#186 – Aligning marketing insights with sales strategies w/ Dr Philip Styrlund & Shakeel Bharmal

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Full episode transcript: 

​Please note that transcription is done by AI and may contain errors.

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Phil Squire: Hi. Well, I want to give a fabulous welcome to, um, um, two people that I've known for many years, though I think, uh, one of them I've not had so much, uh, dealings with, uh, Shakeel, but it's, uh, Phil Styrlund, CEO of Summit Group, and Shakeel, who's the senior vice president of the Summit group. So welcome to the Sales Transformation podcast.

Phil Styrlund: Thank you Phil.

Phil Squire: Um, what we'd love to do before we get stuck into the, uh, topic of this podcast, which is going to be around the whole sort of marketing and sales interface, um, is ask you both to introduce yourself. So Phil, can I start with you just to say a few words by means of introduction, then we'll go to Shakeel and then we'll come into some of the questions I'd love to ask you during the podcast.

Phil Styrlund: Yeah, Phil Sterling. Um, and I am CEO and owner of the Summit Group. And Phil, you and I go way back, both personally and professionally, and in many ways we've, I think, deeply influenced each other. You've certainly influenced my career and, um, our, our firm like yours is, is really our life work, you know, and, and our life work is to elevate the professionalization of selling.

Period. And why, I think, as you've always said it, to make it one of the most sought after careers in the world. And that's always animated me, uh, to the point where, you know, based on your prodding, I've recently finished a doctorate in, uh, global selling and co-creation. Yeah. Um, I think kind of validating my love for the work.

So this is, this is my life's work and one of, uh, the closest partners and deepest friends in my firm is Shakeel. And Shakeel. Let's go back to when you joined us.

Shakeel: Yeah, so I'd love to, love to be love being here in this conversation because it's actually a very deep, deep important topic, um, topic for me that goes back to when I first, uh, met Phil.

I don't know, probably 2000, three or four, right? Um, and so over the course of my career, I've always been working in this intersecting space of. Making companies and people more relevant to the people they serve. And at the same time, organizing the processes inside an organization to support that. Um, enabling people to be more relevant to the customer's markets, uh, they serve.

So I've worked across for-profit, not-for-profit across industries from, you know, retail, uh, consumer all the way through. You know, aviation and aerospace and supply chain logistics and healthcare, and a bunch of stuff in between. Uh, I've been inside senior leadership of organizations myself, uh, and I've been in sales myself.

And now I get to be, uh, a professional advisor as a, both a, a leadership coach, a sales strategy coach, a facilitator, and like both of you spending time, uh, doing a lot of teaching of, uh, of current leaders. Uh, and salespeople and business

Phil Squire: do, do you mind me asking you both? What, what, how did you actually meet?

I mean, where, where did you meet?

Shakeel: In a boardroom In Toronto, Ontario. And I was, uh, just hired by a supply chain logistics company. Okay.

Phil Styrlund: Uh,

Shakeel: and I was hired to actually elevate the strategic, um, um, selling skills and processes for our sales organization. I was a consultant previously. I had built a really nice PowerPoint deck and I was here to now join the company to help make that PowerPoint deck a reality.

And Phil happened to know our C-F-O-C-F-O connected us and said, you should meet Phil. I met Phil, presented the strategy, and he said, wow, that's really, really good work. That's clearly very intelligent work, but if I can be honest with you, um. I think that you're gonna struggle with executing with the Salesforce because this is way too complex for them to execute.

I was working in marketing at the time. And Phil had come from a lot of experience helping salespeople sell. And so that was the beginning of that whole journey together around marketing being relevant to sales that we started together back whatever that long ago.

Phil Styrlund: That's fantastic. And Phil one, one of the things I saw in Shakeel is that he's just gifted for this work.

It was, as they say, it was in his bones. You could just tell this was, this is what he was called to do. And part of that giftedness is he had the self-confidence to make things simple. One of the things that I see in life is that insecure people complexify things.

Phil Squire: Yeah.

Phil Styrlund: People who are secure in themselves and who they are, make things simple.

They're comfortable to make things simple. So I saw that early on and I think that's more important than ever right now in today's complex world, is to be kind of that great reductionist in simplifier, and that's always been kind of in Shakeel's bones, if that makes sense.

Shakeel: Thank you.

Phil Squire: Um, thank you Phil.

And, um, yeah, Shakeel, Phil's always spoken so highly of you over the years, so, um, that's great. So, um, the topic of, I mean, you've in a way sort of started to broach on the topic of today's conversation, which is the, the whole interconnect, uh, between marketing and sales, or sales and marketing.

Phil Styrlund: Mm.

Phil Squire: And, um, Phil, I and I.

And you said, look, we should do a podcast on this topic. Yeah. So Phil, I, I want to know why, why you, you feel of, it's so important that actually we speak about this particular topic on the sales transformation podcast.

Phil Styrlund: I think two reasons. Phil and I go back to, you and I were together in London a few weeks ago and we had a discussion about where we see.

Professional selling, going in an AI world, you know, where the human in the loop will fit. And, and let, let's go back to that conversation and I believe that two things we're, as we work with our clients globally, in many cases we're seeing kind of a, a crisis of relevance when it comes to marketing. Right now, maybe crisis is a little bit hyperbolic, we'll call it maybe a need to.

Uh, recalibrate the relevance of marketing right now given the new human slash AI world, and, and nobody's really got that figured out yet. But I think that's, that's the number one driver. And then I think as we look at what's required in the new world of selling, it's going to take a marketing mindset.

And, and so if marketing isn't hand in glove with sales. You're just not gonna be able to distinguish yourself in the complex world that that's unfolding, if that may. So I think those are the two reasons that I'm seeing. Shakeel, would you add anything else? Yeah. Of why kind of bubbled up?

Shakeel: I, I will, I will add, uh, another layer to it, which is exactly along the same lines as you just talked about.

I think, um, you know, we are all seeing this global shift across the world within all societies of a refocusing on. Um, making sure me and mine are, are protected and cared for first, and we're just seeing this all over the world. It's not a bad thing, it's just the nature of what the needs are of human beings.

Yeah, and we spend a lot of time over the years, um, you know, value-based selling, value creation. Selling has always been about how do we understand what the other's issues and problems are, and how do we then figure out what we can bring them to, to help them solve their problem. That's still valid. Still true.

That's still the only way to deepen relationships. But, uh, personally I'm seeing as we are seeing some of this happen in the world, there's a bit of a tension on that fundamental notion that is perhaps spilling a little bit over into the business world where we just need a reminder that in order to add value and create for others, it starts with a, a real.

A centered focus on actually caring about the other's issues and problems and challenges.

Phil Styrlund: Yeah. Uh,

Shakeel: so that's why I think this is so important right now to help marketing be more relevant to sales. So sales can therefore be more relevant and helpful to the people they serve.

Phil Squire: Uh, and what do you see, uh, what do you see, uh, marketing doing or needing to do in order to, uh, become more relevant?

What sort of things? You know, what do you, you know, what do you think is important?

Phil Styrlund: Well, Phil, let's go back to our discussion around where we see sales going, and then I'll kind of give my view on where I see marketing fitting into that. And I think it all begins with marketing needs to be the keeper of the ethos of business empathy, which is what Shakeel just got done talking about.

And we just described that as business empathy. It's this, it's not about what you have, it's about what your CA customer cares about, which sounds embarrassingly simple. Yeah, but that's an epiphany for many companies. But as you know from our discussion a couple weeks ago, I've been doing a lot of thinking about what the future of selling will look like, and then we'll hang our marketing discussion on that.

And I've come up with three pillars and let's test them, is the first time I've kind of articulated them. Okay. Number one, I think is the notion of insight enabled solution development. So it's taking your products and services. Bathing them in insights, wrapping them with insights around what you sell.

Because increasingly what customers are looking for is not just the product, but all of the insights that surround that. And that's a whole different thing. And that's, that's very much a marketing based acumen. I think the second. Sales fluency for the future is what I call orchestrated sense making. So let's unpack that one for a minute.

That the sales professional now will need to be what I would describe as a virtuoso level orchestrator between their customer and their own company on one axes. And between their human sales team and their digital sales team on another axes between, we could call it the human agents and the digital agents on another axes, right?

So if you think of that, that diagram, it's really going to be this new level of, of being the master orchestrator and to make sense of all of that for the customer, but also. To make sense of the tsunami of information that's coming from ai, because no longer is sales struggling with a lack of information.

Now we're drowning in it. Yeah. So the real work is the so what? What do we do with all this? What does it mean and how do we execute that? And that's what I call number two, orchestrated sense making. And then the third is what I call value storytelling. It's really value articulation wrapped in a narrative.

It's this ability to tell structured stories and in that, embed your value proposition, but do it in a way that's compelling. That's interesting. And that also shows how you're incorporating what's working in other places. 'cause one of the things we go back to that customers. Continually want to know, and I know it's validated a lot by your research.

Phil, tell me what's working somewhere else. Mm-hmm. And that needs to be the center of the story. So I think the, these three pillars of insight enabled solution development, orchestrated sense making and value storytelling are kind of the three pillars of where things are going. So now back to your question, where does marketing fit in all of that?

Marketing needs to be the partner for insights, the orchestration partner and the storytelling partner. They need to be the story makers, so stor, so sales can be the storytellers because marketing now needs to be kind of the epicenter, the fuel rod, if you will, for sales. So they're better informed, they're more strategically persuasive, that they're involved more earlier in deals.

And they can bring insights to differentiate themselves. Now that's a mouthful, but that's why marketing matters more than ever right now. So lemme push the pause button there, Shakeel, given those three pillars, anything you'd add from your perspective to those two? Yeah.

Shakeel: Yeah, I think you've hit all the right three, so I'm not gonna add anything.

I'm just gonna, um, perhaps put on this layer or blanket, um, to make it maybe, maybe simpler, more accessible. Um, when I think about, if I was in a marketing role right now. Um, the one that really, um, strikes it for me is when you talk about sensemaking from a philosophical, intellectual perspective, before you get to sensemaking, you have to get to curiosity.

So much is changing for our, uh, for customers in general, um, for their salespeople that they support on an ongoing basis. So, um, just to support all the engines and pillars that Phil, Phil just talked about, marketing has to remind themselves that they have to build processes for structured curiosity so they can stay on top of what is changing.

For the customer segments and industries that their salespeople serve, uh, we've got three language dialects. We've got the customer language dialect, which is relevant to whatever company and industry they're in. You've got the sales dialect and you've got the marketing dialect. Marketing has to take ownership of translating all of that into common language, and that common language has to be centered on the customer dialect So marketing can own a process of ongoing curiosity of asking questions from sales and from their own market research. What matters to customers in this segment, in this industry right now? Bring that in through the organization back to say, based on what's important right now in the customer's language, what do we have that's relevant?

Product insights, capabilities, all of that. Let's turn that into the value storytelling that Phil talked about, and then give that back to sales so they can tell the story to the customer and put that in our brand communication, our messaging, so the dialects are aligned and we're speaking the same language.

Um, that's, that's my view from a mechanical process standpoint.

Phil Squire: Earlier, you sort of kind of suggested that there, that you felt that marketing was in some kind of, um, crisis situation. Uh, crisis may not be the right word, but, you know, finding it difficult in this world, you know, to find relevance. What, what is it that's making you call that out?

Point in time. I dunno, who'd like to take that question whether it should be, why don't you

Phil Styrlund: open up with that and I'll kind of build on it.

Shakeel: Yeah. I, it comes back a little bit to what I said at the opening of the call. It's this Yeah. A perfect alignment. Um, and it's not perfect because it's, it's, that's a difficult time.

Yeah. There's, there's a general tendency. Um, in business, in sales and in marketing to start first with what do we want the world to know about us,

Phil Styrlund: right?

Shakeel: What do we want from the world as far as, um, you know, we want a customer to make a decision to choose our product over our competitors. Yeah. And so that's a general orientation.

What do we want from the world? Now let's figure out how to go to the world and get them to do what we want. So that's just a general thing that is stuck in business today. At the same time, you have this. Um, dynamic in the world today. That's legitimizing this idea of me first, right? There was a time, it's always been me first, but there was a period of time where it was let's fight that instinct of me first and let's really care about the other.

Um, but I think over the last several years we've seen a legitimization of No, no. Me first is okay, and here's why. It's okay. And so to me that's why there's a bit of a, crisis might be the strong word, but there's this, uh, idea that it's okay to focus on us. Which makes it really more important for folks like us to make sure that we encourage those folks to take that process and put that process in place to know it's, it should be about them first, and here's how you make it about them first.

Phil Styrlund: Yeah, so, so the crisis that, you know, for lack of a better word, is the need to reverse the polarity of the mindset, as Shakeel just talked about, instead of, here's, here's what we want to bring out to the world is what does the world seek from us? What do our customers need from us? Yeah. So it's a fundamental kind of reversed polarity of how traditional marketing has been done in the past.

And so as Shakeel, we opened up with the first ethos of business empathy. I think the second core ethos is chronic curiosity. Back to what Shakeel talked about, this notion of being structurally curious about what's going on in your customer's business and be careful about certainty. One of the things we talk about at the Summit Group is one of the fluencies for the future is to have curiosity over a certainty.

Be careful of being too certain about things because it can be a cruel imposter right now given the pace of the world, if that makes sense.

Phil Squire: I'd like to come back to the whole topic of ai, 'cause we talked about this as sort of, you brought it into conversations sort of earlier on, and to what extent do you think, um, AI is making it more or less difficult for people in a marketing function to kind of.

Get to where you think they need to get to, but I wonder how much of the challenges that marketing face are caused by the system in which they have to operate. Meaning that this focus on me first, or product folk, you know, first could be influenced by the. The way that companies organize their p and l being very perhaps product focused and short term.

And we know that it takes a long time to build relationships with customers, but you know, under pressure to get short-term results sometimes drives short-term thinking. Where the focus is, you know, how many leads can we create? How many deals can we close? Yeah. Which is I guess, the domain of the sales teams, whereas marketing.

Is, yes, it is. It's about lead generation, of course, and you want good qualified leads coming into the business to help you close your, your deals. But actually it's also about building the business for the future. Which is a longer term. So there's a, you mentioned the word tension earlier on. There's a sort of tension between that.

So, sorry, long, long question. I suppose I'm, I'm getting to this topic of relevance and how much of that is perhaps caused by the system in which marketing teams

Shakeel: It is a hundred percent caused by the system. Right. Um, and I would say that's absolutely right. There's this focus from the top down on let's drive results in the short term.

So that turns into let's drive close sales in the short term that turns into how fast can we get them interested in our product in the short term.

Phil Styrlund: Yeah.

Shakeel: But, um, I recently came across, uh, a quote that I think is so relevant, uh, to this idea of this tension you described. Uh, Phil, you're much more red than I am, but F Scott Fitzgerald, um.

Many, many years ago, I had this wonderful quote where he said. Um, the true, uh, measure of an intelligent mind is the ability to hold two opposing forces and function at the, at function at the same time, right? Yes. Short term. Uh, we want long-term results. Long-term results allow, requires you to be a little bit more, uh, measured and take your time to learn, understand, know that you may not close the deal today, but maybe it might be next six months from now or next year.

But look, we need short-term results. Money makes the world go round, and that's how all our systems are organized. So I, I don't suggest we abandon short-term results. I suggest that there is a path to doing both at the same time. Yeah. And I, I, I think Phil and I both believe that, uh, relevance and processes for relevance are your best path to balancing both short-term and long-term results.

Phil Styrlund: Yeah. So two thoughts, just to to, to add onto that. One is that strategic selling is no longer about pitching. It's about how you are impacting your customer's business case, as I like to call BMI business model impact.

Phil Squire: Yeah.

Phil Styrlund: And to do that increasingly again, we're gonna need insights, provocative perspectives of what's working in other places.

Very much industry specific narratives. Again, back to that relevant storytelling and then a new level of value frameworks to, to organize our thinking. So I think that's one thing. I think the other one is so much time is being spent now as in the early days of AI talking about how we're going to use Agen X and how we're gonna program the sales agents to sell and to research.

But maybe the more important question is. What about the buying agents? Mm-hmm. How are they going to show up? Yeah. And how are buyers going to change how they buy in an AI world? I'm not seeing enough about that right now, and that's part of that reverse polarity thinking that Shakeel mentioned earlier.

That's really the question is how are buyers going to use AI and how will that impact our future?

Shakeel: Yeah.

Phil Styrlund: That, that to me is the, the really fun question to wrestle with right now.

Shakeel: Can I dive in on something there? Because I think it again, addresses the discussion. We're all talking about AI quite a bit, and of course it is massively disrupted and there's been so much conversation about how we leverage AI in sales and in buying today.

But if you start with the fundamental principles of how do I understand more about them and what matters to them, and then you look at ai. Yeah, you can see how AI can enable you to, to learn faster, uh, to spend more time thinking more deeply about them and their issues than you could before ai. Yeah. And so if you start with philosophically, emotionally, intellectually the right idea, which is, let me understand them, then.

You see AI as a tool, yeah. As a mechanism, as a, as a, uh, productivity mechanism to help you get faster, smarter. Um, more relevant, more quickly. Um, and so I see it, that's how I see AI as being opport, the opportunity for it to be disrupted.

Phil Squire: We're just to share with you that, and of course, I'll come back to some of the questions we need to cover as well.

Yeah. Uh, on the list. But, uh, where. Um, at the final stages of completing, uh, Phil, I spoke to you about this when we met the global research project, and one of the questions we've been asking and the, the research is with buyers. So it's, it's not with sellers, it's with buyers getting their perspectives on how do customers want to, to be sold to.

And one of the big concerns that, uh, buyers have, uh, is. Or is not concern, but predictions that they have, which you might be interested to know about, is that AI will actually dumb down, um, salesmanship because salespeople are going to become too reliant on ai. And you can spot an a AI generated email a mile away or a LinkedIn post a mile away.

Uh, you can see it coming. And as soon as you start. to Suspect that this is not totally real. You begin to question its veracity, you know? It's, it's the source of the, the truth. So it is ironic, isn't it, that AI is there. As a tool to coming back to your insight, you know, tool to generate insights. Of course there's no, there's, there's no reason why anyone can't leverage AI to help give more insights.

There's no excuse for not doing it. So on that sense, we should be getting smarter. Yeah, we should be getting smarter 'cause we've got great tools that we can use. But We all know that salespeople are lazy and they want to take the shortest cut to getting stuff done. You know, they're under a lot of time pressure.

So I'm being a bit provocative myself here, perhaps. Um, so I just find it very interesting that the buyers are becoming more in tune

to

the way salespeople are using AI to generate insight. And it's, it's an extra layer of screening that they will be doing when they start to evaluate a professional approach, dunno what you think

about that.

Shakeel: It comes back to that same thing we talked about earlier. If you are focused in your selling on getting them to do what you want in a limited amount of time, Then you're gonna take that approach of, let me be lazy and do this quickly in a way to produce the proposal to get the result I want in a short time.

But if you actually believe the other thing that we talked about, which is being of service Yeah. And, and solving an issue or solving a problem. Then you look at AI very differently. Which is how does it allow me to be better, more relevant, more in tune? I mean, a simple, practical example is don't make AI about creating great content fast.

Make AI about asking better questions. Yeah. So if you can use the tool to ask more relevant questions more quickly. Do the research help format questions, but ultimately you still come to a customer conversation. Yeah. Where you ask those questions, you hear those answers, and look with permission, even hit an AI recording device as you ask really good questions to get really good answers back.

Let the AI recording device record it, and then have it organize the conversation in a way that is now relevant. It's real and it's relevant, not made up. It's a real conversation, asking real questions and it organizes the content. That's an example of how salespeople can use that to get smarter and more relevant and resist the temptation to get lazy.

It will make it easier, so it does improve your work life balance and productivity and all those things, but you're using it also to get smarter.

Phil Styrlund: On a personal level, Phil, you bring this, your question brings up a. A great point because I think there's a rise of what I call pseudo expertise. Yeah. And people are using AI to simulate expertise.

Yeah. And, and so now we ask the difference, or now we ask the different question, which is how do we develop wise people, not just smart people? Mm-hmm. Intelligence will be a commodity. But wisdom is going to be something that people will be deeply attracted to, and that only comes with lived experience.

Phil Squire: Yeah.

Phil Styrlund: And I always say you can tell by the third question when you're talking to someone if they actually know what they're talking about.

Phil Squire: Okay. Very good. Well, moving on to the question topic. I have another question for you, which is, how do you see marketing and uh, strategic sellers working? Practically more closely together, you know, to bridge some of the gaps we've been talking about

Shakeel: practically. I can jump in Phil, if you, if you'd like,

Phil Styrlund: please. Yeah.

Shakeel: Uh, so I mean, I'll just tell you how we're doing it with certain, uh, clients and organizations.

Phil Styrlund: Yeah.

Shakeel: Uh, if they are, if they could at least get them, um, singing off the same set of frameworks or as we say, singing off the same song sheet. But if we can get them to understand.

Um, you know, three or four very simple frameworks, um, which are common thinking. What's the customer need? What do they care about? Uh, yeah, what is, what do we, uh, how, what does sales think? What do they care about, about serving the customer that serves the customer? And then what is it that we bring that's pretty a common language, a set of frameworks to be thinking about.

If you can get sales and marketing to be reflecting on the questions from those kinds of frameworks. And then come together in a conversation, um, in small groups to work through a facilitated dialogue. Yeah, yeah. To answer those questions. And then, then the frameworks don't matter anymore. It's the conversation that we're having, but then the framework come back in to organize the conversation.

And then you've got something that has been co-created by sales and marketing aligned to customer issues, challenges. Uh, I think that's the most practical thing I've seen to at least start the collaboration. Uh, and then after that says, okay, based on this common understanding, we have this co-created framework we have of going to market with our customers.

What is it that marketing you can do to execute against this? And what is it that sales we can do to then execute against this? I think that's how it starts.

Phil Styrlund: I, I think that is a good start and I'll just point to two practices that I've seen some of our clients use that is making a significant difference.

One. One is creating industry specific insight platforms. So, for example, at 3M, um, they'll look at each of their industry segments. Yeah. From industrial to healthcare, to aerospace, to uh, to, to, uh, whatever it might be. And in each of these industries, what we tend to find is that there's generally three to five common care abouts as we, is the word we use at the summit group, or issues that are permeating that industry.

So what we see smart companies doing is looking at that industry and saying, what are those three to five major issues? And let's create a point of view and let's bring some insights because they're impacting everybody and do that proactively. So in many ways, they're creating their own think tanks, right?

That they're bringing to their customers around their industry, and that's gaining mind share in unusually strong ways. Because again, customers are hungry for, tell me what's going on in my industry and what are other companies doing about it. Does that make sense?

Phil Squire: Yeah, no, it, it really makes sense. And so I think you're talking about a particular framework that's being applied to the different divisions, which you've started to describe.

Um, but the application of the framework would differ according to different, uh, kind of, um, uh, divisions. And through that process of. Collaboration. Um. That you have seen marketing and sales working much more closely together than in completely separate silos. So the key is the framework in a sense. It's the framework, the language to the way in which sales and marketing work together.

Phil Styrlund: Yeah. To, and that's where marketing can become kind of that industry think tank. Yeah. That you can then bring to create these narratives, which I mentioned earlier. Yeah. That they have to be specific and relevant, not generalized. Yeah. And ethereal. Yeah. And the second practice that I've seen the best do differently is to really get marketing to help prioritize customers.

What we see smart companies do doing is not asking how do we close this deal, but a higher order question, is this customer worthy of our investment? Yeah. Yeah. And one of our customers has kind of codified their. Their customers into three buckets. Number one is transformational customers. These are customers that are so much more than just trying to gain revenue.

They want to overinvest in these customers because they're the best and brightest in their industry segment, and you get better and smarter by working with them. Yeah, so those are the transformationals in the middle are the, are the transitionals. These are customers that are looking for insights from you.

The supplier looking for roadmaps, looking for value, and will pay for it. They're looking for direction. And then the third archetype is what we all know as the transactionals It doesn't matter what you bring to them, they really don't care. It's just about price, and they'll always be there. But marketing can really help prioritize and bring some higher level thinking, because what we see is that depth beats width, going deeper with more relevant customers.

Beats trying to solve world hunger for everybody. Not all customers are created equal, and not all customers, as one of our clients said, are investment worthy. I love that word.

Phil Squire: Yeah. I mean, one of the, uh, just to sort of add to the conversation here, but one of the, um, I'm sure you've experienced as well, conversations that we often hear with salespeople is that they, they're quite critical of the quality of opportunity that's been generated.

By, by marketing. Um, and um, I have heard a group of them talking the other day about the fact it's, you know, some of it's to do with KPIs. You know, the k the, the marketing department is simply KPId on how many perhaps leads that can be generated. There's not real, there's no real, it's quite transactional actually, when you start to look at your three different, uh, types and, and so there's, there's no real motivation for them.

To, to actually get a sort of a higher level of thinking into the way in which they start to really create messages that, that are relevant to your point earlier on. Mm-hmm. With the result being that yes, they've hit all their KPIs because of leads generated, but the sales team don't accept the leads because they know that the, the leads that are being created are, are completely.

Irrelevant. Exactly. They can't conversation. Exactly.

Shakeel: Yeah. No, absolutely. I mean, there's, there's a, there's not, it's not a simple answer to this, but if you layered onto the KPI of generating leads Yeah. And say for each lead we generate, here's our relevance hypothesis on how you might have a conversation in the first 15, 30 seconds.

That is a high likelihood of you being able to move the conversation forward. Now we're talking right. So, yeah, don't, just don't disregard the KPI and the lead because Yeah. That, that's a starting point. Yeah. But layer in something into that, uh, with that lead that allows you to have a relevant conversation out of the gate.

Yeah. Because maybe there is value there, but if a salesperson comes at it from their perspective Yeah. They may not be saying the right things upfront. Yeah. Yeah. And they may not have the knowledge about the customer upfront. Yeah. And they may ask questions that they should already know the answer to.

If in the lead discovery process they got additional insights that helped create a relevant conversation at the beginning. Yeah.

Phil Squire: I mean, do you think that one of the biggest challenges that salespeople are facing in the market today is one of kind of generating new opportunities? You know, is, is the market tough out there and therefore.

They, they really do need marketing to step up. Is that, is that part of what you are observing or, or not?

Phil Styrlund: Yeah. I think they need marketing again to bring them the narratives and the use cases that are more provocative. Because in many cases, the greatest competition is status quo of a customer doing nothing right now because they're paralyzed by complexity.

Yeah, okay. Yeah. What's that new word? BANI Isn't that the new word for vuca, right? Yes, that's

Phil Squire: right. I've forgotten what they stand

for, but I was told the other, day I think it's brittle. Brittle, anxious, non-linear and incomprehensible is the new. VUCA Well, things have become so incomprehensible that it has paralyzed many customers.

Phil Styrlund: And they're just choosing o often to do nothing. And this is where marketing can help you, help sales be more structurally provocative of here's the art of the possible and here's what others are doing. And Show them how to do it.

Shakeel: Yeah. I was gonna say there's, there's, there's, uh, to simplify it one more time is that it's back to that AI conversation.

The quick and easy purchases will be automated. They're easy, they're no problem. They'll get done. They're not gonna create any issues. Let's imagine that, let's say that 60% of the transactions of, of, uh, renewables that a company needs, are those right. But then there's the others which are much more complex.

Yeah. Those decisions are getting increasingly complex. And what we're seeing from the, uh, like we're not helping salespeople that are involved in simple sales processes We're working with salespeople that are involved in complex sales processes Yeah, yeah. What we're seeing from the buyer side on those big complex purchases, and it may not be a dollar driven thing, it just may be on, on another risk level.

That there is required much more internal consensus on buying. Yeah,

Phil Styrlund: yeah, yeah.

Shakeel: Right. And so what that means is that salespeople have to get better and better on consensus selling inside their customer organizations. In order for them to do that, uh, they have to meet and talk to more people inside the customer organizations.

That's hard to do, right? Yeah. And so marketing can help them. They can help them by saying, Hey, here is what you know, uh. Chief, um, medical officers care about an organization here is what, uh, the head of a pharmacy might care of in a healthcare organization.

Phil Styrlund: Yeah.

Shakeel: Here's what your head of manufacturing an industrial organization might care about.

And so feeding them those ideas Yeah. To help them have a more relevant conversation faster, I think is the way of helping them build this relevance across the spectrum of stakeholders in the customer buying organization.

Phil Squire: And dc I mean, uh, there's the, the term sort of account based marketing as well.

Mm-hmm. We could talk about. Because you've got, on the one hand, you've got the generic, what suits an industry type of framework, uh, which we talked about early on with the 3M example. But on the other hand, you've got the very specific account-based marketing that's very company focused. And each individual, like you were saying, within the consensus making, decision making process, are individuals in their own right.

They've got their yes. How do you get to the, you know, that's

Shakeel: exactly it. The more we can empower the, the empower and enable the, the account manager to have more conversations inside an organization. Yeah. Gather the insights from the individual people, as you described. Right. Take those insights back into a marketing organization that's interested in hearing about it.

Yeah. But will not only just hear about it, we'll take some, do something with that. Insight and turn it back into something that then sales can go back to whatever relevant stakeholder A, B, or C with a story that's connected to the last conversation they had with them. Yeah. That is the essence of what we're talking about.

Phil Styrlund: Yeah. The

Shakeel: customer organization is the market. And the individual buyers in the organization or decision makers in the organization are the customers. Yeah. And we have to be more relevant in the value story we tell to each of those individual people who each have a set of common care abouts and a set of unique care abouts.

Same thing.

Phil Styrlund: And Phil, you've hit on a really important thing on account-based marketing and taking all of these, these macro disciplines that we're talking about and bringing 'em down to an account level. And we see when it comes to account based marketing. When marketing does these things well, it really makes a difference.

Number one, what are the major care abouts of that account? Yeah. Not at a, not at an ethereal level, at a precise level, specific. Number two, how do we trigger engagement? And with who, as Shakeel has said, it's now selling into a committee, a buyer's, not just a buyer. Third is to create content journeys, specific buyer journeys, and four is to create micro campaigns for that account.

So it's taking all the macro now and bringing it down to these very specific campaigns.

Phil Squire: Yeah. And then

Phil Styrlund: Right. Are seeing some unusual returns.

Phil Squire: I mean, it may, it makes sense. I mean, you've got the 80 20 rule where 80% of the business is coming from 20% of your clients, you know, which, which I think, uh, so that kind of makes sense.

80% of your markets coming from existing accounts and they are your market. You know, they're such an important source of, uh, sort of opportunity, and we all know that it's much easier to sell new stuff to new things, solutions to existing customers than, you know, to go for the net. Net new, you know, from completely uncharted kind of territory.

Um, and there's been some very interesting research done on the ability to sort of manage relationships in a, in a, in a much more structured, um, structured way. But it's not an easy problem to solve. It's not right. With some companies, you've got very complex solutions almost, you know, it's almost, it's opportunity driven.

You know, you've got different stakeholders for the different types of opportunities that you could, so you've got, um, you know, global customers, you've got people in the decision making process all over the world, you'll never get to see them. Yeah. Because, you know, they're located in, in different territories.

Phil Styrlund: Right.

Phil Squire: Um, so this is, I think, where marketing can really help sale. It becomes an extension, you know, of the sales team. But like you were saying earlier, marketing, sort of driving the, you know, the feel, the tone, the insights, you know, providing that kind of incremental support to the sales process. Um, so yeah, I mean this is, this is, uh, I think how we're saying it as well,

Shakeel: it's, we have to remember that language of co-creation, that we spend so much time teaching salespeople how to do with their customers.

Yeah. We have to bring that culture of co-creation inside the organization. Correct. With marketing and sales. We know based on past behavior marketing comes out with something, the first thing sales is gonna say is, oh, here we go again. That's not gonna be relevant. Yeah.

Phil Styrlund: Yeah.

Shakeel: That's

Phil Styrlund: right. And

Shakeel: every time that sales comes up with a customer insight that's an obstacle, marketing will go, oh, there they go again.

Complaining about how the thing we did for them is the working. It's just an excuse. Yeah. The only way to overcome that is to start working collaboratively from the beginning to define the problem together.

Phil Styrlund: Yeah. Then

Shakeel: we're both solving the same problem. So I, I think that's a human nature thing, but absolutely requires a really confident, uh, competent both marketing leader and sales leader to practice that kind of collaboration at the highest levels first.

Phil Styrlund: And what's fun, Phil, is when we're working with clients, when you can't tell who the salespeople are and who the marketing people are, you know, they're doing something right. Yeah. When you literally, they're talking the same language. And that's rare, by the way. But that's when it's fun when you really, I've seen

Shakeel: it.

I've seen it when we, when we go into a training room and we're getting to know all the people, and I've been in the room where there's a marketing person in the room, or maybe two of them. And I don't find out until later based on looking at their title, that they were actually not a sales person or a marketing person.

I have that same epiphany, Phil. They're doing something right.

Phil Styrlund: Exactly. Exactly.

Phil Squire: Can I just come back to some of the questions we looked at, just to check that we've got, we've covered off, uh. Big question. So I think we've, we've talked about how se sellers and marketers can practically work together. We've talked about, you know, the frameworks and I think we've talked about account based marketing.

I mean, that's obviously, you know, part of the account planning process should be marketing, you know, I guess in, in those kind of conversations as, as well as of course as, as, as you advocate the customer being involved, um. Third box thinking is something that of course, you know, have originated from your thought framework, Phil.

And we, as you know, we love it as well. Um, how do you think third box thinking is gonna help marketing? You know, is that one of the frameworks you were talking about?

Phil Styrlund: Well, I, it is. It's the central framework. That reverses the polarity of the thinking that Shakeel started Yeah. At the, at the beginning of this conversation.

So for those who don't know, third box thinking, here it is in five seconds. Yeah. Three box. Box. One is you the supplier. Box two is your customer Box three is their customer. Yeah. Okay. Nothing mystical. Yeah. Where the magic lies is starting in the third box and thinking backwards. Yeah. And asking why does their customer do business with your customer?

What's the value proposition and how can you elevate your customer's ability to serve their customer? That's where the magic begins, and that's where the clarity gets shifted back to what you feel started the discussion with at the beginning of this podcast. Yeah. So it's what makes it real. And I know it sounds simple, but once you get that into your mindset Yeah.

And once you get that into your culture, it changes everything. Yeah. And here's the beauty of

Shakeel: the model. The beauty of the model is three boxes doesn't have to be three boxes, right? Yeah, exactly. You, you insert boxes to increase the understanding of the players and the value chain. Yeah. And the, the most beautiful thing that happened, and Phil and I were together with this client, is we did one session where marketing was actually the first box.

Exactly. Okay. And sales is the box next. The customer that they both serve together is the third box, and then you layer in a fourth box, which is the end customer.

Phil Styrlund: Yep.

Shakeel: Now you're getting marketing on literally aligned. Yeah. Yeah. In the same line. And you're starting at the end, customer working backwards, including what a sales care about to marketing, say, what do we bring to the whole equation?

That's a very, really quick, easy, simple, magical, with the right kind of spirit and, and tone and respect in the conversation of getting people along the same path.

Phil Squire: I, I think one final thing to cover, perhaps before we finish this podcast, we can always have another one, I'm sure, but is that, you know, I found it quite interesting since doing the doctorate film.

I'm sure you did as well. When you start to look at, um, you know, um. The relationship, um, I suppose even at board level, uh, between marketing and sales and, and, um. And you know, what's more important, you know, is, is, is, is sales a subset of marketing or is marketing a subset of sales? Yeah. And uh, and cer certainly at an academic level, you know, you've got this huge volume of research driven out of marketing and, you know, a couple of very small journals that focus on sales.

Um, so this. I think what we've talked about is, is that sales and marketing need to work hand in hand. You know, it's not

Phil Styrlund: that

Phil Squire: one is more than the other. I just, uh, I just wondered, uh. You know what you'd like to comment on what I've just shared with you. Maybe it's different in America, but uh, it's not

Phil Styrlund: because human nature has no borders.

Okay. Okay. And human nature's the same everywhere. And I go back to what Shakeel opened up with. Yeah. The, the challenge of marketing right now is reversing the mindset that has built marketing for the last 50 years.

Phil Squire: Yeah.

Phil Styrlund: And speaking of quotations, you know, one of my favorite quotations is one that says, until you understand life is not about you, it'll never make sense.

Okay? Yeah. That's not only a good personal ethos, but it's also a good sales and marketing ethos. It's not about you, it's about what your customer sees. And as you know, our company's built on five words. Them us fit proof next. Yeah. The problem is most companies start with us instead of them.

Phil Squire: Yeah. Yeah.

And

Phil Styrlund: marketing needs to be the keeper and getting people off the US bus and making sure they're on the them bus first. And it sounds so simple, but it is so rare.

Shakeel: Yeah. I'm gonna lay Alex. Years ago, years ago, I worked in a company where there was this battle about who led sales did sales lead. 'cause they're close to the customer does the marketing lead because, uh, they've got the budget first of all, and they drive the messaging for the entire company.

Yeah. And then we had a professor of strategic marketing brought in, um, uh, and that professor of strategic marketing was actually brought in by a senior VP of sales. Okay. The senior VP of sales broadened this professor of marketing. Yeah, it was interesting. It was really interesting. It was also personal relationship stuff that was involved.

Like good, like they, they trusted each other. Yeah. But this VP of this, this professor of strategic marketing came in and right on day one he put, uh, a copy of the brand new book he just published on the desk of each person that it was in that planning session, right in the title of the book, marketing Driven.

It's Marketing led. Sales driven? Yes. Professor a j Ccy. Okay. Marketing led, sales driven. That senior VP of sales that invited this professor in. Can you imagine how he felt in that moment?

Phil Squire: Yeah.

Shakeel: And but what the beauty is, is that if you have a culture where that is marketing led, it it fine. Don't change that.

Yeah. Yeah. If you have a culture that is driven by sales, fine. Let's understand that. That why it's sales driven, because of insights from the market or whatever the reason may be. But here's the beauty of linking something we've all learned about in our own leadership careers.

Phil Squire: Yes.

Shakeel: Marketing may lead.

Phil Squire: Yeah. But

Shakeel: is it servant leadership?

Phil Squire: Yeah.

Shakeel: If you're leading, no problem. Yeah. But lead with an approach that's a servant leader, we're gonna have no issues because that is the type of leadership we're talking about.

Phil Styrlund: And I think the title to that book. Is probably the best, the best answer to your question, excuse me, the smoke alarm just went off.

Uh, is is the best answer to your question. Marketing led and sales driven. It's not an either or. It's a both and

Phil Squire: Yeah. Yeah. That's great. Well, I'm very glad we finished off on that because I think it's sort of a, it's a very good sort of summary of the. Perhaps potential disconnects between sales and marketing, but, but actually the importance of them both working together.

So, um, uh, unless there's anything else that we haven't covered, Phil Shakeel, it's been a wonderful conversation with you both

Phil Styrlund: enjoyed

Phil Squire: it over the last hour.

Phil Styrlund: Thank you, Phil. I'm gonna disclose with, uh, actually a piece that came from a client. Recent, uh, RFP that we responded to Yeah. That we'll be working with.

And I think, and they had four bullets on their first slide. Yeah. And this, and I think this is an example of higher order thinking. And it said, the way we think is, number one, sales and marketing co diagnose customer priorities, number one. Right. Number two, we co-create insight, insight led messaging.

Phil Squire: Right.

Phil Styrlund: Number three, we co orchestrate customer engagement and number four, we cosu customer impact. And that's, that's, I think there's a four beautiful, concise kind of summary bullets. Yeah. That align with that. Them us fit proof. Yeah. Now they get, that's an example of somebody who really gets it.

Phil Squire: Yeah.

Brilliant. Thank you. ​