Exhaustion Consulting And Real Work

SPEAKER_02 0:13

Hey everybody, welcome back to Marketing Qualified. I'm Mike Griffin.

SPEAKER_00 0:17

And I'm exhausted.

SPEAKER_02 0:20

Exhausted. Senor exhausted. Uh, how bad is it?

SPEAKER_00 0:26

Uh I got about two hours of sleep last night, but uh yeah, anything I I say in this podcast cannot be held against me in the court of law, so um, as far as I know, but maybe maybe it can't. Anyway, how are you today, sir?

SPEAKER_02 0:39

We'll find out. Listen, I'm I'm doing all right. I'm I'm hanging in. It's been an adventure, uh, still seeking that next sort of full-time thing. I told you I was in between gigs right now, but the good news is I did land a uh a consulting project first uh that I've had in some time. And it's early days, early times, but it's awesome so far. I really love it. It feels like going back into kind of like the glory days when we were uh teaching people how to use HubSpot. So very, very fun, very safe space.

SPEAKER_00 1:06

Yeah. Good, good for you. That's that's awesome. I mean, consulting is definitely the way to go. You know, you you don't have to deal with a lot of the politics and bureaucracy. You can actually just do what you're good at, which is meeting with clients and you know, talking to people and helping them meet their goals. Yeah. So imagine there's something to be said about you know doing doing actual work instead of you know performative bullshit that a lot of companies have you do.

SPEAKER_02 1:29

Well, guess what? You just disqualified yourself from the vast majority of senior leadership positions in most of the places that we do.

SPEAKER_00 1:36

I think we talked about this in the past, but like, you know, with all the talk about AI disruption and like you know, AI coming for our gerbs and and all this other stuff. Uh you know, the the the people at the top who don't really do any actual work, like they don't produce anything, like they are the people who should be gone first. Like AI can make better decisions as long as long as you're feeding it the right data and the right inputs, which is pretty much their direct reports' jobs. It's like they get the inputs and insight from their direct reports and then they use it to make decisions. Often the wrong the wrong ones based on experience at a couple uh a c a couple experiences I've had, but uh that's neither here nor there.

SPEAKER_01 2:14

Was it the Dilbert principle that we were talking about with this? Or like no, no, I get it was um okay.

SPEAKER_00 2:20

Maybe yeah, the Dilbert principle is uh people rise to their level of incompetence. And if that was the actual principle, then I'm I'm pretty sure I hit mine when I was 18 working at a Burger King.

SPEAKER_02 2:31

Just absolutely maxed. That is awesome. Uh all right. Well, listen, we're back at it. Uh, we're trying to get into somewhat of like a rhythm here. Again, we got Mr. Exhausted powering through to the degree that he can. So uh this should be this should be interesting. A couple things we want to touch upon today, just general reactions to some stuff that I can't help but consume on LinkedIn because apparently I'm addicted at this point, just like sit and shadow hate for from from a distance.

SPEAKER_00 3:02

It's like watching somebody about to get hit by a bus. Like you can't not look away. You just have to watch it, and then you just feel bad about yourself, and you feel bad for the person who got hit afterwards.

SPEAKER_02 3:11

Yeah, that's I mean, I think LinkedIn should put that on an ad and just put it out there for uh exactly how the experience is. I think that that accurately captures it. Uh, then I want to share with you. I mentioned that I'm gonna be on this employment journey, right? Just a recent, really fun, said extremely facetiously experience that I had and get into some of like the nitty-gritty, just kind of like a uh job seeker beware piece of advice for me based on this, just kind of get your raw reaction to that. That's always enjoyable. Uh, and then a couple of different things for like, is marketing getting smarter or just louder? This is something that you mentioned just before hopping on the call. Uh, I know that you have a couple of thoughts about like arguments for straw man arguments for like either of those situations. So we'll get into that as well. Um before we do,

Patriots Yankees And Microsoft Reality

SPEAKER_02 4:00

general table setting. Patriots kind of look good again. Taylor Swift made a bad album, and I am using Outlook again for the first time in like a decade. My question for you is is the simulation glitching? Or is this just where we are right now?

SPEAKER_00 4:21

Uh, I mean, I can't comment uh on the Taylor Swift thing out of fear for my life because my wife uh, you know, I I feel like Taylor Swift has this the same effect on certain women that Trump has on like bigoted old men. Where it's like he could do anything that he wants, and like even if they know it's bad, they'll never admit it. And I feel the same thing with the Taylor Swift album. Like, my wife bought it like at midnight when it came out or whatever, and like she listens to it, and I would heard her listen to it a lot, which in my opinion is her way of saying that it's not that great. But she would never admit that it wasn't great. So that's all I'm gonna touch on that one, because otherwise, like I said, like my my life is forfeit if if she gets wind of me saying anything negative about Taylor Swift, but um the the third thing that you mentioned, what was the what was the third thing?

SPEAKER_02 5:11

I'm using Outlook again for the first time in a decade. So there's that.

SPEAKER_00 5:17

I mean I don't hate Outlook. What I do hate is Microsoft Teams, which usually go hand in hand. Do you do you have to use is that I'm guessing for your consulting gate, you have to use are you using Teams, God forbid?

SPEAKER_02 5:30

Oh yeah. Oh yeah, yeah. Teams outlook the whole like shop, right? One note, SharePoint, you name it. If it's Microsoft, I'm in it at this point.

SPEAKER_00 5:39

Yeah. I feel like uh you graduate when you're no longer working at a startup that uses Google, like when you when you when you work for like a a you know a more established company or like you know, legal or you know, fintech or finance or anything like that, they tend to all be Microsoft shops for whatever reason. Like apparently Microsoft is safer than Google.

SPEAKER_02 5:58

Yes, yeah, I feel like that is kind of like the lingering perception, much like Salesforce is like the CRM you should use if you're serious about CRM, right? That kind of like lingering legacy, whatever you want to call it, seems to be seems to be the case. Uh okay. Alright, fun. So not why is the check swing.

SPEAKER_00 6:16

And the the first the first thing about the Patriots, uh I mean, they did beat Buffalo, which is I was surprised as surprised as they were that that that they pulled off that win. Um I actually put a little bit of a money line bet on them, which paid out quite handsomely. The odds are terrible for them before the game, it was like plus 350 or something, so like a dollar basically paid out four. Um but yeah, I mean they I I think that they they do have a better team than last year for sure. I don't know if they're gonna make the playoffs this year, but they're at least gonna finish with a better record than they did last year, which is pretty much all you can ask for for a rebuilding team.

SPEAKER_02 6:53

Hey man, uh forward progress, right? You're right, that's all you can ask for.

SPEAKER_00 6:59

One other thing is uh fuck the Yankees.

SPEAKER_02 7:02

Ah, yes, yes, yes, indeed. They uh they did us dirty.

SPEAKER_00 7:07

I was supposed to go to the uh the ALDS game at Fenway that would have been yesterday, but the Yankees screwed us out of that one, but I'm not mad. You don't sound mad. You don't sound mad.

SPEAKER_02 7:21

Uh listen, man.

SPEAKER_00 7:23

Uh I'm gonna show you a uh a quick message that I had back and forth with uh somebody who you who you've met before, uh Mad Larry. Oh yes. So this is a uh this is uh uh iMessage conversation that we had yesterday. Can you see that?

SPEAKER_02 7:45

Oh, I can see it, okay. It's well done. It's really well done.

SPEAKER_00 7:51

It's funny because it's a garbage truck and Yankees are garbage, and then it's uh picture of Ralphie from The Simpsons.

SPEAKER_02 7:57

He's the the laugh guy, right?

SPEAKER_00 7:59

Like the uh no, that's uh that's his dad, uh Chief Wiggams. Ah okay, okay, okay, okay.

Fantasy Football Pain And Payouts

SPEAKER_00 8:05

It's been a while since I've seen the show, but uh yeah. Good good stuff, good stuff all around.

SPEAKER_02 8:10

That is good stuff. Uh including the the bet that you made. It sounds like that was uh that was a good good stuff, a good payout there, if you will.

SPEAKER_00 8:18

Um speaking of payouts and what you should like uh if we've talked about fantasy football on this podcast, yeah. Sorry I'm all over the place. Like I said, two hours of sleep, can't make straight running on coffee right now. Uh do you play fantasy yet?

SPEAKER_02 8:31

I don't anymore. No. No. I used to.

SPEAKER_00 8:33

You look at enough numbers and data during the day, you just can't bring yourself to look at more at the end of the day.

SPEAKER_02 8:37

It's more like I can't bring myself to pay for redstone.

SPEAKER_00 8:40

Uh I don't have like a best in your well uh I am undefeated in my league, and I'm not even cheating with AI, so that's I think that's pretty much the best you can ask for these days.

SPEAKER_02 8:52

That's really impressive. That's really impressive. How long have you been in the same league?

SPEAKER_00 8:57

Uh I want to say this is year four or five. Um, the league's been going on for probably over ten years at this point. Um, and then one guy dropped out, and then I joined, you know, in the last four or five years or so. But yeah, it's it's fun. It's fun.

SPEAKER_02 9:12

Um good for you, man. I am still in the red. I won, I came in second place or won one league one year, and I think I'm still like several hundred dollars away from breaking even and like my lifetime investments or maybe. Sure, sure.

SPEAKER_00 9:26

You know, uh and I know that I I have yet to win the championship. Like I have come in first in a couple years. Yeah. Um that's good.

SPEAKER_02 9:36

That's really good.

SPEAKER_00 9:37

And uh, but any year that I come in first in like the regular season or whatever, like I never win the championship. Like, I'll either make it to the semifinals or the finals and then just lose for for whatever reason.

SPEAKER_02 9:47

But probably an injury, right? Probably someone being sad or whatever stupid fucking reason.

SPEAKER_00 9:51

Yeah, it's always in those last couple weeks where you know somebody on my team falls apart or um yeah, gets gets injured or just has a really bad game.

SPEAKER_02 10:01

Classic. Uh let me tell you about a bad game. Or bad maybe maybe this is bad. We'll get your take on it. We'll talk about it, okay? Uh, we I think we've briefly touched upon this in the past, but just to revisit it, because I saw this again as I'm doom scrolling on LinkedIn, because that's what

Gated Content Versus Better Leads

SPEAKER_02 10:15

my life is like these days, and wanted to get your reaction to it. Okay. The topic of discussion is gated content. For those just on the audio format, have a visual up so Chris can see, we'll give you the voiceover in terms of what this post is actually talking about. This is from uh head of marketing at Vector, which is increasingly showing up as like a must-have vendor, at least according to again, like the nerds I follow on LinkedIn. Gated content is a weird hill to die on. We spend hours making something helpful only to immediately block access with a form. I'd rather earn attention by making the content great and then use buyer behavior to know who's ready to talk. If you're nodding, welcome to Team Vector. So incoming, like self-plug here, obviously, but no gates, more of the right leads, follow-up ads based on actual engagement, not just email addresses. Then it goes on to use that like engaging me kind of thing. I'll give you the whole like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Um the pitch for vector aside, I want to revisit this conversation with you because you're you're helping support different clients. We were talking prior to hopping on the recording about like lead accumulation, and a lot of like my primary KPIs more recently have been on like actual pipeline, and there's all this discussion about lead to pipeline velocity and uh conversion rates being like super under the microscope increasingly, and so just like you're often as a demand gen, a performance marketer, as a growth marketer, kind of put in this position to be like you need to justify the return on the investments you're making, especially on the variable channels, right? But no one is like happy when you're just like getting quality leads, like those people are not in a place where they're even looking to buy more often than not if it's a form submission on like an ebook or whatever. So I just want like, in general, your reaction to this. I fought and lost this battle at two organizations that I've been at in the past. I was very like fervently team UnGate and uh was told to uh play with fire on the heel that I was dying on making this argument. So what what do you think? What's your reaction? Take it away.

SPEAKER_00 12:37

Uh I mean I've I've seen both sides of the fence as well. Um, I've worked at companies that have been very pro-Ungated, and all they pretty much all they cared about, the only two conversion actions on the site were to request a demo and sign up. Um and then I've also been at companies where they don't believe in giving anyway anything away for free, and like the sign-up form was like 20 questions long, and that was a challenge just to even get them to like reduce the number of fields. So the the way I think about it is in terms of like value matching. So like if you're gonna ask somebody for a piece of information, like their email address or phone number or you know, name, whatever, it needs to what you're offering needs to be an equivalent value to them. Like obviously it's free, so like it's not like exchanging money, like monetary value or whatever. But if we did put it into like monetary standpoints, like how much like just off the top of your head, how much would you ch would you let somebody pay you for your email address? Like if you're paying me for my email. If you're on a website, like let's say they have like a 20-page ebook with some information that you think might be helpful, uh how much would you expect to receive for just giving your email address? Like if they're like you can have this ebook or a 20, you know, like what what amount what amount like if somebody gave you a dollar, would that be enough for you to give your email address?

SPEAKER_02 13:56

A dollar ain't gonna cut it, I'll tell you that much. No. So uh I'm gonna be honest. I mean, I'm struggling to think of like what my my price would be to give my email. I think it's I mean, I don't know, what's rent these days? Uh it's like I don't know, I'd be hesitant to give it away. Yeah, and and I don't know what the number is, but I understand like the point of the exercise. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:15

And like I think that just over time, like obviously everyone knows like the whole classic inbound marketing, you know, HubSpot mantra of like gating content and everything. If you put in, if you're downloading an ebook and you put in your email address, you're gonna get followed up with it might be aggressive, it might not be aggressive, um, it might not happen at all if the person who set up the automation didn't turn on the workflow. So we we've all been in each of those situations, but sure have. I think that just with like AI and everything, like the value of content's going down, but meanwhile, your personal data value is going up. So, like, if I'm gonna get like a like a coupon, for example, like oh, five dollars off your next order, sure, I think that that might be enough to get to give my email. Like, similar to you, I want to do it for a dollar. Like, I especially if it's a company I'm not familiar with, like it's not really worth my time to like give away a piece of my data for for a dollar. Um but I think people are starting to realize more that data does have value and a lot of data that companies were used to getting for free, like they're no longer getting for free. Right. My long uh fatigued induced rant here is basically just summing up that I think that I I'm pro team on gated content now, just because content is a little commoditized now and data is extremely valuable and people are a little bit more hesitant to give it away, at least that's that's my opinion. Um I think that companies need to find new ways to offer value that is a on par with the data that they're asking for their clients. So like a free trial or you know, a a free s uh freemium sign up or something like that, that tends to be decent value because you're actually potentially getting value out of the tool. And if you're a B2B company, like you're ideally getting some kind of ROI on whatever your time, I I guess time would be the resource that you're investing into this tool when you're when you're trying it out. Um But yeah, companies just need to think a little bit more outside the box in terms of what the types of value that they're offering. So like the classic ebook and white paper approach isn't as valuable as it used to be. And I think that that's why gating content isn't really working as well as it used to be. Um and also like coming from a like an from an SEO standpoint too, it's like having the gated content, like if it's gated, Google can't crawl the content. You might have the best e-book in the world, but Google won't even know it exists if it's hidden behind a form. Um so I think that there's something to be said there about having that content like out there and discoverable and ideally like contributing to your authority, which will get more people interested in your site. Not everyone's gonna convert on what value you are offering that you you're asking for an email or or a piece of information or whatever. But you increase your r your chances of getting more people to come to your website just by having that on ungated. So it's like that's that's kind of where I'm at right now. Is I used to be team pro-gated and now I'm I'm pro-ungated.

SPEAKER_02 17:13

Yeah. Are you suggesting that it's possible to evolve your stance as different behaviors and data that's accumulated uh informs your opinion? That's ridiculous.

SPEAKER_00 17:26

Absolutely insert. I I got out of school in the the late 2000s, and uh, you know, I'm if I was if I never evolved my marketing stance from what I learned in school, I'd still be sending out mailers and shit. And like TV ads and like you know, even like people do in promotion and stuff. Like I was talking to um somebody recently who said that, and I think this is actually based on a New York Times article where um people aren't even like really looking at going on like late night TV, like you know, Jimmy Fallon, Late Tonight Show, and like that kind of stuff. Oh, or even like TV shows like The Morning Show to promote their stuff anymore, like a book or a movie or TV show or whatever. They're mostly hitting the podcast circuit because that's where you can have much more candid conversations, and honestly, like better engagement from the users and much more like you know, focused listeners, like the you know, you know, podcasts tend to be a little bit more of a higher ROI for getting the word out about something new now than like the classic, like you know, hitting the the late night circuit or the the the morning shows and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_02 18:27

Yeah, just think about how much more inherently targeted everything is because there's a dedicated focus, typically speaking, right? Even if it's like at a broader stroke level, like to a podcast or a YouTube channel or a a group, like a speaker series or something like that, than there is just like a it's just the classic spray and pray sort of approach, right?

SPEAKER_00 18:48

Spray and pray, yeah. I mean, you might you might reach way less people, like there's probably gonna be less people listening to a specific podcast about a topic that you wrote a book about, for example, but they're gonna be much more likely to buy the book because they're interested in, you know, you might not be reaching you know however many people watch the the morning show for example or the the today show, for example, you know, I don't know how many people watch it, like a million a day, maybe. I don't know. It's me. But you know, you might reach you know a tenth of that, but you're reaching a much more relevant audience, which in my opinion is a win.

SPEAKER_02 19:24

Yeah, they're also gonna buy faster, right? If you're reaching the right people and you're giving them value beforehand, guess what? Like, sure, here's what's gonna happen, right? If you think about like the bar charts and like the progression through funnel, the quantity of leads and yes, like marketing qualified leads are going to shrink when you on gate. That is just like an inherent result of shrinking this down. However, if you are, and by the way, like neither Chris nor I saying that you should like be giving away like demos, right? You have to do like some qualification, right? You're you're allowed to extract as long as it's what what did you call it, the value equivalent, right? Or like the value uh value exchange, right? As long as that's like an appropriate ratio, then you should totally be getting things for, yeah, like a talk to sales request demo, start your free trial, that kind of thing. That's warranted. We're talking, at least when I think about gated stuff, I think about like, yeah, gated content as the post suggests. And like you're you're gonna you're gonna trick your number of leads, MQLs, whatever. But for these people that are converting on those high-intent forums, the velocity at which they're going to actually purchase or come close to making a purchase decision is gonna be way better. And guess who's gonna be happy about that? It's typically the other members that go to market that would traditionally be concerned about the lack of lead volume to work. Dude, I would rather be handed. I'm trying to think of like an analogy here. Like if you're if you're in volleyball, right? Would you rather have to like work a bunch and go and do some fucking bumps and dive on the ground to get the ball back over the net? Or would you rather have a nice little lob coming over that you can just jump up and fucking spike down on the other side, right? Like you're probably taking the spike for coolest points and also just for like ease of close, ease of getting the point. Same concept here, right? Just like give me these like lower hanging fruit. Um, there's gonna be less of them, but you know, uh, it's gonna it's gonna close better. The overall like unit economics are gonna be better. And it's not like there's not there's no way to prove like ROI on that piece. Like you said, you're looking at things like uh increased traffic, right? Domain authority boosting up. Remember when pillar pages as a concept first came out, one of the major things they talked about was in the past, it would be bundle similarly themed blog posts together to make an ebook or whatever. Do that same thing, but make it ungated, make it like the comprehensive stop, right? I actually work with some clients on ungating ebooks, like taking the thing that was in the PDF and posting it on like a dedicated URL, optimize the fuck out of for whatever like the topic was, right? Getting people there. And then guess what you can do? You can retarget, you can use softwares like uh what do you call it? Like a unify, like a vector, like our RB2B, a lot of these. Like reverse IP lookup folks to like get after the right type of folks. And you can build like a behavioral scoring model kind of stuff to reach out to folks appropriately. So yeah, I don't know. I'm definitely team ungate for all the reasons that we've been talking about. And uh I I think that I'm empathetic to some people needing to like prove traction and like a form submission is like super easy to understand. Well, we got X number of sessions to the page, we got Y number of form submissions and whatever, but like you kind of have to be comfortable with shifting the metrics of success for this piece of content, knowing that it's gonna pay dividends longer term, and you have to use multi-touch attribution for it. That's my final thing.

SPEAKER_00 22:42

I I agree with all that. And uh I mean, like I mentioned earlier, I I think that having more creative ways to kind of extract value from people, like Brian Hoggins' whole thing with HubSpot was add value before you extract value. So that's kind of where the whole ebook thing came in,

Interactive Tools That Earn Data

SPEAKER_00 22:55

where you know people provide an email address and they you you send them a valuable piece of content and everything. But I mean, what I've liked doing recently um is more like interactive types of tools. So obviously not every company has the resources or the skill set internally to do this, but just having like interactive tools where you like like a calculator, for example, where people can put in a variety of inputs and you generate an output which takes their data that you're putting in and then makes it in a uh you know something that's useful for them, like uh you know, like a ROI calculator or you know, or something like that where you can just kind of show people, not just tell people that you can help them with you know improving ROI, but also like show them. And also, too, like all that data that they're inputting, you can also then send to your CRM, and that's all super valuable qualifying data where it's like you can ask for their budgets, you can ask for you know how quickly they're looking to to move on on something new, like you can ask a whole bunch of different qualifying questions, but you do it in a way where you're using that input that input to generate some value for them immediately, not like you know, wait a couple days to like put together a demo or you know, a pitch deck or whatever to to show them. But you're providing the the the data, like the output immediately. And then you can even do something like a teaser where it's like you know, show like a little bit of value up front, and then if they want to unlock the full rapport or calculation or whatever you're you're offering, uh then they put in their email address and then that then ties their contact record to all the data that they put in and you can provide them the rest of the information they're looking for. And also like trigger automation, like send them the a copy of the report or whatever they they generated so that you can, you know, start that kind of like email inerture sequence that could be like the first step of a nurture sequence.

SPEAKER_02 24:42

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like there's I I know for a fact, like in HubSpot, you can even configure, I think it's called like a simple workflow, right? Just within the form tool, you you capture the information and you automatically send the email address with whatever attachment or like file link or whatever the case is to the person that submitted the form immediately based on the email address that they uh they provided there. So when you get to the point in that interactive experience that you're talking about where you actually gather the email, it's confirmed, then like shortly thereafter,

A Smarter VP Marketing Interview Approach

SPEAKER_02 25:10

uh you can do it, um, get it to them. I mean, so yeah. Yep. I like it. Um, you mentioned that's something that you've been doing recently, something that the VP of marketing at Refine Labs has been doing differently, or I guess would recommend doing differently than kind of like the traditional approach. So, again, for those just on the audio format, we'll do a quick voiceover of the post here. It's a bit of a long one, so bear with me. But uh it goes as follows. If I wanted the VP of marketing job right now, I'd approach the process differently than most. I wouldn't spend time proving I've done it before. I'd focus on showing I can do it for them now. That's the shift most senior marketers miss. They'll talk in the past tense. I built, I led, I scaled. None of that matters if you can't connect it to how you'll move the business forward today. When I think about interviews at that level, these are my non-negotiables. Number one, partnership over politics. I ask how the CEO wants to be challenged. If they don't, I'm out. I'm not signing up to take orders. I'm looking to build a partnership where tension creates better ideas, not fear. Number two, data and judgment, not just dashboards. I ask how they define data driven. If the answer is charts, not context, it's a red flag. The best marketing leaders know numbers only matter if they inform judgment. That's the skill that compounds. Number three, brand isn't fluff. I ask how brand shows up in board conversations. If it doesn't, marketing's already boxed in. You can't lead demand strategy if brand is treated like design work. Number four, patience for compounding. I ask about their appetite for long-term marketing bets. Most companies say they want growth, but what they really want is relief. Relief from pressure, relief from bored expectations. Compounding only works when you stop chasing quick wins and start building enduring ones. Number five, shared accountability. I ask how marketing, sales, and finance align on goals. If I hear, we have weekly syncs, I push further. Alignment isn't meetings, it's shared math. If the math isn't shared, yeah, a fucking men, right? If the math isn't shared, the incentives aren't either. You've been in this game long enough, you start to see interviews less like a test and more like a mirror. You're not trying to impress you, trying to understand what you'd be walking into. Can you lead? Can you challenge? Can you build something that compounds? Those are the questions that matter. Everything else is just a jargon salad on a resume. So to me, that's a standing ovation post. I think he really brilliantly captures like the way to think about and some of like the red flags that you just like have to be on the lookout for. Um what's your reaction?

SPEAKER_00 27:54

I mean, I I could just see a lot of marketers like just like starting a slow clap during that, and then it breaks out to full applause right around the time where uh he says that um if I hear we have weekly syncs, I push further. Alignment isn't meeting, it's it's shared math. If the math isn't shared, the incentives aren't either. Um I can't count the number of syncs weekly or otherwise that I've had that are a complete fucking waste of time. Totally. And uh Yeah, it's a alignment isn't meetings. Like you can get aligned without meetings, but you can also not get aligned in meetings, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 28:34

It does make sense.

SPEAKER_00 28:36

I don't know if I'm saying makes sense right now. So I'm I'm glad to have your support. You're probably just rolling your eyes and be like, what the fuck is this guy talking about?

SPEAKER_02 28:43

It you are coming out shockingly coherently for the state of mind that you were in. I know for you it feels like you've probably just like blacked out for the last half hour, but uh it's coming good. That would come through. That would be the boost.

SPEAKER_00 28:57

You you might think you might think I'm drinking coffee, but this is just straight whiskey in this cup.

SPEAKER_02 29:02

Little do you know. Man, I went through first of all, bless you if it's straight whiskey. Secondly, I went through such a strong like Disterono or Amaretto and coffee phase for like a dessert thing for a while. I'm thinking about bringing that back. That uh dead nice. It's all your fault when I put this.

SPEAKER_00 29:18

I'm in support, I'm in support of that.

SPEAKER_02 29:20

I'm a fan. Uh what's it called? Yeah, I don't know. He he has a lot of this guy has a lot of great stuff on there that talks about countering the narrative, it's really like supportive, and it's a great example of what he's talking about, like investing in brand, building this like individual thought leadership, getting association with the agency that it represents, and like just really resonating with their target personas because he fucking gets it, right? Like it says a lot of shit that makes sense, and like you said, the slow clap to standing ovation, it just like resonates. I also just think it's like a useful information to share with people um when they think about being on the hunt for stuff. So I wanted to share it, get your reaction, uh, try to get like a helpful nugget to the listeners that may not otherwise have been exposed to it. Um, and that's that's the impetus

Quota Attainment And Case Study Math

SPEAKER_02 30:05

there. Uh let me tell you, use that as a segue into I promise a little bit of like a horror story about a recent experience for me. I won't get into all the X's nos. Uh, some color commentary might include the person being just completely and totally thrown off by the fact that their camera didn't work in this initial interview. And I was like, hey, if it'll make you more comfortable, I can turn mine off. And they're like, no, I really believe in conducting these with like the camera. And I was like, well, fair enough, but like you just said it's not working. So she's like, can you reschedule till later in the day? And I'm like, no, I can't. Like, this is the time that I have. So, anyway, that's how like it all started, and then how it progressed. One of the most valuable things I've learned to ask in interviews, and you and I may have discussed this on air before, is how many representatives on the sales team hit quota last quarter? And this uh HR person recruited gone into all the X and O's of the company, would I be doing so on and so forth? And I asked that question, and you could hear kind of like almost like an audible, like, hmm, I don't want to approach this one. And then after after what felt like an extended period of time, the response was uh none of the reps hit quota last quarter, and uh we actually we we we let them all go, and so our CEO now is owning 80 to 85 percent of all sales led motion. Um, and so yeah, that's the that's the that was my reaction to it.

SPEAKER_00 31:32

That's just like uh you know, the the flag, the red flag got burned, and like you should be running the other way away from the fire at this point.

SPEAKER_02 31:42

Well, at this point, guess what? It gets worse because then we start to go into uh this pump.

SPEAKER_00 31:47

Before you you get into the next part, can I ask why you're asking about sales rep's goals and not like what percentage of marketers hit their goals or like demand gen hit their goals for marketing? For sure. I know that they're they're tied together, but um, I'm curious why you asked that question and not marketing.

SPEAKER_02 32:02

Makes a huge difference. If if sales isn't closing and hitting their revenue target, guess what? That doesn't trickle. You you're not gonna get the variable budget that you need to run the successful campaigns, you're not gonna get the buy in or like the camaraderie. It means that marketing is probably uh getting an undue burden put on them to generate leads that the sales isn't able to close anyhow. And so like you really want to get it.

SPEAKER_00 32:20

You're saying that sales uh sales would blame their lack of hitting goals on the marketing. That's never happened before, though. Like in what companies did that happen at?

SPEAKER_02 32:30

Yeah, find me one uh and I'll so like it's funny though, because like that is what so now this company that's letting go of their all their reps that has the CEO trying to do all the selling is looking to marketing to be a savior to the point where like I was like the last person they interviewed in this intro phase and they wanted to expedite me through the process and just gave me the case study. There were Chris, there were four other conversations with other people of the team that were supposed to be had before the case study was given. They're like, fuck it, we'll just give you the case study at this point. So I start looking through some of the X and O's, and by the way, thinking about like the responsibilities this person would have. They're like, we want you to like 3x revenue and X number of time. And so remember what I just said about the sales reps being fired, right? Then I look at the case study, which is apparently pulled from actual information that the company had. The average sales cycle for this company is close to seven to eight months. They wanted 3x revenue in five to six months. Do that math. You're walking into the math of the prep. The math ain't mathing. And so all I say, I share that part just like vent to to a to a to a group of people, uh, yourself and our two listeners that will understand and like resonate with that. And the other is just to like, guys, ask that question seriously, especially if you're in your performance, if you're in a growth role, ask about rep attainment, ask about runway and ramp. I actually learned about that a little bit more from the same guy that uh posted the thing that we just read through. Um, do it. Make sure that you're not walking into a situation where you're just gonna be fucked because there are unrealistic expectations and uh the company itself is not doing so well. That's it for me on that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:13

Well, I'm glad you figured that out early rather than taking the job and finding it out later. That's uh pretty much the best you can do. And and that's why it's important to remember like even though the job market's tough right now, like interviews are a two-way conversation. Like, I don't even like calling them interviews, like they should be thought of more of as like a conversation to find a mutual fit between um between job candidate and and company. Um Right, right, right, right. Exactly. Uh but I mean it does kind of suck that you know it seems like employers have the upper hand for whatever reason right now. It's definitely gonna shift back the other way. But uh yeah, I mean

Fractional Marketing Boundaries That Matter

SPEAKER_00 34:50

companies can get away with with this kind of shit. And like you and I were talking a little bit about this before the before the recording, how um you know companies and it's not even just like people like companies hiring full-time employees, it's companies taking advantage of like freelancers and contractors and you know, asking for more you know, basically asking for full-time availability without paying for full-time work.

SPEAKER_02 35:14

Correct. Exactly. They're trying to do less with more of it in like a far shittier version of that.

SPEAKER_00 35:20

Yeah, exactly. And like Yeah, I mean if I like in my in my in in your opinion, what is a fractional marketer? Like, in my in my opinion, a fractional marketer is somebody who has you know either set hours, like a certain number of hours per week to work part-time at a company, whether it's in like a CMO type of a role or even just like a demand gen or whatever type of a role. But yeah, I mean a lot of places that I've seen, like they're trying to hire what they think are fractional marketers, but really they're just trying to underpay marketers and expecting like full-time availability. Like they don't expect you to be working full-time, but they want you to be on call basically on Slack and email for you know nine to five, five days a week. Like, what are your thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_02 36:05

Uh, I think you hit the nail on the head. It's like the hours that you deliver, right, are like the fractional means there are set hours, and you can be very transparent about what those hours are gonna be, what you're gonna be doing during those hours, and make sure that you negotiate ahead of time what counts as a billable hour, but like fractional is part-time, right? And you're working within those hours and any other expectation that you're like supporting someone as if a full-time employee, as if you were a full-time employee, that is detached from the reality of what a fractional marketing like hire is meant

Closing Before Zoom Cuts Out

SPEAKER_02 36:32

to be. Uh, speaking of being detached, we are unfortunately about to be detached from our free Zoom time limit. This was fun. This went by fast as it always does. Uh, we have more to talk about. We'll do the last thing we didn't get to today, next time around. Chris is gonna try to get some sleep. We'll pray for him that he does. And uh, guys, come back again next time. Uh, appreciate you. Everyone, be well. Thanks, all. Bye.