Dan Martell - Why Great Companies Stand Out with April Dunford @ AmbientStrategy.com - Escape Velocity Show #9

00:00:00.000 So let's say you just launched and you got like a couple of customers, but you're kind of just

00:00:04.940 starting out. For those folks, I usually say, you know what? You actually want to keep the

00:00:08.820 positioning kind of loose because you don't know who's going to love your stuff. You don't know

00:00:13.800 where it's going to go and you don't know what's going to work and what isn't going to work. And

00:00:17.960 so at the beginning, it's good to keep it loose. But once you do start seeing patterns, so you have

00:00:23.960 enough traction in the market where you start saying, you know what? Customers like this love

00:00:28.540 us customers like this close really fast customers like this never ask for a

00:00:32.440 discount then you can start thinking about tightening up the positioning and

00:00:36.880 say well if we focus just on customers like that could we make our number

00:00:44.080 Five, three, two, one.

00:00:56.400 April Dunford, how's it going?

00:00:57.840 It's going pretty good.

00:00:58.640 How's it going with you, Dan?

00:00:59.360 I'm doing amazing.

00:01:00.140 We're here at LTVConf in New York City.

00:01:03.320 You gave a great talk about positioning and marketing

00:01:06.160 and your experience.

00:01:08.100 Six companies?

00:01:09.100 Seven companies?

00:01:10.720 No, wait.

00:01:11.340 Seven.

00:01:12.220 Seven startups?

00:01:13.420 Seven startups, 16 exits, 16 product launches.

00:01:21.160 You've played predominantly VP of marketing, marketing lead,

00:01:25.180 CEO recently of the last company.

00:01:28.060 Yeah, I've been CEO.

00:01:29.440 I've been COO.

00:01:32.260 I came from the product side originally,

00:01:34.140 so I've had product teams reporting into me a bunch,

00:01:36.340 because I'm kind of more of a product marketer,

00:01:38.860 I guess, I would say, at heart.

00:01:40.780 But yeah, yeah, done a lot of stuff.

00:01:42.280 Billion-dollar exits.

00:01:43.600 I've run some sales teams, too, but I wouldn't hire me

00:01:45.760 as the sales leader.

00:01:46.720 But occasionally, the sales leader leaves,

00:01:51.480 and it's like, congratulations, you're now running sales.

00:01:53.640 I'm like, oh, god.

00:01:54.880 Yeah, OK.

00:01:55.600 So billion-dollar exits, Jana system.

00:01:58.680 Yeah, so I have one big one, which was, yeah, 1.7 billion.

00:02:02.740 That was a big one.

00:02:04.040 And then a bunch of kind of good, hefty-sized ones.

00:02:07.680 Yeah.

00:02:08.880 Yeah, exits are good.

00:02:10.800 You're not always happy when you exit.

00:02:12.340 Sometimes you wish they had it just kept growing.

00:02:14.040 Yeah, you have a lot of fun, especially building teams.

00:02:16.680 And that's what I was really excited to have you on here

00:02:19.020 and talk about is the scale up, the growth side.

00:02:23.560 I mean, a lot of people watching already

00:02:24.840 have kind of pseudo product market fit

00:02:26.680 and decent amount of revenue.

00:02:27.960 But one thing that I mean, I've been watching you speak,

00:02:31.200 April, I mean, I feel like every time

00:02:33.000 we're at a conference, you're around.

00:02:34.620 If they're smart, they bring you on stage.

00:02:37.680 Because you literally deliver the goods

00:02:41.260 and really let the entrepreneurs know.

00:02:42.900 But my thing is, you talked about the CRM software

00:02:46.380 that you worked with that was at about a million ARR.

00:02:49.740 And positioning, do you mind sharing that story?

00:02:51.880 Because I think it's just so relevant to.

00:02:53.460 Sure.

00:02:54.080 Yeah.

00:02:54.580 Yeah, so that CRM one, that was Jana. 0.51

00:02:57.960 So we started out as a CRM for large enterprises.

00:03:03.520 And this was a while back.

00:03:05.420 And so Salesforce was in the market, but they were only focused on the very low-end SMB part of the market.

00:03:12.120 On the enterprise side, there was a big, big company in the Valley called Siebel.

00:03:15.560 And they were giant, like $2 billion revenue, 8,000 employees, an incredible company.

00:03:21.880 And we were 30 employees, maybe a million and a half revenue.

00:03:26.080 And we had this product.

00:03:28.100 And so we were positioning it as an enterprise CRM, which put us directly in competition with them.

00:03:33.720 So not surprisingly, every deal we went to do, we will walk in.

00:03:37.340 And the first question we get is, how are you different than Siebel? 0.84

00:03:40.240 And the hard answer to that question was, we kind of sucked compared to them.

00:03:44.220 Like, we were newer than they were.

00:03:46.460 We didn't have as many features as they had.

00:03:47.820 And what were you guys selling price-wise?

00:03:49.800 Was it like kind of a six-figure annual contract value kind of deal?

00:03:53.340 Yeah, actually, because it was a really big enterprise, generally our deals were more than a million.

00:03:59.180 Yeah, wow.

00:03:59.660 So we did a few that were like $10 million deals.

00:04:02.180 Like, they were big deals.

00:04:03.240 at that point we only had one and a half million revenues we had one big customer and three small

00:04:07.920 customers and that was it that's it and so our biggest problem was getting a new customer so

00:04:13.360 we'd get in we'd have to do this kind of bake-off against Siebel Siebel guys would come in and

00:04:18.200 they're like look at us we're so successful look at our customer list all our features look at all

00:04:23.140 our stuff and Tom Siebel was a famous guy and he had a book and a helicopter and all this stuff

00:04:29.100 how you compete yeah we were just like nobody we're like this little kid we're like yeah us too

00:04:33.980 and uh and and so how we competed was we had two things so one uh we had a feature that siebel

00:04:40.940 didn't have that we thought was pretty cool the problem was is every customer we showed it to

00:04:47.660 didn't actually use it like they didn't really they thought it was neat but they didn't understand

00:04:51.580 the value of it um so sometimes we got them intrigued with that thing but it didn't really

00:04:56.540 help us close deals and then the second thing was you know we were so desperate

00:05:00.080 to land business we would just drop our price like if you said how much does it

00:05:04.940 cost we're like how much money you got what's your budget and so if you wanted

00:05:10.400 cheap crappy Siebel we were your thing and so needless to say that's not very

00:05:15.020 good positioning no and most companies don't want to have something as poor as 0.79

00:05:20.000 important as their customer relationship management on some cheap crappy thing

00:05:24.300 right so needless to say we're not doing too good and we got extraordinarily

00:05:29.580 lucky in my opinion in that we hired a guy a sales rep and we literally hired

00:05:37.140 him because he came in and in the interview we asked him what are you gonna

00:05:40.740 do for us if we hire you and the guy said my buddy runs investment banking

00:05:44.220 at Goldman Sachs and if you hire me I'll get you a meeting we said hired

00:05:49.020 Yeah, hired, and if you don't produce, fired, but let's get the meeting.

00:05:53.460 So we get the meeting with the Head of Investment Banking, we're all excited, and I decide I'm going to do ride along because I want to see, first of all, I want to clap eyes on the Head of Investment Banking at Goldman Sachs, two, I want to see how this guy works and, you know, does the guy like our stuff.

00:06:07.900 So we get in the meeting, Head of Investment Bank of Goldman Sachs is there, and my sales guy is great, he does this great pitch, and he shows our special feature, because we always showed it in the demo.

00:06:19.300 He shows our special feature, and this Head of Investment Bank freaks out.

00:06:22.980 He's freaking out.

00:06:23.760 He's like, whoa, wait, stop.

00:06:25.640 Do you mean you can tell me if this person knows this person?

00:06:28.720 We're like, yeah.

00:06:29.280 And they're like, you can model this and this?

00:06:30.760 We're like, yeah.

00:06:31.560 He's like, I've never seen anything like this.

00:06:33.000 Hang on.

00:06:33.980 Stops the meeting.

00:06:34.700 He runs down the hall, gets his three vice presidents that work for him.

00:06:37.960 They come back.

00:06:39.160 He's like, show them the thing, show them the thing.

00:06:40.920 So we show them the thing.

00:06:42.440 Everybody gets so excited.

00:06:43.560 They ask the same questions.

00:06:44.600 Does that mean if two guys sit on a board together, you can model that?

00:06:47.940 Yeah.

00:06:48.160 Does that mean if people are in the same golf club, you can model that?

00:06:51.400 Yeah.

00:06:51.840 They're like, oh, my God.

00:06:53.060 And they're jumping up and down.

00:06:54.180 Everyone's freaking out.

00:06:55.200 We close a deal in the meeting.

00:06:57.480 This is unheard of.

00:06:59.720 Our deals usually close in like a year.

00:07:01.940 This guy is so excited.

00:07:03.080 he's like get that thing in here right now we need it now and so yeah so we go back to the office

00:07:07.960 we're like ho ho investment bankers they dig our stuff so let's try that out so we managed to get

00:07:15.000 a couple other meetings with investment banks same thing happens we show them the thing investment

00:07:18.920 bankers jump up and down we close the deal we're like well this is amazing we've never had this

00:07:23.800 reaction from anybody so we go back to the office and we had this kind of big meeting where we're

00:07:30.680 like maybe we need to change the positioning maybe we're not a crm for enterprises maybe we're a crm

00:07:37.000 for investment banks that doesn't sound like a big shift but that's terrifying you got to go in

00:07:43.480 and tell your board hey people you wrote me checks to be crm for everything right and now we're going

00:07:50.680 to come in and tell you we're this little niche thing and this little wee market and like the board

00:07:55.400 hated it they're like you're supposed to be a billion dollar company how are you going to be

00:07:59.560 be building like how many investment banks are there in the world you're not

00:08:01.900 gonna make enough money doing that and how we got them past that is you know

00:08:06.500 we were big on Jeffrey Moore at this company so yeah so we had already and so

00:08:10.660 we gave him bowling pin strategy so we said look but you know we drew the pins

00:08:14.780 on the board and said look investment banking that's our lead pin when we

00:08:18.460 knock that one over then we're gonna go to private client services research

00:08:22.300 retail banking then we're gonna not then we're gonna go to insurance and we're

00:08:25.740 gonna do property casually whatever whatever by the way the size of that

00:08:28.900 market here's the giant number you know so don't worry we're not gonna be

00:08:32.620 investment banking forever that's just where we're gonna get start and by the 0.93

00:08:35.680 way not giving anything up because nobody wants to buy our crap anyway yeah

00:08:40.720 so we so we make this shift and the shift was the most incredible thing that 0.56

00:08:47.320 I've ever lived through in a startup like we went from a million and a half

00:08:51.820 and we had been holding it a million yeah years we went from a million and a

00:08:56.320 half to almost 80 million revenue in 18 months I heard so many people I never

00:09:02.800 hired so many people just well it was just like yes you're in come you know

00:09:08.860 like we were growing so fast and and the thing was just like a rocket to the moon

00:09:13.600 and then and then the end of that story is that we we won a bunch of deals head

00:09:21.760 to head with see but we started to get really good at not competing with them

00:09:24.520 at all.

00:09:25.220 So we would go in, and they'd say,

00:09:26.640 how are you different than Siebel?

00:09:27.700 And we'd say, Siebel's great.

00:09:28.940 We love those guys.

00:09:29.760 They're general purpose, CRM.

00:09:32.320 What we are is, for you, well, for Wall Street,

00:09:35.740 special, special CRM.

00:09:37.900 And you need special stuff with the special people.

00:09:40.180 And you don't want the same stuff a call center uses,

00:09:42.520 do you?

00:09:43.600 And so we get pretty good at sort of positioning

00:09:46.060 them out of the space.

00:09:47.280 Yeah. 0.94

00:09:48.060 And I love it because it's not about talking crap or anything. 0.93

00:09:50.840 It's not saying their product's inferior. 0.59

00:09:51.980 It's just like their general purpose.

00:09:53.980 They are.

00:09:54.700 We're specialists.

00:09:55.360 We took their own strong positioning,

00:09:57.200 which is we own the whole market and used it against them.

00:09:59.500 Yeah.

00:10:00.200 And said, yeah, they own the whole market.

00:10:01.600 They're fantastic.

00:10:02.200 We love those guys.

00:10:02.920 Love what they're doing.

00:10:03.680 They're huge.

00:10:04.220 They're amazing.

00:10:04.980 Not for you.

00:10:05.600 Having done this dozens of product launches

00:10:09.280 and helping many startups, I know you invest.

00:10:11.680 You've bought companies.

00:10:14.180 Yeah, I do a little investing.

00:10:15.240 I don't think I'm a very good investor.

00:10:16.700 But I have invested in companies where I've done some work

00:10:19.840 with them, and I feel like I'm elbows deep in the company.

00:10:22.700 And then, you know, you fall in love with these.

00:10:24.120 And then you're like, yeah, you're raising around.

00:10:25.860 Throw my shackles in there with everybody else.

00:10:28.200 But I mean, like, you take this seriously.

00:10:29.900 Like, it's your practitioner.

00:10:31.160 It's your, it sounds like you love it.

00:10:33.980 How important is getting that positioning?

00:10:37.200 Like, if you went into a company and they

00:10:40.860 didn't have a strong position, is this like step one?

00:10:44.020 Is it step two?

00:10:45.380 Yeah, so there's a few things that are really important.

00:10:48.120 So the first thing is, if you're super early stage,

00:10:52.040 So let's say you just launched,

00:10:53.900 and you got like a couple of customers,

00:10:55.820 but you're kind of just starting out.

00:10:58.100 For those folks, I usually say, you know what,

00:10:59.860 you actually want to keep the positioning kind of loose.

00:11:02.320 Because you don't know who's gonna love your stuff,

00:11:04.980 you don't know where it's gonna go,

00:11:07.060 and you don't know what's gonna work

00:11:09.020 and what isn't gonna work.

00:11:09.840 And so at the beginning, it's good to keep it loose.

00:11:12.380 But once you do start seeing patterns,

00:11:15.480 so you have enough traction in the market

00:11:17.260 where you start saying, you know what,

00:11:18.780 customers like this love us.

00:11:20.980 Customers like this close really fast.

00:11:23.000 Customers like this never ask for a discount.

00:11:25.840 Then you can start thinking about tightening up

00:11:27.740 the positioning and say, well, if we

00:11:30.660 focus just on customers like that,

00:11:33.240 could we make our number?

00:11:34.640 If the answer is yes, then why wouldn't you just sell them?

00:11:36.840 They're the easy people to sell.

00:11:38.340 Just focus on them, and then worry

00:11:39.840 about how you're going to get the next segment

00:11:41.460 and the next segment and the next segment.

00:11:42.460 I love that you said that, April, because, I mean,

00:11:44.820 I think that make the number.

00:11:45.980 People, you know, a lot of people watching this

00:11:47.820 are at the one to two million AR,

00:11:49.300 bootstrapped, non-coastal founders,

00:11:51.340 like just the guys trying to figure it out.

00:11:53.440 But they have this growth ambition.

00:11:55.540 So they know where they're at now.

00:11:56.640 They know where when they go.

00:11:58.120 And it's just asking yourself what you just said, which is,

00:12:00.700 OK, this is the number you want to be at.

00:12:02.200 You want a double MRR?

00:12:03.220 Great.

00:12:04.000 Could you do it with that customer?

00:12:05.740 And if the answer is yes, then you're

00:12:07.540 introducing risk into execution by trying to not go focus

00:12:12.620 and be too broad.

00:12:13.420 That's exactly it.

00:12:14.440 And people are scared to focus down,

00:12:16.920 Because it feels like, I don't want to be this small little thing focused on this small little market and whatever, whatever.

00:12:22.280 But the reality is, it's the easiest way to get traction.

00:12:26.700 The smallest you can go to still meet your number is the easiest way to get traction, and then you open it up after that.

00:12:33.640 And that's how everybody gets started.

00:12:35.300 That's how every good company starts, is they start on something really focused, and then they figure out how to expand the boundaries of that as they get bigger and bigger and bigger.

00:12:44.400 Like right now, Silicon Valley is obsessed with category creation.

00:12:48.680 Yeah, the slacks of the world. 1.00

00:12:50.160 And this is bullshit. 1.00

00:12:52.440 It's hot bullshit because most companies don't start creating a brand new category. 1.00

00:12:59.680 They start as a niche play in an existing category because that's the easiest place to sell. 0.98

00:13:05.780 And then once you hit $50 million, $100 million, oh, you can do a lot of hot, fancy category creation at that point because you're big enough, you're well-known enough.

00:13:14.240 You got enough money, you got referenceable customers,

00:13:17.080 you're in a position of strength.

00:13:19.160 And Qualtrics is a great example of this, right?

00:13:22.480 Did this beautiful job of this category creation thing,

00:13:25.120 but they didn't do it until they were 100 million revenue.

00:13:28.160 And before that they were a niche play

00:13:30.240 in the survey market like everybody else.

00:13:32.420 Yeah, it's interesting in the SaaS space

00:13:34.480 where people see that today,

00:13:35.960 they point to MailChimp for freemium

00:13:37.720 and it's like they weren't free for over a decade.

00:13:40.220 I know, and everybody talks about,

00:13:42.560 Everybody forgets that Salesforce used to be freemium.

00:13:45.180 Yeah.

00:13:46.160 Not anymore.

00:13:47.080 No.

00:13:48.080 I mean, it's interesting.

00:13:49.500 They don't see that.

00:13:50.600 We have short memories.

00:13:51.820 Well, we have short memories because everybody's young.

00:13:54.380 And you need the oldster to show up once in a while like me 0.99

00:13:56.800 and go, listen, back in my day, I was walking in the snow

00:14:00.980 up to my knee.

00:14:01.480 We had to sit in the server room,

00:14:02.640 squeeze our butts off, deploying software.

00:14:04.540 You kids don't know how good it is.

00:14:05.560 We need to pay for everything up front.

00:14:06.960 Can you believe that?

00:14:10.100 That's hilarious.

00:14:10.520 It was actually a way better model.

00:14:12.080 Yeah. In regards to the playbook, you know, from a growth point of view, what is what is the marketing playbook for you in regards to?

00:14:20.160 Well, so so I think that once you've got a certain amount of traction, then the important thing to do is to say, OK, so these are my low hanging fruit customers for these reasons.

00:14:33.000 So I can identify the characteristics of a target account that is going to make them really, really love my stuff.

00:14:39.240 and if I understand that that that's essentially the basis of your positioning right so can you

00:14:47.380 identify them in the market right and and ideally make a list right and ideally make a list and it

00:14:53.320 has to be more than just like feelings right like you can't say I'm going after companies that love

00:14:59.220 design I can't measure that I can't see that I can't whatever but if you say I'm going after

00:15:03.160 companies that have bought photoshop plus this plus this I can get a list of that I know where

00:15:07.760 those people hang out i can go on forums where they are like i can identify these people easy

00:15:11.780 i got this yeah so you've got the way the positioning works is you say okay i understand

00:15:18.380 what my customers compare me to so what they would do if i didn't exist which is usually if

00:15:24.180 you're b2b it's excel or word or hire an intern or something yeah build something then i understand

00:15:28.860 what i've got that that doesn't have feature function wise and i understand how that translates

00:15:34.100 into value then I look at that value and I say who cares a lot about that value

00:15:39.080 that's gonna get me to my segmentation which is who am I going after and then

00:15:44.180 you say okay well if I'm trying to communicate that value to these

00:15:47.480 customers what market am I actually in that's your positioning

00:15:52.280 that has a willingness to pay that has an unmet need can meet my you know is

00:15:57.200 big enough to meet my revenue goal all that again back to target which is so

00:16:00.860 important to be big enough to meet the revenue because you might say I'm really

00:16:03.800 good with you know fishermen in Manhattan but there's only three of them

00:16:08.620 yeah my mom thinks I'm great but she can only buy one yeah so yeah so you got to

00:16:18.500 look at it say how big is it and say okay it's this big and I'm only gonna

00:16:21.540 get this many I could probably do that so it's got to be big enough support the

00:16:24.380 business goal but if it is the positioning forms the foundation of

00:16:30.560 everything downstream that happens in marketing and sales it's the input yeah

00:16:35.360 so then you say okay I got to build a marketing plan and my marketing plan is

00:16:39.080 to go after specifically these people so when your mark is very general it's

00:16:43.740 really hard to build a marketing plan for that when the market's really

00:16:46.340 specific it's super easy way easy super product like falls in line the sales

00:16:51.020 conversation super easy again I can make a list right I can make a list and say

00:16:56.420 look call these guys easy right it's hard when you go generic like i got hired once to work with this

00:17:02.740 company and uh the first meeting i had with the ceo i said who's your target market and he said

00:17:07.780 fortune 1000 companies and i said that's it you just write down a thousand and that's like

00:17:13.300 everybody that's amazing and and i said well wait they had this software and it was for business

00:17:18.980 analysts who were um doing requirements stuff for internal software projects so i said wait

00:17:25.700 do all the fortune 1000 do internal software projects they've got a gold mining company do

00:17:30.740 i write any software and he's like no no so we we cross those off so like you know natural resources

00:17:35.860 all those ones unfortunately we cross them off and i'm like huh and i'm like okay but i come from

00:17:40.340 tech and i've never heard of you guys so do tech companies use your stuff no so it's an internal

00:17:45.060 software project but you don't sell software because they use different things so not the

00:17:47.940 tech companies okay so i'm scratching off ibm and all the other big ones so i'm like well wait okay

00:17:53.220 so but what if i was fortune 2000 could i still use your product and i have this but i build a

00:17:59.380 lot of internal software and i got a lot of business analysts would that be a good prospect

00:18:03.460 for you and he says yeah probably would so i'm like okay so let me get this straight size of

00:18:07.380 the company is it actually doesn't matter was that an ego thing for them you think they just

00:18:12.740 didn't think about it okay i don't think they really sat down and defined who's our low hanging

00:18:18.500 fruit customer and so then we looked at it and said okay well let's do this thought exercise

00:18:23.780 so i got software for business analysts to do a big hairy internal projects for software who has

00:18:30.580 that and the answer to that question was well system integrators if you have no not those guys

00:18:36.260 because they use something else too so they were no good but where you have this is if you are a

00:18:40.580 non-tech business and you write a lot of internal software you generally outsource it to into your

00:18:47.860 China and those are very difficult projects to manage so you need the 1.00

00:18:51.040 software okay so I'm outsourcing yeah building stuff and two I also get the

00:18:55.960 same problem if the company is very acquisitive so they buy a lot of

00:18:59.260 companies then I end up with distributed teams all over the place and I got to

00:19:03.520 manage that and that's it okay so if you told me April build me a marketing plan

00:19:08.620 to go drive leads for fortune 1000 companies what the hell am I gonna do

00:19:12.340 take out a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal I don't know how to build

00:19:15.100 a plan for that. No one knows how to build a plan for that. But if you tell me, hey, we want to go

00:19:19.560 after folks that do a lot of M&A. Oh my God, this is easy. I got M&A lawyers. I got conferences that

00:19:25.640 talk about M&A. I can watch for acquisitions and target those accounts. If you tell me folks that

00:19:32.000 do a lot of outsourcing, you know, there's a magazine. It's called like Outsourcers Monthly.

00:19:36.520 I can take a full page ad. It costs like 5,000 bucks and drive all kinds of money. And like,

00:19:42.000 This is easy peasy, lemon squeezy.

00:19:44.900 But you tell me, oh, it's Fortune 1000 companies.

00:19:46.720 I don't know how to market to that.

00:19:47.680 Nobody knows how to market to that.

00:19:49.020 So you start with the positioning

00:19:50.600 and then look at the channels that those audiences

00:19:53.700 are engaged in.

00:19:55.500 That's it.

00:19:56.180 And so for you, you're not saying like, oh, Snapchat's cheap.

00:20:00.560 You really don't care.

00:20:01.920 It doesn't matter if my folks are on Snapchat.

00:20:05.160 So once I get the really tight definition

00:20:07.780 on who I'm going after, then I worry about channels.

00:20:10.540 I'm worried about tactical stuff. And it's really like, do my folks go there? Do my folks hang out

00:20:15.660 there? Do they buy stuff looking at Snapchat? If the answer is yes, yes. If the answer is no,

00:20:21.020 no. The problem we have in marketing is we're super trendy. We like to chase trends. And so

00:20:27.180 we do this thing that I call the marketing fashion assessment. We'll look around like,

00:20:31.100 what's everyone else doing? Oh, they're blogging. I should blog. Or, oh, they're doing Instagram. I

00:20:35.420 should be doing some Instagram. We get FOMO because everyone else, all the cool kids are doing it,

00:20:39.260 and i'm not doing it but that's usually you're chasing your tail like the reason they're doing

00:20:43.580 it marketing fashion accessories yeah yeah i usually call it the marketing fashion assessment

00:20:49.420 and it's like what's everyone else doing oh yeah yeah yeah like hey blues in this year i think i'll

00:20:55.180 have the blue one yeah so it's like that and we get sucked up in that in marketing and we shouldn't

00:21:00.460 be what we should be doing is saying look i got an offering i'm trying to match it with these people

00:21:05.100 these people are very specific and what worked with other people isn't necessarily going to

00:21:09.900 work with my people i got to understand my people then i figure out the plan one thing that i know

00:21:14.700 that usually comes up between sales and marketing teams is obviously lead quality and and um and

00:21:20.380 whatnot how do you score resolve those issues amongst marketing teams doing lead gen and the

00:21:26.460 sales org yeah so again if you're getting really super tight on your definition of what a really

00:21:33.980 good low-hanging fruit customer is you don't have that fight as much because it's pretty well defined

00:21:40.300 like they got to meet these five criteria and if they don't that's a crummy lead okay and so if

00:21:45.340 they meet all the criteria like in the way we've defined the segment then that's a pretty hot lead

00:21:50.860 and there might be a little bit of gray area in there all they meant three out of the four or

00:21:54.540 whatever but you usually have you know an sla between the marketing team and the and the sales

00:22:00.140 team like look i'm not going to pass you anything that doesn't hit at least three of these checkboxes

00:22:04.940 what's there to fight about there isn't anything to fight about it's interesting you solve that

00:22:08.780 problem by doing the upfront clear definition everything like literally all the bad that is

00:22:15.580 happening to you in marketing and sales is because your positioning is not tight and then what have

00:22:20.460 you learned about um you know discovering that from your maybe existing customers or the market

00:22:26.940 Like, is it customer development interviews?

00:22:29.440 Is it talking to the salespeople?

00:22:31.600 It's a combination of things.

00:22:33.840 If you're already at 2 million and you don't have this well

00:22:36.840 thought out to this degree.

00:22:38.020 Which lots of people don't.

00:22:39.200 Totally.

00:22:39.600 If you're selling, particularly if you're doing big deals

00:22:42.560 and you've got good sales acumen, you can actually

00:22:44.700 kind of muscle your way through to a million or 2 million

00:22:47.260 without being really tight on this stuff, and that's fine.

00:22:49.900 At some point, though, you're going

00:22:51.100 to want to add sales and marketing people to the team.

00:22:53.340 And to scale it beyond that, it's

00:22:54.900 hard to do with without doing this tight definition because you're just wasting a lot of money on

00:23:00.120 prospects that aren't a good fit. And so how you actually do this is, you know, when I started

00:23:07.860 going deep on this stuff, I used to think, well, I can survey all my customers and kind of figure

00:23:14.720 this out and figure out, you know, what my differentiated value actually is by just asking

00:23:20.540 everybody. And so I'd run these surveys and without fail, the answers I get back are like

00:23:25.580 garbage. It's all over the place. Some people love it, some people don't. And then some people 0.94

00:23:30.760 like this thing, some people like that thing. And I don't know what to make of this. But now what I

00:23:35.920 do is you basically got to look at, if you, let's say you got to 2 million and you just muscled

00:23:41.960 your way through. If you go and talk to the salespeople or the head of customer service,

00:23:47.240 or even the ceo usually and say how many customers you got you got 100 customers uh how many of those

00:23:53.160 are like great like you love them like you wish all your customers look like that like how many

00:23:58.440 of those are there and they usually say oh like 30 of them are like that they're fantastic and 0.99

00:24:03.000 how many do you have that you wish you never closed because there's such a pain in the ass 0.96

00:24:06.200 they're a big draw on your support if you if you met them in the street now you wouldn't sell them 0.94

00:24:10.680 anything like keep walking yeah i mean like yeah i probably got 10 of those so what i say usually

00:24:18.520 how if you're trying to get to this positioning where i'm trying to get to these the people that

00:24:22.840 really love my stuff good fit for my stuff look at the 30. now if you go and you talk to those 30

00:24:28.840 you hear very definite patterns in a way you don't if you're watering it down with the 10 you wish

00:24:34.280 you didn't have and the 20 that are like they're not that great but if you just filter out the

00:24:40.280 really good ones the ones that are like they close fast they didn't ask for a discount they they got

00:24:45.480 your stuff on the first meeting just intuitively they tell their friends about you they're like

00:24:50.200 the raving fans you go to those people and say what do we got so great like why did you buy us

00:24:55.640 in the first place how are we different than everyone else and those people will tell you

00:24:59.800 and you will see the patterns if you do customer discovery calls on 10 of those 30 i guarantee

00:25:05.880 are super smart about this yeah they'll see it you know you've worked with so many um incredible

00:25:11.300 founders and ceos what do you see great companies doing that are you know obviously product market

00:25:17.320 fit product pulling into the mark or the the market pulling the product in but outside of

00:25:21.120 that operationally speaking yeah there's two things like i think what really separates great

00:25:28.020 company from like a company that that struggles a bit more one is this getting really tight on

00:25:35.220 who we sell to and why they're a good fit. So these are the people we sell to and this is why

00:25:42.560 they want our stuff and why we win. So if you really deeply understand that, the tighter you

00:25:48.120 are on that stuff, the better you do. The second thing is this consistency and stick in that.

00:25:55.420 So sometimes you'll get these companies where they have great positioning

00:25:58.640 and they'll focus on the one little market,

00:26:03.480 but then they lose it.

00:26:04.820 They're just not consistent about it.

00:26:06.460 And six months later, they're all over the place again

00:26:08.800 and everything's loose.

00:26:11.000 They're not consistent in the way they talk about the value.

00:26:13.580 They're not consistent in who they talk to.

00:26:14.100 So they might hire somebody to come in, get clear on it,

00:26:16.740 and then just water it down.

00:26:18.340 And then it kind of gets loosey-goosey.

00:26:19.580 People talk a lot about drift right now.

00:26:23.220 Conversational marketing.

00:26:24.100 Conversational marketing.

00:26:24.980 But I think from the outside,

00:26:27.840 One of the things that I think is amazing about Drift is the consistency in the way they talk about the company, the value, who they're for, has been super consistent for years, like across years.

00:26:41.680 And it's hard to do because internally you get sick of it.

00:26:44.920 Internally your marketing team's like, oh, God, we're running another campaign on that.

00:26:48.380 Everybody knows that.

00:26:49.540 And the reality is, no, everybody doesn't know it.

00:26:52.100 They're just starting to figure it out by the time you're totally sick of it.

00:26:55.900 Yeah.

00:26:56.400 And so this consistency of being able to stick it,

00:27:00.020 and stick it way longer than you think.

00:27:02.300 Yeah, we were talking about this at dinner.

00:27:05.180 It's, we get tired with our marketing before the market does.

00:27:09.080 Totally.

00:27:09.580 Right?

00:27:10.180 And it's the ability to stick to the message to Trump.

00:27:13.100 I mean, no software, Salesforce.

00:27:15.180 They were on that forever.

00:27:17.140 Like a decade.

00:27:18.220 Yeah.

00:27:20.080 I love that.

00:27:20.700 So you're saying that's what you see great operational companies.

00:27:24.880 Great operational companies, they deeply understand

00:27:29.260 this is the value and these are the people

00:27:31.480 that care about the value and why.

00:27:33.980 And then they figure out this nice, crisp messaging

00:27:38.240 and positioning, and then they're super consistent

00:27:40.760 about it over time, and they don't muck

00:27:42.880 with what's not broken.

00:27:44.340 And what about hiring somebody

00:27:45.540 to run a marketing department?

00:27:47.940 You know, what do you think their skill set should be,

00:27:50.740 you know, and how should they divvy things up?

00:27:54.640 Yeah, I don't know.

00:27:55.420 A lot of it depends on, again, the market you're going after.

00:27:58.580 And so it's one of it.

00:27:59.500 Let's say mid-market, 2 to 10 mil AR.

00:28:02.400 Yeah, so one of the big mistakes

00:28:05.240 that people make with hiring a marketing leader

00:28:07.320 is they haven't done enough marketing

00:28:10.480 to know what works and what doesn't work for their folks.

00:28:14.480 So they hire for the wrong skill set.

00:28:16.400 The problem with marketing is we come in all flavors, right?

00:28:19.480 So some people are really good with front of the funnel stuff.

00:28:22.960 Some people are really good with back of the funnel stuff.

00:28:25.040 Some people are really good tactically on SEO or content

00:28:31.000 or PR or something.

00:28:34.180 And everything looks like a nail.

00:28:35.680 Right.

00:28:36.220 And so you hire that person, and then you come in and say,

00:28:38.920 oh, yeah, you're really amazing at all this paid stuff,

00:28:40.660 but we don't do paid.

00:28:43.420 So do this other thing.

00:28:45.220 These are bad hires.

00:28:46.160 And it's not because they're a bad marketer.

00:28:47.940 It's just you hired someone that's really deep on a bunch

00:28:50.800 of stuff you don't need.

00:28:52.720 And it's almost impossible to find a marketer that

00:28:55.140 does everything.

00:28:56.440 And so you really want to, I don't

00:28:58.840 think people need industry expertise.

00:29:02.200 But I think if you've sold the enterprise,

00:29:06.720 if you're a marketer and you've done lots of stuff

00:29:08.520 in B2B enterprise, you shouldn't go

00:29:11.260 be the head of marketing at something that's selling SMB. 0.99

00:29:14.140 Like, you're going to kind of suck. 0.98

00:29:16.540 Like, for me, I'm B2B enterprise. 0.93

00:29:18.680 And any time I get outside of that, 0.52

00:29:20.320 I feel like a dummy, because I am a dummy,

00:29:22.220 Because that's not my thing.

00:29:23.120 That's not your thing.

00:29:23.900 That's not my thing.

00:29:25.080 So it's interesting.

00:29:25.820 So it's once you know the customer what channels

00:29:28.540 or what places they're going to show up in,

00:29:30.440 then figure out the tactics that are

00:29:32.220 traditional for those things.

00:29:33.320 Because I mean, some of my clients,

00:29:35.140 they do like event marketing, right?

00:29:37.920 And it's just like for a lot of-

00:29:39.060 Events are hot again.

00:29:39.720 For a while, events were terrible,

00:29:41.100 and now events are good.

00:29:42.340 Now events are good.

00:29:43.240 Yeah, so if you're trying to hire somebody,

00:29:46.640 do they have a track record of managing event teams and stuff?

00:29:49.640 Right, like anybody that's done enterprise stuff

00:29:51.840 done events yeah like there's you can't find enterprise marketer that hasn't done events

00:29:55.840 because you know and even like events were really good for a while and then they were

00:30:00.160 nothing like and we stopped doing events and now they're good again yeah um but yeah i think

00:30:05.200 there's there's some magic to run an event really well like it's most people run events terribly

00:30:10.240 like if you look at which is why it's really great when you run it well it's so effective because

00:30:15.600 You're in a trade show with 90 booths,

00:30:19.280 and 89 of them are a couple of sales reps sitting there

00:30:22.180 talking to each other, looking at their phones.

00:30:24.760 And then there's two booths that are making noise

00:30:27.860 and nannin' out prizes and cooking up popcorn and whatever

00:30:31.340 and catching leads like maniacs.

00:30:33.680 And the reason they can do that is because nobody else

00:30:35.360 is even trying.

00:30:37.180 Anyway, so I got to think about events.

00:30:39.320 I think people waste a lot of money on events.

00:30:40.900 I think if you're going to do it, you got to do it.

00:30:42.180 You need a pre-event plan, during-event plan,

00:30:44.480 You need a post-event plan.

00:30:45.980 If you got all that stuff together, you can just crush events.

00:30:48.360 And if you know your customers, you know which ones to go do.

00:30:50.260 You know which ones that are worth your time to go do.

00:30:52.940 Yeah.

00:30:53.720 And then what about the leadership style of some

00:30:56.780 of these fast growth software companies

00:30:58.600 in regards to values or the way they hired?

00:31:02.300 Because obviously, you've built these teams.

00:31:04.140 Yeah, some of them, they're all different.

00:31:07.080 If I look back at the ones that I've been in,

00:31:10.200 it's amazing how different they are.

00:31:12.540 I mean, we like to, in startup world,

00:31:15.380 we like to talk about the patterns, right?

00:31:17.080 So we like to say, you know, great CEO does this.

00:31:19.840 But my experience has been the opposite,

00:31:23.480 is there's lots of ways to be successful.

00:31:25.900 There's lots of types of personalities

00:31:28.980 that run great teams in different ways.

00:31:32.360 I will say that the best leaders I've worked for

00:31:37.080 have been fairly self-aware.

00:31:40.760 Like even if they weren't great leaders,

00:31:42.240 they were aware of the fact that they were great leaders.

00:31:47.520 But I don't know.

00:31:50.340 I've worked at some companies where the leadership team,

00:31:56.160 well, not the team, but I'm not sure the CEO was all that

00:32:01.020 great, but the team around him was amazing.

00:32:02.940 He was smart enough to hire those people.

00:32:04.800 That was his skill.

00:32:06.120 I'll tell you, that was his skill.

00:32:08.220 He built an amazing team and a bunch of rock stars

00:32:12.200 that worked really well together too.

00:32:15.240 Like there's some magic in that.

00:32:17.400 But I've worked at other places

00:32:18.540 where the leader's really strong,

00:32:20.300 the team's kinda, and then we make that work too.

00:32:23.440 Like, it's funny how different,

00:32:26.160 like if I look, you get this perspective,

00:32:28.160 like most people only work at one or two startups.

00:32:30.540 You go across seven and you lean back

00:32:33.360 and then plus a bunch of big companies that acquired mine.

00:32:36.320 So all in, you got like a dozen companies or so.

00:32:39.600 And it's amazing how different they are.

00:32:41.580 It's so different, like a fingerprint.

00:32:43.980 Yeah, and looking for patterns, I think, is maybe a bit...

00:32:48.540 Sometimes you get lucky on the market.

00:32:50.160 The market's hot, and you just timed it right,

00:32:52.140 and all the boats are rising because the water's going up,

00:32:55.060 and you're all going to be successful,

00:32:56.880 and it's kind of hard to mess it up sometimes.

00:32:59.720 And then other times, you fight like hell,

00:33:02.280 and you're just executing like crazy,

00:33:04.520 and you make a thing happen out of nothing,

00:33:06.620 and that's cool too.

00:33:07.500 But again, I look across all the companies,

00:33:10.500 I'm like, I don't see any patterns.

00:33:11.620 They all look different.

00:33:12.920 April, who did you need to become to be the marketing leader you are today?

00:33:18.140 Who did I need to become?

00:33:20.420 You know, at the beginning, I'll tell you one thing.

00:33:24.880 Like, for a while, I worked at IBM twice.

00:33:31.120 And so I'm doing all these little companies.

00:33:33.120 I didn't get companies to get acquired or whatever.

00:33:34.900 And so the first time I worked at IBM, I had this great boss.

00:33:38.360 and um and he he told me he's like i get like you come from being a startup but like do you want to

00:33:50.060 spend the rest of your life just doing stuff or you want to lead the team and at ibm they had a

00:33:56.020 term for it was called a doobie and it was derogatory he's like you want to be a doobie 0.89

00:34:00.240 forever and i was like dude i come from startups we're not allowed to not do stuff yeah and we'd

00:34:05.160 have this fight so we had a fight about this like every time we had like a little one-on-one time

00:34:09.040 my boss would say like you do like i see you you got a super strong team why are you doing anything

00:34:14.460 i don't understand why you're doing all this stuff and at the beginning i thought he was just plain

00:34:18.960 wrong about that like i thought oh yeah you're ibm or fat cat guys yeah all you guys want to do is

00:34:24.880 do nothing yeah right like you're a do nothing you think i'm a do you do nothing and and he kept

00:34:31.280 saying you know what you got to figure that out and he kept calling it professional maturity he's

00:34:36.240 like you know the reason you're not getting promotion here april you lack professional

00:34:39.760 maturity and i'm like i do not understand what that means you're gonna have to define it for me

00:34:44.240 and he kept saying it's kind of a thing i don't know how to put my finger on it but you know you

00:34:48.240 just you're not the leader you could be blah blah blah and then i i ended up leaving ibm and i went

00:34:54.480 i went to another startup and i i had quite a it was a bigger company like i'd call them a startup

00:34:59.600 up there 80 million revenue they're pretty big and I had a pretty big team

00:35:02.300 there and and subconsciously that guy got to me because I got to my new thing

00:35:11.120 and I had this great big team and my job was to really just clear the path for

00:35:17.340 them to do stuff my job was to be an accelerator right I had this hotshot

00:35:22.660 team everybody's amazing at their stuff and all they needed me to do was just

00:35:27.260 get blockage out of the way. So I had to deal with the founder and say, leave my people alone.

00:35:33.540 If you've got a problem, you come talk to me and then I'll deal with it. But don't distract them

00:35:37.800 because they're amazing and everything they're doing is amazing. If we need budget to do this

00:35:41.600 thing, I'll go get the budget. If I need to convince sales, we need to, I'll go convince

00:35:45.340 sales for you. You let me handle that. You just keep doing what you're doing. And then all of a

00:35:50.100 sudden I had it, this professional maturity thing. And then the crazy thing is, is I started seeing

00:35:55.360 it and other people that are coming to me going why am i not vice president yet and i and i'm like

00:36:00.000 my old boss from ibm i'm like you lack professional maturity and i have to try to explain that to

00:36:08.720 people but but there was kind of i do feel like there was this switch that flipped at some point

00:36:14.880 in my career where i went from being really good tactical execution get it done marketing person

00:36:21.040 to be in the leader right the person that deserves a seat at the executive team the person that's

00:36:25.120 impacting the business strategy of the entire person the person that can go in and say

00:36:29.200 look you guys we got this all wrong and and and the rest of the team listens to me as opposed to the

00:36:35.760 person says here's the spreadsheet here's the numbers here's how many leads i generated blah

00:36:39.440 blah blah that person doesn't belong in the boardroom april where do people find you what's

00:36:44.480 the best place for them to find you online well i have a website it's aprildunford.com yeah i used

00:36:50.080 to do more stuff on social i'm kind of active on twitter still you can follow me on twitter i'm at

00:36:53.920 I just rebooted my, I unfollowed everybody

00:36:56.540 and refollowed all the sassy, fun people.

00:36:58.480 I may need to do that.

00:36:59.320 It made Twitter relevant again for me.

00:37:01.240 Yeah, I did do a massive unfollow of people

00:37:05.080 that just were just making me angry.

00:37:06.860 Yeah, that's what we're allowed to do.

00:37:09.200 Yeah, so Twitter's good, AprilDumford.com.

00:37:11.560 Twitter's good, AprilDumford.com.

00:37:13.380 Yeah, I've spent the last year writing this book.

00:37:17.780 And so because I've been writing a book,

00:37:19.560 I haven't written anything else.

00:37:21.180 Like if I have any cycles to write,

00:37:23.020 So I stopped blogging.

00:37:24.140 I stopped doing everything.

00:37:25.600 Now that the book is out-ish, like it's in pre-orders now.

00:37:29.980 What's it called?

00:37:30.520 It's called Obviously Awesome.

00:37:32.520 Everybody go check it out.

00:37:33.700 Go check it out.

00:37:34.360 Check out the book.

00:37:34.860 Get the pre-order.

00:37:35.200 But now that I've done that, I'm

00:37:36.360 going to go back to blogging, because I miss blogging.

00:37:38.560 You are a prolific blogger.

00:37:40.260 I'm going to go back to writing some stuff.

00:37:41.720 Now that I'm not writing a book, I can write other things.

00:37:43.940 Awesome, everybody should check you out.

00:37:44.940 Appreciate it, April.

00:37:46.060 Thank you so much.

00:37:47.520 Super fun combo.

00:37:48.540 Thanks for watching this episode of Escape Velocity.

00:37:51.660 Be sure to like and subscribe and leave a comment

00:37:54.520 with your biggest insight from our conversation.

00:37:57.140 Be sure to check out the next episode.

Dan Martell - August 29, 2019

Why Great Companies Stand Out with April Dunford @ AmbientStrategy.com - Escape Velocity Show #9

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