The Sales Perspective | Sales Vs. Marketing [Endless Customers Podcast S.1. Ep. 37]

This transcript has been generated with AI and not checked for accuracy.

Chris Duprey
0:00:00
Too often sales and marketing stand on opposing sides. That has to change if we are gonna continue to grow and develop. So check out this conversation Alex and I have that dives into why it's so important to get everybody together,

Chris Duprey
0:00:15
and more importantly, how each group can take action to make that a reality.

Alex Winter
0:00:21
Welcome back to Endless Customers.

Alex Winter
0:00:28
My name is Alex Winter and today I'm joined by Chris Dupre, our head coach. Chris, welcome back to the show. Thanks, man. It's good to see you. Good to see you too.

Chris Duprey
0:00:36
Very good to see you.

Alex Winter
0:00:37
We have a really interesting topic today and I feel like I need to go into my prize fighter voice that's like, marketing versus sales, in the left corner, in the right corner. So today we're talking about marketing versus sales, but specifically we're gonna lean a little bit more into the sales side of things. But we hear all too often that marketing and sales

Alex Winter
0:00:59
have issues, they don't communicate, they tend to be in two separate lanes and it's very hard to get that cross pollination that we have found to be necessary in order for major growth, major success. So let's start high level.

Alex Winter
0:01:13
What are some of the things that you see are some of the problems that tend to happen between sales and marketing and trying to bridge those

Chris Duprey
0:01:17
gaps? Well, so I think that sales is generally just uneducated around what marketing and marketing's role actually is. So it is there and again it And again, it depends on the type of selling or the type of sales organization you have. But in a lot of organizations, the sales team is looked at as the price fighters, looked at like they get all the attention, they're out grinding, they're out, you know, doing outbound, filling up lead funnels, like making calls, making introductions, meeting people,

Chris Duprey
0:02:03
closing deals, generating rev for the organization.

Chris Duprey
0:02:06
And so in a lot of companies,

Chris Duprey
0:02:07
especially before they start an endless customer's journey, the marketers, if there's even marketers, make things like PowerPoint decks. And you know, and that's how the sales team thinks of them. Oh, they do that social thing and then they create our decks for us, our proposals.

Chris Duprey
0:02:31
So if you're in one of those organizations, you're starting from a position of sales is way up here and marketing's way down here because of what we have been doing. Totally. Now fast forward to a company that's doing some version of ask, you answer,

Chris Duprey
0:02:51
and those customers where the marketing team is doing a ton of content creation. And let's even say they're doing the right content creation. So they're doing that. They ask, you answer, endless customers, content, so content that's driving the revenue. We can still see issues if the sales folks

Chris Duprey
0:03:09
don't know what's happening, right? So if we aren't proactive as an organization of talking about what marketing is doing and making sure that sales is leveraging the content that marketing is producing, you will continue to have this gap

Chris Duprey
0:03:30
between the two parts of your organization. Totally, no, absolutely, and that's actually a great segue

Alex Winter
0:03:36
because I have a stat here from LinkedIn that says nine out of ten sales professionals or sales and marketing professionals say that they're misaligned when it comes to strategy, when it comes to process, content, and even culture. And it plays into what you're saying. Why does that happen? And how do we go about starting to have those conversations or figuring out ways as teams

Alex Winter
0:03:59
to unearth it and have more of a collaborative approach versus you stay in your lane and I'll stay in mine.

Chris Duprey
0:04:05
Yeah, so I think it starts with how do we as an organization look at folks? Do we look at it as the responsibility of one team or multiple teams? Is it just sales or is it sales and marketing? Is it sales, marketing, and service?

Chris Duprey
0:04:21
Like how does it all line up on our accountability charts, our who sits where charts? That's number one. Number two is, forget how we talk about it as a leadership team or as an organization, but if we aren't doing the right things in marketing, and when I say the right things in marketing,

Chris Duprey
0:04:49
I'm talking about things that we know drive revenue, right? So if we're not writing the big five, if we're not creating videos that can be used in sales, if we're doing, you know, sort of fluff type stuff, of course there's a misalignment because sales is like, oh, they write articles about nice things, right?

Chris Duprey
0:05:10
Like, they just, there's that misalignment. And so some of it is, do we have a really good strategy, right? And then this piece that I've just found coaching all these organizations in the last five years is if the sales team doesn't read the content

Chris Duprey
0:05:32
or watch the content that's produced, they're way more, or they're way less likely to use it in the sales process. And so if the marketing team is doing great stuff, but the sales team isn't reading it or looking at it, then they don't really know that it exists because they tend to live in their own space trying to close deal after deal after deal.

Alex Winter
0:06:03
Right, especially if what they're doing has been working for them, then it's like, why do I need to invite other things in? Yeah, like I can see that logic or thought pattern.

Chris Duprey
0:06:13
Yeah, so it all comes back to this, how do we as leaders at whatever level, so if you're the CEO, you can go influence this to happen. If you're the sales leader, you can go start the conversation with marketing leader and vice versa. But the idea here is we have to come together to understand what each is doing. We have to come together to understand the needs of each. And then quite

Chris Duprey
0:06:44
Because only then can you say the marketing team's not creating the right content. If you've never read it, then you can't really say that. And this is the crazy thing for me is once you read great marketing content that actually helps buyers make decisions and you're a great salesperson, you're going to go, holy smokes, if I could just have this article, if I had had that article a year ago, I would have closed ten more deals. Because that's what will happen, right? But that first

Chris Duprey
0:07:22
step, so if you're doing the right things, but you still have this disconnect, force the consumption of your own content and discussions around it. If you're still in that dichotomy though of, well, our marketing team does, you know, happy mother's day from those of us at ABC Corp, um, type of things and just make slide decks. Of course sales is going to look down at them, right?

Chris Duprey
0:07:53
And so marketing, you need to own your stuff too and engage with sales. You guys are creating the right stuff that drives revenue. Very well said.

Alex Winter
0:08:02
And we've seen this happen time over time. And Chris, you work with a lot of companies, B2B, B2C, a lot of different industries. What happens when you start to bridge these gaps? And marketing is actually asking these questions to give sales folks better content

Alex Winter
0:08:15
that they can actually use and vice versa. Sales folks are actually starting to look at what marketing is doing and trying to help them to push the content and deliverables they need.

Chris Duprey
0:08:25
Like, the whole dynamic changes, right? And so I've made, I've coached companies to make everybody read this stuff or do watch parties and like, we talk about that on top of meet with each other. But the number one biggest thing that I've actually seen,

Chris Duprey
0:08:45
like, take it to the next level. Like the, if it was my organization, this is totally what I would do because I've just watched it work so well. Which is have the marketing team sit in on the sales role play sessions.

Chris Duprey
0:09:08
Right?

Chris Duprey
0:09:09
So we have a client, Opus Partners. Probably one of the best examples of they ask, you answer in the world, okay? And their marketing leader and their marketing manager sit on these role plays. And in these role plays, we bring up real scenarios

Chris Duprey
0:09:30
where sales folks are talking about deals that they lost or things that didn't go as well. And it starts a conversation between the marketers and sales people about exactly what type of content they should produce. So I've watched it happen. They've talked about it. They've updated a buyer's guide. Sales has then had success. And do you want to know how the sales and marketing team at Opus gets on? They love each other's business on a positive note because they all see the value that both teams provide.

Alex Winter
0:10:08
And that's huge.

Alex Winter
0:10:09
And there's a key takeaway that I heard from what you said there, that the sales leader and the marketing leader are both in these meetings, and it seems to be those are the people that are helming or driving this initiative forward. So do you find that to be true where, like, leadership or from the top down needs to really set the example or set the tone?

Chris Duprey
0:10:28
Yeah, I mean, so what we expect needs to be inspected or is not gonna happen, right? So said another way, we've gotta show them, not just tell them. So if we say, you guys have to work together, go to these meetings, and then we don't go ourselves or we don't participate

Chris Duprey
0:10:51
or we don't actually embody it, then yeah, of course you're gonna have sales people like, marketing's just making blogs, who cares?

Alex Winter
0:10:59
Right, and if boss person isn't doing it, then why should I do it?

Chris Duprey
0:11:02
Right, and so like, leaders should set the example. But it should become so clear if we're creating the right content and sales is weighing in and sales actually knows what it is. It should be a no-brainer that they should work together because it's helping them close deals.

Alex Winter
0:11:22
Yeah, I hear you. It's fascinating too because I'm on the marketing team here at Impact. You tend to head up most of the sales on the Impact side of the equation as well. And I remember when you were like, we need to watch sales calls, but why? And I remember being resistant to it. I really was and that's the truth.

Alex Winter
0:11:46
And we started doing them and over time, I go to more and more watch parties now because the things that happens in those meetings, watching a sales call, pausing it, talking to the team, having these conversations, what on earth is some of the best content we've ever produced.

Alex Winter
0:12:02
And that's a real thing.

Chris Duprey
0:12:03
And why?

Alex Winter
0:12:04
Because we're taking the time to understand what the sales folks are going through and the conversations that they are actually having with real clients.

Chris Duprey
0:12:12
Yes, like that's, yes! That's the thing! Yeah. Right, so it's this double-edged sword. Sales people have to read and watch the content that's created.

Chris Duprey
0:12:26
Marketing folks need to watch the calls that salespeople are having so they can actually see the way buyers show up.

Alex Winter
0:12:35
Right, and what questions they have and what concerns they have.

Chris Duprey
0:12:38
Yeah, because here's the deal. If you put a gun to my head and said, what are the last three questions that a buyer's asked you? I'm probably not, I mean, I'm gonna guess, but I'm so in that moment going through it that it makes it harder for me to do what we originally had said in the Ask You Answer, which was like, salespeople, if you hear a

Chris Duprey
0:13:00
question, you know, you should be asking yourself, is it on my website? If not, I should write it down. Yeah, we still do that, if you can remember. But holy smokes, with AI, with all this stuff, record your calls, make marketing listen to them, and because they're gonna, like when sales listens, we're listening to see how could we have closed it from a sales perspective. When marketing is listening

Chris Duprey
0:13:26
to it, they're going where was the buyer uneducated and how could we have made this a simpler conversation for sales. And here's the thing, when sales sees marketing doing that, and marketing is now proactively creating things that they know that will help, and when marketing sees that sales is willing to have the conversation,

Chris Duprey
0:13:50
that they're actually reading the content, that's when you create this group that comes together to achieve great things versus two groups in silos that don't talk to each other.

Alex Winter
0:14:05
That's so true, really well said. All right, so I have a question for the marketing folks here. In an ideal world for the sales teams, right, what support do they need from marketers like us and from the marketing team? And how does that look like in action?

Alex Winter
0:14:19
You used Opus as an example, but like, in a perfect world, they ask you answers, adopted sales and marketing teams working together, what can marketing do or what's going to be best for support for sales?

Chris Duprey
0:14:30
So here's the biggest thing, marketers need to be proactive. We will also focus attention on salespeople and how they can be better to the marketers. Bottom line is, marketers, you probably need to take the first step because

Chris Duprey
0:14:47
sales is ingrained in the way that they've done things. And so the easiest path is truly understand what they do. Right. And there's a couple ways you can, if, if you go and do in-person meetings, go with the salesperson. If, you know, if you're in an industry that like does work, so say a home improvement industry. Not only go with a salesperson and see what that's like, but marketers, go with the crew that does the work

Chris Duprey
0:15:20
to see what you actually do from a work perspective, right? Because the more that you actually know about the product, service, and the customer, the more sales is gonna lean into you. And the more proactive you are at either asking the right questions

Chris Duprey
0:15:36
or understanding what's happening, the more they're going to want to engage with you.

Chris Duprey
0:15:43
Okay?

Alex Winter
0:15:44
Yeah, that makes total sense. And the deeper understanding that you have with anything, at least for me on the marketing and the creative side, I wanna know everything so that I can convey the messages the best way that I can. And you can't do that if you don't have

Alex Winter
0:15:56
a deep understanding of these things.

Chris Duprey
0:15:58
Right, so let's use an example of us.

Chris Duprey
0:16:01
Okay.

Chris Duprey
0:16:02
Right? A couple weeks ago, we went down to a company in New Jersey, and I presented a workshop on bringing artificial intelligence into an organization, right? It was actually the second time that you've actually gone with me on one of those to see it.

Alex Winter
0:16:17
That's right. Right? Yeah, I saw your inaugural kickoff one, and then this was, yeah.

Chris Duprey
0:16:22
Like, less than six months later, here we are doing it again. But the idea is, it wasn't, like I'm sure that, like again, we know each other pretty well, so it's fun to just hang out and do that stuff, but you got to see how real customers and clients of ours

Chris Duprey
0:16:40
responded to something that we delivered. Yes. Right?

Alex Winter
0:16:46
Absolutely.

Chris Duprey
0:16:47
And so, and so for me, I don't feel like I have to tell you as much to be like, Hey, bro, we need to do some more on, you know, I could really use a piece to help me close some more of these workshop deals or to get to the next step. So they have to this thing and you now know exactly what the, the CEO of that company talked about the whole time that we were going through it, and you have a different perspective potentially

Chris Duprey
0:17:18
on what they found is the most valuable, to now you can come back to me with like, hey man, I think this is the angle and here's a great video to help with it.

Alex Winter
0:17:27
Totally.

Alex Winter
0:17:29
Right? Totally, and that's the beauty of it. And I wouldn't know those things as well if I hadn't gone with you and I hadn't had the chance to see these real customers in real life and their real fears, worries, doubts, and concerns

Alex Winter
0:17:41
and then how you shifted that conversation and how you addressed those things. So that was eye opening for me, yeah.

Chris Duprey
0:17:47
We also have a real relationship with each other, right? You're not the videographer and I'm not the head coach, right? So while I'm not saying that everybody needs to be best friends with everybody they work with, but holy smokes, exponentially easier to do this job

Chris Duprey
0:18:07
of whether it's sales or marketing when you actually know each other beyond just, hope you had a great weekend. Yeah, absolutely, no, and that's something

Alex Winter
0:18:18
as a professional videographer, and it doesn't just apply to us, it's for content managers, it's for anyone in marketing, the better rapport you can build with your sales teams, with the people that you work directly with so you can understand them,

Alex Winter
0:18:29
so that it's more than just transactional, that's the key to better content, to more authentic content, to building trust, and so on and so forth. So that's really like at its core, I think one of the strongest points is

Alex Winter
0:18:41
those relationships are instrumental in conveying your messaging correctly. A hundred percent. Yeah, yeah, totally. So let's flip the switch now. So we talked about how marketers and what marketers can do for sales.

Alex Winter
0:18:55
What can sales teams do to help our friends and my side of the pond on the marketing equation? Like what, what are some things that salespeople could be proactive with to really get marketing more involved with what they do? Lose, lose your ego.

Chris Duprey
0:19:06
Stop thinking that you're the only people that provide value to the organization. It's that simple. Okay. Right. At the end of the day, you need support to close deals, whether that is help with marketing materials, whether that is actually somebody to help you generate lead,

Chris Duprey
0:19:26
get past whatever is in your head about you're the only person that can help close deals. Second thing is don't have a comment about content until you've actually read the content or watched the content.

Alex Winter
0:19:43
Right?

Chris Duprey
0:19:44
Like, don't blow off, don't blow off those things. And, oh, by the way, look in the mirror and remember that when you're a consumer, whether it's for the business or for yourself, you do research by looking for things like, how much does it cost? What could go wrong with this product or service if I buy it?

Chris Duprey
0:20:05
Who else does it? Who's the best at it and what are people saying? Right.

Chris Duprey
0:20:09
Because we all do it.

Alex Winter
0:20:10
We all do it.

Chris Duprey
0:20:11
So anytime a salesperson blows off the marketing team, I'm like, so who is educating on those things? Well, I am. Like, no, you're not. Because do you want to go into insert any buying experience and have the salesperson be the holder of all the info and every salesperson will say no. But they still want to be the holder.

Chris Duprey
0:20:34
It's like times have changed, gang. People are gonna get the answer. Let's help our marketing team be the ones that provide it by being teammates rather

Alex Winter
0:20:43
than adversaries. So true and there is a shift that I've seen quite a bit where salespeople that are maybe really good at what they do but are stuck in their ways, maybe they're battling a little bit of the ego because they've had such a great track record, the shift isn't really like you have to change everything you're doing. It's looking at it through a new lens that's like, if you can leverage this team, this

Alex Winter
0:21:03
marketing team, how many more deals can you close? How many more meaningful conversations can you have and less of like, I have to spend 20 minutes selling this person when you could spend five minutes just closing a deal, right? And that's the difference that we're talking about here, which is a big difference. 100%.

Chris Duprey
0:21:19
Yeah.

Alex Winter
0:21:19
100%. Yeah, now when this shift happens, right, for sales folks, when this starts to hook up and the marketing team and the sales teams are driving, can you give us some examples? They can be like general numbers,

Alex Winter
0:21:28
but like, do you see the sales numbers increasing substantially? Like, what does it typically do?

Chris Duprey
0:21:33
Yeah, I mean, listen, I've seen 25 to 50% upticks in close rates. Wow. Just because the people start working together. Right. So, I think anecdotally, the more educated the buyer is, the more likely they are to buy,

Chris Duprey
0:21:50
and the faster that process is going to be. Yeah. I don't care how highly technical the deal is to how simple it is. If a buyer has to consider it, then it means that education is needed. And when I say something like that, I'm like, I don't do education on guitar picks, right?

Chris Duprey
0:22:07
Like, I don't. I play bass, so I know when I'm playing bass with a pick, I want a thicker pick. When I'm playing guitar, I like a medium pick. I don't have to do research on that. They cost less than 20 bucks for a pack. But if I'm gonna go buy like what strings should I put on my bass guitar, you had better believe I'm gonna go do research because I don't know

Chris Duprey
0:22:34
exactly which ones I want yet because I haven't been playing bass as long as I've been playing regular guitar. So I need to think about it. Right? Like these are just examples. So I know that content being easy to find and helpful is super important to me as I buy stuff. So we need to remember that as sales folks and lean into it.

Alex Winter
0:22:57
Absolutely, and it's super important to most buyers nowadays, the age of AI, the way that search has gone over the last 20 years with the web and with everything, all these tools that we have at our fingertips, the powerful tool that's just in our pocket, that's our phone, like we can search and research

Alex Winter
0:23:13
almost anything these days. So it's also that shift of knowing that and knowing that people have short attention spans, they wanna be well-informed, they wanna find it themselves, and then they wanna make a buying decision.

Alex Winter
0:23:25
So it's meeting them where they are.

Alex Winter
0:23:26
Yeah, totally.

Alex Winter
0:23:27
Any closing thoughts or any closing suggestions for sales folks and marketing folks as we wrap up here?

Chris Duprey
0:23:34
Yeah, I mean, just understand that selling's a team sport and you need both sides. And quite frankly, marketing is more important to buyers. They might not ever say it, but we all want to be searching on our phone before we go talk to somebody because when we talk to somebody, it's real. When we're watching videos or doing the research, there's still that barrier between us and the product.

Chris Duprey
0:24:01
That's where your marketing team's helping you in. And so we should look at it as like, how can we help them get those people that are just scrolling to go, oh, I wanna talk to them.

Alex Winter
0:24:12
Yeah, absolutely. Spark that motivation to go take action.

Chris Duprey
0:24:17
Yes, sir.

Alex Winter
0:24:18
Chris, great insights. I love talking with you, always. Thanks for being on the show.

Chris Duprey
0:24:22
You're welcome, man.

Alex Winter
0:24:22
All right, we'll talk soon. And for everybody out there listening and watching, this is Endless Customers. I'm Alex Winter. this is Endless Customers. I'm Alex Winter.

Alex Winter
0:24:31
See you on the next episode.




Transcribed with Cockatoo