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00:00:01
A Marketer Raised by Sales Wolves w/Tonya McKinney
22 Plays1 day ago
In this episode, Brian Dietmeyer talks with Tonya McKinney about the persistent challenges and evolving dynamics of aligning sales and marketing strategies in large organizations. They explore why, despite advancements in technology and methodology, many companies still struggle with sales and marketing misalignment and its impact on revenue generation. This insightful discussion is packed with real-world experiences and strategies for enhancing collaboration between sales and marketing teams to drive business success.
Timestamps:
00:17 - Introduction of Tonya McKinney and her role at IBM.
02:02 - Discussion on the age-old issue of sales and marketing disconnect.
03:59 - Tonya's insights on digital strategy and customer experience.
08:57 - Exploring integrated marketing and its necessity across sales functions.
13:28 - The concept of 'A Marketer Raised by Sales Wolves' and its implications.
19:43 - The rapid adaptation required in marketing campaigns.
25:26 - Utilizing AI in sales and marketing for competitive advantage.
31:40 - Essential strategies for leveraging marketing to drive revenue.
37:30 - Closing thoughts and the importance of sales and marketing alignment.
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Transcript
Intro
Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:00:05
brian
Hello and welcome to another edition of closed mode, the enterprise sales show. I'm b Brian Dietmeyer CEO of Close Strong the home of Precision Guided Selling And today I'm really lucky to be here with my, my pal and long time, uh, workmate.
00:00:21
brian
I suppose I could call you Tonya McKinney, who is the senior partner America sales force practice at IBM. Tanya, welcome to the show.
00:00:28
Tonya McKinney
Thanks, Brian. We've been talking about this for years, this topic today, yeah?
00:00:30
brian
You know,
00:00:33
brian
yeah yes
Personal Stories and Negotiation Insights
00:00:34
brian
Yes, we have. and And I do have to say, you look marvelous having gone through chemo. you're rocking You're rocking the chemo hair, I have to tell you. You look amazing, my friend.
00:00:44
Tonya McKinney
I didn't have a choice. You know, i thought about I thought about shaving my head in grad school, Brian, but I was really worried about my head shape, so I didn't have the bravery to do it. But now I don't have a choice. i was like, thank goodness I have an okay skull.
00:00:58
brian
you You are an an amazing woman long before that. you're You're one of the most hardest working, smartest people I've met in my life. And now I find out you're a complete badass on top of it. So I guess I should have known that in the past.
00:01:12
Tonya McKinney
you you don't You don't know you the wake you created you know years years ago when we did a little joint interview around women in negotiation.
00:01:21
brian
Yes, I recall that.
00:01:22
Tonya McKinney
which And then, yeah, I went on to speak at Dreamforce and many places around women in negotiation. and And then i i like to I still hand out your hard copy book. Anybody I mentor gets the book and we go through negotiation exercises.
00:01:38
Tonya McKinney
And i Brian, I would estimate that you've probably been responsible for for quite a few women's increasing their salary and probably are worth a million dollars to a few people in terms of salary upside. Yeah.
00:01:53
brian
i'm i'm honored by I'm honored by that. So last last week you and I were chatting. loved, you said a couple of things to me that I'm going to repeat today that blew me away.
Sales and Marketing Alignment
00:02:04
brian
We were talking about sales and marketing disconnect, right? This is a you know this is a million year old subject.
00:02:07
Tonya McKinney
so
00:02:10
brian
And you said, how Are we still having this conversation? And so we decided we would continue this today. So let me let me start with this this first question. I was doing some research prepping for this and companies, there's motivation to get this fixed, right? I think we all know it, but companies who who report really strong alignment between sales and marketing,
00:02:31
brian
have 36% renewal increase over the people who don't, 38% higher win rate, but 90% of sales and marketing organizations are reporting misalignment.
00:02:42
brian
So this is the million dollar question. Why? are we still having this conversation, Tanya?
00:02:48
Tonya McKinney
You know, I assumed this was done. You know, my previous history as CMO and VP of marketing, I put in closed loop marketing systems and tightly aligned with sales.
00:02:59
brian
Yeah.
00:03:01
Tonya McKinney
And then i I kind of motored over into digital strategy and customer experience and then innovation. So here I am back in a role in the Salesforce ecosystem and now looking again at sales and marketing systems And I was amazed how this is not standard operating procedure at Fortune 1000, 2000 companies.
00:03:25
brian
Right. Yes.
00:03:28
Tonya McKinney
It was like, we did it 20, 25 years ago. i mean, I know it can be done. So you know since last week, we talked about this.
00:03:38
Tonya McKinney
so i started to think about what I was seeing in companies that were, that was i mean, technologically, we've had the technology to do this for a while, right?
00:03:46
brian
yes
00:03:47
Tonya McKinney
I mean, I hooked up from sales, from marketing through sales, through contact center, all the way into yeah ERP and was able to trace every dollar I spent back to revenue to the company.
00:03:59
brian
Yeah. Yes.
00:03:59
Tonya McKinney
That's that's what we're talking about here, right?
00:04:01
Tonya McKinney
so like So we have even better technology, so what's going on? And I started thinking, I think that might be some of it, Brian, is that we've got so many more digital channels, we've layered on application after application,
00:04:17
Tonya McKinney
And it feels like we're doing a lot, but in fact, I feel like it's creating distance between, between sales and marketing.
00:04:26
brian
Interesting.
Marketing's Role and Challenges
00:04:28
Tonya McKinney
Cause every single one of those platforms just, I mean, now we're looking at these, we're just mincing up all these KPIs and, but we haven't, we're not having our eye on the revenue ball all the way through sales and marketing.
00:04:28
brian
Yeah.
00:04:43
brian
I, yeah as kind of a follow-up to that, I think I was telling you the story last week that when I was in graduate school, I hardly, I hardly spoke. I went to a you know, a weekend and MBA program and I felt like, yeah, I was surrounded by people smarter than me.
00:04:56
brian
And I was fortunate enough to take a marketing, I thought I was fortunate enough to take a marketing class with Phil Kotler, or anybody who studies marketing is generally known as sort of the godfather of marketing. And what he wasn't a great professor, by the way, and it was one of the very few classes where I actually said something.
00:05:12
brian
my My classmates used to toss candy to me and go speak, speak like a dog, because I never said anything, which would surprise most people who know me.
00:05:21
Tonya McKinney
I know, I really have a hard time imagining this, Brian.
00:05:22
brian
But I,
00:05:24
brian
i i I did it. I did it. And even with Candy and and maybe and maybe so here's the PTSD I did in Kotler's class. And I made this argument that that there should be a part of marketing that reports to sales.
00:05:39
brian
And he said to me, what is your job? And at the time it was VP National Sales. And he said, of course, you would say that. And it so irritated me because it was such a bias. and And I think, Tony, the question I have for you is that ah ah American Marketing Association chief marketing officer council put out a report that 90% of stuff produced by marketing for sales is not used.
00:06:01
brian
And my argument to you last week was marketing's job has been one-to-many and brand, and our job is granular and one-to-one.
00:06:12
brian
Is it unfair? but why why Why isn't marketing putting out stuff that sales is using? Is it because sales is lazy or because it's not good stuff?
00:06:21
Tonya McKinney
you know I don't disagree with you. We had a mirrored point of view on there because your professor was saying, of course you would say that as as the you know CSO.
00:06:35
Tonya McKinney
And yet in a lot of my marketing career, right I often ran telesales or I turned my telemarketing team into telesales because it just made more sense because we could market and sell at a price point.
00:06:40
brian
Yeah. Yeah. okay
00:06:46
Tonya McKinney
So I i kind of ate into the sales line where you were going to maybe eat into the into the marketing line of bill. And I'm okay with that, right?
00:06:55
brian
yeah
00:06:56
Tonya McKinney
Because and I do think that
00:06:59
Tonya McKinney
we get blind to the jobs each other's doing a bit. And so I do think that marketing has to spend some time in sales to really understand how their material gets used and applied and what it results in.
00:07:14
Tonya McKinney
you know, kind of like one of the things I think would be very helpful is that at least, you know, once a month, you take one your leads and you follow it all the way through to the end.
00:07:14
brian
Yeah.
00:07:24
brian
Hmm.
00:07:24
Tonya McKinney
You know, you pick one from last year or whatever, follow it all the way through to the end. And conversely, I think it would be good for sales to see what it takes to generate a lead that ends up, you know, sent over to them.
00:07:35
Tonya McKinney
But I keep thinking, and don't know who's driving this, Brian, but this lead conversion point is like the only point that sales and marketing interacts with.
00:07:47
Tonya McKinney
And it's like this no man's land. It's like, you know, here you go. And it's like, oh, I'll take it. And then we we go our separate ways, toss it over the fence. there
00:07:55
brian
Yep.
00:07:56
Tonya McKinney
There has to be... What marketing does has to be integrated into the process sales processes, the the systems, people, the the AI in particular, right?
00:08:10
brian
Yeah.
00:08:10
Tonya McKinney
So and just you know as had this scenario where sales wanted product marketing to hand all over their content to them and pros so that it can be ah ah consumed by the AI they were deploying.
00:08:22
brian
Yep.
00:08:22
Tonya McKinney
Well, like now we're putting a manual process and we're, and that doesn't that further separate sales and marketing and doesn't that make, and then marketing updates the material and it gets converted down to pros and handed to sales and put into some AI.
00:08:39
Tonya McKinney
i mean, part of it is sales has to invite marketing in that should be a collaborative activity to take that product and product launch material. and make sure it's embedded throughout the sales systems, organization organizations, and people.
00:08:53
brian
Yeah, I love that. i'm I'm sorry. Yeah, keep going.
00:08:53
Tonya McKinney
And it, I would yeah,
00:08:56
Tonya McKinney
but I would say mediocre content integrated, you know, really pushed out into the or into the sales organization would get consumed more than brilliant content that isn't really integrated into the sales environment.
00:08:59
brian
Yeah.
00:09:10
Tonya McKinney
I think that's that's what's going on and why a lot of that mark material's not being used because it's not aligned all the way through the sales system.
00:09:10
brian
yeah
00:09:19
brian
It's yeah. What, what you made me think of is one of my favorite HBR article is called staple yourself to an order. And I often think of this when I'm going through customer service with organizations that if the CEO is were to staple herself to an order, like you're going to find out, there's no way to find out what your customer experience is like. And and I've done this so much. And you just made me think of about that, that sales and marketing should staple one another to the
Revenue Focus and Marketing's Impact
00:09:44
brian
order.
00:09:44
brian
I love that. and i And I'm going to move to a moment very quickly into what you've done to to make it work in your roles.
00:09:47
Tonya McKinney
Thank you.
00:09:50
brian
Cause I think we can whine about this all day long. but you've done some stuff and and I want to get to to you doing some stuff, but I want your reaction to this. This is the second thing you said to me last week that I want to revisit. And you said you you met a COO at a company you worked for at a cocktail party. You introduced yourself and said you were in marketing. And he said, great, another piece of overhead.
00:10:12
brian
And and you know you what did you do with that? how You used that comment.
00:10:17
Tonya McKinney
i understand i wanted um um I wanted to make him eat his words.
00:10:19
brian
Yeah.
00:10:22
Tonya McKinney
you know but
00:10:22
brian
Yes.
00:10:24
Tonya McKinney
i mean But it was because I was so angry and I was like, I want to be like, I want you to regret ever saying that to me.
00:10:34
Tonya McKinney
I want to be, and in some ways it's also like, I want to be the, I'll be the last person standing here because I want to make sure that I am relevant to this company's business.
00:10:34
brian
Yes.
00:10:44
brian
That's what yeah.
00:10:44
Tonya McKinney
I talk a lot
00:10:46
Tonya McKinney
Yeah, I talk about a lot about activity based marketing versus outcome based marketing. And I and and that's probably why I got so embedded with sales. Someone told me one time, wait, am on it might have been Tom Martin. I'm trying to remember this.
00:11:00
Tonya McKinney
He said, you're like ah ah You're like a marketer that was raised by sales wolves. But i did it ah did't I did market for sales you know a sales methodology and training organization.
00:11:12
brian
Yeah. Yes.
00:11:13
Tonya McKinney
i did get So I think that's my advantage. but i so that's what really drove me down to be so relentlessly revenue focused. I wanted to be able to point every every dollar the company had that I was responsible for and lay claim to that.
00:11:22
brian
yes
00:11:29
Tonya McKinney
A lot like a sales mentality, right? And I do remember what the first one of the first startups I was VP of marketing for, the the chairman of the board that was operating as the CEO at the time came to me and said, so I perfected this ah at at Siebel.
00:11:45
Tonya McKinney
I started at that startup. We got bought by Siebel, perfected at Siebel, and then took it out to one of the first startups I was working for after that. And the CEO came said,
00:11:57
Tonya McKinney
you know, you're really responsible for our very successful round B's and C because we have such predictability.
00:12:02
brian
Yeah.
00:12:05
Tonya McKinney
The company knows if they pour X into this, you've shown that we're going to get Y out the other side. So there's confidence in the money and they give us more money with, and we have to give up less to get it. So, I mean, honestly, that's the, my, you know, that's my biggest success in marketing is to be so essential to the company's success.
00:12:24
Tonya McKinney
You know, and especially now in these economic times, marketing has to be doing this, Brian.
00:12:29
brian
yeah Yeah, but i but I'd love, i do the reason I bring up that quote, snarky as it is, is because of your reaction.
00:12:34
Tonya McKinney
but
00:12:35
brian
And and I loved the fact you said, you know, I'm going be relevant. I'm going to prove. I'm going to tie it to revenue. Such such a powerful reaction. by the way, i also love Raised by Sales Wolves.
00:12:47
brian
i'm trying i For some reason, i i was like envisioning a book.
00:12:50
Tonya McKinney
That needs to be the book I write is be a marketer raised by sales wolves.
00:12:53
brian
Yes,
00:12:55
Tonya McKinney
Yeah.
00:12:55
brian
No, it's it's funny you say that's actually what I saw the book cover when you said that. So I think we should both pay attention to that and you might want to do it.
00:13:02
Tonya McKinney
Wait, what did you, what did you see in your head?
00:13:06
brian
I saw wolves and I saw that title. That was about it. So we'll design that together.
00:13:09
Tonya McKinney
I saw, I saw, I saw a very elegant sheet with product running around with wolves. That's.
00:13:17
brian
All right. That's way better. That's way better. i had a how howling wolf. I think you improved.
00:13:21
Tonya McKinney
Yeah.
00:13:22
brian
You improved on it.
00:13:24
Tonya McKinney
simple
00:13:24
brian
So you ah and we we didn't dig through this last week. You mentioned something about integrated marketing. And I felt like and I and i wrote it down. And I want to know because i it was in our discussion about your reaction to that snarky comment.
00:13:37
brian
And and talk talk to me about that. What when you say that, what what does it mean?
00:13:43
Tonya McKinney
You know, and I think it's, I think that's one thing that's moved along a little bit better, but you know, I was one of the first people that, that pitched on integrated marketing. And let me tell you the, the science behind that and what I found and eventually turned into integrated marketing was because we were doing closed loop.
00:14:02
Tonya McKinney
Right. And you can measure everything all the way through. So we were coupling marketing programs and and I started to, cause I had such good data. I started to see, wow, when I do like this event or or this email with this webinar, it lifts my, it lifts my webinar by 30%.
00:14:22
brian
Yeah. huh
00:14:22
Tonya McKinney
And then if I do that with an event and I started just like, we started like piecing these together and we learned, well, they had to be thoughtful really like, you know, they really, it can't be just things you do simultaneously or,
00:14:31
brian
yeah
00:14:34
Tonya McKinney
or in sequence, they had to be related and they had to be moving you down a buying cycle. But we did see those really integrating the themes and content together and really moving people along. And I think a lot of that has been put into customer journeys, but Brian, I think a lot of that has become, it's linked marketing, but not really integrated marketing because it's still sitting in marketing. and You know, we still don't take that all the way through to sales.
00:15:02
Tonya McKinney
You know what i mean? So when you have companies, i mean, I come across companies that are you selling by challenger or outcome or solution and marketing selling by product or made marketing's made the leap to selling by business outcomes.
00:15:03
brian
yeah
00:15:20
Tonya McKinney
And then your sales is still selling by product. Well, and you know, you're not, you're not really integrated there, right? If you're, even if you just do the integrated marketing, it's gotta get, it's gotta get integrated all through sales.
00:15:34
Tonya McKinney
And you know, one of the ah ah thing I, a solution I was doing the other day, which was, it was on the marketing side and they wanted to have an agentic that would help solution for the, for the customer.
00:15:49
Tonya McKinney
And, and this is where you want your marketer raised by sales sales goals. It's like, well, that has to be integrated into the CRM system. Because as soon as my customer's on here engaging with the agent to put some ideas in to potentially get a solution out, then that has to be feeding into Salesforce or whatever CRM and that AI so that my sales person is now being informed and working alongside my customer.
00:16:15
Tonya McKinney
And so i think integrated marketing isn't enough anymore. It was pretty good for just the marketing function, but now with the channels and You know, everybody's blurring into sales and marketing. It's going to have to go all the way through. and
00:16:27
brian
Yeah.
00:16:28
Tonya McKinney
And honestly, folks aren't thinking about that all the way through to sales.
00:16:31
brian
So something, Tanya, that just came into my brain and Maria, our producer, is behind the scenes doing all this. and And Marie, we need to name this A Marketer Raised by Sales Wolves.
00:16:42
brian
That's the name of this episode.
00:16:42
Tonya McKinney
Okay.
00:16:43
brian
So just a little admin function while you and I are here.
00:16:44
Tonya McKinney
okay
00:16:46
brian
So I have another question that just pop popped into my head out of the blue. one One of my favorite books, it's a very sad title. It's called The End of Competitive Advantage, and it's written by a Columbia professor, Rita Hunter McGrath.
Adapting to Market Changes and AI's Role
00:16:59
brian
and And what she says in this book is that we used to have this it is so sort of like structural advantage and we do our annual plan and we'd leverage the bejeebers out of that structural advantage for the year.
00:17:13
Tonya McKinney
No.
00:17:13
brian
And now her the point that she makes is that there there are so very few structural, long-term, sustainable, competitive advantage. And she said something to me, or not to to me, I wish she said it to me.
00:17:26
brian
She said in the book, we need to learn to compete on a series of short-term transient advantages. and And it just struck me as you and I are talking about this, like how much,
00:17:38
brian
that's That to me is this massive shift. how How do you get, you know, your your value is changing, your competitor value is changing, customer needs are shifting, you know, whether it's supply chain stuff or geopolitical crap, everything's moving around and these conversations are not annual.
00:17:46
Tonya McKinney
asked.
00:17:53
brian
This is quarterly. The VP of sales told me we're doing the equivalent of annual planning quarterly right now. And you know, everybody knows like annual planning, everybody shuts down, right? To do next year's plan.
00:18:06
brian
and And so, yeah, I just wonder about this notion. It's like, how do we get a shift or react to a shift to monetize something as quickly as possible? Because we have a short window now.
00:18:18
brian
I just wonder how how how you think that might impact. Is marketing paying enough attention to that?
00:18:24
Tonya McKinney
i'll I'll give you an example of a client I worked with who had a nine week long campaign cycle. So from, you know, we're going to start it to finish it, getting out and closing it. in ah ah in and you know a place I've worked before, it was like nine weeks as well. I got it down to nine days.
00:18:40
Tonya McKinney
Now, and i and I, as I mentioned, I had that feedback loop and now we have a lot more feedback, right? So if you can't, if you cannot shift your campaign strategy, methods, formats, everything in nine days or less, then you can't really be competitive right now.
00:18:47
brian
yeah
00:18:58
brian
yeah
00:18:59
Tonya McKinney
And one of the clients we were getting information, I mean, I could tell them, offers that were running better today. But, and we were, we were monitoring social media at such a rapid rate.
00:19:07
brian
yes
00:19:10
Tonya McKinney
And I could tell you what was shifting to tomorrow. I could tell you the language to use. I could tell you that yeah the pictures, everything, graphics to use, they couldn't cycle with the information, Brian.
00:19:22
brian
Yeah.
00:19:23
Tonya McKinney
but not I could give them that insight, but they could not produce and cycle. and some of it it was just their internal, you know, approval systems, not just, I mean, the software might've been able to do that, but they weren't able to do that.
00:19:35
Tonya McKinney
So it's a people and a system thing, right?
00:19:35
brian
Yeah.
00:19:37
Tonya McKinney
The systems now can move very quickly.
00:19:37
brian
Yep.
00:19:40
Tonya McKinney
We have to be able to consume that and, you know, turn it very quickly. guess, i One of the things I would look at all the time is, you know, you start shifting around to different channels and different methods. So maybe it's LinkedIn now, maybe, you know, maybe, oh, now people are paying more to mail.
00:19:56
Tonya McKinney
So let's do some mail. the minute The minute something becomes standard, start looking for something different. Literally, start the minute something is like, oh, you always do.
00:20:03
brian
Right.
00:20:06
Tonya McKinney
You always send this out at Tuesdays or you always drop your you always drop your tick tock on Saturday morning or whatever that is. As soon as someone tells you to do that, it's probably time to change it.
00:20:17
brian
right Well, the you know they ah ah the other thing, back did the I agree. it's It's so fast. And I had a discussion with an SVP at a Fortune 50 supply chain management company who bought a one of their biggest competitors in Europe, which then gave them a better global footprint to compete with the number two player in the industry. And in this industry, there's only three players.
00:20:41
brian
and And I asked him, you just made this acquisition. How long before words are coming out of salespeople's mouths to monetize this acquisition?
00:20:50
Tonya McKinney
Uh-oh.
00:20:51
brian
You know what he said to me? Six to nine months, best case.
00:20:53
Tonya McKinney
yeah
00:20:55
brian
That, I mean, think think about that. It's like how, ah you you know, we have a new competitive footprint. Now we have new kinds of customers. We should be talking to all this stuff because you know, we, we do have this six to nine months.
00:21:07
brian
He said, and he used marketing by the time we get this stuff from marketing and then whether or not sales uses it or whatever. That's, that's pathetic.
00:21:16
Tonya McKinney
See, we can, I mean, I think one of the most attractive parts ah for sales, particularly in AI, is how fast we can onboard somebody now.
00:21:24
brian
Yes.
00:21:26
Tonya McKinney
Absolutely.
00:21:26
brian
Yeah. Yeah.
00:21:27
brian
I, I, yep.
00:21:27
Tonya McKinney
is
00:21:28
Tonya McKinney
yeah i mean but and And to get them also not knowledgeable, but the sort of AI that gets them adept at it.
00:21:36
brian
Well, it's, it's funny.
00:21:37
Tonya McKinney
Right? so
00:21:37
brian
It's funny to say that. And I rarely talk about my, my business on, on this podcast. Um, we, we found that out too. We built something using AI and we, you know, it's an enterprise sales tool and several folks have, have reacted recently that, oh my gosh, this is a great sales onboarding tool because it's really the best practices of your best people at every stage of the sales cycle from qualified to close.
00:21:59
Tonya McKinney
right
00:22:00
brian
And and i didn't I didn't even think of it that way. Like I just ran through GPT and repositioned some of our marketing to say, this really is like those who have gone before you.
00:22:11
brian
This is what's in those sage brains. And let me drop it at each sales stage for you.
00:22:14
Tonya McKinney
but
00:22:16
Tonya McKinney
That's the best, I mean, to me, that's the best ah AI accelerant in sales. It truly is.
00:22:20
brian
Yeah.
00:22:21
Tonya McKinney
I mean, because, you know, because with AI, we can say, okay,
00:22:21
brian
Yep.
00:22:25
Tonya McKinney
I want you to ask act like a ah ah telco CIO for B2B, telecommunications infrastructure.
00:22:35
Tonya McKinney
And then I try out everything. i you know i I get my script right with you. i I play with some scenarios and have it just i mean, it it can mimic your customer so you can hone your skills and your presentations.
00:22:48
Tonya McKinney
It can, you know, it can kind of be your customer when it puts, when it, mean, you can to get a standard presentation and I can run it through my, you know, my, my client persona builder, right.
00:22:58
brian
Yeah.
00:22:59
Tonya McKinney
And have it completely tuned.
00:22:59
brian
Yeah.
00:23:00
Tonya McKinney
And then as I have more interactions with that person, I load all those interactions and stuff. And as, as a doc, repository, and it really can start becoming my client.
00:23:11
Tonya McKinney
And I just can get so good at even the client level sales activities.
00:23:11
brian
Yeah.
00:23:16
brian
It's, it's, you, you make me wonder if, what, what do you think the, adoption of AI is generally in corporate marketing and not even a percent, but like how how effective are the, you just, that it's massive, right?
00:23:31
brian
That and in terms of this sales and marketing disconnect we talked about, that could be the bridge used properly.
00:23:32
Tonya McKinney
Yeah.
00:23:37
brian
But I wonder what your gut or actual knowledge is about how well it's being leveraged.
00:23:42
Tonya McKinney
You know, I look, I work at an AI company and ours and ours isn't still 100%. It's high. But i I think for most companies, it's a little bit of a struggle. And you know my opinion of this.
00:23:52
brian
Yeah.
00:23:52
Tonya McKinney
you know, I know people are very ah ah worried worried about, you know, am I going to be replaced with AI? I'm like, no, you're going to be replaced by someone who knows how to use AI. Well, yeah.
00:24:01
brian
Bingo.
00:24:03
brian
Bingo.
00:24:03
Tonya McKinney
Yeah.
00:24:04
Tonya McKinney
Right. So and i marketing uses a lot for creative.
00:24:04
brian
Well, it's like the.
00:24:08
Tonya McKinney
think they're going to have to get better at using it for the other parts, intelligence, own interactions in the company.
00:24:16
brian
Yeah.
00:24:18
Tonya McKinney
You know, that I think those are going to be some things that they're going have to get better at. Everybody's really attracted to using it for the creative. But I mean, some of the best things I look, one of the very best things I use it for is figuring out the requirements.
00:24:33
Tonya McKinney
from the content I have.
00:24:33
brian
ye Yeah.
00:24:34
Tonya McKinney
I know that's not exciting, but my goodness, it's good at it. And it saves me weeks. I
00:24:40
brian
Yeah. Without a doubt, we we just interviewed a sales lead about everything he wanted his team to be doing and then turned put that video into ai and turned it into prompts for the reps to multiply the sales leader over three or 400 people, you know, and you you just you you just made me think of that.
00:25:02
Tonya McKinney
love it.
00:25:03
brian
But you you made a point, you and I almost did this podcast on AI, and and but I'm really glad you brought up this point about it's not going to replace you, you're going to be replaced by people who are using it better and leveraging it more smartly.
00:25:08
Tonya McKinney
Thank you.
00:25:16
brian
And it's funny because I think it was the Screenwriters Guild that was, you know, the union was was trying to sort of say, you you can't use ai to write screenplays, which by the way, is never going to happen. That's that example of, I'm not going to get rid of my horse.
00:25:31
brian
No way I'm ever getting a car. And and and it's it's figuring out how to work within it. And they interviewed one screenwriter who said, look, I used to be able, but I'm going to screw up the numbers, but it's a directionally accurate story, like most of my stories.
00:25:45
brian
And he said, i could do one screen clean a year, right? If I use AI, I can do five and I'm going to have it do the basic grunt work. I'm going to give it the ideas. And then I'm going to human buff this thing out, which only a human can do. And to me, that's, that's kind of what you were saying.
00:26:02
brian
Like this, this I think is the approach to AI, whether you're a marketer or a seller or anybody else. It's like, how do you use it better than everybody else to do more?
00:26:11
Tonya McKinney
One thing about using it a lot is I start becoming very aware of the things that I do that AI can't do. Right.
00:26:19
brian
Yeah.
00:26:20
Tonya McKinney
and And like, why do why do I want to, you know, work, work, work, work to figure out how to take a presentation and turn it into from one industry to another industry? But what, you know, what I can do is that the AI can't do which is to form a human connection and a trusting relationship with somebody.
00:26:40
brian
yeah
00:26:41
Tonya McKinney
AI is just doing the stuff that, You know, I'm not going to say it doesn't count, but it's not the most important pieces and it's not the most human pieces, right?
00:26:50
brian
Yeah.
00:26:53
Tonya McKinney
It's, i mean i mean, to me, and that's what I start focusing on more and more is that the the part of that human connection that i can I can do, let AI free me up to spend more time with you, Brian, right?
00:27:05
brian
Yeah. Yep.
00:27:07
Tonya McKinney
Like AI can't have the conversation we just had. like it can't.
00:27:11
brian
Yes. it's it's I have to tell you, and and for those of you who are listening, this is a slight aside, but hopefully you'll find it amusing.
AI in Sales and Marketing
00:27:17
brian
I was on with Kaz, my CTO this morning. and he And he's now using AI to code stuff, to build stuff, right? And he's he's an old school coder and he's learned how to master this, but he was showing me today.
00:27:29
brian
The AI came back and said, yeah, I have this thing done. And he went back to it and said, but it doesn't look like it's working. And this blew me away. i was He said, the AI said, well, okay, sorry, ah ah kind of lied to you.
00:27:43
brian
But I was trying to appear competent. So, and this isn't my AI, this is an outside service he's using, but I was trying to appear competent. and And then, but Kaz was saying to me, he's like, I don't know if it was lying about lying because it may have actually done the work, but now it's hallucinating. He's like, one way or the other, it's lying to me. And my my head almost exploded because it came back like a kid getting caught doing something wrong saying, okay,
00:28:10
brian
I lied to you. I've never seen that. That's the first time I've seen this, but that's an aside.
00:28:13
Tonya McKinney
I have it so have have a guy that works for me that he he really does eight agents that work with each other. and one of the things he does for research is he has another, he has an agent that like its job is to ride herd and fact check and double check what the main agent is doing, pulling research for it.
00:28:28
brian
Yeah.
00:28:31
Tonya McKinney
And so he'll cluster agents like that so that they, you know, they kind of keep each other honest, so to speak. And on top of that.
00:28:38
brian
Yeah, no, it it's it's ridiculous. And we, if if you haven't heard this, excuse me, a gentleman and I did a podcast here a couple weeks ago about how to use AI for human coaching, right? And you you can call it talk therapy, you can call it whatever you want, but it's it's so emotionally intelligent, or he argued that it's not emotionally intelligent, but it's programmed to be so So that there are so many uses. So let's, let's do this before we, before we close this out.
00:29:09
brian
I I'm, if if I'm a sales or revenue leader, which is, I think most people who are here listening to this, what are the three things I should be doing right now to leverage marketing, to drive more revenue for me?
00:29:25
Tonya McKinney
Yeah, well, you know, this was a lot about ah about alignment. And it like I said, it really bothers me that we're like, everything is like crunched down to that lead conversion point and maybe some strategic planning once a year, if you're lucky it's quarterly, right?
00:29:36
brian
Yeah.
00:29:40
Tonya McKinney
we we have to We have to have more touch points between sales and marketing. we We do. We do. it We have to have sales more aware and involved in marketing and marketing more aware and involved in sales.
00:29:55
Tonya McKinney
Because a lot of times they're, you know, what we're able to do personalized one-to-one marketing. it's It's strange that it's not more, that's not more adopted too. And I think some of that is, I feel like a salesperson would really be the one to drive AI to do better marketing.
00:30:12
Tonya McKinney
one-to-one marketing, right?
00:30:13
brian
Yeah. Yeah.
00:30:14
Tonya McKinney
And that's, you know, and I think there's, i think there's value on both sides, but marketing and sales have to work together more on just that day-to-day on more than that just that place where you hand the lead over and they say yes or no.
00:30:27
Tonya McKinney
That's not it. That's, you can't be aligned if that's the only place you touch during the day, right?
00:30:32
brian
Yeah.
00:30:34
Tonya McKinney
And then you have to have the visibility, Brian. I mean, I can't, I can't do my job as a marketer if I can't if i can't see all the way through.
00:30:44
brian
Yeah.
00:30:44
Tonya McKinney
like follow that lead, you know, staple yourself to that lead and follow it all the way through and understand what what happens to it. Right? Otherwise, again, you're, and people can get, you know, you can start thinking about a lot of KPIs, but if, you know, look, my TikTok results have to still lead to revenue.
00:31:03
Tonya McKinney
Do I want playtime and all that stuff? Sure. When it's not producing the revenue it's supposed to produce. The first job is visibility through to what everything I do produces in terms of revenue.
00:31:16
Tonya McKinney
And then again, that's again, simplify those measures. Like I said, that TikTok example, my first measure of any channel, any method, any format has to be on whether it's going to produce, is going to influence the revenue number.
00:31:28
brian
Yeah.
00:31:29
Tonya McKinney
The rest of those metrics are what, like if TikTok's producing what it's supposed to be producing and touching the people and that's producing revenue, I'm not going to sweat those little measures. I dig into those when it's not producing for me.
00:31:43
Tonya McKinney
But that's not the first line of measurement I need to look at.
00:31:45
brian
Right.
00:31:45
Tonya McKinney
It's always revenue. Sorry, it just is.
00:31:48
brian
Yep. Yeah. You, it's funny too, because some, I learned this over the years when, when I had a real job in a big company, that some of the best consultants that came in were bringing like this street level stuff that I was sort of like, are you kidding? Like we're paying, but, but it was all right on.
00:32:06
brian
It was street level and it was actionable stuff. And I found those to be the best consultants. And you, I learned from you today because this like walk a mile in the other person's shoes thing. I mean, really do it for sales and marketing to, to understand this, this whole journey and how it all works. Like that struck me if I was sitting in a,
00:32:24
brian
a chief sales or revenue officer position right now, I'd make that happen somehow.
00:32:30
Tonya McKinney
I'm going to ask you a question.
00:32:32
brian
Okay.
00:32:33
Tonya McKinney
What, what is it? What is it? What is this? What are the behaviors a sales guy exhibits when, you know, they're not, they're not doing well, they're not hitting their number, but they're trying, you know, they're trying to keep you from digging too much. And, you know, you've only got two X pipeline, you know, what, what, what is the, what are the behaviors you see that salesperson do when they're trying to avoid that conversation, if you would.
00:32:55
brian
with with their with their boss?
00:32:56
Tonya McKinney
About the number. Yeah.
00:32:58
brian
Oh, about their number? Yeah. I mean, I suppose it it it depends on the human.
00:32:59
Tonya McKinney
Yeah.
00:33:01
brian
and I interviewed Walt Zola, who's the chief sales officer for Newman's Own. and And Walt said, as as as a CSO, that he delivers bad news really fast.
00:33:07
Tonya McKinney
Mm-hmm.
00:33:14
brian
And I loved that, right? that was That was a whole part of the podcast we talked about. and And then the respect he gets from people, right? Because they trust him. So I think they're I think what a salesperson should do is deliver bad news fast.
00:33:28
brian
and And my guess is what might happen depending on the other kind of salesperson is a lot of object obfuscation and and and smoke.
00:33:37
Tonya McKinney
I'm having, had I had all these meetings. I had you know one these meetings set up.
00:33:40
brian
Yes.
00:33:41
Tonya McKinney
I have these meetings. I've been doing this presentation. it's It's all the activities and things they're doing.
00:33:46
brian
Yeah. Yep.
00:33:47
Tonya McKinney
and i mentioned
00:33:47
brian
That's the obfuscation and the smoke. Yeah.
00:33:49
Tonya McKinney
Yeah. I mentioned earlier about, you know, this activity based versus revenue, you know, based marketing.
00:33:54
brian
Yeah.
00:33:55
Tonya McKinney
I'd come into places and and I mean, oh my God, these marketers are working 14 hour days doing things, things, things things stin things, and not doing anything to move the number. And they're just, it's an obfuscation. It's like, look at what all the stuff I'm doing. I'm like, but we still don't have the number.
00:34:10
Tonya McKinney
And earlier I said, i feel like technology is,
00:34:10
brian
yeah
00:34:14
Tonya McKinney
there's like, look, I, I bought a new software that's going to help us with the website. I bought a new software to help us with product launch and oh, it comes with all these KPIs and reports, but it's obfuscation because you're still not hitting the revenue number.
00:34:28
brian
Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I think part of that's driven too by, by the way, some managers coach, it's not really coaching, it's auditing. And so they got to make up some crap. Rep makes up crap to fill in those blanks.
00:34:37
Tonya McKinney
Mm-hmm. Yeah. yeah
00:34:38
brian
And I've talked to some reps on this program who say the best coaching is when the coach is like, oh, that there's a blank in that. Let me help you fill in that blank.
00:34:49
brian
Whatever that thing is you need versus going, Tanya, you got to go do more of those.
00:34:49
Tonya McKinney
Mm-hmm.
00:34:54
brian
let Let me go run some internal interference and get that deal approved for you. Let me go do
Revenue Generation as a Shared Goal
00:34:57
brian
this, you know? And I think so some of that behavior, you know, the other thing you make me think of too is I've become, as an American, I was a big stock car racing fan, right? I grew up around stock cars and I've become,
00:35:09
brian
a huge fan of F1 racing. and And one of the things, and and I find it very motivational in business and in selling to to watch all this, the F1, especially the Netflix series. But that's, they do what you continue to do here.
00:35:22
brian
It, nothing else matters unless you're on the podium. That's all that matters is winning races. And you keep doing that with revenue. It's like nothing else matters.
00:35:29
Tonya McKinney
yeah
00:35:31
brian
and And yeah, you got to do that stuff, but that's, that's the ultimate result is being on the podium, isn't it?
00:35:36
Tonya McKinney
Right. That's all that matters.
00:35:38
brian
Yep.
00:35:38
Tonya McKinney
but You know, and one of the things after I've done this at at various places, I scare the bejeebus out of marketers. I do, you know, because, and this is the saddest thing going back to that COO that said, oh great, another piece of overhead.
00:35:56
Tonya McKinney
have a lot, there's a most, I'm afraid that most marketers out there do think they're overhead. And when I tell them they're going to be revenue measured, it scares them.
00:36:00
brian
Yeah.
00:36:06
Tonya McKinney
But once it's done and they realize that they're they're all they're operating off a science, math and ledger based approach, They're more confident, they're more relaxed and they work a lot less.
00:36:18
brian
Yeah. Yeah.
00:36:19
brian
yeah you
00:36:20
Tonya McKinney
It is, but it's something that marketers don't believe that they actually have a revenue impact.
00:36:25
brian
ye No, I'd love that. And if they leaned into it, which is what you did, this is why I asked you that question about that snarky comment, because you used it to fuel everything we're talking about today.
00:36:32
Tonya McKinney
yeah
00:36:36
brian
Yeah, you've been, I learned some stuff from you today and I love that. I love doing this podcast because I tend to talk to, and I say this offline, nice people who are smart people.
00:36:47
brian
that and and i And you are, man, you're so in that category and you've been super generous with your time, with your ideas.
00:36:47
Tonya McKinney
yeah
00:36:54
brian
and And I love, having just this body of knowledge for our peers to say, Hey, if you're sitting in a job somewhere and you're struggling with sales and marketing disconnect, listen to Tanya and see if if you can get something, you know?
00:37:05
Tonya McKinney
Well, if I can help the CSO talk to the CMO and and fix some of these things, you know, if that's what this helps do, I think that's great. It could now preserve, pervert preserves both of them.
00:37:14
brian
Yeah.
00:37:17
brian
Yep. That, my number one goal with this is, is it to have it be a body of knowledge for, professionals to go to and go, Hey man, what, what, what are my peers talking about? So you've, you've added greatly to that today. And again, i' really, really appreciate your time and yeah, maybe next time we will, we will have the AI discussion.
00:37:36
Tonya McKinney
right. Thanks, Brian. This is great.