Building the House of Revenue Attribution with Steffen Hedebrandt
Welcome back to the Exploring Growth Podcast! In this episode, Lee interviews Steffen Hedebrandt, CMO of Dreamdata.io i, on building the proverbial house of revenue attribution for B2B mid-market companies.
With buying cycles typically lasting between three to nine months, it can be tough to connect the dots. Our guest shares some valuable tips on starting with simple, low-cost approaches to improve revenue attribution. These include having salespeople ask prospects how they heard about the company and implementing a "How did you hear about us?" form on the website. If you're a mid-market B2B company looking to improve your revenue attribution, this episode is a must-watch!
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Have a guest recommendation, question, or just want to connect?
Go here: https://www.harvardmurray.com/exploring-growth-podcast
Connect with Steffen - https://www.linkedin.com/in/steffenhedebrandt
00:00:00:01 - 00:00:25:17
Lee
Welcome back to Exploring Growth Podcast. So excited that you are joining us again today. My guest is Stephan Hillebrand from Dream Data. I know and we had a robust conversation about building the proverbial house of revenue attribution for B2B mid-market companies. If this is you, you're a B2B mid-market and you guys are having trouble connecting the dots on revenue attribution.
00:00:26:08 - 00:00:32:20
Lee
This is the episode for you. Stefan, thanks for joining me on Exploring Growth podcast.
00:00:34:03 - 00:00:38:13
Steffen
Thank you for for having me early.
00:00:39:00 - 00:01:08:16
Lee
Yeah. So I'm excited to have Stefan here today from Dream Data IO CMO. And you know, you may if you've been following my episode, you may remember I interviewed Laura from Dream Data, who's one of their sales development reps, and we had a great conversation about attribution for B2B. And so today I'm privileged to talk with their CMO and talk more to a marketer.
00:01:08:16 - 00:01:45:18
Lee
Right. And it was interesting to hear what Laura had to say from a sales perspective, because, you know, this topic that we're talking about is so intertwined with marketing and sales. That conversation has to be aligned for enablement of both sides. So that was such an interesting take to talk with her. But now on the marketing side, you know, I thought that maybe we can spend our time today thinking about that mid-market B2B company, you know, revenue ten to 10 to 100 million and the the buying cycle being maybe roughly 3 to 9 months.
00:01:45:18 - 00:02:18:02
Lee
Right. And it's funny, I think a lot of companies probably don't even know how long they're buying cycle is but we know like that's that's and you actually even have some data you were sharing with me earlier that that timeframe is typical for a larger sale B2B. So with that time frame in mind and that type of company in mind, let's talk about setting up revenue attribution or kind of building the proverbial house of attribution for a company.
00:02:18:12 - 00:02:48:07
Lee
You know, a lot of times when I go in and meet with clients, they either have a team that's kind of disorganized and they aren't sure why things aren't working. And so it's either that or I come into a company that is strong, have heavy on building brand now that they've been doing sales specifically and they want to push a lot of marketing out, a lot of marketing campaigns which are driving new quality inbound leads for their salespeople to support them.
00:02:48:07 - 00:03:15:23
Lee
And in doing that, they just are kind of clueless when it comes to attributing success up the pipeline from, you know, maybe doing it well in the sales pipeline. But as we look up the funnel to marketing, it's it's kind of not there. So I thought maybe you could kind of walk us through, you know, the building blocks of what how should they be thinking, you know, what's the mindset and then what are some of the first things they should be doing to set the foundation?
00:03:17:00 - 00:03:42:00
Steffen
Yeah, thank you. And good question. I, I think there's a there's probably a there's many paths here, but if like, let's start with a like a simpler path, which is like what are things you can do without a lot of technology available? I think that that's a good place to start because most companies don't necessarily have budget or skills to to do more technical things.
00:03:42:12 - 00:04:06:20
Steffen
So that's right. Starting to like enforcing that. The salespeople always ask the question, so how did you hear about us? Where did you meet us? Where did you come from? Kind of make sure that if they're using a coding software that will already be locked, if they're not and at least type it into the system, what did this person actually reply when you asked, Is this at the meeting or on the sales call?
00:04:07:05 - 00:04:30:15
Steffen
Just to start getting some anecdotes about what seems to be leaving an impact? The same thing is that like this more and more popular kind of. How did you hear about us from Phil on where you book? Yeah, your calls also makes a lot of sense. It's super low cost to implement and you can catch some some signals of of what's working.
00:04:30:15 - 00:04:41:03
Steffen
Um, I would say then the problem is that, that most people don't remember how they like got into like the your, your world, but at least by.
00:04:41:03 - 00:04:42:02
Lee
The time they get there.
00:04:42:13 - 00:05:11:11
Steffen
But at least I can give you an anecdote of what they think that led you there. So I would say like this two like easy, accessible, the tricks on the meaning. Ask them where they submit their forms. You can ask them as well. And you know, that starts giving you a glimpse of what's going on. When we tested this ourself, particularly the form filled, we could see that when we compared their answer to what it said, a dream that there was quite a big discrepancy.
00:05:11:11 - 00:05:37:21
Steffen
And also it's what you catch in the forms can sometimes be a bit too vague to act upon. So if somebody writes Google that is so. Yeah, it's is it it wasn't an ad was it an organic which ad was it or which blog post or what did you search for? All these questions are not answered. So to the great self self-reported, the answer can be a bit of a unicorn.
00:05:37:21 - 00:05:44:14
Steffen
Sometimes too. To come across. But nevertheless this is completely free to use. And you can you can start that out today.
00:05:46:07 - 00:06:09:18
Lee
I like that. It's kind of like an old school approach, you know. And I think that aligns with what I tell my clients to do when they're building their marketing strategy, when they're building out, you know, picture of their ideal buyer in that you first look at your customer base and say, you know, who are we currently dealing with that we want more of?
00:06:09:18 - 00:06:29:23
Lee
Yeah, because you don't have all perfect customers. So which ones make the right sense? They have a good product market fit and you know, we could sign these up and do really well for them and we would create, you know, sort of a snowball effect. And so then that gives you information about who to talk to and then going out and getting that feedback.
00:06:29:23 - 00:06:53:02
Lee
And I love that's where you started because I feel like the secret sauce to marketing is customer feedback or buyer feedback out in the wild before they become customers. The more you can know about what they're thinking and what they need, the more you can meet them where they are and pull them towards a solution in an effective, value driven way.
00:06:53:08 - 00:07:00:07
Lee
So I think that's a great start, you know, for to building a foundation as hey, it's kind of funny, like so simple. Just go ask.
00:07:00:10 - 00:07:21:18
Steffen
Yeah, and make sure you actually highlight it. One more thing you can do. You can just take your current customer base and right this question sort of one by one and see like kind of what is the aggregate data. So on your website in meetings and then you could also just send an email to everybody like where did you hear about us that that was that will get you off to off to a good start.
00:07:23:06 - 00:07:52:11
Lee
I like that. And so what I would I would ask now is like question about mindset. So, you know, I always try to make sure my clients are have the right mind about what they're doing so that they're committed to it. So they're not we're not talking about tactics. We're talking about, you know, a long term commitment to something that's going to, you know, fuel put fuel on the fire towards your vision of how you're trying to grow your company and why.
00:07:52:11 - 00:07:58:10
Lee
So tell me a little bit about how they should be thinking when it comes to attribution.
00:07:59:15 - 00:08:30:20
Steffen
Yes. And I think like, funnily enough, I think attribution is a it's a fundamental way of thinking about the marketing and growth of a company in general, because in B2B, you don't just get a deal in the door out of nowhere. It's a result of multiple actions leading towards creating awareness interactions, sales meetings and then maybe a legal process before somebody signs that.
00:08:30:20 - 00:09:10:17
Steffen
That means that we can't just get another customer tomorrow on this. We start doing something six months before tomorrow. And so for sure there's a kind of a cause and effect relationship you need to establish. And my interest for attribution comes from like a desire for winning. I like if I can understand why that when we 100 customers last year, which part of the day tick are there any of those parts that looks like I can replicate them look like this is a desert campaign always and I want to do more of this ad campaign or is this piece of content of this type of content?
00:09:10:23 - 00:09:20:18
Steffen
Well, let's develop more of it. So yeah, let's try to understand what are the things that we can repeat and expect a positive outcome. And now.
00:09:20:18 - 00:09:22:18
Lee
Yeah and even. Go ahead. Sorry, go ahead.
00:09:23:08 - 00:09:48:14
Steffen
We released these benchmarks last year that said, like from first touch to a deal being one among our customers, this is 192 days. Okay. So do you know if you need to be one or two quarters upfront with marketing before that, the revenue needs to come in in your company and this this you need to I it would be nice if the organization intuitively knew that that this is how it connects.
00:09:48:14 - 00:10:08:14
Steffen
But I think yeah, let's just take that responsibility on us as marketers to explain people that things take time. If we have a Q3 target of sales, then in Q1 and Q2, we need to do a lot of marketing because the salespeople are going to need this demand by by Q3 or even in Q2.
00:10:09:12 - 00:10:28:19
Lee
Yeah, yeah, for sure. And I think, you know, having that that mindset so that you can commit to the 192 days. And actually I think we talked about Laura and I talked about that a little bit because I gave her this challenge of if you're, you know, a CMO for B2B company for 100 days, what would you do?
00:10:29:18 - 00:10:38:19
Lee
And it's like, well, you wouldn't you would do a lot, but it wouldn't amount to a lot because you still got 92 days to go. Yeah, I would do it. So you know.
00:10:38:20 - 00:10:39:15
Steffen
What you need.
00:10:39:15 - 00:10:40:19
Lee
So let's speak to that.
00:10:40:20 - 00:11:02:13
Steffen
Let's say you need to establish kind of a a framework for like leading indicators and lacking indicators that that your work actually has a good impact and the lacking indicators like the deal gets signed, that's the best thing we can see. And then you want to work your way backwards in the process to say, what are some of the earlier signals that we're on the right path?
00:11:03:07 - 00:11:24:15
Steffen
Hmm. Typically I think like a booked demo call is a great earlier indicator. If maybe it's not lead leading, then it's at least it's not one. It's quite early in the journey still. And yeah, it should be pretty good that we get demo calls booked and then we can monitor the quality of the demo calls that gets bookings.
00:11:25:00 - 00:11:32:11
Steffen
And then that must be an indication that we're building some momentum that can close two or three or four months later on. Yeah.
00:11:33:02 - 00:11:55:18
Lee
Yeah. And I think to like applying that same type of strategy of asking, you know, how did you find us applying that to the demo call and ask them, how did you end up here? You know, a simple question of how did you go from where you were to this call asking, doing that more and more on the interactions that you're having.
00:11:56:07 - 00:12:16:19
Lee
And I think that they don't have to be even personal 1 to 1 on a on a call interactions that can be in the comment section somewhere or an email, you know, how did you end up here? Where were you before this? Just a simple question and answer is going to inform you up the funnel so you don't have to wait all the way to the very end where there's a sale made.
00:12:17:00 - 00:12:41:04
Steffen
Yeah. Completely agree. And like if you want to get a little bit more theoretical about how to do growth and marketing, then, you know, ideally you would want to have like a small committee meeting in your team or in your company one time per month or even by week or something like that. But write down what all the ideas we have that we could start doing in terms of marketing and growth.
00:12:41:13 - 00:13:12:17
Steffen
Yeah. Then you would like systematically score them on two or three or four factors and then you pick the ones that are kind of probably the easiest but the highest impact. And then you would write down the dates of when do we start executing on these things? Because then like once metrics start to, you know, get impacted by this, you would know, okay, all things being equal, we started this experiment this day and now a week later we see, oh, there's an uptick in demo calls, you know what I mean?
00:13:12:17 - 00:13:28:02
Steffen
So like, you could do a lot of things just by being structured about on this day we started X and the next day we saw this. You might not have the statistical evidence, but you know that I started this activity today and tomorrow does have it.
00:13:28:02 - 00:13:48:23
Lee
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think if we're trying to build a house here, we've got the foundation in terms of how to how to think properly. And as we start building the walls, that's really what your it sounds like you're talking about is, you know, it's it's having a framework for how you operate and and employing that framework.
00:13:48:23 - 00:14:16:06
Lee
So, you know, it's just tracking as a as a more of a behavior, right? It's more of like building that into the natural rhythm of how your team operates to say, no, this is a this is a priority and that now we need to track. So even if it's a spreadsheet and dates, you know, along the top with your three tactics that are three things that you've you've want to you want to do, that's fine.
00:14:16:06 - 00:14:35:21
Lee
Because at least now you're starting to build that into how you operate. And you can get more fancy. You always get more fancy. But I love that, you know, you guys sell attribution software and you're telling people to like go old school, like start somewhere, right? Just open up a spreadsheet and ask people how they get there. Yeah.
00:14:37:05 - 00:14:45:13
Steffen
I can easily get into a dream that a pitch, but I would like it's much more tangible to do like it's, it's a nicer place to, to start for sure.
00:14:46:12 - 00:15:25:12
Lee
For sure. Yeah. You know, I think that's, I think that's very wise and it will set the tone for future attribution that's more complicated. And I like that. So I like that we are building into this conversation feedback loops because it's something I push a lot. You, you really want to have that to be a mechanism of how you get more accurate insights so that you know, when we're actually going to run this experiment or run this test on these three things that we're actually going to get good quality data back.
00:15:25:12 - 00:15:41:18
Lee
So I think we've got a good we've got a good solid like framed up house now from here. Where would you say they need to go? So let's say, you know, the team at they've listened to everything you've said. They've got the right mindset. They're starting to track, they're deploying a few things. What's next?
00:15:42:04 - 00:16:04:01
Steffen
Yeah, yeah. Then I think then the next part, if we're going to do this kind of trackable growth, then the next thing is to think about or even say, you know, as you start being structured about how you do these things, then you start to then you also not need to build a narrative that you tell your team and your organization.
00:16:05:00 - 00:16:32:18
Steffen
Like, we started these things. These are the sort of early signals we see. So people start to understand this correlation between the marketing team is doing these things and they start to see these outcomes. So like just the next, the soft thing is like what is the narrative that we're like believing in here? And then once you have the narrative, then then next step is then, okay, how can we provide evidence that what we're saying is true?
00:16:32:18 - 00:16:55:23
Steffen
And then even here, I would still allow you to go soft first, like start with some qualitative evidence, like take screenshots of interactions on LinkedIn or the last touch of a demo call that converted was a Google search and stuff like that. So you start to they could warm up to your organization that here's proof that marketing works.
00:16:56:15 - 00:17:08:11
Steffen
Mm hmm. And then when all that done, then you can go into a more like data advanced set up, right? Like dream theater or similar solutions.
00:17:09:12 - 00:17:43:10
Lee
Yeah, I like the idea of the screenshot as an example because it provides a visual to the kind of loosey goosey narrative that is being thrown around and maybe that the team is not used to tracking things. I think it can be overwhelming. It can seem kind of a big thing to bite off, and it can also make people feel a little uncomfortable that now you're going to start holding them accountable right to their what they're doing instead of just putting out feel good, you know, ads on Facebook or or running, you know, PPC campaigns.
00:17:43:22 - 00:18:14:09
Lee
Now it's your diving into a little bit more. And I think there's can be some fear that comes out of that. So those screenshots, as a specific example, are good because it shows like, okay, here's an example of what we did and how it worked and it can I should empower those team members to want to do more like that or do it better so then they can attach themselves to this new goal, this new version of success that they're shooting for.
00:18:14:09 - 00:18:24:10
Lee
And they then become it becomes more about what they're they're they're they're gunning for instead of it being something that they don't really want to, to play, to play in.
00:18:24:11 - 00:18:49:01
Steffen
Yeah. Yeah. And I think, like, nobody should be tracking just for the sake of tracking, you should be doing it because you want to positively impact your business and trying to understand what's working here or what's not working. So we could stop doing the things that are not working and like keep putting more ethics into the baskets of, of, of what's working.
00:18:49:01 - 00:19:21:09
Lee
So let's say that they've done all this and now they are starting to actually get some data in and maybe it's going to be on the spreadsheet. Maybe they are they've installed Google Analytics. They've they're they're seeing more real time data and maybe not maybe maybe not quite at the dream data level yet, but they're starting to see analytics come in, watch how what should they be thinking about next.
00:19:22:07 - 00:19:47:01
Steffen
So yeah, so I think that's actually good corner just to turn as well is that I think about making sure that as much as possibly can leave behind digital reflections so there is data if you want to deep dove into analysis. So a few examples can be if you do all your customer success work in like a Gmail inbox right now, you might want to change that up with like a real customer success software.
00:19:47:01 - 00:19:58:09
Steffen
So it leaves right digital traces. Or if the salespeople are just, you know, dialing with their phone, not using any tools, maybe not forced into call through HubSpot or L'ecole or whatever.
00:19:58:17 - 00:19:59:13
Lee
So it can be tracked.
00:19:59:13 - 00:20:41:12
Steffen
Yes, I can see like on this day we did an outbound experiment called the 100 customers. It was these customers we connected with 70. 25% of them got to. Yes, this and that. So in all kinds of go to market activities, you can probably enforce that. It leaves behind some digital trace as well. And then when you've gone through that exercise, I think what you should be striving for is then to build the connection between your activity and at best the deals you've won, or at least deals that reached a certain pipeline stage because that's what matters in B2B.
00:20:41:16 - 00:21:00:23
Steffen
Like we're in B2C, marketing can run marketing, and then you have a website that sells running shoes and then you sell running shoes, and then the feedback loop is quite tight for us B2B marketers. We have to be patient. We have to observe that it actually goes through the sales pipeline, that the contracts get signed in the end.
00:21:01:07 - 00:21:34:13
Steffen
And that's our scorecard. That's new business. That's the sales pipeline. There's nothing else that matters. I'm sorry to say it, but like you do marketing activities to produce sales pipeline, and that also means that you can be doing the best of marketing in the world. But if the sales people do not pick up the phone, if they don't write the leads that you produce, then though you produce great marketing, it's worth nothing for the company, or at least close to zero because no revenue was won from this.
00:21:34:13 - 00:21:57:18
Lee
Yeah, it's funny you say that because just I think the previous episode I had Joe Pesci, who's a world renowned sales trainer, and we talked all the things sales and and that was one of his major things too is like your salespeople need to know what to do with these leads because you've done all this work and now it's for not, you know, and then the marketing team means of looking back.
00:21:57:18 - 00:22:27:10
Lee
And that's the age old, you know, in-fighting that we have. What it makes me think is we're talking I'm thinking of all these things. I'm writing notes down here. It's I think after the well, let me start let me say it like this. I think that practically speaking, the progress for tracking your success as a marketing team should be first about tracking the progress of building your framework of how you're going to track so that you start to have success.
00:22:27:20 - 00:22:46:07
Lee
You know, like if I want to build a if I want to get stronger and, you know, build muscle, well, first of all, I need to know the right the right workouts. I need to have a time that I work out every day. You know, I need to start tracking the progress of actually getting out there, showing up and being there and, you know, awkwardly moving the weights.
00:22:46:15 - 00:23:10:00
Lee
You know, until I kind of okay, I've got a rhythm of how this works. It's in my day and it's working and I've kind of hit the first phase. Now I can actually start to start to track progress of building muscle. I think it's the same thing for for attribution. You got to start building somewhere. So track short track the progress of your build that to get to where you can actually track, you know, success.
00:23:10:00 - 00:23:33:17
Lee
And I'd say parallel with that day, I would say probably day one marketing needs to have a conversation with sales and tell them what they're doing and say, okay, look, we're turning over New Leaf here. We want to know, we know the efforts we're putting in matter and we're behind this. So we don't have a full clue of what we're doing, but we're going to start building something and we're going to let you know.
00:23:33:17 - 00:23:52:22
Lee
And that starts the rhythm of the sales and marketing alignment. So sales can say, Yeah, okay, well, once you guys get your stuff together, you know, maybe we can help out and it starts that back and forth conversation. So as you're building and you get to the level of screenshots, you can share those with the sales team and say, Hey, we're getting further along and building our our thing here.
00:23:53:16 - 00:24:13:21
Lee
And look, let me show you what we did and what it amounted to. Yeah. Are you seeing anything on your side that starts a real conversation, a feedback loop between marketing and sales? And so I think that warming up that sales alignment conversation is important. So it's not just you turn it on and say, well, we sent you all these leads and what did you do with them?
00:24:13:21 - 00:24:16:03
Lee
Yeah, that's crucial. Yeah.
00:24:16:12 - 00:24:36:09
Steffen
I mean, like, yeah, if you are to start anywhere, just like walk into the sales room physically or digitally and then ask who would you like to have in those customer meetings? How do they look like? Yeah. And then go back into the marketing room and figure out a way to like get the more of those people that they like talking to.
00:24:36:20 - 00:24:37:12
Steffen
Like they'd like.
00:24:37:12 - 00:24:51:10
Lee
If there is, like, if there ever was a way to hold sales people's feet to the fire. That's the way. Yeah. Like you tell me who you want us to bring you and we'll go we'll go work on trying to do that. Then when they show up there, there's really no excuse to not follow up with them and not do the work of closing.
00:24:51:13 - 00:25:09:18
Steffen
It sounds overly simple, but it's extremely powerful to like go in there, ask, who should we try to sell to? Okay, let me go get you some of this. Okay. He he converted. Why didn't you speak to him or you did speak to him and when. All right. Just try to, you know, double the budget on this compete that brought him in.
00:25:09:18 - 00:25:32:18
Lee
Yeah I agree 100%. And you know, as I'm there's I have lots of notes here and like lots of things kind of popping in my mind as we're talking and if we kind of continue on this, this, this, you know, narrative of building the proverbial attribution house, we end up at the roof, like, how would we put a cap on this in?
00:25:33:00 - 00:26:05:00
Lee
And I'm going to throw something out there just to, you know, you tell me if you agree with it or don't agree with it, and then let's let's figure out how can we really bring this full circle for them so they can have this full idea of how to think about attribution. So my thought is ultimately, you want to be able to report up to the C-suite, you want to report up to the board of directors and let them know this is this would be like the real goal to get to you to say, okay, not only do we have a really good handle on what we're doing, but we're tracking everything we can track.
00:26:05:11 - 00:26:30:12
Lee
We're seeing what's working. This is what's working. And you're not necessarily giving them the minutia, but you're giving them these high kind of pillar metrics. And the way I advise my clients is to look at two major kind of umbrella metrics that are not really metrics at all. They're just they're really more modes of mechanisms of which the other metrics fall below.
00:26:31:00 - 00:27:01:05
Lee
One of them is volume because every company wants to have more, right? So and it doesn't necessarily mean exponentially more, but are we incrementally or exponentially growing the number of everything coming through the funnel, including operating opportunities closed and the other one being sort of this the speed at which those new leads are flowing through to sales and then even through the sales pipeline themselves.
00:27:01:22 - 00:27:21:14
Lee
So for me, I feel like as we get close to sort of button this up, I would say now, now that you're looking at all this data and getting your your note, you know, now what you didn't know before. So you're more informed of how to use the tools and maybe now you're at a dream data stage where you can use really good, qualified, you know, tools.
00:27:22:15 - 00:27:36:21
Lee
You have to now push up the right narrative and numbers to leadership. So I'd be curious to hear what you think about that thinking and and how you guys think about it.
00:27:37:05 - 00:28:10:06
Steffen
I think it's a good way of thinking about it. I think, oh yeah. To be successful in marketing is one thing is that you're constantly explaining the organization why you're doing things, because you need to be assigned budgets, you need to have like buy in that is it's working. And then I would say a good thing to report on would probably be to explain as much as you can off the pipeline and to your whoever is that you're reporting to.
00:28:10:06 - 00:28:42:20
Steffen
So let's say so you have like this classic, you have an outbound team and they book some meetings. They would probably know kind of somewhat the percentage of how much of the pipeline that they bring and then of the rest of the pipeline, how much of this can you say is this fair to describe, like prescribe to to marketing and like you want to have that if not growing faster than sales, then at least keeping up with the sales of how many outbound meetings is getting booked.
00:28:43:14 - 00:29:07:02
Steffen
And you know, constantly, constantly improving is not percentage based in at least the amount of leads that you bring in and the value of leads that that you bring in. And maybe one last component I really advise anybody to to think about as well is how much are you willing to pay for it, a lead or a deal that you source?
00:29:08:00 - 00:29:33:23
Steffen
Typically, that's the answer's pretty crisp. If you ask the outbound department, hey, we booked 100 meetings last week. We have four employees doing it. Their salaries, hence a meeting cost this? Yes. A true few marketing teams have actually established what is our target cost per requisition. So by establishing this you have like a metrics where you can say, are we below or above the target?
00:29:33:23 - 00:29:59:11
Steffen
If we're below what we're willing to pay, then we should actually be funneling in more money to marketing. Yeah. Or at least if it's if you compare sales marketing one on one and if they were equal, I would put a much more money into marketing because you don't see all the seats that you plant, all the other people that are hit by your marketing, whereas you have one converted demo call, but maybe another 5000 people actually saw the brand.
00:30:00:02 - 00:30:16:06
Steffen
Whereas in outbound is this kind of one on one poke that you're doing and it's not leaving a lot of spillover effect on on your brand. Right so do have the conversations in your team what can we afford to pay for a certain business outcome.
00:30:18:00 - 00:30:48:17
Lee
Yeah, I like that. Very important. And as a conversation that's going to come up, if it doesn't come up day one, which I don't think is answerable day one in this scenario, but I think if they kind of follow this train of this path that we've sort of outlined here, they're going to in due time, probably months arrive at a place where they have data of some sort that they can then ask the question of the sale and say all the information we can gather.
00:30:48:17 - 00:31:18:03
Lee
Now, how can we attribute up the pipeline, the not only the success and the path, but the percentage of what was spent or what we should now budget for doing these things again? And I think again, back to the setting up like establishing or tracking the progress of the build is very important for leadership because then they it's not a it's not something that's in a dark hole somewhere that you're just saying words.
00:31:18:12 - 00:31:54:16
Lee
It's more of like, let me be transparent as a marketing leader to my management about what we're building and how we're building it. You give them insights. So once you actually have it built to a large degree, they're going to feel like they have part ownership. I think that's great. And I would add one more thing and this is I'm just add in this there because it's I think it's on my mind I want to add as much value to what is listening here if they're taking notes and I, I love conversations like this, by the way, because it allows us to pack a lot of information into, you know, 30 minutes or whatever it
00:31:54:16 - 00:31:57:18
Lee
is so people can come back and listen to it over and over again.
00:31:57:22 - 00:32:02:00
Steffen
Trying to share all the mistakes that we've done. So certainly don't. Yeah, don't have to.
00:32:02:16 - 00:32:37:04
Lee
Yeah, exactly. But I think one major misstep that could happen is not well, it's first of all is having a marketing leader that understands all of this because the speed in which you're going to actually build something and get to success from a marketing attribution standpoint is is that's the difference. It may be 192 days or maybe, you know, 654 if you have a leader that is not as experienced in this domain.
00:32:37:04 - 00:33:13:12
Lee
So I would say having the right marketing leader is critical from day one. So if you're kind of like we need to redo all this because we don't know what's happening with our marketing budget search for, you know, a marketing leader who can come in and not only lead a team, but and hopefully think strategically too, but already has experience and maybe has even work with some software like this that can that has the thinking in place because then they can come in and stair step in and say, okay, leadership, we need 192 days to even do anything.
00:33:13:17 - 00:33:37:13
Lee
But here's what we're going to do in that first hundred and 90 days. We're going to build this out. That's going to give so much peace of mind to leadership. It's also going to do affect so much more success throughout the team and and they're going to play well with sales. I think that's a critical component that if missed, you know, because a lot of people have a marketing leader and they don't know what they don't know about how that person should be judged.
00:33:37:13 - 00:33:47:22
Lee
Right? Yeah. I mean, you you sort of sit in that role yourself. So I'd be curious to hear your thoughts about I mean, you're you're kind of in that hot seat.
00:33:47:22 - 00:34:11:21
Steffen
Yeah, I would say I, I wouldn't want to have a marketing leader who was not talking about pipeline and revenue, because then I would get worried that the focus is not in the right place. I feel like fundamentally that the talk track should be about we're doing these things because we want more high quality leads for the salespeople.
00:34:12:00 - 00:34:26:06
Steffen
We want our company to produce more revenue. And if there's a complete disconnect between what is the marketing project and the revenue outcome, then that would be a big red flag for me.
00:34:26:06 - 00:34:46:01
Lee
Yes. Yes. Hey, I appreciate it so much. It's been a great, great conversation. Very rich for you know, especially for the company we're talking about. I think if someone comes across this or listening to you, they're going to get so much from it. So I really appreciate your time and joining me and talking through this.
00:34:46:11 - 00:34:53:12
Steffen
Thank you, Lee. Me too. We definitely think alike on many of these topics.
00:34:53:12 - 00:35:02:06
Lee
So if if I'm going to link your LinkedIn below, of course, dream data, I Oh is there any other place that someone what if someone want to find you they.
00:35:02:06 - 00:35:10:01
Steffen
Could know that that would be the two main entities to take care of pretty. All of us are pretty active on LinkedIn, so we'll answer any question people might have.
00:35:11:00 - 00:35:36:21
Lee
That's great. All right. Thanks a lot. So thanks again for watching Exploring Growth Podcast. I want to do something a little different this time. If you don't know about the email that summarizes and follows all these podcast episodes that has even more rich information on it for you. If you're not on that, go to Harvard Maricon and then click on podcast and right there there'll be a little subscription box.
00:35:36:21 - 00:35:40:20
Lee
Just put your email address in there, hit subscribe. You won't be disappointed.