VO:

Hi, and welcome to The Insiders by durhamlane, where we get perspectives from industry thought leaders about strategies that are unifying marketing and sales cycles to help accelerate growth inside your world.

Richard:

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, co-founder and Chief Commercial Officer of durhamlane, and today, I’m thrilled to be joined by Goetz Posner.

Goetz is the Global Head of Marketing and Customer Experience for Amadeus, and I think if you’ve ever travelled anywhere, then you have probably been part of the Amadeus technology at some point in time. Amadeus’ technology powers the global travel and tourism industry, improving the travel experience for millions of people since 1987. So, Goetz, really great to have you on the show, thank you so much for being with us.

Goetz:

Richard, thanks a lot for having me here. It’s really great to chat. I know from our pre-session, we’re going to have a really interesting conversation today, so I’m very much looking forward to it.

Richard:

Perhaps to get us started and for you to introduce yourself to the listeners, I was hoping you could give just a quick overview of who you are, how you got to be at Amadeus, and your work journey so far.

Goetz:

Sure, more than happy to, Richard. Well, as I said, my name is Goetz Posner, I’m currently heading the marketing and customer experience department for Amadeus Solutions. And before that, I was working in sales and various marketing roles, really trying to kind of bridge the gap between that marketing and sales departments. So before that, I was working in the financial services area, and even starting off my career as a consultant. So I was able to dive into many different industries and kind of get my head around what is really interesting and what is driving this world.

Being in the financial services area for over a decade, I thought, why not turn into the travel sector? And travel tech is one of a kind, as you just mentioned, it’s really, really interesting, and especially working for one of the biggest tech players in the world.

Richard:

Yeah, excellent. So a man after my own heart, so connecting the worlds of marketing and sales together, I think it’s something that we talk about a lot on The Insiders podcast. I still think it’s a big challenge for many organisations to connect the two and have that consistent flow of the prospect or customer journey. But really interesting that you’ve come out of alternative backgrounds into sort of the marketing space. So perhaps we’ll dig into that as we chat today, Goetz.

First thing we’re going to talk about is audience focus and creativity. I guess within the world of travel, it’s quite a small marketplace, I would suggest, in terms of who you work with. Would that be fair?

Goetz:

Ah, it depends. It depends because when it comes to different solutions, I mean, everyone more or less is traveling more or less in this world. And depending on who is your target audience, because there are so many different target audience that you can serve to, it can be quite diverse. And this also, you know, bears then the problem of, you know, how do I communicate to my target audience? And first of all, do I know him? Right.

Richard:

So, I made that first mistake by thinking that you were targeting sort of the suppliers, but actually, you’re right, it could be anyone, not dissimilar to whether you’re B2B focused or B2C focused. How within Amadeus do you identify and understand who you want to target? And then how does that manifest? How does that happen?

Goetz:

So, we have different segments within Amadeus. We are serving airports, we’re serving airlines, we’re serving hotel chains, rental car services, everything that basically has anything to do with travel or moving forward. And we are also serving big corporations that are in need of a travel and expense solution, for example. They want to plan, book travel, you know, people that they are having traveling for their company do want to get reimbursed. So that’s why they’re looking for specific tools to make it easy for them.

And this is where it comes a bit tricky because, you know, not every day there’s a new airline or not every day there’s a new airport built, but you have millions of companies that have very different needs and very specific pain points, which you have to address more or less separately.

Richard:

And this bears a big problem in marketing when it comes to, let’s say, automation or mass marketing, right?

Goetz:

Yeah.

Richard:

And how do you solve that conundrum then? How do you break that up into units and focus?

Goetz:

That’s a very good question. I think it all starts with data. You need to really have the right data in your system, and you need to know what you’re after. And this is where what I’ve found, particularly, especially when working in the consultancy business, where a lot of companies already struggle. They might have a very good marketing automation in place. They might have a very good sales pitch, sales technique, but they are not particularly after the right prospects. I think defining your target audience, this is where all the companies should really start to really be super clear on, you know, who am I after? And once you define that, it’s around getting data on these accounts in your CRM, I would say.

And the more insights, the more data you have, the better it is. But you need somebody or some system to analyse this data to make decisions out of it. And I think this is the, I would say, a bit boring, not super sexy to start with, but it has to be done.

Richard:

Yeah. It’s the foundations of the house, isn’t it? In our world of outsourced sales and marketing, then it’s absolutely the same point where if you don’t have the best or the right data, then you can run the greatest campaign ever. But if it’s to the wrong person, then it doesn’t really matter.

Goetz:

Exactly.

Richard:

We talked before the recording about making people smile and creativity. I know this is something close to your heart. So maybe we could talk a little bit about how you bring some of the humour into the campaigns that you build for your customers.

Goetz:

Absolutely. More than happy to talk about this subject. I think when it comes to the next step, because we’re just talking about data. Once you, let’s say you know your target audience, you know whom to market or to sell to, it’s around how you do that. And a lot of companies tend to sell their products right away.

So it’s like, here it is, it’s nice and shiny, it does this and that. And they forget about that most of the people are not directly interested in it. I think when it comes to the top of the funnel, so really starting to get brand awareness, starting that, getting my name out there and trying to kind of figure out what do I stand for as a company, as a brand, then it gets a bit of interesting.

You need to kind of attract people and you have so many touch points during a day. And we all know that, right? We’re getting bombarded with messages, the marketing slogans, advertisements online, anywhere. I think here you need to find unique sweet spots.

And I think this is different to every company, right? You have much more conservative companies, you have much more compelling companies. Sometimes you have a very cool product that people can touch or really engage with. And sometimes it’s a bit of more like a software as a sales service solution where you say like, well, it doesn’t sound like super cool, but what do I do with it? And what we tend to do is we try to leave people with a smile whenever they get in touch with our brand, because we learn that this kind of resonates and sticks to the people rather than a product, a pure product based message.

You’re like, oh, that feature does this and this, and it connects to this certain API or interface. Could work if you talk to technicians or if you really have an R&D audience. But when you have a specific decision maker unit that you want to address your solution to, we found out that it makes sense to have a bit of this disruptive surprise inspirational element where people are like, wow, that was catchy.

Richard:

I like that.

Goetz:

Could be a slogan, could be pictures or the story that you build up. But this is where people then tend to talk about it a bit more than basically just a product.

Richard:

So is the smile test part of your strategy when you’re building campaigns? Is that sort of one of the boxes that have to be ticked before you can release a campaign? Is that sort of part of your culture?

Goetz:

I need to note that down, Richard. A smile test is good.

We almost have the same because for me, whenever we come up with good campaigns or whenever we come up with campaigns, good is to be diagnosed by the audience. But whenever we come up with campaigns, we try to think of it as being it a video, being it an infographic, being it whatever it might be, maybe even a nice static banner. Would that be something that you would forward to your friends and family just because of curiosity or just because it was done in such a cool way? And of course, you cannot hit the target 100%, but we try to achieve that to like, yeah, that’s kind of cool. It’s neat.

I would just forward it or share it with a couple of my friends who would exactly understand this kind of humour or this kind of plot twist or anything like that, because that gives a bit of this viral factor that a lot of people are looking for right now. And of course, we’re not in the TikTok community where we say like, okay, we need to produce video content on a daily basis. But I think you can turn your solutions into a bit more attractive chunks of marketing rather than just blasting out product sheets.

Richard:

So for any listeners that are building, running, managing campaigns, that’s such a great way of looking at it, isn’t it? Because if it comes across that you enjoy what you do, then people will want to align with your brand and they’ll want to share it with others. And you get the most trusted form of recognition, which is the referral to other people. So I love that. It’s a great idea. You can have the smile test, by the way, as a thank you for coming on the podcast.

Goetz:

Perfect.

Richard:

Moving on from there, that was, you know, so we’ve got the foundations, we’ve got the data, we’ve got the messaging, we’ve got the smile test or making sure there’s curiosity. Would we be, you know, we want to feel proud of the campaigns we’re doing. Does that filter through into your sales teams and how they then follow up any interest that’s created? How does that work?

Goetz:

That’s another great question because, you know, aligning marketing and sales is, I believe, on every marketer’s agenda. It’s just a question, how do you live it? And when it comes to sales, they’re usually spotting just the opportunities where they just have to run into, sign the deal and go for it, right?

Unfortunately, it’s not that easy most of the time. You have to really work with the commercial teams. And I think here, again, it can be a lot of fun rather than just, you know, pushing over marketing qualified leads or saying, okay, we’ve fueled the pipeline.

You take over now. It’s a constant interaction. I think it’s a constant discussion where we get lots of valuable inputs from the sales guys because they’re on there on the market.

They’re having discussions with prospects, with clients, you know, account managers that also address different pain points or give us feedback on existing campaigns, on existing webinars or anything that is out there. So, we can use the data for our marketing campaigns and vice versa. We feed into our insights into the sales pitch to make it as relevant as possible.

Because I don’t think that, yeah, if you have a very generic sales pitch, it resonates as much as a very generic marketing messages. You can hit, you know, if you’re lucky, but the spread loss is just immense. I think it also sounds a bit boring, but it’s unfortunately frequent collaboration.

And I think once again, here, you can turn it into creative brainstorming because commercial people, they do have a very creative brain when it comes to, you know, their sales pitches. So why not sometimes use it in your marketing messaging and combine it? Because then you really have a more seamless approach to your target audience rather than the siloed driven approach. Okay, here’s marketing. And then there’s a breach or maybe even a gap, and then there comes a sales approach. And ideally, you’re speaking with the same tone or with the same voice to the customer. So he or she even feels, oh wow, that’s one brand that they’re communicating with the same kind of arguments or same advantages rather than, oh, are there two different companies, right? And I think we pick up disconnection subconsciously really quickly, more than we ever have done.

Richard:

Well, I think our expectation, certainly as a consumer, we expect it to be connected. And I think B2C behaviour typically comes before B2B behaviour. But in the world of B2B, we now expect that continuous flow, we expect our salespeople to be continuing the message that marketing has put forward. You have to get that engagement. It’s a key piece for us. What about more targeted marketing? So, you know, a very common phrase now is ABM or persona-based marketing.

Richard:

So, what are you at Amadeus doing from a very specific point of view? And is that a much more integrated campaign team of sales and marketing together?

Goetz:

Yeah. ABM is, I would consider ABM as the buzzword before AI popped up. So it’s gone from three letters to two.

Richard:

Exactly.

Goetz:

So even there is condensation, you know, it’s a focus, focus. No, but ABM, I mean, has been there, at least the term has been there for quite some time. And I think even there, I’ve seen a lot of companies mentioning and talking about account-based marketing, but what they do is basically marketing to bundle accounts. They have a specific message and they say, well, this is, this goes out to half of my database because they’re interested in the tires. And the other half is interested in the steering wheel.

So it’s, it’s, it’s rather this, when you really talk about account-based marketing, you look really at a specific account. And this has to, of course, do with the value of the account, you know, is it really worth it? Because account-based marketing can take quite some effort and even some budget because you dig deeper, you try to really speak the language of that specific account. You need to find the narratives to kind of really address the specific pain points of those contacts on this account, which might differ, you know, from finance background to an HR background, to an IT background.

So you need to have people that are getting these insights. And of course there are tools out there that help you with it. And sometimes you can have the most dedicated messaging and creating landing pages with even the picture world of this account, and you won’t hear anything back.

And I have a funny story where, where we were trying to breach into an account for, I think it was almost six or seven months. And we had some interactions back and forth, but nothing was really moving the needle. And so we dig deeper and we found some more information on real social media, so far beyond LinkedIn. It was Instagram, it was Facebook, but all openly available. And what got us in the end to a demo meeting was that we found out that a C-level executive out of this account, we found out which university he went. So eventually we said, okay, let’s buy a hoodie of this university and let’s just send it over because we’ve done targeted booklets, brochures with LED signs on it, like everything very sophisticated.

And we address it not to him, but to his assistant, because before that we just addressed it to him and his, we’re assuming the assistant just, you know, took care of it as the last barrier. And at some point, well, two, three weeks, nothing happened. But at some point he reached out to one of the inside sales guys that was trying to get him for over a decade, I would say.

And then said like, okay, I’m going to listen to your demo. We, in the end, we didn’t win the case, but to make it not too unicorn style, but no, no, it was, it was really interesting to see sometimes there are these sensitive, more private thingies and how can you twist them into your machinery, I would say. And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.

Richard:

Yeah. And I guess when you say sometimes it works, I guess the objective here was getting contact and a meeting. So it worked as a strategy… You didn’t win the contract, but the strategy of that part of the campaign worked. We do a similar, very similar thing with Newcastle United shirts. We’ve done some great little moments where we’ve had a shirt and we’ve sent it to someone we know, a company we’re trying to do business with, and that’s been really good.

There are lots of things that you can do through ABM, but I think it also shows that putting a little bit of effort more than people are used to goes a long way. You’ve got to look for all the things that enable you to demonstrate that effort and a university hoodie is a good one. I’ve not heard that one before. I like that. And is there a mechanism within Amadeus where you say, yes, we can focus an ABM approach on this customer. How does that work within the organisation?

Goetz:

Basically, it is a discussion. We have automation in place that kind of filters certain prospects or yeah, kind of the priority in terms of, you know, these accounts, but what we always do is we have a discussion around our top prospects and then we kind of define a strategy. This is the combination of the sales and marketing effort, including inside sales, where we really go on into an account because it has been in there in our CRM for quite some time because we heard rumours because we heard noise, we need to find out what’s happening.

And then we sometimes sit together and have a discussion around three, four, five accounts and say, okay, what is it that we can do? Does anybody, did anybody hear anything else? We try to bring everything together that we do have, because sometimes a lot of information is still not maintained in the CRM, but it’s in the heads of the people.

And this is what we constantly try to push to say, if it’s not in some machine or in some system, we can’t access it and we cannot work with it – this is why we have these meetings. And then we can really quickly dismiss or we can quickly engage with a plan. Then we come up with a strategic plan. And sometimes it’s a longer discussion because we’re missing information.

We need to, you know, take different steps to say, okay, what do we need to do? Because we think there’s lots of value in this account. So it is not fully automated yet. And I don’t think it will ever be because there is, or maybe not ever, but it will not be in the foreseen future because there are so many human aspects to it that cannot yet be, I would say, a quantisiser or, you know, being put into a system directly.

Richard:

Yeah, it’s a good point. I’m going to take us back to your first point around data, because I was talking to someone the other day, a CEO of a global organisation, CRO role, typically 18 months as a tenure, so very short lifetime. CMO is probably not much different in some organisations. So, you’ve got to keep your data up to date at all times, haven’t you? How do you manage that? I presume in your business, much of it is automated. How do you go back to first base and make sure that your data is right all the time? I guess that I’m assuming that is something that people listening will go, yes, that’s a problem.

Goetz:

Yes, and I can fully relate to that. I’ve just been at a conference in London two or three weeks ago, and we’re discussing with some of my peers, and they’re all facing the same problem. It’s around the data quality. And as you mentioned, Richard, that it’s really the foundation, it’s the basis.

Richard:

So if this is already not working, how can you go further?

Goetz:

You know, so we really try to keep our systems up to date. We really try to work with third parties, you know, kind of, it’s around cleansing, it’s around maintaining, it’s around updating, it’s around getting rid of old or, you know, not relevant data anymore. And this is not only due to GDPR reasons, but to really say, okay, we don’t want to ride any dead horses, you know, so let’s really spend our effort and time and resources on the things that matter.

So it’s a constant effort. And I don’t think I will ever be at that position to say, guys, we’re 100% clear, all set, you know, let’s just forget about data, it’s all done and dusted. Unfortunately not. It’s really a constant effort, and it requires a really high focus on it.

Richard:

Yeah, absolutely.

Goetz:

One of those things that is, I don’t think we’ll ever have it right.

Richard:

It’s like the website is never finished, isn’t it? That’s one thing we always talk about is it’s just something that goes on forever. And it should be because your messaging should be changing, things should be adapting. But yeah, something you need to have processing to make sure that you can have it as accurate as you can do when it comes to data.

Something else I thought we’d talk about was adapting to change and learning from mistakes. I imagine there’s going to be some humour with this as well in terms of, you know, how we keep a smile on our faces. But, you know, how have you found strategies that work when you’re adapting to change in leadership or unexpected changes in company strategy, for example?

Goetz:

Yeah, that’s actually a tough question, because the only constant is change. And it’s hard to prepare for that to say like, well, guys, always be open, you know, be open for change. Even in Amadeus, you know, we’re evolving at a quite fast pace. This also leads sometimes to, you know, changes in, I don’t know, hierarchies and leadership, but also in systems when it comes to Martech stack or anything like that.

So how do you prepare yourself for that? I think one thing that is really good, even within Amadeus, and I know a lot of companies tend to do this, like make mistakes, you know, trial and error, go for it, test the waters. And I think this is something what we can really do within Amadeus. We are eager to go and test new ways.

Of course, we do mistakes on a daily basis. And the fun thing is really that we then sit down together and we analyse and say like, okay, why did it go wrong? Or could we have prevented it? Were there any other ways? And this is how we learn. And this is also how we constantly evolve.

The cool thing is that we can play back these results to other units within Amadeus that they can play with, or they don’t have to do the mistakes once again, right? So it’s, I think, be open for change is easily said. You really have to live it and you have to also be up for it. If someone that wants to have constant things on a daily basis, and that is not up for change, it’s going to be super tough.

Fortunately, I have teams around me that are very open, that are very willing to go for new ways and try new things. And fortunately, we do have a great employer that allows us to do that. Because I also know some companies that tend to say that, but they don’t live up to it, which is a pity, because then in the end, your employees will do it maybe once, but then they will never do it again, because they feel like it’s not the right place to do that.

You can only learn or grow when you do mistakes. We would all like to avoid it, right? But there’s not only that one line that you can walk, there are multiple ones, and I think, learn from it and then take another route and make it better.

Richard:

Yeah, it’s a really important cultural trait, isn’t it? Empowering people to feel they can try things and they obviously try them with best intentions, but they know that if something doesn’t work, then let’s learn from it and try something different. If you can create that culture, then I think amazing things can happen.

Goetz:

Absolutely.

Richard:

And I think just coming back to it, how can you maybe foster this culture a bit more?

Goetz:

One thing that we do during team meetings, and we have also an upcoming team workshop, I like to include this ‘Merlin’ exercise. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it, Richard, but it’s based on Merlin from The Magician. So, what I asked the team, including myself, is to imagine you’re one year ahead, and we’ve reached all our goals, we’ve reached all our targets, then let’s do some reverse engineering. Let’s take a step backward. What had to happen in order to end up there? It’s nothing else rather than saying, okay, these are your targets, go run for it and try to reach them.

Rather than: we’ve made it, we’ve reached all our targets, it’s: what were the steps? And think the unthinkable – the sky’s the limit. I don’t accept any budget restrictions or something like this. So think very freely, because that opens sometimes a totally new discussion, because when you say, okay, here are your goals, this is your budget, these are your resources, run. And then you’re like, okay, I’m in this kind of ring fence and try to manage it. But when you think outside of this ring, you might end up saying like, okay, maybe there is an argument to get two new resources, maybe I can create a business case to go for this new solution that we can connect to our CRM, something like that.

It’s always around finding arguments, right? To kind of justify your decisions. And I think this is a fun exercise where people tend to be like, well, okay, so we can think about everything, yeah! And then of course, I have to pull them back sometimes, back into reality.

But it’s a very good way of letting your creativity flow. This is just one thing that helps us kind of tackle some of the objectives that are out there.

Richard:

Yeah, I like that. So let me just summarise and check I’ve got it right: You call it your Merlin exercise and you basically say to your team; we’re a year from now, we’ve hit all of our targets, let’s just now step back and think of what all the things that we did that enabled us to get to that point. And there are no barriers, so it could be 15 million on social spend, and it all happened that way. But it probably wouldn’t be so yeah, okay.

Goetz:

Yeah, but they would then have to say just okay, how did it happen? You know, what did we do with the 15 million? Imagine that. And the fun thing is that they it’s most of the time it’s not around the budget. I don’t hear too many times that okay, if we had our budget 100 times, everything would work out.

So nothing really crazy out of this world, but usually we stumble upon little things like, if we would have this organisation helping us, for example, we installed inside sales between marketing and sales, and we had the shots to say that you get one resource then we’ll try it, which is also trial and error.

And we were very fortunate because it worked. And now we have more resources, and we are really embedding them to bridge the sometimes existing gap between marketing and sales. And it proved to be the right thing to do.

Richard:

Yeah, excellent. And that and that came out of your Merlin exercise, excellent. So, lots of learnings and things to take away for our listeners. Thanks so much.

I’ve got some questions in from when we go out in the socials and ask for people to submit some questions. I’m just going to pull one out of this list here…

Here’s one from Will around ABM and persona based marketing. He asked: Could you share some insights on how you align persona based marketing strategies with your sales teams at Amadeus? What are some best practices you recommend for ensuring seamless communication and effectiveness in these campaigns?

I think we’ve touched about that a little bit, but perhaps you could go into a bit more detail for us?

Goetz:

Sure. Well, it’s a great question. I think you have to start with creating your customer profile first. The famous ICP, the ideal customer profile, and this has to be done together with your commercial or sales team. You really have to sit down together. Whom are we after? Is it an individual person? Is it maybe a short or a smaller circle like a decision maker unit? Is it the whole account consisting of 10, 15, 20 people? And then it really comes to, OK, how can we get their attention? Or maybe we are already engaged. You need to define the stage. Do they already know us? Maybe not.

Then you need to define how can we communicate with them? And you should start with the audience centric view. What’s in it for them getting in touch with you? And usually a lot of companies say, well, we have tons of messages and value propositions and narratives. Let’s shoot them over. Yeah, that usually doesn’t really resonate very well.

So make that, you have to act like as a profiler. You need to really create a profile. What are they after? What are their pain points? Then you should, if you have, you should include inside sales to do this qualification, you know, like the typical bant qualification. I call it BANTE because I’m missing the E for emotion there, but it’s budget, authority, need, timeline and my E for emotion to really say, do we, are we able to build some sort of relationship with them? Do we have any, you know, good ambassador maybe already in there that we are, that we can talk differently to, right? That can maybe share some of these insights and then build a plan. And it’s not marketing department building a plan, nor the sales department building a plan. It’s both of them together.

And then you start and then you test and do your trial and error exercise. And having first run the Merlin exercise to give you all your answers. Why not?

Richard:

Yeah, why not? I mean, that’s great advice there. I know it’s quite easy to give advice, and the hard thing is then putting it into practice. But I think we’ve talked through a number of elements today, which people will be able to go and think, well, this is what I need to do, not just to have the creativity, but to have the discipline to then go and make it work with my colleagues across departments.

And that’s really important. So I really appreciate you being on an episode of The Insiders with us. Thank you so much for sharing your insights and knowledge.

We have one last question before we wrap up and that is we’re building the insiders Spotify playlist. Every guest gets the opportunity to add a track of their choice. Have you thought of a song you’d like to add?

Goetz:

I would definitely add Don’t Stop Me Now from Queen.

Richard:

Great choice. That is a song I would recommend. Is that your get up and go track?

Goetz:

It’s one of the get up and go tracks, definitely. And it has a certain connection even within Amadeus. Whenever we celebrate, this is definitely part of the playlist, if not number one. So there’s a strong emotional connection to it. And it kind of gives us back the feeling, you know, don’t stop us now. But it’s Don’t Stop Me Now. It’s okay.

Richard:

Excellent. Well, that’s brilliant. Great choice and we’ll get that added for you. So, like I say, thank you so much for being with us.

Lots to take away for our listeners, ranging from retaining a sense of humour, making sure your data’s right, building audience centric messages, thinking, you know, put your feet in your customers shoes before you get started doing anything. And then thinking around ICP. It’s the planning, the preparation, but then executing successfully with your colleagues and driving that customer-centric approach.

So thank you so much. It’s been great having you with us.

Goetz:

Well, thanks, Richard, for having me here. I really enjoyed it. And also the great questions. Had a fantastic time.

And I hope that also our listeners found it useful as well. And don’t forget, you know, test the waters, make mistakes, learn from them, and repeat.

Richard:

Perfect. And thanks to you for tuning into The Insiders. Please subscribe on your preferred podcasting site to ensure you’re notified to any new episodes as and when they are published. And if you’d like to learn more about durhamlane and our unique method of Selling at a Higher Level, please visit durhamlane.com for more information and we will see you all again soon. Thank you.

VO:

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