know my customer is Peter. Kelsey y'all are going to tell me, you know, your customer, but why do we all go to a counselor when we have our problem? Let's say marriage counseling. Relationship counseling. Why don't we go to a counselor? It's not that the counselor is brilliant. The counselor is a third party that we can both talk to.
Well, that's what we're doing in research and insights work. So I'll make the deal to the executive and say, I'll give you your [00:24:00] $9,000 back back. I won't even cash the check. I'll bring it to the meeting when we share our insights. And if you get no value out of it, I'll hand you the check back. Now, are you willing to try.
It's not much money. And if you can't find insights and the next, the next barrier is people say, well, our lost customers, aren't going to call, oh, heck yeah. They can't wait to talk about you. That's there. They're very excited about it. The current customers will do it just because you are a current customer.
What about your prospects? Well, you have to be thoughtful about how to reach out to them, but they're interested in driving solutions to their problems. So that's how we approach. Hey, no, you're in this space and you've got this problem. So we just want to spend 30 minutes. We've been hired by this organization to get your insights about what would be a great product or service for your industry and your problems.
And then we get into the dialogue and it's an amazing thing. So why is all that so important? Well, one it's not me. It's not me saying, I like another [00:25:00] form of, I like is me being a mandator and just saying I'm a marketing expert and that's how. This, this gives me the ability to come to the executive team in a way that's respectful and say, here's what the team is saying.
Here's what your customer are saying. Here's what your lost customers are saying. And you can not like me as a marketer or not think much of my craft, but you gotta respect your customers. You gotta respect your prospects. And I've never, since we've been doing that, it's probably been 20 years of doing it.
I've never had to give a $9,000 check back. And every time it just changes the point of view, because it's not my opinion. It's our third party. It's like science. It's, it's not my opinion. That's science. It's not my opinion. That's measurements, math, you know, it just changes everything. So as much as I want people to trust and like me, it's gotta be the measurement.
It's gotta be a science. It's gotta be the man. It's gotta be. So that's how I create alignment and go all the way back to that [00:26:00] first question, Peter, and get outside of yourself and, and bring in third parties. I'm not saying, hire me. I'm saying, bring in data, bring in math, bring in customers, bring, bring in science.
Okay. That makes a lot of sense. And, and I agree that getting a. A third party unbiased or differently biased, sometimes focus is is really helpful when it comes to bringing in that kind of data. And definitely customers will, we'll tell someone who's a third party, something different in more than they'll tell you.
Cause people often don't like to give people negative feedback. That they'll always tell you the positive, happy stuff to your face. And then they'll gripe about you in the back room and the stuff that's negative is actually some of the most important stuff to understand, because those are the things that often are pretty fixable.
But if you don't know that they're there, it's pretty difficult to fix them. You don't [00:27:00] realize. Yeah, you did not go into this conversation today. Contemplating doing voice to customer research. Did I take you from GRI contemplating the contemplating? When's the last time we did that, we actually are re literally in the middle of a voice of the customer study right now which is which is super helpful.
So are experts. Okay? I thought I was going to catch you in an hour. No, no, no. It, I think it's fortuitous timing on our part because it's really the first kind of customer research study that we've done. And it, it happens to be aligned with the timing that we're recording this conversation. So, so far the, the early reside results are fantastic.
I'm really pleased and definitely come back with some constructive criticism, but but overall, lots of delight, which I'm I'm really happy with. That's that's important to know you do not want are those sequel yes. Research and insights person. You gotta, you gotta hear some bad news and there's gotta be some [00:28:00] absolutely.
There are always things that we can improve and that that's what we're we're focused on. So let's, let's talk about the, let's talk about, we talked about some of the issues of alignment, some of between sales and marketing some of the you know, some of the symptoms that you. Look at to identify if there's a problem.
So paint a picture for us of good alignment. What does that look like? And what are the benefits that an organization would derive from creating better alignment between marketing and sales? Yeah. Great question. And I did just think of another practical answer on organizational design. So remind me if you, if you, if you have an extra.
It's another chip, but so the benefits, I'm going to start with lowering your customer acquisition costs. I mean, what, what executive team is not interested in that? So w what's the difference of going to an executive team and saying we'd like to launch new [00:29:00] initiatives to lower our customer acquisition costs versus saying I'd like to start a new marketing person.
Well, executive team was right. The the guy who runs the plant floor, doesn't come in and say, Hey, I want to get this new piece of equipment because it's really cool, right? The person who runs the plant floor comes in and says, Hey, we can lower our cost of goods sold by 2 cents. And now everybody has gone at a million units a year.
Let's talk a little bit. And then you get into a great conversation. So I think the greatest benefit is more effective selling. So right now, if your sales, this goes Kelsey, back to your symptoms question. If. Aligned with marketing or worse doesn't trust marketing. Then they're doing the early stage work sales is getting back into stage one, stage two pre contemplating contemplating they're building their own lists.
They're there. But they might even have their own Excel spreadsheet. [00:30:00] You know, they're doing their own management of their own people. And they're treating that like an asset. So to business owners, I wouldn't tell you if you're paying for salespeople and there's not a CRM involved in your sales team is not putting that data into the CRM.
Then you're paying your salespeople to build their own assets. And that's your asset because they're getting salary. They should have a base that covers the time to build that asset. It's if you're not thinking about your system, As an asset, and then you're leaving money on the table and you're worse than the old guy, the macular on the sales person leaves, the Rolodex leaves the weapon and why in the world you would let any other department in your organization do that.
So don't let them build an asset and K it, let them build the asset for you. That's why that's what the money is for. So. That it, mark sales will step into the early stage roles that marketing can do at scale with much greater efficiency, vice versa. [00:31:00] Marketing will not know what to do most of the time.
I see marketing, not knowing how to support late stage sales. If marketing candor. If I was interviewing a chief marketing officer, I think a great first place. Would be talk to me about how marketing should support late state's sales and support customer success. If a good marketer should be able to answer those questions, if they can't articulate rationale, thinking, answer those two questions, and you've got to probably somebody who's typical and trained for early stage stuff, creating awareness, and that's fine.
There's a need for it. But I mean, I'll even B2B, right? So this small cycles much more important to me. Lifetime value is much more important to me than selling a Coke or a shirt on the way home or whatever, a consumer I don't, I can't speak to what consumers do. Consumer marketing does very well. So [00:32:00] marketing should know what to do.
So another symptom of a misalignment and not understanding. Marketing not knowing how to do late stage. Well, what happens if marketing doesn't know how to support late stage sales, who doesn't respect them sales? In fact, what cells do I got this don't, you know, Hey, thanks for offering to build my deck or thanks for putting this together.
I'll take care of, I don't need you at the event. I don't need that. Got it. So, I mean, that's you get that? Step-mom how many marketers and or how many times have we gotten close to our biggest deal and marketing wanted to help or said something about helping? And we just said, I got it, man. I want the control.
It's me. I'm the sales person. And I'm going to close the deal. Stay out of the way. Well, that's a again or owners, that's a ineffective use of yourself, but your marketing should know what to do. [00:33:00] I would tell you that marketing should eclipse there. Not be super involved in the physical real time because there, they should be building the scalability of your operation down the road.
Again, Peter that's to your point, right? Mark, you should have a long view. We should be building business. That's going to close in two years. Sellers should be closing this quarter. You know, what's planned, we've got to hit plan let's that's that's immediate needs, but marketing has got to equip sales to do that.
So. The benefits are marketing can lower your customer acquisition costs by taking care of all the early stage stuff in a way that sells respects and will appreciate anybody who's ever launched. A marketing automation initiative here has said this following sentence, a tribal marketing automation, and I got a bunch of leads and the quality was fill on your experts.
You know, low quality is a real common. Yeah, that probably comes out of a misunderstanding of scale and misunderstanding of volume. Maybe marketing is doing a bad job. Most likely [00:34:00] what sales is looking at when they say it's bad quality, what they're really saying, it's not really ready to close. Okay. I mean, people, behavioral science, the behavioral science says that you can sit for two years in a contemplating pre contemplating preparation stage two years.
And you can say that. Through it, right. You could come through and close and, and download a book and then come back a year later and you can cycle through that. Will sales interprets that as a bad call lead. That's not us. The nurturing league. It's somebody who's not ready to buy yet. The consumer still has.
Right. So you've got to give them the room to cycle and loop set comes down to education and sales and marketing and communicating and alignment again, communication. And then setting, we just did this with one of our clients where we finally sat down, they were complaining about lead quality. We finally said, let's sit down with sales and say, what sells?
What do you call it? Engaged? [00:35:00] What are the triggers? What do you see as valuable? So we adjusted, we threw away our metrics and we use sales metrics for what the word engaged in there. This was an account-based marketing program. We were running, we were seeing engagement and getting excited and throwing them over the wall and they were not ready.
And they didn't like what we're saying. So we've changed the metric and it's a measurable metric. And now it's working. So, gosh, the other answer I would say is marketing technologies. We have a revenue operations team and rev rev ops is amazing. And I think the role of rev ops is to deliver visibility across the entire team marketing and sales, and to improve efficiencies around the process of driving.
And even improving predictability of revenue. So you can do things like market and budget for the next year. How do you understand what an appropriate and CAC or marketing customer acquisition costs? Well, you got to have some data [00:36:00] visibility, so we take the 13, 14,000 MarTech that are out there. Now, boil it down into three areas of demand, gen sales, enablement, and customer success.
By looking at that as a foundation in those three categories then we're able to cover most of the needs. And then of what marketing should do with great visibility. And then as a company grows and matures, then we do want to add into that, that, that budgeting measure the dashboard kind of thinking which y'all are obviously very familiar.
So how did, why is this thinking important? Well, let's go back to behavioral science, but one last comment 80% of your customers are going to look at options while they're your customer. Right? 80% of them must have us go well, that's not, that's not true. So the behavioral science showed that 80% of people who quit smoking were looking back at smoking.
You are no. Do you remember the good old. So, if you want a biblical point of view, you know, Israel [00:37:00] got out of Egypt and they all went, oh, remember we had housing and fish back there. Yeah, you were slaves, you know you know, your customer, whatever your business is. You know, you're looking at a 80% rate current customer looking at well, It was a late stage.
We love, we call it the interruption marketing. So right before someone signs a deal, right before you meet her, tell tells you, change your behavior. What do you do? You chair right. Do a last check. Did I make a mistake? Do I do before I make a public commitment to buying the software, to buying this capital expenditure mine, I'm going to ask them.
I'm going to look online on the, go to G2, to software. I'm going to go to whatever. Yeah. I'm going to look and get other people's opinions. That's the power of this distributed thing, the internet, right. So I can get all kinds of opinions. So 80% of those people are going to retreat when sales thinks that it's just all green lights.[00:38:00]
So you've got to remember those things and work together on this thing. That's a great way, actually, that marketing can artist and dispatch themselves is discussing that retreat, that close rate. In fact, we call it selling backwards. When we come in and do it and engagement if we're going to help you roll out a new revised marketing plan, 90% of all marketers I've ever met, create awareness and try to push people through the.
We're going to say, no, let's start with lay staged lists and then let's grow it back to the contemplators than the awareness, but we're going to sell backwards. And all of that is joint, right? We're creating that alignment. Great. I've got to learn how to make sure podcasts and speaking to that, we're, we're we're at the end of our time here.
And I, I wanted to thank you for for great insights that you shared with us, Sean. And in, just before we wrap up, I wanted you to let our listeners know how they might find out more information about. Certainly [00:39:00] well fits martin.com is the website MIT, Z M a R T I m.com. And a way if you're interested, some of the concepts that I was sharing today, there's a petsmart.com/free help.
And it's I got one. I also want to thank Peter and Kelsey, they purchased you. Listen. Some copies of sheriff shift is a book that might be a little under a year. Your group of listeners, calcium beer. It's written for executives who are in charge of marketing, but they were never trained for the task.
I just space that so much that we wrote that that book published by rock bench out of Nashville. So it's free. I'm not baiting you with a lead gen technique. We'll send you the book and I hope. So yeah, come learn and see what you can find in that free help section. Just some of the frameworks, this cognitive marketing framework is there, and then you can get, get booked for free too.
So what better than that? That's great. Thanks very much. Thank you. You guys heard great. You asked the toughest [00:40:00] questions. I've done jillions of these podcasts. These are the toughest parties, questions that not appreciate it. That's what we try to do. So let's do a second. Take one. Another tribe. There are no mulligans in podcasts.
So given that Kelsey, I think we're a, we need to wrap up and you can help take. Thanks so much for your time today, Sean, make sure to follow the next Simo and plan on Twitter and LinkedIn. And if you have any ideas for topics or guests, you can email us@thenextcmoatplanet.com. Have a great day. Thanks Sean.
Thanks Sean.
