Speaker 1:

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 Lane:

Welcome to 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 at durhamlane. We’re a leading outsource sales and marketing agency that helps global and ambitious brands create always on channels of meaningful and well-qualified sales opportunities. Today I’m thrilled to be joined by Paul Gowans. Paul is the global director of regional and channel marketing for VIAVI Solutions who provide network testing, monitoring and assurance solutions for communication, service providers, enterprises, and more all over the world. Paul, great to have you on the show, and thank you so much for being with us.

Paul Gowans:

I appreciate it. Yeah, good to be here. Thanks for the invite.

Richard Lane:

Great. Well, look, in order to get started, Paul, and to help our listeners get a feeling for who you are, would you mind introducing yourself and perhaps sharing a short anecdote about your career or your experience to date?

Paul Gowans:

Yeah, of course. I’ve been in the telecoms industry for, I mean, it’s about 30 years now. I’ve run technical support teams, product management, business development, and now I run, as you say, the regional and channel teams across the world. Their job really is at the coalface, working directly with sales driving campaigns and executing those into all the regions. As a global company, we touch a lot of parts of the networks around the world, so it’s important that we’re all aligned in terms of the same campaigns driving in each of the regions. Typically, we focus around 5G, the role at 5G networks and fibre networks, and a lot of that is around fibre to the home, but also embraces hyperscalers and cloud providers.

Richard Lane:

Excellent. Okay, so a wide remit and lots of different scenarios, which I’m sure we’ll get into as we chat through on this episode. One I think we spend a lot of time discussing on The Insiders is the world of demand generation and capturing new customers interest. It’d be great to hear your perspective on this in terms of where does demand gen start and finish and where does lead gen start and finish. So maybe talk us through that journey as you see it in your business.

Paul Gowans:

One of the main aspects of any business like ours is driving new logos and driving new business whilst at the same time serving your current customers, so is that balance between those two. I’m not sure if there’s a defined exactly line between demand and lead. I mean, you’re effectively going through the awareness phase. I didn’t realise you can do that type thing to preference. I need to tell me more about what you have to then conversion, to then driving the deal and closing the business. A lot depends on the maturity of the market and where it sits in terms of where you are. You’re a lot of the time driving awareness for your company as opposed to necessarily just trying to sell solutions. So it’s that balance of maturity to the market. I mean, there’s 5G and fibre everywhere, but they’re at different phases depending where you are. Some countries might, for example, be much further along in fibre to the home, provide in high speed broadband. Other countries might be further behind, so you might be in very different kind of phases, even though your message is essentially the same.

Richard Lane:

Do you see that variation in country as well? So do you see that as much as it’s a different stage by country, by country, do you find it by region, by region within a country, for example?

Paul Gowans:

The main difference… Well, actually, so I’ll step back a bit. So it depends on the country. Obviously if you’re looking at the US, that’s a big landmass with quite a lot of different communities there and the rural and urban. What’s happening, for example in New York City is probably very different from what’s happening in Wisconsin. And they’re just different environments. Typically, if you look at European countries, they’re quite homogenous in terms of, for example, where France or the UK or Germany is in terms of that maturity. So it depends where you’re looking and the size of the country, but there’s not that much variation within countries. It’s mainly one country might just be further on, but obviously the big difference is rural versus urban in terms of where am I getting a 5G service or can I get high speed broadband and those kind of fundamental questions because it’s such an essential element of people’s lives now.

Richard Lane:

Yeah, absolutely. And something we talked about pre coming on air was about the buyer journey and how the buyer journey is always evolving. One thing you mentioned is that you pointed out everything seems to be pre and post pandemic nowadays. It’d be interested from an ABM account-based marketing perspective, what have those changes meant for your customers?

Paul Gowans:

Yeah, it is funny how everything seems to be pre or post COVID and the comparisons between the two, which I think is reasonable, because we’ve just come out of that and the market is often compared because you can’t really look at the two year COVID period and use that as a benchmark. One thing that I think has changed is that that buyer cycle, I would say maybe prospects would’ve been 50, 60% along that cycle before they even got in touch with you. Now it can be 80%.

Richard Lane:

Wow, okay. That much?

Paul Gowans:

So they can be much further on in that buyer cycle doing much more kind of research and analysis themselves before they ever even contact you. And that’s where as we were talking about demand and lead gen earlier on, that’s where the awareness aspect is crucial because they have to just know who you are and what you do and why you might be an important potential vendor or supplier. So I think that has changed. I think the face-to-face aspect is really important for people now. If you take for example, a classic trade show where pre pandemic, so many people would go to that, but it would be difficult to pick out the real prospects because it was often such a vast environment. Nowadays, I think what we find is that there’s less fruitful at these trade shows, but the quality of the people that are there are higher. So I think that has changed a bit. The dynamics of that before and after.

Richard Lane:

I think that is a direct outcome of the pandemic is the face-to-face, I think, has taken on a more significant gravitas in terms of if people are willing to make the effort to go to their office to see you, or you’re making the effort to go to a show, et cetera, then it just feels like there’s a higher intent than there was pre pandemic days, for example.

Paul Gowans:

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Richard Lane:

And within your world, it feels like there are many different layers that you’re having to get your brand in front of, and as you mentioned, 80% of the buyer journey done before a salesperson is spoken with. So with your global remit in mind, how do you make sure that you’re getting the brand and the business in front of the right people with the right message across those different tiers of operators?

Paul Gowans:

It’s a challenge, right? It is a challenge. I mean, the thing is, we have a lot of business with, for example, like Tier 1 operators who know us well and we’ve been working with for a long time, and that’s all about trust and relationships. More building breadth within that operator rather than trying to drive new operators. So I think that’s one aspect. The more challenging one is when you scale that up and you go to, for example, some of the smaller operators rolling out fibre, you might call them altnets in the UK or tier three in other areas, and then the scale’s different and there’s lots of elements of that ecosystem.

There’s contractors involved in installing stuff, which isn’t necessarily the employee, the tier three operator, but is a key element in terms of rolling out fibre to the home, for example. So you’re trying to get awareness, like, “Who’s VIAVI? What do they do? What do they stand for? Why should I even talk to you? Or maybe I’ve been using a different vendor for a long time and you’re a new vendor and I don’t kind of understand the differences.” People tend to not want to move off what they’ve been using for a long time just because there’s a trust thing, even if it’s not the best. It might not be the best product out there, but just to feel comfortable with that.

And I think you can often move a market a bit more when there’s an inflexion point in it. 4G going to 5G is an inflexion point in the market where new tools and new capabilities are needed, and that gives you, I think, an opportunity in the market dynamics to show what your capability is compared to others if a customer, for example, hasn’t been using it. So that whole kind of scale of driving new logos in the broader market compared to, for example, what you’ve been doing in Tier 1 operators is quite a difference. And again, it’s a balance of the teams.

Richard Lane:

In the Tier 1, I guess, you’re known, and it’s about how do you increase the debt of your relationships. When you go out of the Tier 1, then it’s how do we become known? So how do your people split their time into the various buckets? Is that a significant challenge for your business?

Paul Gowans:

It can be. I mean, there’s almost like three buckets there. You’ve got your Tier 1 operators and network equipment manufacturers. That’s your key customers, as you say, that’s your ones that you’re developing your trust and your relationships with or continuing that. You’ve got the next tiers down, the Tier 2, 3s, which is of course a scale. And then we’ve also got the channel.

Richard Lane:

Of course, yeah.

Paul Gowans:

The indirect channel, which is a key element of how we go to market and get that scale and get that breadth out. Often they’re selling to maybe the contractors who are doing the instal and turn up of a service versus the actual operator themselves. So you’ve got these kind of buckets and really you need different campaigns for each of those, although they’re all connected. It’s about a kind of three-legged stool. There’s pieces of each of that. You’re addressing those markets separately, but they are somewhat connected. There is connected tissue between them, how the contractors are buying products to do instal, that’s often driven by what the operator needs. So although they might be separate markets, there’s a lot of connected tissue between them. So you need to address that whole ecosystem and think about when you’re doing go-to-market plans, you can’t just isolate each of those components in its own right. You need to pull that together in an overall market assessment.

Richard Lane:

Right, so just as you were talking through that, Paul, I was thinking is there a golden thread that links all of those different campaigns together? And I presume as a piece of work that would be a significant piece of the jigsaw when you’re then cascading that through the various campaigns that you run both locally and regionally and globally.

Paul Gowans:

It sounds simple, but I think the consistency of message and how you go to market with that message is really important. That should be consistent right the way through whatever kind of watering holes you’re using, whether it’s a blog or whether it’s an email or you’re at a trade show or you’re running a webinar, whatever it is, that consistency message is really, really important. And not deviating from that because it’s easy for, we talked about different things in different regions, and of course you would have a different message depending on the maturity of the market, but if the market’s pretty well at the same level, you need to be consistent with that and scale that across all your markets. That’s really important.

Richard Lane:

Yeah, it’s a key point, isn’t it. Consistency does sound obvious when we talk about it, but it’s one of those things that people just aren’t very good at being consistent.

Paul Gowans:

And it’s easy to get taken down a different path when there’s different priorities maybe going on in a country and they want something specific and, “Oh, but I’d like this, this and this.” And you have to say, “Look, you have to look at what you’ve got in terms of a global campaign and just keep saying that same message.”

Richard Lane:

Yeah, great point. Okay, thank you. Well, look, we’re going to change track just a little bit, and next question is, what’s one of the biggest challenges that VIAVI faces in selling your solutions?

Paul Gowans:

The biggest challenge, I think, again, it depends on the new logos. Let’s focus on trying to drive new business, which is often the challenge of any business, picking up new customers, driving new opportunities and new logos. I think now we’re post pandemic and we mentioned earlier about folks have done a lot of research. They could be 80% through that buying cycle. It’s like you and I buying a car these days, typically you’ve done it, 80% your research before you ever go and talk to a dealer. So a lot of customers have done a lot of research, so you need to then, okay, so how do you feed that research? What do you need to put out there? Now, we talked about consistency, but you have to really have a set of activities and tactics coordinated into a consistent campaign.

It’s very easy to just go down a path. And you’ll hear, someone wants, “I want to do a webinar. I want to do an email shot. I want to do social. I want to do this, this, and this.” And you end up with a set of disparate tactics which aren’t integrated into the campaign. They’re not a consistent message. You’re kind of reacting to a need as opposed to proactively building a solid campaign. I think that’s important. It’s often easy for certainly folks in marketing and particularly ones that are really at the edge of the marketing domain, where you’re really in front of driving things in front of customers to just get reactive and respond to needs. And I think it is important that we… I mean, clearly you want to respond and be flexible, but you really need to step back and really plan. And plan things consistently and engage on an integrated campaign. I think that’s the way that you can drive new logos. This idea of trying to just drive MQLs by phoning people up, I mean, it just doesn’t work anymore.

Richard Lane:

Yeah, I mean, it is amazing when you talk about 80% of the buying decision made before they’ve spoken to anyone. So that then comes down to education of the market and the personas in your marketplace.

Paul Gowans:

Sure.

Richard Lane:

Have you found that that focus on educating the market has slowed sales cycles down or has it in some cases accelerated it? It’d be interesting to get your thoughts on how that’s worked through your business.

Paul Gowans:

Yeah. Honestly, Richard, I don’t think it is necessarily slowing things. I think it is interesting that how do you address, and we’ve had a look at this for example, in the fibre domain, which is how do you address influencers in that market that may not be buying your solution, but have an influencing component? So an example of this is in the fibre community, a lot of that is driven by venture capital, high cost of capital upfront, high amounts of investment upfront, because a lot of these guys are digging up roads and putting contractors out there and driving fibre pasture home. That’s a big capital investment. So a lot of investment banks and venture capitalists are involved in that.

So we’ve engaged that community, that community of investors because they’re influential in the operators, but also to help them kind of understand the importance of having high quality networks to their ROI. They’re investing in a business, they need to look at the return on investment, that’s a high quality network, not just driving past homes, but then connecting to homes. That’s an important part of their business. So we’ve spent time, for example, with the fibre investor community. We’ve done this in the UK, we’ve done this in the US, to help them understand about networks and how you instal them, why testing is important, all those aspects, even though they’re not buying equipment from us, but just to help them understand the whole environment they’re involved in.

Richard Lane:

Yeah. So that leads me to a common thread on The Insiders, which is around the integration of your marketing and your sales divisions and people. Can you share any stories, Paul, around where that’s worked particularly well, or perhaps sometimes we’ll learn better from the horror stories, so maybe there are times when it hasn’t worked particularly well, but it’d be good to get your thoughts on some of the dirty detail in there.

Paul Gowans:

My team works very closely with sales on a daily basis. I mean, really because they’re working hand in hand in each of the regions. The interesting areas are when we’re looking at expanding markets or you’re trying to cross fertilise some solutions into another domain. So I’ll give you an example. We sell into the military and aero market, what you call the mil-aero market. And typically you’d be selling very specific solutions for that market. But of course that market, things like fibre and 5G and those type of communications is really important to, so the question is how do you take that broader portfolio through that channel and do cross-sell upsell?

And so actually the sales and marketing teams that I’ve got have really been working closely in terms of what that looks like. A lot of that is, we talked about awareness. Those guys are typically saying, “Yeah, we’re buying these solutions from you. I didn’t realise you’ve got all this fibre stuff and all this 5G stuff over here.” So how do you blend that in and take that message? So actually that’s been where sales have seen a growth need in a market. It’s come from the sales team, because they’ve seen the opportunity to cross sell, and they’ve worked back with us to say, “We need marketing help to tell us how to do that and blend the message together, that portfolio message, et cetera.” So I think that’s an example where it can work together. They really have to work together in a very cohesive way.

Richard Lane:

Yeah. And that’s the perfect scenario, I think, because your salespeople should be at the front end hearing the challenges and concerns of the customer or the prospect, and then being able to then translate that back into the organisation who can then affect it and create campaigns and awareness and educate on the back of that is fantastic. So to have that closed loop, I think, is really, really important. And the sales funnel has got so many different start points, endpoints these days, it’s not a linear process. So great that you’ve built that out through the business. That’s fantastic.

Paul Gowans:

And you’re absolutely right, Richard. The other thing I was just going to say is it’s not just, you don’t have to be building new products for that domain. You’re literally taking the products you’ve got and repositioning them for that particular market. The message might be different, but the product’s the same.

Richard Lane:

Yeah, absolutely. And so able to react more speedily, able to get campaigns running, able to then create more opportunity and awareness. That’s fantastic. How has ABM manifested itself within VIAVI? Any tips on what you’ve learned to this point or any thoughts around what you might have done differently if you’d started that process again?

Paul Gowans:

The ABM side, I mean, it’s really important for us because so much of our business is tied to Tier 1 operators and Tier 1 network of equipment manufacturers. So where they are in the dynamics of the market often then reflects on us in terms of what’s needed. We mentioned about going from 4G to 5G and those type of inflexion points. Or driving fibre to the home in rural communities, for example, which is a high priority for a lot of operators now, expanding out, and there’s often government funding to help drive that because they want much broader coverage.

So I mean, we’ve been selling to Tier 1 operators and network equipment manufacturers for, I mean, years. But often it’s getting the depth in the accounts that’s important as you evolve. Typically if you’re selling test and measurement products, you’re often selling it to the same people on a daily basis, because it’s the same group, but as an example that can deliver data and information that other groups can use. We have, for example, a product that does location intelligence for mobile networks, so using anonymous location information to help them do planning and management and assure the network. But there’s a lot of really smart data in there that can be used for other groups. It’s not down to the what Richard does or what Paul does. It’s anonymized and aggregated, but there’s patterns of information in there that can be really used by marketing and business development teams, et cetera. So it’s looking at those expansion opportunities where, again, you’ve got a product, but it’s got broader appeal across different lines of business.

Richard Lane:

Yeah, that’s really interesting. That reminds me of the adage that John Deere, the tractor company now see themselves as being data specialists.

Paul Gowans:

Yes.

Richard Lane:

What you could say is a side product actually becomes hot property, I guess, in terms of the new world.

Paul Gowans:

Yeah, absolutely.

Richard Lane:

That’s really interesting. And we talk about multi-threading a lot at durhamlane, so getting into an organisation, having multiple points of contact at all different levels of an organisation. And I guess for you across Tier 1 and all of the other tiers, you need to replicate that as best you can as well, don’t you?

Paul Gowans:

Yeah.

Richard Lane:

Okay. Well, one thing that we, I think we’ve had a lot of this already, Paul, on the chat so far, but one thing we’re very keen to do on The Insiders is lead actionable insight for our listeners to be able to take away and do something with. So what one thing can you share with our audience? You’ve already used consistency, so maybe we’ve got that one, but what else can you share that they can take away and action immediately?

Paul Gowans:

Well, Richard, you touched on data there, the John Deere, and I think that is a fundamental element now of our business, which is data and analytics and measuring things. It’s the old adage, if you don’t measure it, you can’t improve it. And it’s often quite difficult with marketing campaigns to determine was that successful or was it not? What was the ROI on that? We now live in a data analytics world. I think it’s important that decision-making, marketing decision-making is based on data and results. There’s a lot of work needs to be done upfront with that. It’s a bit like the flywheel. It’s really difficult to get going and get that momentum. It’s hard, but once that thing starts spinning, you get results and the thing moves at a faster pace. So I would say on top of the consistency measures that we talked about, look at the data, right? The data’s telling you something and use that to make decision-making.

Richard Lane:

Excellent. Are there any particular tools that you use that you couldn’t live without for helping that process?

Paul Gowans:

Not particularly. We do a lot of data analysis ourselves internally. There’s not like specific tools or companies we use. We actually have quite a lot of experts actually in-house that do that analysis against campaigns, how well they’re doing, channel, indirect channel, the whole analysis. There’s not any kind of one tool or something that I would pick that we use. I just think it’s just the discipline associated with data and measuring what you’re doing and determining what was successful and what wasn’t. It’s okay to fail, right? But you want to fail fast and move on to the next thing.

Richard Lane:

Fail fast, move on, and don’t fail at the same thing twice.

Paul Gowans:

Absolutely.

Richard Lane:

Yeah. Excellent. Well, we’ve got a question in from a listener. Hannah’s asked, “What advice would you give to aspiring marketeers looking to specialise in regional and channel marketing? Are there specific skills they should focus on developing?” I guess that’s really specific as from a channel point of view. Is there anything specifically to consider rather than a more general marketing role?

Paul Gowans:

I think there’s a lot of skills there that are transferable in the domain, whether it’s direct or indirect. I don’t think there’s anything necessarily specific from a channel perspective. I mean, obviously just the experience of doing channel marketing is a key element of that. But again, I think the key thing for me in any of these domains is understanding the domain and understanding the customer and who you’re trying to sell or market to. And again, it sounds obvious, but there’s an influencer, there’s a buyer, there’s a user, and they all have a different message. So understanding your market, understanding the domain you work in and using data to make decisions. I would say that type of thing. I think certainly how many years ago, maybe data analytics wasn’t so important, but I think now it’s really a fundamental element of the job. So when you’re looking at marketing courses or business courses that can help develop skill sets, I think anything that helps you understand the financial side of things and the data analytics side of things will stand you in good stead.

Richard Lane:

Excellent, great advice. And I totally agree with you. Data is… Well, they say data is the new goal, don’t they?

Paul Gowans:

There you go.

Richard Lane:

So I think having an understanding of data, really no matter what you do, I think these days is key.

Paul Gowans:

Yeah. I agree.

Richard Lane:

That’s brilliant. Look, Paul, I’ve really enjoyed the conversation. We leave with perhaps toughest question for last, and as regular listeners will know, we’re building a playlist on Spotify where every guest gets to choose a song. So I’m going to ask you, what would you like ala Desert Island Discs to include on our soundtrack of the future?

Paul Gowans:

The most difficult question of the day. Well, look, I grew up with David Bowie, so I have to therefore pick a David Bowie song. So I would pick Life on Mars by David Bowie.

Richard Lane:

Life on Mars. Perfect. Okay. Well, I don’t believe we’ve had that before, so I’m not actually sure we’ve had David Bowie, so.

Paul Gowans:

Right. I’m first.

Richard Lane:

You’re welcome. It will be great to get that onto the playlist, and we’ll obviously put a link to that playlist in the show notes.

Paul Gowans:

Great.

Richard Lane:

Paul, it’s been a great chatting to you. Really enjoyed the conversation. Lots for our listeners to take away and to action. So thank you so much for being on The Insiders.

Paul Gowans:

Great. Thank you, Richard. Appreciate it.

Richard Lane:

And thank you all for tuning in once again. Please subscribe on your preferred podcasting site to ensure you’re notified of episodes as and when they’re published. And if you’d like to learn more about durhamlane and our unique method of selling at higher level, visit durhamlane.com for more information. Until then, see you next time.

Speaker 1:

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