Marylou: Hi everyone, it’s Marylou Tyler. This week, you are going to love the session, it’s with Matt Heinz. He’s the president of Heinz Marketing Inc. out of Seattle, Washington. The reason why I love what Matt does is because he really is that blend that we’re looking for between having the right words, the right content, the right assets, 0the right documentation and helping us have better conversations with top of funnel clients. Those prospects with whom we are starting initial conversations, we’re doing cold conversations, we maybe following up.

His expertise is really encompassing. Besides, I’ll let him tell you, but he more likely does all of the funnel. What I’m looking at him today for us is to help us understand how we can get better at leveraging content to help us have those first conversations more consistently and more predictably so that we can reduce the lag in the pipeline and get to opportunity faster. Matt, welcome.

Matt: Thank you so much for having me.

Marylou: Let me just start by saying it’s 2016, it’s the end of the year. I am enrolled in three copywriting classes right now; a persuasive copywriting class, a journalistic copywriting class and then a blog writing, to understand how to write better and how to write with understanding more about the behavioral aspect, the sentiment of crafting good content. It’s not because I want to get really good at it, because there are people like you in your world that know how to do that, but I just really want to understand where we’re missing the mark? I’m hoping that you can shed some light for the people listening today who are stymied as I have been. What is this thing with content and how do we get better at it?

Matt: This is a great question and I think our ability to communicate is a key part of that. I applaud you for taking the right path. We have an awful lot of marketers, sales people who have great things to say and simply can’t get them across. Some of that is about the word they choose, some of that is about the approach that they take, the clarity and precision of the words they choose, how fast those words are communicated in various formats, whether it’s in a written word, or an audio format like this, or a live phone call, or even a video. There are differences and nuances in all of that. It’s important to understand communication, precision and best practices.

An even bigger issue I see in the market is that people don’t create content that resonate with their audience. They create content for themselves, about their sales, their product, their services first and their sales that really help prospects and their audience and customers understand why that matters.

Another way to say that is we fail too often to take the prospect’s point of view, the customer’s point of view. Start with their issues, end with their issues. Focus on their needs, their problems, their outcomes, their desired objectives and you set [00:03:40] when the time is right our solution, our product in the right context so it’s seen as a value added at that point. I think communication really become [00:03:51] the way that we communicate, but then also what are we communicating. We have a lot to do there as well.

Marylou: The other thing that I’ve discovered and I’ve talked about this in my book is that there are certain levels of awareness, especially when we’re doing an outreach campaign. We don’t have the luxury of having people who have found us, who are interested in what we have, and maybe are in evaluation stage. Of those five levels of awareness, we’re getting people who are unaware of who we are. We’re getting people who kind of know there’s a problem but don’t necessarily know there’s a solution even out there for them. Not everybody, but there’s a lot of that going around. I’ve had people say to me, “I’m so glad you’ve found me because I would have no idea that you do what you do and you do it the way you do it.”

As a professional business developer, we have to worry about that as well. I think that’s another disconnect that I am seeing is, the level of awareness and how that’s embedded in.I see two issues. One is like you said, the people, but we also have to know when these people appear in the pipeline. Because business development, we may start talking to someone in and around the influencer, whether they are directly or indirectly influencing our target. We may start some place in that bull’s eye on a second or third level but we still, as you say so rightly, we still have to be able to communicate that to that person so that they’ll be willing to have a conversation with us.

Matt: Yeah, you’re right. You said a number of important things there, but I think your ability to really craft and position your outcome, what you represent in a way that is favorable towards the process you’re selling, it’s critical. It takes time and it takes patience but I know a lot of people listening probably just like me and just like you Marylou. We have a number we have to hit at the end of the month. We have a number we need to hit to keep our own businesses open. They have the ability to come down and close a deal but those deals have to be mutually beneficial.

Too often when prospects come to you at the end of sales process, those  mythical, ready to buy prospect that we all [00:06:22], too often those prospects come with their own preconceived notion of what they’re solid and what their getting. If you haven’t been involved or if you haven’t held condition and precision what problem you are solving and what it’s going to take to solve for that? The prospect may be buying something that’s different than what you deliver and there is still risk in those ready to buy prospects. There’s a disconnect.

I think a bigger challenge and opportunity for companies is to build that relationship well before either side need it. To be able to not just get someone’s attention which we seem all enamored within sales and marketing. We’re all focused on how do we get someone’s attention.

The bigger challenge, the bigger need is to keep that attention, to sustain that attention until they are ready to buy. We as sellers don’t [00:07:16] when a particular individual or company is going to be ready to buy. We can create a [00:07:23] but there are so many other factors. We’re not going to have control over that but what we can control is whether we continue to earn ongoing attention in the meantime. What are you doing with your content, with your channel, with your cadence, with the value that you’re providing to someone on an ongoing basis to keep that sustained attention in evaluated ways so that when the prospect is ready to engage and ready to buy, not only do you still have their attention or do they have yours, but you spent that time just conditioning them to have similar viewpoint and a similar perspective in terms of what you can solve. I think, the sales process ends up going a lot more smoothly and a lot more quickly as a result.

Marylou: If I’m a sales manager listening to this conversation right now and I’m thinking, “Okay, Matt makes a heck of a lot of sense. Where do I begin? What do I need to look at in terms of tactical?” Let’s put strategy to the side because if we were to engage you in day one, we wouldn’t be in this predicament that we’re in right now. Let’s pretend that we started and we’ve got this thing that’s call the sales process going and it’s not really going our way so we are looking and becoming educated that jee, content really does fit here, but how does it fit? What are the first things I should look at as a sales manager who’s on the sale side in terms of the content pieces?

Matt: There’s a couple of things that I would point out. One is you have to better understand your [00:09:03], the results. For marketers, this comes down to what are your results? How well have you identified the decision makers and stakeholders inside the organization that you care about? And how well would you define the characteristics to actually [00:09:16]. You can create more [00:09:18]. That applies to sales people as well. Buyer persona, that means you have to have long, [00:09:24]. It can be a bullet point. It’s giving you insight into what that audience cares about so you can have that conversation and create content around that.

Also operationally, for sales managers, how do you create a system and a set of processes that allow your reps to have the right conversations over and over? Good sales is not just about nailing that call and nailing that conversation, it’s about doing that over and over and over again. Knowing that many of those processes aren’t going to go anywhere so you’re worried that pipeline doesn’t work the math. You need to have something to say that’s not only repeatable but also predictably, reliably the same, and provides more value.

Understanding your audience better so you can create better insights with your content and then creating a process where your reps are able to more efficiently and effectively engage with those prospects on an ongoing basis. Those are keys to companies developing the system to become scalable as they grow, to deliver predictable results.

Marylou: Where does this effort reside? Is it a collaborative effort between marketing and sales? Or is there an ownership? You mentioned a couple of my favorite words which is “repeatable.” There’s a usage of the resulting content and somehow the metrics around its usage and the viability of optimizing it sounds like it’s embedded somehow in there. Is that a sales function since they are the ones selecting the content and using it, or creating emails from the templates, or using that particular set of words in the voice mail. Is it the result of sales feeding back, that this all works really well? What do you say about that?

Matt: Yeah, in an ideal world I believe that marketing developed that function. I think, what you’re describing, what we’re talking about here is sort of a classic. Sales enablement, one on one programs where you’re delivering content tools and processes built so you can help  them be more efficient and more effective.

I believe that’s best delivered by a marketing orientation. I believe sales teams should be focusing less of their time in selling as possible, it is not in their job description to have create their own content, develop their own personas. I believe strongly that the key role of modern marketing organizations today, especially if the key is to deliver that customer’s site, to create that content, to identify sources and specific types of concepts that can be shared and curate it with your prospects to keep that ongoing attention. And then maybe just to the work directly with sales to develop the processes that they are using to engage with those prospects and customers over time. At the end of the day, someone’s going to do it. If you have a marketing team that’s not stepping up to do it, then ask sales [00:12:34] you can take advantage of the opportunity. I highly encourage marketing to use this opportunity to embed themselves further with sales organizations and to go deeper than simply lead generation to provide more revenue brilliant values in this organization.

Marylou: There are couple of things that I want your opinion on, something that I’ve been wrestling with for a while. I’m talking specifically outreach now. This is basically first conversations with a list of targeted accounts or targeted people that we want to go after and I call them the whales. I got that bucket and then I’ve got follow up where people have engaged in some fashion with us. There is an interest, there is an awareness, there’s maybe even evaluating that they’re doing that, so I’ve got those two buckets of people.

The first one I’m trying to kind of understand the mapping within the organization if I’m an up market account. I’ve went through LinkedIn, I’ve went through all the resources, I’ve researched. I think I’ve got the right guy, not sure. But I want to be able to have content that can help me get to the right guy. Once I get the right guy, then I want to be able to switch gears and start selling them on my value proposition in order to get them to our first meeting.

I see those as different content because this concept of hyper personalization is where I would put content for those people trying to get that first meeting because now we’ve narrowed the focus because we know it’s the right guy and we’re trying to now get our foot in the door for that first meeting versus we’re trying to find out if we’ve got the right guy.

Is that a lot to ask of marketing to help us sort of have those different conversations going all at the same time? By the way we have also feedback, the results of these conversations so that marketing understands which pain point resonates faster?

Matt: Yeah, obviously you’re after that, I’d love to ask the market and again, I think the answer is yes. I believe fundamentally that that is part of marketing’s job and responsibility and role in the organization. Gone are the days when marketing [00:14:49] arts crafts department, just create something, throw it over the wall and do the trade shows, they’re done. Gone are the days when marketing can just generate a bunch of leads and pass them off and say, “Well, our job is done. We’re going to go off to happy hour now. Thank you very much.”

We see study after study that tells us that the divine process continues to expand and become more complex. The members of the internal buying committee are expanding, a consensus is building a decision making of companies to buy the products and services that we’re selling are becoming more complex. And accordingly, our sales and marketing processes need to follow suit. If we want to be competitive, if we want to win the deal, if we want to outplay our competitor, then we need to have this level of sophistication, precision and the way they were going to market. It is a redefining in many cases of the roles and responsibilities of both sales and marketing. But I think it’s a necessary shift. We’re seeing companies that already do it.

Marylou: Give us some examples, give us some stories, you don’t have to name the company but tell us some stories.

Matt: Well, for instance, it starts with the objectives. I’ve seen a lot of companies start to say, “Hey marketing, your objective is now a percent of our net new opportunities come from market,” or that marketing is now responsible. How many deals were touched by a marketing activity? That marketing activity can be a lead, it can be something that was a sales enablement process, it can be any number saying, “I’ve seen some companies eliminate attributional overall and just fail, and marketing get the same goal of marketing. Your objective is not lead, your objective is not pipeline, you have a quota just like sales does.”

And then maybe compensations differences put together but it forces some of the right conversations. You no longer hear marketers say, “Well, I’m not willing to try that lead challenge because it will increase my cost per lead.” I don’t care if your cost per lead goes up for yanks. If it will give better leads than a lower overall acquisition rate and a better lifetime value of your customer, then you’re making the right decision.

I think there is a lot of force for the trade activity that could happen in the past with marketing and still clearly happens at a lot of organizations where marketing is focused exclusively in the wrong metrics. If marketing is simply focused on lead quantity, then it’s likely they’re not getting the quality of leads that their sales team need.

But if we can re-prioritize the way marketing is motivated and compensated and rewarded, if we can tie that as closely to the to the final sales number as possible. I’ve seen numerous examples of a sale marketing team now prioritizing the right things. No longer focused on lead volume, focused more on the right leads, on the right account. Focus less time in the marketing and focusing more time on sales enablement. Helping the sales team increase conversion and urgency of the opportunities that they have. It’s a different role in some cases, it’s a different set of skills but you’ve got a marketing organization that is going from random acts of marketing in the arts and crafts department to really being the profit center of the business. It’s a very big deal and a very significant improvement I believe in terms of the measurable result and the measurable impact marketing can have.

Marylou: This sounds so transformational. I’m sitting here thinking, “Wow.” Personally, I have not encountered this in my accounts but that doesn’t mean that it’s not out there. Where are you seeing this influx of the light bulb went on, or I got that “Aha!” moment or that like, “Yeah, this is what we wanted all the time.” Where are you seeing this kind of growth?

Matt: I’ve had to take this more influx. That would imply that this is happening all over. We’re definitely seeing this happening. I’ve seen more people give lip service and have a difficult time in.

I spoke at a [00:18:57] council a couple of weeks ago. We talked about the idea of profit center marketing, we talked a lot about the idea that marketing can be seen and act like a profit center not only in terms of what it reports but what it does. One of those biggest challenges to truly transform a marketing into that is the fact that you are now taking people who are used to focus on generating lead, they’re not taking part of the result out of their control. You’re asking them to take on new skills that they’re not comfortable with. You’re asking them to change what they do on their job which for some people impact their job security which makes them defensive which makes them resistant.

You’ve got a leadership team and a board that has gotten used to be up into the right lead volume numbers in charts and slides for marketing and now you’re trying to change the way they perceive and value what marketing does. There’s a lot of resistance inside and outside the organization to make the change that is just sitting at this podcast is really you can say oh yeah, this totally makes sense.

You get inside the context of a company that has the hidden number. Then ask to give the email out next Tuesday. It has to keep people productive, that they’re getting a paycheck every other every week. The reality of making the shift is not [00:20:11], It’s not simple by any means. Front and center marketing starts with intent, not perfect execution. It starts with talking about the impact marketing has on business metrics, not marketing metrics.

I was in a meeting this morning where I asked one of the junior marketing people, “What are your objectives for 2017?” She didn’t talk about pipelines, she didn’t talk about revenue results, she talked about open rates, click rates, and getting more emails on the list. I get that that’s operationally where she’s focused, but the fact that she literally could not elevate it into a business conversation. That is a challenge.

She may walk out of that room even though she said that, “I’m focused on pipelines, I have to go get open rates fired..” She may be right because if you’re doing email marketing and you don’t have good open rates, tactically operation is also important. But if you have a marketing group that is perpetuating that that is their job, that becomes their dashboard. They go to the executive team and now we’re putting on results or revenue impact. They’re recording on tactical campaign responses. We didn’t have this all over the place. Even in organizations that talks about revenue responsibility, even in marketing groups that talk about the alignment they have to put there. Part of it, let’s just say we have a long way ago on this. It is hard stuff. We’re asking marketers to do really hard marketing and do it in a way that in many cases it counters the way they are trained and practice to do marketing today. It makes sense, it’s not a quick shift but it’s far longer.

Marylou: Definitely. I’m feeling profoundly changed over here. The reason why is because I have always been running the assumption that a persona in marketing is not a persona in sales. Why? Because the persona in marketing is all about generating a kind of hand up in the air like I’m interested. But the call to action for us, for personas for top of funnel, I’m talking, is to find the right person or to get a first meeting. Those are two diversely different calls to action that we need from each, from marketing versus sale. But now you’re talking to someone who still has that old mentality. This profit center marketing thing sounds awesome!

Matt: If something, we’re spending a lot more time certainly engaging about and evangelizing. One of my real focus there over the next few months is to figure out not just how to describe what profit center marketing is and what it can mean, but the next question I want to ask is, “How do we do that?” It sounds great, I can listen to this podcast, it sounds fantastic.

Marylou: Yeah. That was my next question, Matt. What system of yours can we get, follow, learn from you?

Matt: Even though we’ve just recently started using the term Process Center marketing as sort of our material, teaching a lot of it. A lot of what you’ll see in our blog, for instance really speaks to that. Even in some of the factful recommendations, it’s encouraging marketers to think in terms of the right target, in terms of web traffic is not good enough. Are you getting the right traffic? If you’re measuring cost per lead, that’s only relative to the quality but the value that will generate if those opportunities are the right lifetime value targets for you.

You can create a lot of content. You could see a lot of it there. What we’re working on next is how we take that concept in Public Center Marketing and help CMOs take advantage of it. How do we help managers and operational marketers to sort of shift how they think about how they talk about their work? And then, shift how they’re doing the work to reflect that as well.

Marylou: It’s been my mantra for top of funnel when we’re doing cold outreach. Actually, since we’re focusing on some accounts on those top 20, what they call account based selling now, but in the olden days we used to call our strategic accounts. But be that as it may, we’re still working those accounts in a hyper personalized mode where we’re doing a lot of research on the people within the company, what the company initiatives are, what the culture of the company is.

We still need templates to help us drive the sales conversations so that we ultimately get the right people sitting around the table from us so that we can continue our sales conversation. That’s kind of driven from sale. How involved do you expect the sales folks to get as part of your initiatives for Profit Center Marketing. Is it going to be in marketing or do you see it finally umbrella, get that kind of cross the bridge over to sales?

Matt: This only works if those organizations are doing it together. I think there is a more missed opportunity for marketing to leave the charge as one of many ways to build credibility as a Profit Center in the business than [00:25:53] business leader in the organization. This cannot be a marketing function. This only works if sales and marketing are putting ego aside and doing this together for the benefit of the organization, the betterment of the result, the betterment of their ability to predictably thrive.

That’s another reason why culture is the one making the shift. You’ve got a lot of sales and marketing organizations that has been trained not to trust each other, not to like not each other. The sales organizations believe that the end of the month or the end of the quarter, no matter what marketing is done, they’re on their own trying to hit the number. In most cases, they are right. We have to change that. If marketing all of a sudden stands up to this, check us out, we’ve got the term Profit Center Marketing, this is what we’re going to do. No one is going to believe them because marketing has cried wolf for too long. It’s going to take some time to build credibility, to build trust internally, to make some of these changes that are getting acquired to have external impact upon.

Marylou: Matt, this has been great. I’m going to put in the show notes how to get a hold of you but if there’s people listening to this or probably raising their hands above their heads saying, “Finally, I’m hearing something that make sense.” What’s the best way to get a hold of you and your organization? How can we keep in contact? Let us know. Tell us.

Matt: Yes, I appreciate that very much. You can find us on the web at heinzmarketing.com. I’m on Twitter, @heinzmarketing and you can email me as well at matt@heinzmarketing.com. I would certainly welcome a conversation if anyone’s interested.

Marylou: Yeah, and you also do a radio show. Are you still doing that?

Matt: Yes, we certainly do, every Thursday we are live. [00:27:48] Pipeline radio. You were good enough to join us on a recent episode and we just finished year one of doing the weekly show. It’s a ton of fun, learned the walk from a lot of great people, including yourself. It’s been great.

Marylou: That’s wonderful. Everyone, remember the term Profit Center Marketing. Look to Matt Heinz for probably the evangelist that’s going to lead us there but also this is definitely an initiative where marketing and sales need to come together. I’m coming from the sales side, so all of my clients end up doing some version of this, not nearly as complete as what you’re probably offering, Matt, because I’m just focusing on one channel of top of funnel which is outreach but I think that is the answer. The content assets, the content conversation, the levels of awareness, all the things that the marketers know how to do, we have to put a little persuasive twist on it for what we need.

The content is there and we need to come together and get this happening because this is the best way to reduce the lag in the pipeline and increase our response rates so that we can start having those conversations. It’s really the only way.

With Predictable Revenue, we used to have a goal of 7% to 9% response. When we started adding content assets to our sequences, we shot into double digit and it is consistent throughout all of my clients. The importance of the marketing pieces is definitely there. It’s how to use them, when to use them and with whom to use them is what Matt’s talking about that he’s perfecting over on his side. Thanks again Matt. I really appreciate your time and you’re wisdom for us today.

Matt: Thank you very much for the opportunity. It’s been fun.