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It’s called Go-to-Market for a Reason: Let’s Get Out of the Office
22 Plays3 months ago
Crack open a Guinness with Peter Meyers, founder of Portage Sales, to discuss go-to-market strategy that actually delivers. From the importance of sales and marketing alignment to practical AI adoption tips, Peter shares what separates top-performing sales leaders from the rest. We also cover how to escape planning theatre, avoid random acts of marketing, and why building momentum matters more than perfection. And yes—we talk beer, leadership, and the myth that marketing is optional. Spoiler: it’s not.
Whether you're refreshing your GTM playbook or looking to bridge the sales-marketing gap, this pint is packed with actionable insights and a...Molson Canadian???
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Transcript
Intro
Introduction and Guest Overview
00:00:28
Brendan Ziolo
Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, everyone. We're back for the latest episode of the B2B Marketing Pint. I'm super happy to be joined today with someone who has become a friend fairly quickly, Peter Myers.
00:00:42
Brendan Ziolo
We worked together on a project on sales and marketing alignment maybe a year ago now. It's been a while.
00:00:48
Peter Meyers
I think it was a year. Yeah. Yeah. yeah
00:00:50
Brendan Ziolo
But yeah, I was really looking forward to having Peter on this as well. We won't repeat Everything we did there, we'll ask him some new, much harder questions than I did. Peter is in the sales leadership and strategy area with a company called Portage Sales, where he's the president and founder.
00:01:06
Brendan Ziolo
He's been doing this, well, like Brian and I for a very long time. Let's just go with that today. i Very passionate about coaching sales leaders and has really taken up and explored and learned and tested AI in many different ways.
00:01:22
Brendan Ziolo
on the sales front and others as well. So, you know, i I sense once more another podcast here, Brian, and we haven't even started where we can pick Peter's brain on AI and sales.
00:01:33
Brendan Ziolo
But to get the ball rolling, the most important thing, obviously, for the podcast, Peter, what are you drinking today?
00:01:37
Brian O'Grady
Thank you.
00:01:39
Peter Meyers
Oh, I am having a, so i when I turned 50, all my taste buds changed. And the only beer that I was left, i like really actually liking, I hate all other beer now, is Guinness.
00:01:51
Peter Meyers
So I love Guinness.
00:01:52
Brendan Ziolo
All
00:01:53
Peter Meyers
I was just saying before this that on this weekend, i had a couple up at the cottage and it is like a nice warm sigh when I pour a Guinness. I love a Guinness.
00:02:04
Peter Meyers
What are you guys drinking?
00:02:05
Brendan Ziolo
right. Well, he's he salvaged him himself there, Brian. e I was going to say our new screening question is, do you like beer when we invite guests? But he did salvage it by going with Guinness. And I knew Peter was going to go somewhere in that area.
00:02:18
Brendan Ziolo
So I decided to join him with the Guinness.
00:02:21
Peter Meyers
Oh, very nice.
00:02:21
Brendan Ziolo
Now, mine is the non-alcohol 0% variety, as you may recall, which I stopped drinking.
00:02:22
Peter Meyers
Very nice. Branded. Branded. Yeah.
00:02:29
Brendan Ziolo
Maybe that's when I turned 50. I can't remember now.
00:02:32
Peter Meyers
Okay.
00:02:32
Brendan Ziolo
But yeah, I find this one is close. So I'm still looking for a taste test challenge with someone to see if I can fool them.
00:02:35
Peter Meyers
It is.
00:02:40
Brendan Ziolo
But I'm drinking Guinness with you today, Peter, in your honor.
00:02:42
Peter Meyers
Awesome. Thank you.
00:02:44
Brendan Ziolo
Brian, what are you drinking? Guinness? Guinness?
00:02:47
Brian O'Grady
Well, someone's got to go to the opposite and opposite end of the beer spectrum from you gentlemen. And this will be two, good guests, good guests.
00:02:52
Brendan Ziolo
Blue.
00:02:54
Peter Meyers
yeah
00:02:55
Brian O'Grady
This will be two episodes running where I send a shout out to our our old friends at the macro breweries, not at the micro breweries.
00:03:03
Brendan Ziolo
oh boy. oh boy.
00:03:05
Brian O'Grady
And you were you were close with your guests, but the brand here speaks to people.
00:03:08
Peter Meyers
Molson Canadian.
00:03:09
Brendan Ziolo
All right.
00:03:09
Peter Meyers
Wow. Wow.
00:03:11
Brian O'Grady
I know.
00:03:11
Peter Meyers
wow
00:03:12
Brendan Ziolo
So please, everyone, avoid the nasty comments on Brian's beer choice for this episode. We'll try not to hold it against him.
00:03:20
Brian O'Grady
Brendan, that's no way to get sponsored.
00:03:22
Brendan Ziolo
Yeah, I don't know if I want to be sponsored by anyone other than Guinness. Where's my camera? Oh, there we go. All right.
00:03:30
Brian O'Grady
Fair enough.
00:03:31
Brendan Ziolo
Well, I don't know if everyone just wants us to banner about beer. So, Brian, why don't you get us started? Oh, did we forget to cheers?
00:03:36
Brian O'Grady
All right.
00:03:38
Brendan Ziolo
We forgot to cheers.
00:03:38
Brian O'Grady
We did. We're
00:03:39
Brendan Ziolo
I'm so rude.
00:03:39
Peter Meyers
Cheers, cheers, cheers.
00:03:40
Brendan Ziolo
Cheers.
00:03:41
Brian O'Grady
doing good podcast.
Portage Sales and Its Mission
00:03:43
Brian O'Grady
do have a lot of questions and and my big problem is I'm struggling to know where to start.
00:03:44
Peter Meyers
yeah Great.
00:03:49
Brian O'Grady
So I'm going to off piste or off script for the first one, which is read in your bio that you're a big wilderness and canoe guy. And then I noticed the name of your company is Portage.
00:03:57
Peter Meyers
Yeah.
00:04:00
Brian O'Grady
I'm assuming there's there's a clever connection there and you're portaging people from marketing to sales or from sales to marketing. How does that work?
00:04:08
Peter Meyers
Yeah, so I remember it was 11 years ago now that I started up the company. I was i trying to name it. I was bancing bantering it around with my mentor, Catherine McIntyre. and And I had come up with all these creative names and then I went back to basics, which is what what do I love? And the idea of Portage Sales is really where we're the we're the team that delivers the lift that lasts. So brings you from one place to another when the going gets tough and and really with a focus on growth because growth is hard hard. It's not just one thing you got to do to drive growth in a business.
00:04:40
Peter Meyers
there's a bunch of levers you have to pull and and we're the team to help you do that. So that that's how we think about it is is bringing you from, you know really literally portaging is really bringing you from one body of water to another, like bringing you to, and hopefully a better and higher place as well.
00:04:57
Brian O'Grady
And avoiding the rapids.
00:04:59
Peter Meyers
Oh, well, God, always. Yes.
00:05:01
Brian O'Grady
Fair enough.
00:05:02
Peter Meyers
or or Or at least we say we will.
00:05:06
Brian O'Grady
Okay, well then let's let's get real. Let's get out of the woods and into the tech speak. Go to market is a big part of your company description, your bio and
00:05:13
Peter Meyers
Yeah.
00:05:16
Brian O'Grady
the industry it's hard It's hard for me to go anywhere without bumping into someone who's all about go-to-market or GTM.
00:05:22
Brian O'Grady
If you're a tech nerd like me, you might think people mean Google Tag Manager, but they don't. They mean go-to-market.
00:05:22
Peter Meyers
Yeah.
00:05:30
Peter Meyers
Yeah.
00:05:30
Brian O'Grady
So oh what's the most important part of that? Since everybody uses that acronym today, you can't see a LinkedIn profile without either AI or go-to-market in it. but you really do it. You're not just putting on your LinkedIn profile.
00:05:42
Peter Meyers
yeah
00:05:42
Brian O'Grady
What's the most important element of a, of a go to market strategy and and how do you unify it? How do you bring it together? So it's not random acts of going to market.
00:05:51
Peter Meyers
Yeah, i think I think a lot of us exist or a lot of our customers and teams end up existing in the echo chamber of their own business, meaning that they listen to a lot each other rather than the outside. And I really look at go to market as the opportunity to look outside. How are we impacting the customer? How are we beating the competition? How are we growing our market share and our address you know getting more of our total addressable market?
00:06:15
Peter Meyers
it's it's And I think when we, like, let's take the fuzziness out of the title as well. Like go to market should be referring to, in my mind, is referring to really the the folks in the business that are leading and driving impact for the customer, impact for how we show up outside the walls of the business.
00:06:34
Peter Meyers
And and i I, you know, when we say go to market strategy, it falls to some of the usual suspects, sales, marketing. Now, we we we only train leadership teams that are go to market. And so one of the teams we trained was a procurement and supply business. Now, that was for a distribution business. That was that that was absolutely critical and how how go to market gets delivered in their operation.
00:06:58
Peter Meyers
But that's that's as far as I've seen it stretch.
00:07:03
Brian O'Grady
Cool. I guess you you shot a light right away on something, which is it's go to market, not go to the boardroom or go to your colleague's office.
00:07:10
Peter Meyers
Yeah. Yeah.
00:07:12
Brian O'Grady
It's go to market. It's not about that that internal group thinking.
00:07:13
Peter Meyers
yeah
00:07:16
Brian O'Grady
I've been part of enough meetings to know that's where new ideas go to die is when you can't get them outside of what you call the call the echo chamber.
00:07:24
Peter Meyers
Oh my gosh, yeah. And the more you can iterate on things, like we can get into it, but really go-to-market, it's about, yeah nothing think lives. it's It's like, you know, you have a clever thought and it doesn't live until you say it, like do you share it with other people.
00:07:38
Peter Meyers
think it's the same thing with go-to-market. there's There's no life in it. There's no energy in it. There's no momentum in it until it's really showing up for what our customers see.
00:07:49
Brian O'Grady
that's That's a good opener. Over to you,
Aligning Sales and Marketing Goals
00:07:51
Brian O'Grady
Brendan.
00:07:51
Brendan Ziolo
Yeah, so I've seen kind of where where Brian started, I've seen a lot of, you know, the LinkedIn example, you know, people talking go to market, and they're really, you know, talking of maybe a subset of marketing, in some cases, and and not something broader like you are. And the the series we did a while ago, Peter, was really on sales and marketing alignment, because I i know you're as passionate about this as I am. And that's that Go to market won't work without those two teams being aligned.
00:08:18
Peter Meyers
Yeah.
00:08:19
Brendan Ziolo
I know at the outset I said we weren't going to spend a lot of time on our previous work, but I do think we had some good takeaways there. But what I'd like to also know is like, have any of those takeaways changed or been updated by you in the past year-ish or so?
00:08:27
Peter Meyers
yeah Yeah, I think so too.
00:08:36
Peter Meyers
i They haven't, honestly, Brendan. They come down to, i think, some pretty simple stuff from a leadership perspective, because this is a leadership story. How to unify? It's got to start with the leaders. and And so it's about setting clear expectations of the teams to...
00:08:50
Peter Meyers
work together, work effectively, work towards one, I'll say go-to-market external set of goals that we're driving for, clearly to define the roles as well. Who's going to be championing? yeah Let's not just leave it with the person at the top as the one that owns the go-to-market strategy. That's got to be deployed all the way through.
00:09:08
Peter Meyers
And then it's up to the leader to structure and collaboration as well. That was the third thing that I think you and I walked away with from that conversation is that it's it's it's not good enough to schedule one meeting.
00:09:20
Peter Meyers
you you and and And everybody hates the word process. Everybody hates, but let's let's get this structured in. Let's get this as a regular, whether it's monthly, quarterly, weekly, every two days. I don't care what it is, but you've got to put it in place in order to, meaning a regular rhythm of of driving en forcing and and motivating collaboration between the teams.
00:09:44
Peter Meyers
in order to be effective and in order to have that kind of, you know, I'll say unified momentum.
00:09:51
Brendan Ziolo
Yeah, and I think i if I recall correctly, one of our other big takeaways or conclusions was just that, you know, like you said, collaboration and stuff, but also that alignment of goals. And that's been a theme we've had with other guests as well as, you know, if sales and marketing don't have common goals, then this alignment will just never happen because they're pulling in either opposite directions or at least different directions.
00:10:14
Peter Meyers
Yeah, yeah, yeah. i I think you're right. Like I set expectations and I should have been more specific with that because I think that's the expectation of what's the goal that we're pulling towards, but also what's your role in it? You know, what's Brian's role in it?
00:10:29
Peter Meyers
Like, let's let's deploy this and cascade it because otherwise it's not going to have, you know it's not going to have the energy and And people won't connect to their day-to-day work and and what's on their work and development plan back to what's going actually drive the results for us.
00:10:45
Brian O'Grady
Okay. I'm hearing expectation setting. I'm hearing driving the results. I'm hearing process, which is a necessary evil. I get it. I get it. If you don't put it on the calendar, it's probably never going happen.
00:10:58
Brian O'Grady
Is that sufficient or is there more or is there more are there more tricks or techniques you can share for bringing those teams together?
00:11:08
Brian O'Grady
so you get them bought in because i and as an example, back in my Fortune 500 days, you know i used to I used to not put on a happy face when that big series of meetings arrived and I discovered that executive number 27 had kicked off a new planning process that was going to save the world and change everything.
00:11:24
Peter Meyers
Yeah.
00:11:26
Brian O'Grady
And after you've seen 10 of those, you you get a little cynical.
00:11:28
Peter Meyers
Yeah.
00:11:29
Brian O'Grady
Maybe this isn't, maybe it's like the other one.
00:11:30
Peter Meyers
yeah
00:11:31
Brian O'Grady
So how do you help overcome that cynicism and get people to buy in? Because of course, if they're not, we're not all working together, we're not all working together. So how do you get buy-in?
00:11:41
Peter Meyers
Yeah, i you know it it I think the short answer is it's not easy. It's like, you know, it doesn't happen a bunch of times because it's not a gimme. It's not just an automatic thing that happens. like I was reading, I i do this habit, it's a recorder, I guess, called Haystack Reading. I pick off three or four books, I pick a purpose, and I read parts of all the books and kind of go lateral across them. One of the books I was reading this past weekend for my Haystack Reading is called Leadership Pipeline. Ramchurhan is one of the authors of that.
00:12:11
Peter Meyers
And it clearly defines what the role of the leader is. And I think that's really germane to our conversation here. like The role of the leader is not only to coach, it's not only to set expectations, but also to, and not so, you know, those things are all about the people that are the individuals that report into that leader.
00:12:30
Peter Meyers
It's about working up and across the organization. that That really is the, so whether I'm a leader of others, leader of leaders, it's it's still in my job description. It's still in the expectation. and that's how you build, that's how I believe you build that kind of unified strategy, unified goal setting, having us all pull, you know, we talked about my company name at the beginning, but, you know, let's get in the proverbial canoe and say, are we pulling in the same direction? Really? Like, that's really the point.
00:12:57
Peter Meyers
And that's not going to happen if I didn't talk to the other person. And so that's that's and that is that's not for me to delegate. Like, of course, I can get you know Sarah on my team to also do that at her level or or elsewhere in the organization. But it is my job. The buck stops there as the leader. It is your job to go across the organization and up across and diagonal across the organization, too, to to network, build relationship.
00:13:22
Peter Meyers
Talk about what you see in the business. And also I'll say, listen, like ask a couple of questions so that there is a true exchange of ideas and you're starting. That's that's I believe where alignment comes from, where it starts and where it continues over time to this isn't a buck that can be can be passed, I i believe, to anybody else.
00:13:45
Brian O'Grady
So get out of your own office or ivory tower and go find your colleagues wherever they are.
00:13:48
Peter Meyers
Right? Go to market. go Go to the other people too. Go to the other departments.
00:13:52
Brian O'Grady
Yeah.
00:13:53
Peter Meyers
Yeah, i I think so. i I think it's it's, again, we all get caught up into our own stuff. And we've got to get out of our stuff and and really open our eyes to what's happening. And you know the momentum. Like, yes, i can i you know I have a different screen on my right here that's all of my AI LLMs that I'm using. yeah at different times and and sure i i could ask there but that does nothing for building a unified and and building momentum across the organization i gotta i i gotta you know go for go for a guinness or go for a you know a coffee or go for lunch or just go and chat with some of my my colleagues uh to find out how they're thinking about the business and importantly share my hypotheses what i observe as the problems
00:14:44
Peter Meyers
and what I think we should be working on as well to start to lead us to a solution. Don't just wait for that to happen. but
00:14:50
Brian O'Grady
Fair enough.
00:14:51
Brendan Ziolo
Yeah, I definitely remember one of the closest relationships I had with a sales leader at a small startup was, yeah, we we go grab a burger and beer, you know, once a week or we go out after work for beer if he wasn't traveling and stuff like that.
00:15:02
Peter Meyers
Oh.
00:15:07
Brendan Ziolo
And yeah, i I think we solved many or had many good discussions there than we ever did in the office. Right. So, yeah, the getting out is a great, great tip there for sure.
00:15:15
Peter Meyers
Yeah, yeah.
00:15:20
Peter Meyers
I think there is magic to that of you get get away from the square table or the rectangular table or even the round table. like like like i i used to i don't I wrecked my knee years ago, so I had to stop running, but I used to do long distance running when I was younger.
00:15:36
Peter Meyers
younger and some of my favorite conversations were talking with my running partner and because you don't you're not you know it's not so intense of across a desk or something like that and and I think there's magic however you set that up whether it's go you're walking over and grabbing a coffee whatever that is. like i think i think these these are the small things that have big impacts for aar us as a leader. And and boy, you can just add so much more energy to these conversations, make them real.
00:16:05
Peter Meyers
and i and And it's kind of fun too. It's exciting.
00:16:09
Brendan Ziolo
yeah I think we may have answered part of this question, but I don't want to leave our audience thinking that we just recommend beer as the solution to everything. Although, well, maybe we do.
00:16:21
Brendan Ziolo
Anyway, I'm going to ask the question again and see what else we come up with. But I know you've worked with a lot of teams, a lot of sales leaders, Peter.
00:16:24
Brian O'Grady
things.
00:16:28
Brendan Ziolo
And like outside of the going to grab a beer, are there any other best practices, anything common you see between the groups that are top performers and those that are,
00:16:40
Brendan Ziolo
you know, laggards are not quite where they need to be? Like, are there any other tips you can share here?
00:16:46
Peter Meyers
Yeah, no, wait I think there's a lot like there's a lot underneath that. And I think I'll open it up in a second to both of you as well of what what have you observed? Let's look at the facts. The research says that for companies that have a unified strategy, meaning sales and marketing pulling in the same direction, on average, they gain 30% more revenue, more than 30% more revenue than their peer set.
00:17:09
Peter Meyers
their peerce So it's worth it.
00:17:10
Brian O'Grady
Thank
00:17:11
Peter Meyers
Number one, that's what we're all pulling for. We're pulling for growth. That's how we get our bonuses. That's how we look great. That's how we get our next great job as well. And so how do you do that? Well, number one, if you're if they're you're one of the leaders in the organization, make sure you do what you're supposed to do, which is, as we said, work up and across the organization.
00:17:31
Peter Meyers
There's, there iss a I think, another practice that gets forgotten sometimes, which is to pause and think. One of my favorite times of the year on my business and when I used to work, you know similar to what you were saying, Brian, working in corporate as well, is that the season and the time of the year to do the business review, do the do the step back and do the reflect.
00:17:52
Peter Meyers
And it's easy to get caught into day-to-day, the grind, you're driving hard, And you know really doesn't matter what it is, but it's it i I see one of the things that the best performers do is they do do a pause and step back.
00:18:07
Peter Meyers
They do reflection time. They really think about, well, what what do we face? What am I seeing? What's changed lately? you know that The old Einstein thing of you know what problem do I really need to be solving for? You know, that thing of if I had an hour to solve a problem, I'd spend 55 minutes figuring out what the problem was, defining it.
00:18:27
Peter Meyers
I probably but you know really bastardized that quote, but still, it it still holds. And then sharing that with others, you know defining the problem, understanding our problems, whatever that is, having some hypotheses around it. So I think that's one piece.
00:18:42
Peter Meyers
The other piece I think about a lot is I was in a program called Strategic Coach, and it's, I think, just a terrific entrepreneurial program.
Leadership and Strategy Execution
00:18:50
Peter Meyers
And one of the models that they use for planning is a 3M model that it really ends with, where do I have momentum in the business?
00:18:58
Peter Meyers
and And I think that's another piece is that great leaders that I see, that I work with, I have the just the absolute pleasure of working with in my business, you are the ones that are also watching for Where do we have momentum in the business and how can I build on it? it's It's so easy to keep focusing on where are all the gaps.
00:19:17
Peter Meyers
And and it's you know you can't be everything to everybody. And so figure out what's really working and build on that. And that's I see that as a habit for people.
00:19:28
Peter Meyers
for great leaders of watching for that momentum, planting the seeds to build that momentum and and and and and building on what works in their business versus staying focused. And I'll say distracted by all the problems because there's always crap going on. like there there're always There's always problems. There's always pumps. We've all got them in our businesses and can see them easily from the outside and all of our client businesses as well. But let me like, and and that was a bit windy. Let me open it up to you guys. Like what's the, you the, if you had tips, like what, what are the what's the one tip that you would throw out as, you know, what, what is the, I'll say that the call, the call out of a great successful leader in, in creating this kind of momentum and strategy.
00:20:16
Brendan Ziolo
i thought I thought, Brian, we I thought the guests weren't allowed to ask us questions.
00:20:16
Brian O'Grady
Oh, I want in. I want in.
00:20:21
Brian O'Grady
He's a bit of a rule breaker, I guess. i don't know.
00:20:24
Brendan Ziolo
Man, man.
00:20:24
Peter Meyers
Yeah.
00:20:26
Brendan Ziolo
If you're looking to jump in here, go for it, Brian. You have first stab at this.
00:20:29
Brian O'Grady
All right. Well, you touched on one of my favorite concepts. It can be referred to as as the Einstein quote that sounds trite, but it ain't wrong.
00:20:39
Brian O'Grady
And one of my mentors, a guy named Larry Smith, an economist at University Waterloo, he had me in a few years ago to help judge an entrepreneurship contest for all the best aspiring entrepreneurs at the University of Waterloo, my alma mater.
00:20:39
Peter Meyers
yeah
00:20:53
Brian O'Grady
And this contest, you'll be thrilled to know, was based entirely upon that aspiring entrepreneurs understanding of the market problem they were trying to solve. So much so that if they mentioned their solution, because of course they all had solutions, that's how they got here. and if you win the competition, you actually get funding and support for your idea to go to be an entrepreneur.
00:21:16
Brian O'Grady
But if they even mentioned their solution to the judges, they were disqualified. It was so heavily focused on, do you understand the problem you're trying to solve?
00:21:25
Peter Meyers
Yeah.
00:21:27
Brian O'Grady
Because the deeper you go there, the more terrible mistakes you avoid making by knowing so much more about what you're trying to achieve.
00:21:28
Peter Meyers
Yeah.
00:21:32
Peter Meyers
Yeah.
00:21:35
Brian O'Grady
So I'm a huge fan of that concept.
00:21:35
Peter Meyers
Yeah.
00:21:37
Brian O'Grady
And another way of expressing it is that solutions are a dime a dozen. And a lot of solutions could be valid, but until you really thoroughly understand the problem you're trying to solve,
00:21:48
Brian O'Grady
It's not really worth pursuing much in my opinion.
00:21:53
Peter Meyers
Nice. Yeah, there's a there's it feels like that harkens back to what is go to market, right? Like it's it's about listen first. We have two ears, one mouth. So let's listen a little bit, figure out what's going on outside there that we're actually that actually matters and and what we should be solving for. And then and then start thinking about the solution from there.
00:22:12
Peter Meyers
Nice.
00:22:13
Brendan Ziolo
Yeah, I guess I have a couple thoughts on that just to kind of build off of what you're both saying in terms of really understanding the problem and, you know, getting out there and stuff like that. The one one tip I guess I've had, and I'm not sure if this is necessarily even needs to be leaders doing this, but I find often...
00:22:35
Brendan Ziolo
You know, getting marketing people getting out of the out of the office and in front of the customer or in those customer meetings rarely happens. Right. And, you know, and I get some of the reasons for why it doesn't. You know, there's travel expenses. There's 50 people in the room. You don't want to have 51 or whatever the case may be. But.
00:22:55
Brendan Ziolo
I know any opportunity I had as a marketer to like get be in those meetings, I didn't have to speak. i didn't have to present. I could just listen. Right.
00:23:03
Peter Meyers
yeah
00:23:04
Brendan Ziolo
Really helps you get to the bottom of the problem. and then helps these other things as well. I do think on the differenti on the leadership point and the momentum point, you know in addition to understanding the problem is that you know clearly being able to articulate your differentiation too.
00:23:21
Brendan Ziolo
right I think the best performers are very clear on why someone needs and should choose you over the others.
00:23:21
Peter Meyers
Yeah.
00:23:28
Brendan Ziolo
And it's always so always puzzling to me when those answers are weak.
00:23:32
Peter Meyers
Yeah.
00:23:33
Brendan Ziolo
or non-existent in some cases, or my my favorite slash pet peeve is I have no competition. And all that says to me is two things, right?
00:23:39
Peter Meyers
Yeah.
00:23:42
Brendan Ziolo
you either You either don't have a market and you're not going to make money, or you don't understand the problem because the problem's being solved somehow today. you know Sometimes it's being solved poorly, that's fair, but it is being solved somehow.
00:23:52
Peter Meyers
Yeah. Yeah. yeah
00:23:57
Brendan Ziolo
So yeah, I would just add to the add the differentiation to what both of you had said on on some of what the best performers do.
00:24:05
Peter Meyers
Yeah, you know what's fun about that too is there's layers and layers. I was listening to a podcast recently, Clayton Christensen, think that, yeah, who passed, I think, in 2020. He's the creator of Jobs to be Done.
00:24:17
Brendan Ziolo
Yeah.
00:24:17
Peter Meyers
and And talk about, like, peeling back the onion to say, what are we actually solving for? he uses this quote in there but that says, I'm...
00:24:27
Peter Meyers
what the customer is buying is never what you think you're selling and and uses the whole mcdonald's milkshake and really when he gets to the bottom of it the competitor to the milkshake is really donuts and a banana and you know things like that so it's like you know of course mcdonald's would never think that you know never have thought that way otherwise and
00:24:39
Brian O'Grady
Yeah. yeah
00:24:48
Peter Meyers
And so, yeah, it's, it's still points back to like, just, just spend some time reflecting, like, think about what are we actually solving for it? As you say, like what, what a crime that we're not spending enough time as leaders as well, and with customers and really listening up for that.
00:25:03
Peter Meyers
So I, I think there's, there's a lot of wisdom in that of just, just boy, simple stuff, but yeah, just get out there.
00:25:09
Brendan Ziolo
Yeah.
00:25:11
Brian O'Grady
Well, I want to haul us back to a proper planning question.
00:25:15
Peter Meyers
Yeah.
00:25:16
Brian O'Grady
but before I do have a warning, you guys have just reminded me of, which is if you're working with people to figure out what problem it is you're trying to solve, be careful using the word problem. Cause people who are not familiar with Greek argumentation, for example, or there's another one argumentation, uh, assuming you've gone negative and and you're saying that everything's a problem just by using that word.
00:25:25
Peter Meyers
Yeah. yeah
00:25:35
Brian O'Grady
So you can say instead, what are we trying to achieve or what are we trying to do here?
00:25:35
Peter Meyers
Yeah. yeah Yeah.
00:25:41
Brian O'Grady
that that's a revealing, some trauma and a scar I have from a meeting that went very badly by my misuse of the word problem.
00:25:46
Peter Meyers
Got it. Yeah.
00:25:48
Brian O'Grady
But let's go to planning again for second, go to market planning. You talked about, uh, executive leadership working together. I've been through a lot of planning cycles and a lot of different organizations of different sizes and Q4 often senior leadership, less than sales often disappears, locks themselves in rooms. Not unlike you're saying, start planning for the the next fiscal.
00:26:09
Peter Meyers
Yeah.
00:26:09
Brian O'Grady
And come usually January, because let's be honest, most of these plans don't actually get baked until sometime in the key one, but whenever they get rolled out in Q1, sometimes your, here's my sin.
00:26:17
Peter Meyers
yeah
00:26:21
Brian O'Grady
Maybe I'm playing the role of the cynical guy today. So that's my role. I'll take it. Sometimes these plans look wonderful, grandiose, completely divorced from anything the american organization is doing or even knows how to do.
00:26:36
Brian O'Grady
Uh, and often those plans after Q1 are never spoken about again and get put in a box and forgotten and everybody moves on. So in your experience, how do you avoid that kind of planning theater? I call it.
00:26:48
Peter Meyers
Mm-hmm.
00:26:48
Brian O'Grady
And instead make sure that the plans you've built and all that time and energy you've put into building them actually can hit the ground running actually can be executed in Q1 for your next fiscal year.
00:27:00
Peter Meyers
So i I get it. I got throw something out that is a personal belief and i probably fall like a big fat wet balloon here is, is that I don't think we should be doing annual planning anymore.
00:27:14
Peter Meyers
I think it should be quarterly. i think it should be rolling three quarters, two quarters, four quarters, whatever.
00:27:19
Brian O'Grady
Thank
00:27:20
Peter Meyers
i i do think things are changing rapidly enough and our, our attention spans a little bit short and So I i would really rather see that because that that forces the you know what forces out the problem that you're talking about, Brian, because I've seen that too many times where organizations will, as yeah I love that word theater, I think, do the act it out, but not actually follow through.
00:27:42
Peter Meyers
And and thats that's a big problem. I think the second piece, so so number one, give up on annual, go go rolling and and do two, three, four quarters, whatever that is, sort of similar to forecasting.
00:27:55
Peter Meyers
The second thing is we talked about it before, but oh my God, like don't don't start stuff cold and expect results right away. Like we all know that that doesn't happen.
00:28:06
Peter Meyers
Like it's rare at least. So yeah, Pick the areas of momentum. And if you don't have any momentum, then you better only promise progressive results and and start. you know I think of if you've got something that's got to be happening in Q1, you better be planting the seeds and piloting and testing and getting it out right now.
00:28:29
Peter Meyers
You can't wait. It's, it's and and I, you know, however you happen to manipulate the system to get some momentum now, you better be, otherwise it's a black box. Who knows this if be even the right strategy before you start, let's talk, go to market, like actually get it out there, get some reaction from customers.
00:28:48
Peter Meyers
you know i I just, you know part of this this whole hey haystack reading that I alluded to from this weekend, the problem I was solving for was, or working on was, how do I evolve my leadership program to the next level? That's one of my three pillars of the services I offer.
00:29:03
Peter Meyers
I have a concept. I'm really excited about it. And my first step is to turn it into a landing page and go talk to the seven or eight different you know sales leaders that I know that will give me honest feedback on it.
00:29:16
Peter Meyers
So go to market, get out there right away, get that feedback as soon as possible. Because if I want some results in Q1, it's October right now or November, and boy, I better be getting, you know, piloting essentially that getting feedback right now.
00:29:33
Brian O'Grady
that's a great That's a great answer. And it echoes one of our previous guests, Santosh Kumar, talked about the value of a pilot. So that whether it's a plan or whether it's a big idea, when you roll into the board and bust out your big idea and then get asked, well, how do you know it works? Have you tried it? Have you piloted it?
00:29:50
Peter Meyers
Yeah.
00:29:51
Brian O'Grady
That's an awkward conversation to have if you haven't.
00:29:53
Peter Meyers
Yeah.
00:29:53
Brian O'Grady
That's a great tip.
00:29:53
Peter Meyers
or or Or one that is a slow pitch that you're so excited to get in the boardroom instead, where it's like, yeah, actually, a turn we turned it into Atlantic page. We've tested it with 20 of our customers.
00:30:04
Brian O'Grady
Yeah.
00:30:05
Peter Meyers
Here's the response. Not everybody loved it, but 12 of them really did like it. And here's here's the course corrects that we're doing now on it. We think it's got legs. like that Like suddenly, you've turned. i you We teach objection handling to frontline sales and and account managers. And one of the things we say about objections is they are a gift.
00:30:26
Peter Meyers
Questions, they could be, abs and they are an absolute goldmine for building trust, momentum, buy-in. If you just actually pause, ask some questions and so and and and address what they're really asking as well.
00:30:44
Peter Meyers
and and learn from it. learn Learn from really why they're asking that. But, you know, so objections are a gift in this, you know, that that kind of question can be a gift for you
00:30:56
Brian O'Grady
maybe Maybe after this corporate life of ours is over, if you're good at objection handling, you can become a marriage counselor as well or Stay focused.
00:31:02
Peter Meyers
you.
00:31:03
Brendan Ziolo
all
00:31:04
Peter Meyers
Let's slow that down. Let's slow that down. but follow that
00:31:08
Brian O'Grady
and then Brandon, stay focused.
00:31:10
Brendan Ziolo
right i know we started the podcast here and we probably need to deliver on this at some point brian but as has become tradition i think we're going to ask you our two final questions peter which have become pretty standard across our podcast episodes and guests
00:31:10
Brian O'Grady
Take us home.
00:31:29
Peter Meyers
I'm ready.
00:31:31
Brendan Ziolo
The first one I'm going ask, and then I'll let Brian do the second one. So I know you're doing a lot of work in the areas of AI and from a sales team perspective and stuff like that.
00:31:38
Peter Meyers
yeah
00:31:40
Brendan Ziolo
you know Totally unfair ask because you could we could do one, two, five, 20 episodes on that, I'm sure, with you and all our other guests back. But you know are there any tips on the AI front you can share with the audience thinking,
00:31:57
Brendan Ziolo
This is mainly a marketing audience, but, you know, maybe what sales teams are doing and maybe more importantly, things they should avoid on the AI front now. Thank
00:32:08
Peter Meyers
so So I think what's interesting, i will answer your question in a second, but I think what's interesting, I mentioned i mentioned jobs to be done. And some of the thinkers that I listened to are bringing this back up in the context of AI, and I think it's the right thing to do.
00:32:23
Peter Meyers
So there's an MIT study that came out that said that 90% of organizations that have rolled AI out are getting zero value
AI in Business and Marketing's Role
00:32:30
Peter Meyers
from it. In fact, it's actually slowing down productivity in 70% of the workforce.
00:32:35
Peter Meyers
So that's yeah it's a very, very big problem. It's a big gap between expectation and actual result. What's the impact? What's the fail point? There's several in there, but one of the big ones is that we think by shoving technology at people, they'll know how to use it.
00:32:50
Peter Meyers
And that is wrong. And Jobs to be Done really looks at, okay, what's the workflow? What's actually the value that we're trying to create with particular, I'll say, discrete values? processes or or or functions in the business, you know, i'll say micro functions in the business.
00:33:05
Peter Meyers
And let's map those. Let's really understand that. Let's get those to best practice. Let's get those really hammered down so we know exactly what we're working with. And then look at how can AI either be an automation or an assist, a thinking assist or something that actually automates part of that process. Never going to automate. you know There's some workflows that, of course, it might it will automate parts of it, but it's not going to automate the whole thing most often. And and so yeah when I'm in with customers and I sell in our Rev.AI initiatives, I'm pretty clear to say that 70% of the work has nothing to do with technology at this point. in this
00:33:46
Peter Meyers
at this point because they've got to nail down what's their value prop, what's their what's our sales, that part of the sales process, what's our account, our monthly business review process that we do with customers, whatever that is, how do we handle support calls and what does the best practice look like there?
00:34:00
Peter Meyers
a lot of this is dusty, it's not documented properly, it's not nailed down. And you got to do that. It's hard work. Boy, it's hard work. It's it's it's painstaking. And it pays off in spades. I've put AI throughout my business. And I'm still i'm iterating on it over time.
00:34:16
Peter Meyers
My learning design process, I have saved days out of each design. And and it's a you know i i i I think it's in some ways just magical what it could do But it it took a lot of work.
00:34:33
Peter Meyers
And a lot of it wasn't about the prompt or the LLM. It was where the agent or whatever you're using. It's it's about, like we think agentic, right? Agentic is a big, oh, that's a magical, wow, that's so exciting.
00:34:46
Brian O'Grady
everything It's going to save everything.
00:34:48
Peter Meyers
and And it is not, unfortunately, a big green button. It's not. It's like you gotta do so much work.
00:34:57
Brian O'Grady
I was counting on that. I didn't want to think anymore. didn't want to deliver.
00:35:00
Peter Meyers
Oh, wouldn't that be great?
00:35:01
Brian O'Grady
you
00:35:02
Peter Meyers
But that'd be great. But, you know, thank goodness for complex and hard to solve problems because it does keep us in business. It keeps it gives us something worthy to solve for. And this is a big opportunity to solve for. And at least my business, I know at Portage, we're we're absolutely intent on that. We're peeling back the onion. We're running to two new clients right now through our process, taking different approaches each time to continue to iterate and modify it so that we really get down to how do you get to that value a lot faster?
00:35:33
Peter Meyers
And and there are we're we're finding some some some approaches that are working. and And the first one I would say the tip is go analog, figure out what the workflow is before you go digital.
00:35:44
Brian O'Grady
fair Fair feedback.
00:35:45
Brendan Ziolo
Yeah.
00:35:45
Brian O'Grady
And it it echoes some of the experiences I've had with these tools. And one of the questions I've gotten into the habit of asking myself, because it's so easy to get down that rabbit hole, say, oh, what if I did the prompt this way?
00:35:56
Brian O'Grady
Oh, I don't mind. That's pretty good. What if I did it this way?
00:35:58
Peter Meyers
Sure, yeah.
00:35:58
Brian O'Grady
And suddenly an hour has gone by, 90 minutes have gone by, and I've had to start asking myself, what's the opportunity cost here while I mess around with this thing? What would Brian be doing this time if he wasn't doing it?
00:36:10
Brian O'Grady
And if the answer is this is still worth it, like knock yourself out. But if it's not, it's time start asking some questions.
00:36:12
Peter Meyers
Yeah. yeah Yeah. yeah Yeah. There's a great, one of my favorite books is who not how, and it's all about also like really like for me, cause I love this stuff too, Brian, for you, should it really be us?
00:36:29
Peter Meyers
Really?
00:36:29
Brian O'Grady
Okay.
00:36:29
Peter Meyers
Yeah. Or is there a really good who that we could find that that that actually could be building that out for us and with our direction, our oversight? So as leaders, yeah, I think it is a slippery slope to get caught into it. And I i find a lot of the leaders I work with are deep into it. A lot of their staff are not.
00:36:48
Peter Meyers
And that's a big gap too.
00:36:50
Brian O'Grady
Yeah, yeah. Oh boy, okay, we have to queue this up, Brendan. We're gonna have to have a whole other AI episode with them back, okay?
00:36:56
Brendan Ziolo
We are, yeah.
00:36:58
Brian O'Grady
But the the the clock, that's right.
00:36:59
Brendan Ziolo
we need to we need We still need to ask our favorite question, Brian. We can't let him off the hook yet.
00:37:02
Peter Meyers
Uh-oh. but
00:37:03
Brian O'Grady
We're not gonna let you off the hook. Final question, B2B marketing pint, as always. Sir, you bump into a lot in the boardrooms and teams and places you go, all the things you hear and see, and you probably bump into that same particularly annoying idea or thing that just won't die or go away.
00:37:26
Brian O'Grady
and you have to spend time and energy disproving it in seven out of the 10 places you go to.
00:37:32
Peter Meyers
Hmm.
00:37:32
Brian O'Grady
What is that thing? What is the biggest myth about this process, the marketing and sales process that drives you nuts and you would be thrilled if you didn't need to spend any more time or energy disproving it anymore? because this is your opportunity.
00:37:46
Brian O'Grady
Everyone's going to hear this podcast. It's going to go away if you do this job right. Go.
00:37:50
Peter Meyers
You know, I don't think this is as true for the larger businesses as we work with. We're working with some much larger enterprises, but I'll say for those mid to smalls that we've worked with in the past, we're sort of 20 million revenue plus is what we target in Often they'll say, and and and i'm and I'm calling this one out because of you guys here, like they'll say marketing is optional. like Like it it is a bit nuts. Like there is a point where you can't just do it the old way you did it before.
00:38:19
Peter Meyers
And if you really want to scale, you really want to grow, you got to have a whole bunch of things pulling in the same direction. And so, you know, your brand, your awareness, your positioning, your value prop, all of those things aren't strictly, they they aren't necessarily about marketing. Marketing is a very, can be a very, very pragmatic play in the business. and and And as we talked about here, can be pulling directly and in line with what you're doing and sailing, what you're doing with your product, however your organization is centered, I think it's easy to think that you don't need the other stuff. And that's not, I just, i am i'm I'm of the opinion that's not true. There is a point you absolutely need that. and You better be starting to plant those seeds now.
00:39:02
Brian O'Grady
I love that answer. And if we ever need to rebrand B2B marketing, pit we will call it marketing is not optional.
00:39:09
Brendan Ziolo
yeah And I also can't think of a better note to end this on. I mean, it's also it's also time, but that's the perfect note for me to end it on.
00:39:19
Brendan Ziolo
So, Peter, really appreciate you taking the time.
00:39:20
Peter Meyers
Perfect.
00:39:22
Brendan Ziolo
Enjoyed the conversation yet again with you.
00:39:22
Peter Meyers
Thanks for having me. Yeah.
00:39:25
Brendan Ziolo
Hopefully we don't go a year or whatever it is between our projects, but who knows. But yeah, really appreciate you joining us.
00:39:31
Peter Meyers
Who knows?
00:39:32
Brendan Ziolo
And thank you so much. And hopefully hopefully we have a wee bit of beer left for one last year.
00:39:35
Peter Meyers
Yeah. Thanks for having me. I really enjoyed it. Enjoyed the conversation. Yeah. Yeah. It was a real pleasure. And, uh, yeah, just, uh, really appreciate this opportunity to, uh, to have this conversation together.
00:39:48
Brian O'Grady
Good times. Thanks for sharing some yours.
00:39:48
Brendan Ziolo
All right. Thanks, Peter.
00:39:50
Peter Meyers
Okay. Yeah.
00:39:51
Brendan Ziolo
like peter
00:39:51
Peter Meyers
Take care.