Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:03 Welcome to the culture of things podcast with Brendan Rodgers. This is a podcast where we call culture leadership, teamwork. Hello everybody. I'm Brendan Rogers, the host of the culture things podcast. This is episode 29 today. I'm talking with Peter Strohkorb. Peter is the owner and director of Peter Strohkorb advisory. After 20 plus years in the corporate sector, working for companies like Sony, 3m cannon, computer sciences corporation, and Dell, Peter wanted a change. He had experienced a number of mistakes that small, medium and large businesses make when trying to accelerate their sales results. So he set himself a task to develop and offer solutions to remedy these mistakes. Hence he founded his advisory service specializing in sales, acceleration, and smarketing for the tech it and services sector in Australia, USA, Asia, Pacific and Europe. Peter has developed a structured sales and marketing productivity framework to help your sales and marketing resources work together more effectively. This approach drive sales, revenue growth enhances your customer experience and lifts employee engagement. Peter is the author of two books. The one team method, how to boost big business and smarketing sell smarter, not harder. He's a non executive director sitting on several company advisory boards and is a graduate from the Macquarie graduate school of management and Australian Institute of company directors. The focus of our conversation today is marketing, how sales and marketing must collaborate and work as a team to achieve success. Peter, welcome to the culture things podcast.
Speaker 0 00:01:53 Let's dive straight into this IO. This is a really, for me, an interesting topic because we've talked a lot about culture and teamwork and performance on the culture of things, podcasts. That's the nature of what we talk about, but this is taking a slightly different slant on things we're talking that, but in relation to sales and marketing, working together as a team. So how about just to start, give us a bit of an overview of your journey in this corporate sector, and what's brought you to where you are today and really what drove you to love this sort of sales and marketing sector.
Speaker 1 00:02:25 Look, thanks Brendan. And thanks for the great intro as well. You've basically said everything. I look just to answer your question. The, um, as I said, I've spent 20 years in the corporate sector working for some very large organizations and it just bugs me that no matter where I went, there was a real disconnect between the sales team and the marketing team. And one of my clients gave me this line that he said that there's a disconnect between sales and marketing and the larger the organization, the larger the gap. And it's really true once they become big and they have a separate team of marketers versus separate team of sales people in South liters, it's just phenomenal how they stopped to each other. So what I did was I thought this is such a common problem. There must be a common solution to it. And I spent actually quite a few months, like six months researching online, whether there's any, um, any specific structured programs to resolve the situation.
Speaker 1 00:03:15 And I found none. Then I've reached out to Neil. <inaudible> the of spin selling this guy back to last century now, but he's still around in Austin because he's such a seasoned professional in that spice. And the, he said, no, most people just have the CEO say, guys, just work it out just to collaborate better, you know, but there's no structured program. And so I felt that because this is such a ubiquitous problem that I need to create a structured program for that's, that's how I developed the, a, the smarketing and the wanting methods programs. And I made it the, um, the subject of my first and second book,
Speaker 0 00:03:53 I guess what I just want to point out there is so many people we come across these problems, you know, you saw this problem in sales and marketing and the disconnect, the silos, I guess we could say, and as the organization got bigger, it got worse, but what was it for you that, you know, a lot of people will see things, but they won't actually do anything about it. They'll just maybe complain a little bit more, you've taken some actions. So there must be something around sales and marketing that you really know is driving that passion to actually resolve this issue. And for you to add value to organizations in this area.
Speaker 1 00:04:23 Yeah. Well, Brenda, it's simple. It's because I lived through it during my training years. I, um, I spent time as a, as a sales leader and as a marketing leader and it was terrible how I was on the sales side, how marketing couldn't really support our objectives. And didn't really give us the tools that we needed to be successful yet. When I was in marketing, we tried really hard to give the townspeople what they needed, but they just didn't care really because I had most, so much faith prior to me coming on board as a marketer in marketing, they just thought, Oh, we'll do it ourselves. Thanks very much. And so this really created a terrible environment of an atmosphere of finger pointing and blame shifting that that was really destructive to the culture of the organization. That's really what I'm trying to remedy the impact that it has on people and on the performance of businesses.
Speaker 0 00:05:11 I bet you now tell us this term smarketing, which you've trademarked. So sales and marketing coming together and working as a team, what is smarketing?
Speaker 1 00:05:20 Well, it's basically bringing the two disciplines back together again, to help them collaborate for mutual benefit. And our talk about that. Everybody wins. If sales that's marketing now, what they need to perform better from them. Then marketing can make a much better informed decision in terms of what collateral, what product, what media, what events to provide that actually help sales to connect with that target audience. At the same time that material gets shared between sales and the customer and sales gets immediate feedback from the customer in terms of what they like, what they don't like. So why wouldn't they feed it back to marketing and saying, look, this is what the customer liked about this cost or this white paper. And then marketing again, can make a much better informed decision in terms of how just food sales equally marketing does market research and customer surveys. And then it should feed back that feedback back to sales as well. So that sales can have a better sales and guidance, but that's the audience. And so what I say is that if marketing helps sales and sales helps marketing to do better, everybody wins marketing brings sales wins, and the customer wins because they get a much better and more consistent customer experience from both the sales side and the marketing side.
Speaker 0 00:06:37 But it makes perfect sense in what you're saying to me. Do you want to just define, I guess in the normal sense, how people, you know, what is sales and what is marketing and then how do you connect these two together to actually achieve what you've just spoken about?
Speaker 1 00:06:54 Yeah. I looked at that's a really good point. You're making there because a lot of people don't know the difference between sales and marketing. They call it marketing and that means sales and they call it <inaudible>. But to me, the reason I call it smarketing is that I actually don't like the idea of categorizing, but disciplines. And you've probably heard of the sales funnel, you know, where every stick leads into the top and then the leads get nurtured and they get handed over to sales and then from marketing itself and then sell and bonds them and closes the deal into the business. That is a linear process that just says it starts off with marketing and it gets handed over to sales and then sales brings home the bacon, right. But really in this day and age, and particularly since the advent of the buyer's journey, but with the internet, it should actually be a circular reference because what you want to do is that marketing creates the leads.
Speaker 1 00:07:45 Then they get a hand above the sales, but then after the, um, the deal is done, then marketing should nurture the client so that they get repeat business and they get referral business as well. So it should actually be a never ending circle of collaboration. I haven't, that's why I called it smarketing in the traditional sense, marketing understands the market, understands the products and services that we're offering, and then items to match the services to the market and puts the message out there so that the market understands that we exist in terms of if a customer is looking for a particular service that they can find us, but it should also help to support salespeople with the vital collateral and media to help them reach out to their ideal prospects. So proactively and engage them in that in a business conversation. Whereas it's not up to marketing to then close the transaction, that's up to sales. So in the traditional sense, marketing should prepare the ground for the salespeople to then succeed them. And I say that marketing really exists to create an environment where sales can occur.
Speaker 0 00:08:48 You're a pretty logical guy and every time we speak, I yet Peter is pretty logical. And what you've just explained to me in my mind, very logical. So the question that comes out is why wouldn't people do what you're saying, bring sales and marketing together.
Speaker 1 00:09:02 That's another really good question. And it comes down to not logic, but people. And what I mean by that is that there's a real inertia and a lot of businesses. And particularly in large business, that's basically based on the seven, most dangerous words in business. And the seven most dangerous words in business are we have always done it this way. And you know, it's very hard to change an organization once they used to pray that they conduct themselves. So when I reach out to salespeople and say, I'd like to help you work better with marketing, like I might come to the end of the month coming up, or the end of the quarter, I don't have time to talk to marketing. You talk to marketing, right? And then when I talk to marketing people, they go, Oh no, no, everything's fine here. We're working really well with that itself.
Speaker 1 00:09:47 We already aligned. So there's nothing to see here. So there's a lot of denial out there. And the trick to overcome that denial, which I think is the crux of the question, is to help my customers see that they can do so much better if they stopped at the, in denial and actually started doing something. The key to that is that a help let themselves discover that they can do that. I don't go to them and say, look, we've got a problem. Let me help you fix it. Or it was, let me show you what you need to do. People get their backs up, right. Then they go on out. Here's the sky from outside. My business tells me how to run my business. What would he not? So if I can help you to go on a journey of discovery and find out how you can do better yourself and actually help you make it, your idea, then that helps everybody. And that's why I've created this multi-step program that they should be leads with with a bit of self discovery. First,
Speaker 0 00:10:43 When you hear these words that you mentioned, we have always done it this way. What do you do? Do you run the other way, or do you like tackle this head on and what do you do about it? Where does that self discovery process start?
Speaker 1 00:10:55 You rely on an individual either on the South side or on the marketing side to drive organizational change, behavioral change and even cultural change, you know, on a bit of a hiding to nowhere where do sales and marketing come together is where we pulled up to. So if you have a combined head of sales and marketing, which is something that I advocate and over the machines, because then you have one person that understands both well, hopefully understands both disciplines and has a, an interest at heart to happen, but more collaboratively. Then did you talk to the head of sales and marketing? But if there's a separate head of sales, say a national sales manager or a CRO or a sales director and the head of marketing, then they would both report into this, either the CEO or the CEO, and really wherever they come together, whether it's the CEO or the head of sales and marketing, they need to make a decision that they want to do better. You know, I can lead the host of water. I can't make them drink. That's where I am then for them to have a bit of a self discovery so they can go, wow, I didn't know that we can actually do much better. These will be the positive business outcomes if we do that. And here's how we can go about it. And by the way, it was my idea. So I'm looking good. Now
Speaker 0 00:12:07 It's a good point. And that self discovery, again, just tapping into that, I understand what you're saying about going to the connecting point. You know, whether that's a CEO where there's a sales and marketing manager, director, whatever, what process do you follow or line of questioning to really get them moving on that self discovery process? Because it's really, again, you referred to the word change, it's a real change management and a really change of mindset. Like I said, going back to a question we've always done it this way. That's a real challenge to do it. So can you talk us through a little bit about how that works for you and what you do to start that change of mindset?
Speaker 1 00:12:44 Yeah, absolutely. And actually I avoid the word change when I talk about smarketing, I'm just mentioning it to you because it's just the two of us. Yeah,
Speaker 0 00:12:53 I think so.
Speaker 1 00:12:56 I talk about how can you do better? How can you miss sales performance? How can you marketing performance and how, how can you adjust the customer experience as well? So you've got to bring it back to some quite practical things that you can do. And what could you look at in an organization so that you could say, duh, why aren't we doing that already? And for that purpose, and again, talking about the self discovery, I've actually got a free smarketing checklist. That's available on my website. If you look at the smarketing tablet, Peter struggle.com and scroll about halfway through, and then there'll be the marketing test that you can do just by yourself for yourself, without me free of charge. You don't need to leave your email address or anything there. And it asks you a few simple questions and you just answered them to the estimator and you get your smarketing school, like encourage any one of your listeners to go to Peter startup.com forward slash smarketing.
Speaker 1 00:13:46 And to have a look at this test and the questions that it asks for example, are, is it easy for the Salesforce to find specific marketing collateral? Yes or no, or marketing has a good understanding of what marketing material is being used by the high performing sales people and how they use it. Marketing insight into the sales forecast, marketing consults with sales and the creation and management of sales lead generation campaigns. Yes or no. So I'm just asking some very simple questions about, are you doing this correctly? And the outcome I'm looking for is that we're not doing that currently, but it makes sense. Why aren't we doing it? And so I want them to have this as a kid holding itself discovery, where they go, what else did I know? What else should I move out for? Oh, that's us Peter. That's the trick then for them to be their idea, to want to know more, as I said before, I can lead the horse to water, but they've got a drink and I can't go and say, you're doing everything wrong.
Speaker 1 00:14:46 Let me show you how to do it. That just doesn't work. I need to take these baby steps, introduce them to the subject of cyber. Why should I even be interested? What's in it for me, what's the outcome. And the outcome is that personally, the business will improve your sales and increase your profits will go up and it'll be a much nicer working environment because everybody collaborates instead of pointing the finger. But also if it was my idea that I'm improving the business, it makes me look good personally. So there's something good for the organization, as well as something in it for me as a person and as an employee,
Speaker 0 00:15:18 I want to stick on this self-discovery side, but I want to point the finger at you a little bit. You mentioned earlier that, you know, you've been sales and marketing. You've got enormous experience in that space. And that says that like any of us, we've all screwed up a bit. So in your own journey of self discovery, and what's brought you to putting smarketing and the one team method together, tell us a bit about your own screw ups.
Speaker 1 00:15:38 A brighter. I started when I met the marketing team of a very large multinational organization in the tech sector, we thought we wanted to work more collaboratively with the Salesforce and the Salesforce were on one level in this high rise building. And the marketing team is on another level. So the problem was that we wouldn't even meet in the hallway. You know, we were actually separated through physical distance city. So we wanted to come up. We as a Tate, as a marketing team, we want you to come up with a way that they could better interact with marketing. And we started out with a bit of ideation, what is, how could we go about it? And because he wants to make it a team exercise, we said, okay, let's work together as a team on a mind map, just to put all the aspects and perspectives into one picture that we could then turn around and address.
Speaker 1 00:16:26 And we created this mind map and it was pretty large because, you know, we got lots of input from lots of different people and the bubbles for them. And do you know what a mind map looks like, right? That's the central theme in the middle. And then you have the supporting things on the outside and then the sub themes again. And so it blows out from one big bubble in the middle to emphasize smaller bubbles. The further out you go. And we took this to the sales team, to themselves, the leaders, and who said, Oh, great. Do you want to collaborate better with sales? That's great. But then when they showed it to their reports, so the sales leader showed it to the sales reps. The vests were uninitiated. That was a mistake. We didn't actually introduce them to the journey, but just showed them what we have done and what they did was this. I was quite offended at the time, but now I can laugh about it. They said that this looks like a whole bunch of sperm and you know, and we were so just hot. And because we put a heart and soul into this thing saying, we really want to help you. Now here's us putting ourselves on a map. And, uh, gosh, you know, like I said, I can laugh about it. Now at the time I was pretty horrified.
Speaker 0 00:17:35 What was your learning you took from that mate on reflection?
Speaker 1 00:17:38 Well, don't rely on, on any leader to introduce the subject on their own, to their reports, American part of the program, that there is an introduction into what they're doing, why they're doing it, what's in it for you and what are the steps? So don't just say, can you show this to you guys and tell us what they think. If you want to stop doing things the way we've always done it, then you've got to say, bye. And you've got to promise them, benefit that once they get through that exercise, through that journey, that they're relax. You be a better outcome at the end of it. And it's the same thing that they need. Change management. If you get a new CRM system, people will be reluctant to use it. If it's imposed on them, whereas produced as a tool, that's not going to be a big brother to the sales reps, but they'll actually be a sell support tool. Then they'll embrace it. If they feel like it's going to make them redundant, because all of my secrets and all my conversations and all my contractors will be in the CRM or not. If I leave the brushing and I can't contact them with me or they will stay there, then I'll be more inclined to say, look, I'm not telling you anything because that's my IP. And that's my job security. So unless you tell people why they should do it and what's in it for them before you do it, it's not gonna happen.
Speaker 0 00:18:53 I think that leads nicely into our next section. We want to really talk about, which is teamwork, collaboration around sales and marketing, smarketing, the benefits and the rewards. Like why is this so important to you that this is how things look in the sales and marketing area?
Speaker 1 00:19:10 Yeah, of course there's probably six or seven points that make it, make it worthwhile. And they are, if you get people working together collaboratively, then that creates a much nice and work environment for everybody to thrive. I'd rather work in an environment where people are trying to help me and where people are trying to point the finger at the headline with that. Then you'd get a much higher caliber of staff joining the organization because the high performance have a choice of employer. They will go where they can actually shine the most and they can maybe make the most money or they can be the most successful. And of course, in a collaborative environment, they got to be more successful than the one that's more finger pointing. So a more collaborative work environment will actually attract a higher caliber of stuff with that. Then you get higher productivity and less waste.
Speaker 1 00:19:58 It's high productivity, the spliced and high caliber stuff. You get a better customer experience because the people that talk to the customers will be ones that can deliver the benefits and are competent at dealing with customers. Then the technology, I mentioned CRM, but it could be marketing automation systems. It could be a content repository could be whatever system will also work better because people actually using it and are happy to use it and are using it in the right way. So you get a better ROI on your technology as well. And last, not least the sum of all these efforts should be that you have more sales, higher revenue and non profits as well, which you can then reinvest into higher caliber staff and Bennett technology. So it's actually a virtual circle of collaboration there
Speaker 0 00:20:49 Really good points. And again, the whole teamwork emphasis on that first point, you say about working together a nice environment leads to better quality people attracting higher talent. Just so much of it starts with the people, whether it's sales and marketing smarketing or whether it's it's anything to be fair in business. It, it really is implanted through the people process. Isn't it?
Speaker 1 00:21:10 Yeah. Look in my, I talk about this in my book, actually in both books, I talk about the productivity Trinity of people, process and technology, but I draw a sort of a Venn diagram, but three bubbles are not the same size. My largest bubble is the people side and then the process, and then the technology, because if you start with the people element and get them onto the same page, get them to agree that this is worth going through the rest will be so much easier. And I've worked for, um, North American companies and for Japanese companies and divide that they bring change into an organization as possibly different the American steward by a top down approach. So somebody at head office decides that this change is happening and then push it through the organization. And they had sold out the resistance and everything else as they go along. Whereas the Japanese do it the other way round, right? Seek consensus first and then implement. So there's pros and cons to both in the Western system. The decision gets made very quickly, but the implementation takes a long time. Whereas in the Eastern system, the decision takes a long time to be made. But then the internal passion is really smooth because everybody's already on board.
Speaker 0 00:22:24 I understand that there may be pros and cons of each one, but where does the balance sit? If you're in the Western side of the world, then you know, that sort of top down approach, you can do that, but people don't always follow in those foods when that happens too much. But then the other way, if you're driving consensus all the time, sometimes things don't get done. So where does the balance it?
Speaker 1 00:22:44 Yeah. And look, it's definitely cultural as you say, but the balance probably sits somewhere in the middle, particularly with Western organizations because let's face it. We don't like to be told to do, you will accept this or else. Well, that's, you know, that's going to drive consensus, isn't it? So you should, as I said before, it's used the reason for the change and paint a vision off the future after the changes has happened, obviously that the vision must be an improvement on the status quo and what we have today, so that people know, okay, I'm going through a bit of pain. I'm going through a bit of challenge, but I'll actually be better off having gone through it. And therefore it's worth investing my time and effort into making the change happen. You gotta bring people on board first, before you make the change. It doesn't work if you impose it on them.
Speaker 0 00:23:31 How about you? Tell us again, you, you spend a fair bit of time in this game. Maybe you can give us one or two success stories, just so people can relate to actually, this is how it works in real life, in our operation. Then the outcomes
Speaker 1 00:23:43 I'll give you two examples. One from my SMA startup and another one from my national corporate organization. So the SME startup was basically when I met them was two years old. I work in the energy advisory sector and they had geographically displaced sales and marketing teams so that the marketing team was in Brisbane. The sales team was in Sydney and they had very little alignment between the two and very low respect between the two, because Sydney would say, well, we'll put the people in Brisbane and Brisbane tried to tell them the Sydney people that they could charge a at higher prices in Sydney for the services that this company was offering. And as a result of that, the, the sales targets weren't met and the startup investors were getting a bit antsy. So they had wonderful disenchanted investors. They're actually getting quite nervous about the investment in this company that I'd seen for the terms that they were looking for up to six weeks of working with the, with the CEO and with the sales and marketing teams.
Speaker 1 00:24:46 This is how the CEO described the situation. Often I'm quoting his exact words. He said, thanks to your method. We were able to improve our margins, move into a higher customer segment and record the same amount of sales revenue in two weeks that had previously taken us six months to generate. So they made more money in two weeks than I did in six months, simply because the two teams were working together more effectively. And the reason that they made more in two weeks than in six months, plus they've got the largest deal ever right after the intervention right after they went through my method. And it wasn't a big deal in Sydney. And they were charging the high prices that Brisbane had always demanded that I do, and they got the deal. And that was the largest deal in the history at that time. And it was more than I had generated the previous six months that goes to show that the problem exists in smaller organizations as well.
Speaker 1 00:25:40 And that the method works in SMEs. Just as much as, as multinationals. Speaking of which I'll talk about this other company. Now this, this is a, a a half a billion dollar Australian energy company. So just coincidentally that they're both in the energy sector, it's got nothing to do with the method, their lodge. So they had a separate sales team and a separate marketing team, a Salesforce that goes both B to B and B to C. And I had a call center in Tasmania that was completely disengaged from the mainland, but I felt like there were other cousins that were engaged in a weekly phone call, but it was all one way you will do this and you will do that. So I had breakfast with the CEO of this company cause I was introduced to him and he said to me over breakfast, he said, Peter, that's something I miss between myself and marketing teams.
Speaker 1 00:26:29 I don't know. I can't quite put my finger on it, but they're not working together really well. And so she said, can you have a look at it? So the support of the seeing, Oh, I brought the sales and marketing leaders onto the journey. We did the self discovery. So we started off with this marketing test and we did a, what I call a three 60 degree review. And that involves looking at what the sales think of marketing. What does marketing thinks of sales and how does it reflect on the customers? What do the customers think of what they see on the red side versus what they hear from my brick? So this is why I called it three 60 degrees in the real sense, because it now involves yourself, your marketing teams and your customers. Because if you don't take the pulse of the customer, then listen to the voice of the customers.
Speaker 1 00:27:18 You're already getting an internal picture. You don't really get the real sentiment at the point of where it matters. And I meet with the customer. So that's where the OneTeam method is very different. It's not just looking at an intro or organizational perspective. It actually takes a holistic perspective in terms of like the customer Vonage, the whole ecosystem. After that, the CEO decided at my recommendation that they would hire a combined head of sales and marketing. So the person that would lead up by disciplines, the trick was of course, to find somebody who is competent in both sales and marketing. Because if you get a total sales leader and put marketing under them, they will think that marketing is only good for leads. Whereas if you have a market of running a sales team, then they will care more about the brand and about the sales results. So it needs to be somebody that actually is equally versed in both disciplines and understands and can talk to both parties. It took us a little while to find this person, but we can then hired this, this 90, who took over the management of both sales and marketing. We worked together for six months after six months, they had the best ever sales man that had more than guys saw happier customers. And this head of sales and marketing as recently been appointed the CEO of the entire organization.
Speaker 0 00:28:39 There's one thing that really stands out for me. I'm a passionate Queensland at that first example, it sounds like Queensland won the state of origin battle. Is that right?
Speaker 1 00:28:51 Well, it's true because they had to, they were not very well respected by the new South Wales, South by sales team. They wouldn't believe I said Nazi based too competitive. There's no way we can charge these prices on here, but by getting them to talk to each other in a combat with a fly and mutual understanding, I tried out and lo and behold it succeeded. So yes, it was like crazy winning the fight of origin, but also in a way, these involved one as well, that's the outcome that you want to achieve, that both parties gain, both parties feel like they're getting something better every day.
Speaker 0 00:29:29 The moral of the story is that even Queensland is in new South Wales, Sherman can work together really, really well. And as a team and achieve great outcomes.
Speaker 1 00:29:37 Yes. And I had actually not thought of it. This it's probably
Speaker 0 00:29:42 My sporting competitive nature coming in mate.
Speaker 1 00:29:46 Well next it will be the Bledisloe cup, I guess,
Speaker 0 00:29:50 Far away, far away, far away, but let's move on. How about you just give us a bit of an overview of the one team method, smarketing, a little bit of detail about what it's about.
Speaker 1 00:30:01 So it's, it's quite simple. You've got to start with baby steps to bring everybody on the same page. So we start off with this marketing self assessment test. And as I said, if you go to Peter struggle.com/marketing, you find the test there, it will ask you a set of questions. I think there's eight or 10 questions there and you answered number of yes or no. And it actually gives you your personal smarketing score. So this marketing score is a score out of a hundred points and it tells you how well you are aligned in terms of the sales and marketing efforts. The next thing then is to run this same test across a number of staff on both the sales and the marketing side and to compare who says what? Because it will be interesting, but if you say, but sales consultant marketing prior to setting sales targets, for example, is one of the questions, sales consults with marketing prior to setting sales targets.
Speaker 1 00:30:53 So you kind of say, well, that makes sense. How often does it happen if then marketing says, yes, we do that and sell, say, no, you go, why do you think you're not doing it? Or why do you think we're doing it when the other party is saying, you're not doing it, then that's a conversation starter because you want to get a wife from Peter sending us what to do to say, Hmm, why aren't we doing that? What's stopping us. And then as soon as it's talk about what's stopping us, he then told about, well, what can we do to stop stopping it? So three 60 degree view is really important to start the compensation internally. And then once you get the feedback from the customer side as well, it becomes a bit of a no brainer because you got well, it's the customers think of it that way.
Speaker 1 00:31:34 Then of course it makes total sense for us to chat. Or if the customers can see that it says one thing on the website. But then when I talk to a sales rep, I get a different story. That's really not an experience I'd like to have. I might exercise my rights and go somewhere else. If you can see that it impacts on the business, the customer moving away from us, because that had an inconsistent experience, simply because our sales and marketing teams are not working to talking to each other. That's a serious business impact. I don't want that in my business. So you do this three 60 degree review, maybe take the findings from the three 60 degree videos. So from the marketing side, from the South side and from the customer side, and by the way, it must not be just the heads of sales and marketing, but whose input you seek, it's the front line salespeople and the frontline marketing people that often have the greatest pain and also have the best ideas in terms of how to overcome it because that's what they're exposed to on a daily basis.
Speaker 1 00:32:33 So I find, I get a lot of value actually interviewing more junior people then sometimes interviewing the senior people. So after you've done that, you take the whole lot of information that you've gathered and you to everybody into a workshop. And I call it the cocreation workshop for obvious reasons, because if I've agreed to doing something it's, it's been created with me with my input, it actually becomes my solution, a solution that I contributed to, therefore I can support this, the implementation of the solution. And I know that if we do it right, everybody will benefit and I will benefit then my kind of possible benefit. I call it a co-creation workshop so that it's clear that we're working on a solution together. And we agree on what the solution should be because then in the Eastern culture, the implementation will be so much easier. Nobody will resist it because they've all contributed to it. So the co creation workshop doesn't need to be bigger than Ben hood. It can actually, you can work this thing out and probably missing a week. And then you decide to watch what you're going to do. Who's going to do it and by do it. So we use some project management principles to then lay out the plan in terms of how they're going to get the smock and anything on the road and implemented. And then of course in step through the implementation process,
Speaker 0 00:33:52 It actually sounds like to me, that some simple things that people could even just implement now or, or go through a process to start thinking about the sales and marketing process and how it's working or not working. And what they've got to do is just leading that in. Then I guess, getting to a close of this conversation today, what piece of advice would you give to leaders out there that have these issues? You know, sales and marketing is not quite working and not quite sure what to put their finger. What could they do? What can they take away mail to start to change things for the better
Speaker 1 00:34:24 I can buy, either one of my two books, the OneTeam method, or it's marketing sell smarter, not harder available@allgoodamazonstoresandalltheycangoanddothefiveminutesmarketingtestatpeterturner.com forward slash marketing. And I actually will offer them a free review session, a free discovery session online or face to face if they're not in Victoria, or if you travel up there by now, but seriously that they can go to the website, do the five minutes marketing test and then get a free discovery call with me to talk about how they could bring smarketing into their own fashion. And it's just a compensation it's just to tell them what's available to them, what the benefits are and what the process is to if I need to go through and how they can get started. And by the way, the three step process that I talked about earlier, and then we have the three 60 degree review, the kind of crash and workshop and the implementation.
Speaker 1 00:35:23 They don't have to buy into all that at once. We can just take baby steps and just through a little local review, just so they get some early indication of how big the problem is. And actually that reminds me the CEO of the, the larger energy. At the time, when I presented the findings of the three 60 degree, he actually said to me, I had no idea how bad it is. And then to his great credit, he said, the buck stops with me. We're going to fix this. But it was really an eye opener. He was, he was at the head of the Russian, but he had no idea how at the coalface, but the more junior ranks and how bad things were in terms of finger pointing or blame shifting into how they actively disliked each other on a personal level. And it was really poisoning the culture as organization. We had no visibility if that he had never done to that level before he'd never investigated that kind of attitude and that wasn't reliable. And I think it will be a huge eye opener for a lot of senior executives and CEOs.
Speaker 0 00:36:24 You've mentioned a number of times your website through this interview, and you've got some fantastic tools, as you've mentioned that the smarketing questionnaire is a great tool on your website. Lots of different things there. So people can go there. Is there any other ways that you would like people to get hold of you? If, if they want to have a chat,
Speaker 1 00:36:41 It's all on the website that had the contact me, but they just email me at <inaudible> dot com. That's available to them. They can go to my LinkedIn profile and connect with me. They can look at my webinars channels. I can book my, how do you do 64? I think articles set up on my LinkedIn profile as well. So that's, that's any number of lights that can get in touch with me. And I'm really welcomed with open arms. If they want to reach out
Speaker 0 00:37:06 You live and breathe, what you do. I know smarketing is actually now part of my vocabulary. It's a great little term. And again, everything you said to me today just makes perfect sense. And it's so logical, you know, that whole teamwork and collaboration between the sales and marketing arms is just so important to achieve the best results like it is for any team in any organization with departments, heads working together, having a common goal and really driving things forward might. So I just want to say a huge thank you. I really appreciate your time. And thanks for being a guest on the culture, things podcasts.
Speaker 1 00:37:36 No thank you. But it seriously was a pleasure to be here. I'm so passionate about it. The hope that came through it looks, it's a journey that's where it's wild, but the journey, it starts with a few small steps. So the trick is to get started.
Speaker 0 00:37:58 Smarketing is such a simple and logical approach. Bringing two important disciplines together that should be working hand in hand in my view is a no brainer. It's basically creating an environment for teamwork within sales and marketing. That definitely should be a no brainer. The benefits of smarketing teamwork are clear and was shared by Peter. If people work together collaboratively, it creates a better work environment. This will encourage a higher caliber of people to join the company, which will lead to higher productivity and less waste resulting in a better customer experience. Also technology will work better because people will use it and understand the benefits of using it leading to more sales, higher revenue and larger profits, which in turn you can reinvest in people process and technology. These were my three key takeaways from my conversation with Peter. My first key takeaway, a common goal will remove silos.
Speaker 0 00:39:00 Silos in organizations are really the antichrist of teamwork. The concept of smarketing brings sales and marketing together and provide the opportunity for these two disciplines to work together. As a team, having a leader responsible for the smarketing department and driving a common goal, creates greater collaboration and will remove silos. My second key takeaway, latest guide and coach self discovery. Peter said it a number of times, it's not about him telling leaders what to do. It's about taking them on a journey of self discovery, getting them to realize what they can do better and how they can do it. When this point is reached, coaching through questions, provide the level of engagement and ownership where change has a greater chance of success. My third key takeaway people are always the most important as I prefer to say, look after the right people and the right people will look after your business.
Speaker 0 00:40:02 Peter talked about what he calls the productivity, Trinity people process and technology with people being the most important cog in smarketing showed genuine care for people. They will feel valued and anything can be achieved. Even if a change seems logical like smarketing it's people and ego that can stop it happening. So in summary, my three key takeaways were a common goal. We'll remove silos, leaders, guide and coach self discovery. People are always the most important. If you have any questions or feedback about this episode, please feel free to send me a message@brendanatbrendanrodgers.com.edu. Thank you for listening. Stay safe until next time. Thank you for listening to the cultural things podcast with Brendan Rodgers, please visit Brendan rogers.com. Access the show notes. If you love the cultural things podcast, please subscribe and give a review on Apple podcast and remember healthy culture is your competitive advantage.
