Richard Lane started transcription 

 
Richard Lane   0:11 
Welcome to the Insiders by durhamlane, an industry podcast that connects the worlds of marketing and sales, one guest at a time. I’m your host, Richard Lane. I’m co-founder and Chief Commercial Officer of durhamlane. And today I’m thrilled to be joined by Jessica Gil. 
Martin, formerly CRO and CMO at Callendly, amongst many other impressive roles. Jessica, great, great to have you on the show. Thanks so much for being with us. Really looking forward to diving into some of the detail that we’ve got lined up for today. But before we do that, perhaps you could just introduce yourself to. 
Our listeners and give them a quick sort of career, career start off stop up to this point. 

 
Jessica   0:56 
Absolutely, very nice to be here. So the very quick version is that I’ve spent about 15 years in tech sales and marketing, everything from starting the building the first revenue, hiring the first sales people, hiring the first customers for the marketing, building up from scratch to scaling up. 
Companies like Asana, so was there from pre IPO up through 600 million of revenue. I joined Calendly a couple of years ago as CMO, had the great opportunity to take over as head of sales. That was an amazing opportunity. If any marketers have the chance to also take over sales, I’d say do that. And then about a year ago, yeah. 

 
Richard Lane   1:33 
Awesome. 

 
Jessica   1:36 
And then about a year ago, I decided to take some time off and now I’m a full-time consultant, fractional CMO and board member. 

 
Richard Lane   1:43 
Brilliant. So, so I had the, I had the pleasure of going the other way around Jessica, way back in my corporate career. So I was Richard, we think you could look after marketing and whoa, OK, so maybe we trade some stories as we get through to that. But but today, thank you so much for that. And again, welcome, welcome to The Insider. 

 
Jessica   1:49 
Yeah. 
Yes. 

 
Richard Lane   2:04 
Today’s episode is titled as How to Build a High Performing Marketing Organization and I think as we discussed sort of just off the air, be great to sort of go through those different modes or different modalities as it were from startup, scale up, IPO, you know the speed. 
And. 
And then into the larger organisations and how things maybe changes as we go from there. So what we’re going to focus on and think about is what it actually takes to build a marketing team that performs. So not just hitting metrics, but actually collaborating and getting to performance, driving real pipeline and earning trust. 

 
Jessica   2:35 
Mhm. 

 
Richard Lane   2:44 
From across the organization. So maybe to to get us started, let’s let’s perhaps think about what does high performing marketing really mean in today’s environment? Can you, can you help us with that? 

 
Jessica   2:57 
Yeah, it’s it’s so interesting cause I I talked to a lot of other executives and a lot of other CMOs and what I find very interesting and sad is that most CMOs do not build high-performing marketing organizations. It’s actually pretty rare to find a CMO that has a really well-run marketing. 
Organization. So it’s it is a particular passion of mine to build high-performing marketing marketing organizations and to help other CMOs do that. And it’s really hard. So I understand why most people don’t do it, but this is one of the reasons that CMOs tend to lose their jobs every 18 months. 

 
Richard Lane   3:29 
Right. 

 
Jessica   3:35 
Because they’re not doing that. And so as you think about what a high performing organization looks like #1, you’ve got a high performing team in place. You cannot have good results unless you have a good team. And so that requires a huge amount of rigor. 

 
Richard Lane   3:47 
Yeah. 

 
Jessica   3:52 
Around hiring, around management and around firing, you know, there’s just that it’s it’s the hardest thing to do, which is managing a group of people and making sure that you only have a players and it’s the most important thing you can do. So if you don’t do anything else, the number one thing is having really strong management techniques in place. 
To make sure that you only have the best people on board. Then once you have that, then it really is around the data and the systems. So if you don’t know your data, if you don’t know the results, then you will have no credibility with the rest of the organization. You also will not be spending your money wisely. 
And so that is, that’s also incredibly hard to do. And so you know, we talked a little bit before the before we started about vanity metrics because that’s something that marketers love to talk about is vanity metrics. The reason marketers talk about vanity metrics is because the real metrics are so hard to figure out. 

 
Richard Lane   4:50 
Yeah. 

 
Jessica   4:51 
Out how to build and how to report on. But that is how you go from a an OK CMO to an amazing CMO and to a game changing CMO is by knowing the data, having everyone in the organization be focused on that and then the final part of having really strong. 
Marketing organization is having a great story. So deeply understanding your product, deeply understanding your place in the market, deeply understanding your competition and how you fit in and how you tell that story in a differentiated way so that it’s very obvious where you fit in and why somebody should buy you versus. 
Somebody else. 

 
Richard Lane   5:30 
Wow. So that’s fantastic. So one having a great team in place, two data and systems and three having a great story. 

 
Jessica   5:39 
Yes, easy. 

 
Richard Lane   5:41 
It sounds easy when it sounds easy when I repeat it like that. But each one of those I was sort of each, each one of those I was sort of gulping. You know, that’s a career in itself, isn’t it? So and and have you found, have you found those, those three points to be consistent no matter what size organization that you’re working? 

 
Jessica   5:44 
Just not easy at all. 
Yes. 

 
Richard Lane   6:01 
So you know we mentioned before you’ve you’ve worked in startups, scale ups, post IPO type organizations. Is it the is it the same? 

 
Jessica   6:12 
Yes, 100%. And and obviously as you get bigger, the complexity changes and the amount of stakeholders that you have to manage change. But fundamentally those are the things that you have to know. So if you are at a start-up, you know you’re not going to have to. 

 
Richard Lane   6:21 
Yeah. 

 
Jessica   6:26 
Worry about board dynamics. You’re not going to have to worry about executive dynamics as much. And you know, you typically are not going to have to worry about the collaboration with hundreds of salespeople and all those things. And obviously as you get bigger, then you have to think a lot more about all of those. 
All the complexity of managing very large parts of the organization, but if you can tell the story and have a great team and have great data, then all that other stuff becomes really easy. 

 
Richard Lane   7:01 
Right. OK. And and I and I and I’m just dig into this a little bit deeper then I’m I’m presuming you’re. 
Your team obviously in size, but as as you move into larger type organisations, I presume you need a different type of team to the one that you have when you’re a hustling, hustling, start up or scale up. 

 
Jessica   7:22 
Yeah. And that’s a huge mistake that I’ve seen because I advise companies at all sizes from no revenue up through 100 + 200 million in revenue. And that what I’ve seen is the some of the small start-ups. 
Hire people that are at too high of an altitude. So it makes a ton of sense that a CEO would want to hire a CMO that has 1520 years of experience, would want to hire people that have tons. It absolutely makes sense in reality. 
Those it’s rare to find someone like that who wants to come into a small organization and roll their sleeves up and be writing content and be, you know, editing the CMS. Like, to be frank, I would want to do that at my stage of the career, my, you know, my career. And so there often is a mismatch and a frustration on both sides because that wasn’t clear. 

 
Richard Lane   8:03 
Yep. 

 
Jessica   8:15 
And it wasn’t, it wasn’t aligned with what the CMO wanted to do or the first marketer wanted to do and what the CEO needs. So that’s one thing that I’ve found often happens. And so matching the what someone is interested in and also their skills. So you have to find that sweet spot of, yes, I know what I’m doing. I’m not just sort of a scrappy 22 year old. 
Old who’s figuring things out. But I’m also excited about the day-to-day and I’m excited about doing the work. But then as the company grows, what I’ve found is that people, CEOs tend to hold on to people too long. And so you may have that brilliant, scrappy marketer who was. 

 
Richard Lane   8:51 
Right. 

 
Jessica   8:54 
Fantastic when you were at 2 million, but now all of a sudden when you’re at 20 million or 50 million in revenue and you need to hire seasoned executives like this is when you need to hire those people who can build structure and systems and. 
The scrappy early marketer doesn’t necessarily know how to do that. They don’t hire correctly. They don’t hire senior people. And so you’re creating an organization where you need to scale, you need to grow up, and you don’t necessarily have the team that can do that. And so it really is about understanding where you are, what you need for the next year. 
or two and then hiring for that. 

 
Richard Lane   9:31 
That’s interesting, isn’t it? So just to reflect on what you’ve just said, essentially what we’re saying is when you probably haven’t got the money, you’re over hiring with someone that’s more experienced and probably more expensive than you need. And then when you probably have got the money, you’re clinging on to the people that haven’t got the experience and probably aren’t as expensive. 
So I can, I can totally get, totally get how that happens. Yeah. So OK, well that’s they’re a great team, data and systems, great story. So let’s let’s talk a little bit about data and systems then I mean the the. 

 
Jessica   9:51 
That’s that’s exactly it, yeah. 

 
Richard Lane   10:09 
I’m yet really, I’ll be careful what I say, but I’m I’m yet to come across organisations that have great data. I would, you know, that’s like a rarity, right? So, So what when when you say you know data and systems? 

 
Jessica   10:18 
I’m going to second that, Yep. 

 
Richard Lane   10:27 
I I guess in some ways that’s doing the best of what you’ve got, but it’s making making what you’ve got the best it can be, I guess. 

 
Jessica   10:34 
Yeah, I’ll give you an example from Calendly. So we, you know, obviously an amazing product hadn’t invested as much in data engineering and so and and particularly when you have a hybrid PLGSLG motion and that’s kind of my sweet spot. That’s where I’ve been for the past five years. It gets really messy because you have. 
A lot of your you have all your customer data in like a Salesforce or CRM and then you have all your user data in a completely different system and so that it just everything breaks. And so when you’re trying to understand the land and expand model which is critical for PLGSLG success. 

 
Richard Lane   10:59 
Yeah. 

 
Jessica   11:12 
You can’t do it because the systems don’t talk to each other. And so then all of a sudden you have a data engineering problem because we have, we had amazing analysts, like we had world-class marketing analysts, but they couldn’t piece that data together because nothing talked to each other and nobody and we did have. I can go on and on forever. 

 
Richard Lane   11:27 
Right. 

 
Jessica   11:32 
Way too much time learning about data hygiene at my last companies, but we we basically had different definitions. The engineers were looking at data differently than the sales analysts were, than the marketing analysts were. And so as an organization we said we have to fix this. And so that’s what I mean when when I think about a CMOI don’t think about someone that just. 
Six days in their lane and just kind of raises their hands and says, oh, sorry, I can’t, can’t do it. Oops, I’m going to give you what I have. So I think of someone that goes way above and beyond to make the organization better. And so I basically kind of raised this and then someone on my team or my head of growth is a. 
Brilliant overall, amazing person who knows everything. If you’re listening, Darren, hello. And so, so, so I put Darren in charge of running this, basically fixing our data. And so he created a committee with our marketing analysts, with our our product team, with our data engineers and we just fixed it. 
We fixed all the data and we had the executives were on there. We educated them on why this was so important and we all got together and said we’re going to fix this because it’s critical to the organization. And so it wasn’t a quick fix. It was months and months and months, but over time we got closer and closer to where our data was. 
Usable and we could actually understand it and then we could come back to the organization and say like this is what’s going on. And obviously running sales and marketing was helpful because I, you know, the whole go to market organization, I was able to rally around this. And so you can do it. It just takes you thinking about. 
Your role as much more expansive than running marketing. It keeps you thinking about your role as I am, you know, I need to do everything I can within the organization to get the information that I need and to influence others to get the information that I need. 

 
Richard Lane   13:24 
It’s it’s got me thinking actually just goes where does where does data usually sit in an org? Does it? It doesn’t sit on the marketing typically, does it? 

 
Jessica   13:34 
That’s a huge problem in marketing is that we have to rely on, we’re usually the back of the line. So you know everybody, everybody has data needs and marketing is usually the last to to get what we need. And so I I have a team, I have a team of marketing analysts. I actually feel really strongly that. 

 
Richard Lane   13:35 
Yeah. 

 
Jessica   13:54 
Marketing should always have its own analysts. In a lot of organizations, analytics is a centralized team. But I I don’t believe that that should be the case because marketing is so specialized and you know, we have our own systems, we have our own reporting tools. You just have to really deeply understand. 
The complexities of marketing and so having it sit in a centralized team, you just lose all of that knowledge and you lose all of that understanding. And so I’ve always fought really hard to have marketing analytics in my team and then sales should have its own analytics team and then there typically is a centralized data. 
Analytics team that is liaising with all of the different independent teams. So it’s it’s complicated and messy. 

 
Richard Lane   14:41 
Yeah. 
Yeah. OK. Well, there’s some, some great, some great Nuggets for us to consider there. And and then the Third Point you mentioned in this, you know from a high performing marketing perspective is great stories. I’m just fascinated of you. 
Have you ever landed in role and thought that’s a terrible story? 

 
Jessica   15:02 
Well, I’ve landed in roles where we didn’t have one. So yes, yes, and I’ve had to build it, but I would say at at Townley and Asana, you know, and and I and Google obviously they all had. 

 
Richard Lane   15:07 
But there is no Where’s the Where’s the story? 

 
Jessica   15:17 
They all had great storytellers and I think what generally happens is not that you have a terrible story, but that the product and the market evolves. And I think the important thing is always evolving with it. So even if you had a great story and even if you deeply understand your customers, deeply understood your. 
Your customers and what they valued that is that changes. And so every year, if you’re lucky, maybe it’s every six months, the market changes, your competition changes, your customers change. And so you can’t be static. You have to constantly be evaluating whether this is landing. And that’s, by the way, a huge part of why. 
Marketing. 
Sales have to work really closely together and that’s one of the giant areas where I’ve seen things fall down is marketing creates a story without sales input and I and and not just sales, but customer support, customer experience, CSM, account managers, nobody. 

 
Richard Lane   15:59 
Yeah. 

 
Jessica   16:18 
Knows our customers like the people that talk to our customers every day. And so if marketers are building stories without that group of people, it is by definition going to be incomplete. 

 
Richard Lane   16:21 
Yeah. 
Yeah, I mean back in my back in my corporate sales career, there were just some mind-blowing stories I have where there was just absolutely no link between the marketing we did and what I knew our customers thought of us or saw us for and. 

 
Jessica   16:45 
Yes. 

 
Richard Lane   16:47 
It was, it was crazy. But it yeah, so that so that’s, I mean that’ll move us nicely onto the sort of common traps that create that disconnect. We spend our time. I talk about Durham Mane as being the middleware that connects sales and marketing together because you know from our outbound lead generation services, we’re always listening and we’re bringing back insight. 
To our customer and often we’re engaged by the marketing team and we take that responsibility of of being the closest touch point to the prospect and learning, listening, what’s happening, what’s landing, what isn’t. What are the, what are some of the other things that get in the way between the classic? 

 
Jessica   17:17 
Mhm. 

 
Richard Lane   17:26 
Old marketing sales disconnect. 

 
Jessica   17:30 
Oh, so that could be a that could be an all day discussion. 

 
Richard Lane   17:33 
That’s a it’s an all day podcast in its own right, yeah. 

 
Jessica   17:36 
It is. It is. You know, I think a lot of it is, gosh, you know, where to start. I think so much of it is that structurally marketing and sales just tend to think of themselves as adversaries as opposed to friends. And that to me is one of the saddest things. 
And and in my organizations and my teams, the first thing I tell everybody is nobody is allowed to complain about sales ever and what you’re and and because that’s all they do, right. So sales complains about marketing. Sales says marketing isn’t giving us leads and marketing says I do all this these leads and then sales doesn’t work them. And then you know and I say I come from a place of understanding. 

 
Richard Lane   18:09 
Yep. 

 
Jessica   18:16 
Understanding why sales does not work certain leads. So what I tell marketers is if sales is not working your leads, sales are actually salespeople are really smart and they will get to their number in the easiest way possible. Like that’s just the definition of sales. And so if a salesperson isn’t isn’t doing the things that you want them to do, if they’re not going to your events. 

 
Richard Lane   18:30 
Yeah. 

 
Jessica   18:36 
If they’re not following up on your leads, if they’re not using your decks, it’s because they’re not working for them. It’s not because they’re lazy. Salespeople are not lazy. It’s because you’re not giving them things that are valuable. And so instead of just complaining and just doing the same thing, you need to talk to them. And that’s the number one thing is. 

 
Richard Lane   18:48 
Yeah. 

 
Jessica   18:54 
You know, I think one of the biggest impediments is marketers just they they don’t treat sales like a customer. And so treating sales like a customer so that you are understanding what do they like, what don’t they like, what leads are valuable, what content is valuable, what do they need more, what do they need less of and then. 
And building something together with them, that is just like that alone is transformational. The second thing that I saw see a lot of is marketing build a plan and then it throws that over the fence to sales. 
And that again like you think of it as we are, we are one team and we are inextricably linked and our success is linked to each other. And so sales and marketing needs to build a plan together. And the same thing with sales, like sales should not build and I see this all the time sales builds, you know pipeline targets. 
And then tells marketing what they need to hit. And you’re like, no, that that doesn’t because we can’t do that because we may not have the budget or we may not have the head count. And so marketing and sales need to come together at the beginning and say this is the pipeline we need to hit, this is the revenue we need to hit, this is the leads we need to get. Is that realistic? How do we do that? Do we need to get more budget? Do we need to? 
Allocate budget differently. What types of activities work really well? What don’t? What do you like? What didn’t you like? And then you build a plan together and then you iterate together and you get feedback constantly. And that feedback is so incredibly important. 
So to give you an example, at Calendly, one of the best things we did is we started implementing sales QBRS, but for marketing and for leadership. And so all of our sales people would get the opportunity to present to our marketing leaders on what’s working, what’s not working, what do they want more of. 

 
Richard Lane   20:34 
OK. 

 
Jessica   20:45 
Of what do they want less of? And it was absolutely game changing. Like it was a few hours of insight into what is working that we took back. And one thing we learned was there’s a certain CRM that every single time they got that lead, it closed in a really significant. 
And that was just literally a salesperson saying, hey, I’d love more of these types of leads. So then we gave that back to the marketing team and then they built a whole ABM campaign specifically for this group and very simple. And so how do you systemize that? How do you make that just part of your routine of that infinite feedback loop? 

 
Richard Lane   21:20 
Yeah. 
Yeah, I mean that’s all about focus, isn’t it? And it’s just surprising to me that we’re still, we still, it’s very, very uncommon to see sales and marketing together as one team. You know we’ve I noticed on your LinkedIn, Jessica, I think you were you CRO and. 

 
Jessica   21:38 
Yeah. 

 
Richard Lane   21:45 
CMO at Calendly at the same time. 

 
Jessica   21:48 
Yeah. 

 
Richard Lane   21:48 
Yeah, well, that’s great. That’s a perfect example of, you know, it all, it all coming up to to the right place and um. 
That feels like it’s still quite rare. We’ve we’ve tried here at Durham Lane to build sort of Rev OPS team. So we have sales, marketing, customer success together and you know account management all together. But I think it’s traditionally still they’re still seen as very different disciplines. 
But like you say, they should be having the same goals and all working towards the same the same goal, not separate. 

 
Jessica   22:18 
Yeah, yeah. And and to be fair, the reason it worked at Calany was because I had a fantastic VP of sales who ran the day-to-day in a really excellent way. And I had fantastic V PS of marketing underneath me that kind of ran a day-to-day. And so I could focus on these things like how do I make sure that? 

 
Richard Lane   22:32 
Right. 

 
Jessica   22:37 
Everything is that the teams are working together. You know, if I had to manage sales pipeline every day and forecast it, it probably wouldn’t work as well. But that is that. But that also is an understanding of where you are in the organization and making sure that you have really good people underneath you. 

 
Richard Lane   22:48 
Yeah. 
Yeah, which goes back to a great team, right? 

 
Jessica   22:56 
Yeah. And and my one of the when I left Google, my first job was as it was supposed to be a CMO of a company called Piazza, which had no revenue. It had a product but no revenue. And I joined in day one, the CEO said, OK, you need to sell. 
And I said, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m not a salesperson. She said, well, I need a salesperson and not a marketer. So I became a salesperson and I sold all of our first deals and I built our first sales teams and I ran them. And then I built marketing after that and I built operations and customer support after that. And so you know it’s, it’s possible for a marketer. 
To be a salesperson. And also it it taught me an incredibly deep understanding of how to sell and how to be a salesperson and how to story tell and how to build marketing and sales together. And so anybody can do it. And I I will say that it is the absolute best thing I ever did in my. 
Entire career was to be a salesperson. 

 
Richard Lane   23:55 
Yeah, well, I mean, I was just thinking maybe there should be a, maybe there should be an enforced job swap for for a semester or something, you know, being organisations because because you don’t, you can say you want to work together, but if you don’t understand each other and what you do, then it’s always going to be difficult. So that’s, yeah, that’s something. 

 
Jessica   24:12 
Yes. 

 
Richard Lane   24:15 
For us to maybe take away and and think some more about, but just just moving on then Jessica, what what did what in your experience, what do what top top marketing leaders do differently? 

 
Jessica   24:19 
Yeah. 
So I would say the the absolute number one thing that top marketers do differently than others is they listen and they learn and they’re humble and they iterate. And I have one of one of the parts of my practice is I come into organizations after a CMO. 
Has been let go and I am an interview. I said I kind of manage the team on an interim basis and I help find a new leader and 100% of the time it’s not less than 100% of the time the the CMO was let go because the CEO didn’t trust the CMO and when I dig. 

 
Richard Lane   25:06 
Right. 

 
Jessica   25:07 
Into what that means. It’s the CMO built plans on their own. They didn’t get feedback from the rest of the organization. They they didn’t have the data, they weren’t showing the data, and they were. 
They were launching marketing campaigns. They were launching plans. They were building things that weren’t successful, but they refused to admit it. They refused to acknowledge it. They didn’t share results, and they got really defensive when anybody would ask about it. 
And so the CEO, understandably, and the CFO and the CRO would say, I don’t know what this person’s doing. I don’t trust them. I don’t see that they’re a learning organization that is going to be able to hit our goals. And so the CEO lets them go. I will say, I mean, it’s unbelievable how consistent that is. 

 
Richard Lane   25:56 
Wow. Yeah. So someone probably looking at those vanity metrics, sort of trying to demonstrate they’re doing what they’re doing, but doing it as in the ivory tower, just in isolation and not willing to be part of the team, I guess. 

 
Jessica   26:13 
Yeah, like I’m hitting my leads. It’s sales’s fault for not doing this or I like the story and it’s, you know, and it’s this person, whatever. So that’s it’s just that inability. And and it’s so funny, I I always tell my team because nobody likes to share when things go wrong and I would always. 

 
Richard Lane   26:16 
Yeah, yeah. 

 
Jessica   26:33 
My. 
Is everybody knows it didn’t go right. Everybody knows it was a failure. So just admit it. You look a lot better when people know that you know. And I think the key is and so I with my teams, I always make them do a monthly and MBR, a monthly business review and we do that and we open it up to the entire. 

 
Richard Lane   26:35 
Yeah. 
Yeah. 
Right. 

 
Jessica   26:53 
Organization. But we go through everything that worked, everything that didn’t work, and then whatever didn’t work, we say this is what we’re doing instead. And we say, hey, and we get feedback. And it’s not just we present. We say, do you agree? Do you disagree? What would you like us to see more of the more that you can make other people feel that. 
They are part of the decision-making process and they’re part of the plan. They’re going to trust you a lot more and they’re going to want you to succeed. Like if they help to build the plan, well, obviously they want the plan to be successful because it’s their plan too. 

 
Richard Lane   27:25 
Yeah, yeah. 
Yeah, absolutely. That’s so that’s a great nugget for our listeners to take away there. So essentially run a monthly business review and open it up to the organization and and request feedback. So turn it into a dialogue. So it’s not just we’ve done this and look how great it is, it’s. 

 
Jessica   27:44 
Yes. 

 
Richard Lane   27:46 
This is what we’ve done. This is what worked. This is what didn’t work. But tell us what you think. You know, what’s your view on some of this? Because I guess there’ll be some things which you may feel didn’t work, but actually sales might have really liked that positioning or that messaging, and whilst it might not have worked for that month. 
It’s still got opportunity. 

 
Jessica   28:05 
Or they can say, hey, this thing didn’t work, but there’s a nugget here. And if you took this and then you blew it out in this way, or actually it worked really well for these customers, but not these. Those are just these little insights that make the difference between something that that is 80% right versus 100% right. 

 
Richard Lane   28:08 
Yeah. 
Yeah. OK. That’s that’s that’s really great. And on the back of that, Jessica, do you talk to us a little bit about the metrics that you that you use to drive performance? I presume it’s not just the number of MQLS. I’m getting the feeling like it’s. 

 
Jessica   28:37 
It’s. 
It’s all MQLS. It’s all I care about. Yeah. So I have. I have banned my team from ever talking about MQLS. Nobody in the world cares about MQLS and marketers. The only thing that matters is revenue. That’s it. Nothing else. And so and that’s another way for marketers to start thinking about themselves as not just focus on, you know, I. 

 
Richard Lane   28:41 
Yeah. 
Yeah. 

 
Jessica   28:59 
I throw the lead over and then anything past stage two is sales fault, like sales’s responsibility. That’s not true. And so when we all look at revenue, then we can all take a step back and say, OK, well and then part of the part of the process. 
Is all marketers, all sales are looking at every stage of the funnel. And so we’re looking at top of the funnel, we’re looking at leads, we’re looking at MQLS, we’re looking at stage one, stage two, stage three, stage four, stage 5. And we’re saying and actually by the way, we’re not just looking at sales, we’re looking at customer experience and we’re saying retention. 

 
Richard Lane   29:33 
Yeah, close it. 

 
Jessica   29:36 
Because it doesn’t matter if you close deals if you can’t retain them. And so we’re looking at every single solitary part of that and we’re saying what can marketing do to help that. And so it so we we’re constantly looking at OK, well it maybe at from stage 3 to stage 4, we don’t have the right materials like they need better ROI materials. 
well So we’re going to help them with that. Maybe the customer, oftentimes the account managers, they desperately need content. And for some reason, marketers just completely ignore the group that’s responsible for all of our retention. And so we can help them create really good packaged content. At Asana, the marketing team put together these fantastic 
Materials for our account managers that focused on and they were scalable ways for account managers to show customers their ROI and it was super cool and it was an incredible retention tool. Account managers can’t do that, but marketers can and so thinking about all of the different ways that you can improve. 
Improve retention, not just we got a lead and then we throw it over. We don’t think about it anymore. 

 
Richard Lane   30:41 
Yeah, yeah. And I mean that’s an interesting point. We, you know, we, we sort of typically have spent our time around the marketing, sales, friction, debate, whatever, but actually the role marketing can play in customer success and retention, renewal. 

 
Jessica   30:56 
Mhm. 

 
Richard Lane   30:56 
Is is is huge, isn’t it? In terms of you know the and and growth and expansion, you know not just not just winning the new customer, but how do you keep the customer and and expand it? 

 
Jessica   30:58 
Huge. 
Marketing should play an enormous role in expansion. 

 
Richard Lane   31:13 
So maybe, maybe just to sort of as as we get to the the end of our of our chat, Jessica, what what about, what about resource? And I mean I’m presuming resource is finite, you know, I’m presuming that you can only have so much. I mean although some of the companies you’ve worked at were like rocket ships, weren’t they? So maybe, maybe there was. 

 
Jessica   31:26 
They are. 

 
Richard Lane   31:33 
More fuel than ever, but you know, normally we’re working in an environment where you can only do so much. So perhaps just just to maybe finish up how how can you help people think about where they where they point the resources they have at their disposal? 

 
Jessica   31:39 
Yeah. 
Yeah, it’s it’s really hard. And so my one of my favorite mantras is is ruthlessly prioritize. And I actually had a CEO, a CMO who this stuck with me forever. He said strategy is just the art of prioritization. And I love that because there’s a million good ideas and. 
The key is what are the ideas that are going to make you money and what are the ideas that are aligned with your company strategy. So I always start with what’s the company strategy, what’s the sales strategy, what are, what do we need to accomplish as an organization? And then everything flows from there. And So what I do with my marketing team is every quarter we put together OK Rs. 
We look at what we did last quarter and we cut anything that did not serve us well. That’s something that marketers do not like to do with cut things. So you have to have be ruthless, utterly ruthless about cutting things that really just don’t work. And think of everything as an experiment that you’re going to keep doing or not, but can’t be wedded to anything. 
So looking at things that didn’t work, cutting the things that that did not and looking at your strategy, looking at where you are now as an organization and making sure that everything you’re doing is focused on that. And so all of our OKRS cascade, right? So if somebody, you know if the company OKR is we need to win more $50,000 deals. 

 
Richard Lane   32:48 
Yeah. 

 
Jessica   33:07 
And you know, maybe there’s one other thing, right? We need to expand into financial services. Just just say that then all of our marketing OK Rs have to ladder to one of those. If they don’t, then we cut it. And so that’s just an example of how you can keep your team on track is just. 

 
Richard Lane   33:13 
Yeah. 

 
Jessica   33:25 
That looking back at everything your team is doing, cutting, cutting, cutting and then rebuilding it. So you’re almost like you’re rebuilding your marketing team. And unfortunately what that means is oftentimes every six months or so you have to look at your team because the skill set that you you you hired for six months ago or a year ago. 

 
Richard Lane   33:41 
Right. 

 
Jessica   33:45 
It’s potentially not the skill set you did right now. One big example right now is I see a lot of this with organizations is, you know, we all used to have big PR teams, we all used to have PR firms. I don’t think PR makes a lot of sense for most companies. And so, you know, when I was at Calendly. 
A year in, I said, hey, you know all of our our PR team members, like we can’t have them doing PR. And so you all have to work on influencer relations and they had to make that switch. And if people can’t make the switch, then you have to let them go and find people that can do that. 
And there’s a million examples of that. But it you really have to overhaul and review your organization constantly and make sure that you’re not keeping people on because they were good for the organization a year ago or because you like them. But you have to only keep people that are going to be aligned with the priorities for the organization right now and it’s it’s. 
It’s horrible. It’s the worst thing that you have to do as a leader, but it’s it’s the right thing to do. 

 
Richard Lane   34:45 
Yeah. And that, I mean that’s that takes us right back to where we started the conversation, doesn’t it, around having a great team and that great team to be great has to change depending on the priorities, depending on what you’ve got in the plan going forward. So, yeah, really difficult to do, but so. 

 
Jessica   34:51 
Yeah. 

 
Richard Lane   35:02 
So important, essential to building a a great business. Wow, amazing. I’m going to take this recording, Jessica, and send it to all of my sales and marketing team right now before before release. But look, I’ve absolutely loved listening to your stories and and your expertise around. 
The world of marketing and I think actually, I mean what you’ve really been talking about is, is running a business and you know and and I think if if we all spend our time focused in that way, then we will ultimately all be more successful, we’ll collaborate more and we’ll all be. 
On the bus facing the same direction and hopefully in the right seats and achieving our goals. So really thank you so much for being on the podcast. Really appreciate. It’s been lovely learning from you. So thanks very much for your time. 

 
Jessica   35:52 
Thanks so much. This is great. 

 
Richard Lane   35:54 
And and thanks to everyone for joining us for another episode. I’m Richard Lane. I’ve been your host. If you’d like to hear more from us, then please find us on your favourite podcast site, Spotify and the like. And if you’d like to know more about Durham Lane and our selling at high level methodology and how we help organisations to scale, then please check out. 
At durhamlane.com. In the meantime, I’ll see you next time. And Jessica, thanks again.