April 14, 2025 • 41 mins
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What does it take to elevate marketing operations from a technical support function to a strategic business driver? AJ Driscoll reveals how understanding product marketing fundamentals transformed his career trajectory from system administrator to co-leader of an entire marketing department.
The journey begins with a data-driven approach to validating and refining ideal customer profiles (ICPs). Rather than accepting conventional wisdom about target markets, AJ demonstrates how combining quantitative analysis with qualitative research creates powerful insights that sales teams can actually use. He walks us through his methodology for evaluating historical win rates, customer demographics, and industry trends to identify where businesses should focus their efforts.
Most remarkably, AJ shares his unique philosophy on cross-functional collaboration. "My job is to help other people be better at their jobs," he explains, detailing how this service-oriented mindset helped him build relationships throughout his organizations. From creating automated alerts for sales teams to designing ROI tracking systems with finance, these collaborative efforts eventually earned him company-wide recognition typically reserved for top salespeople.
For marketing operations professionals looking to expand their impact, AJ offers practical advice on developing business intelligence skills and becoming industry experts. He shares how new AI tools have accelerated the research process, allowing ops professionals to quickly gain domain knowledge that enhances their strategic contributions. The combination of technical expertise, product marketing understanding, and collaborative spirit creates the foundation for a marketing operations professional who can truly drive business success.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of
OpsCast brought to you byMarketingOpscom, powered by the
Mopros out there.
I'm your host.
Michael Hartman joined today,as you can see, with my co-host,
naomi Liu.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hi, it's been a little while.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
It has been.
It's been a minute.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Yeah, Schedule's aligning finally.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
I know.
Well, spring has sprung whereyou are and where I am, so we're
ready to go.
Maybe that's a sign that we'llget to do this more often.
Well, good, joining us today isAJ Driscoll.
Aj is a marketing consultantwith AJ Driscoll Consulting LLC,
the agency that he shocker,surprise, surprise founded.
(00:39):
Prior to starting hisconsulting business, aj was a
marketing operations leader atDeepWatch, where he co-led the
marketing team.
He has done previous work inmarketing, marketing strategy,
marketing automation at agenciesas well as in-house, and he
likes to take a data-drivenapproach to effectively build,
scale and measure marketingstrategies.
Aj, thanks for joining us today.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Yeah, I'm trying to remember.
You're up in the northeastsomewhere, right?
Speaker 3 (01:09):
Yeah, up in Vermont we got some snow yesterday, so
I'm jealous of hearing that youguys have spring.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Snow.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Snow, that's crazy.
Snow in April in Vermont.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Well, hopefully you're a skier, you get to enjoy
it not enough to enjoy uhskiing, just enough to uh, you
know, make them salt the roadsonce again yeah, make driving
treacherous, so at least you'reprepared.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Down here in dallas, like if it snows, like I just
try to avoid driving because theidiots out there don't know
what to do.
We don't have the equipment toreally clear the roads.
It is what it is, okay.
So our main focus today isgoing to be talking about why
it's important for marketingoperations professionals to
(02:00):
understand product marketing.
But before we get into that, Idid a quick overview of your
career and your journey, but I'dlove for you to share maybe a
little more about that and howyou became passionate about this
topic of the understanding ofthe overlap and understanding
needed for marketing ops folkswith product marketing.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
Yeah, I think one commonality into my career path
has always been just fallinginto some realm of marketing.
It started off by my internshipwhere the director of marketing
, who had hired me to be anintern, left the company two
weeks after I started and hadjust purchased HubSpot and the
(02:47):
rest of the company leadershipwas like, hey, intern, go figure
this out.
And that really kickstarted mylife into marketing operations
and learning, marketingautomation, all of that kind of
good stuff, and just keptdeveloping it from there until I
reached the point at DeepWatchwhere I was now a marketing ops
leader and, collaborating withso many different people,
(03:10):
realized it'd be hugelybeneficial for me to better
understand everything elsethat's going on in marketing so
that I could be more effectiveat marketing operations, which
led me to mostly productmarketing.
I'd been involved with demandgen strategies and things like
that in the past, runningcampaigns and nurture programs,
(03:32):
all that good stuff.
But where where productmarketing came into the fold was
developing a new ICP exerciseand I pushed people to have a
more data-driven approachbecause there was kind of the
notion that we knew who ourcustomers were at the company
(03:53):
and we kind of dove into if thatwas true or not.
And from there started taking adata-driven look into you know,
what does our current customerbase look like?
What deals close the fastest,all of that good stuff and built
a readout on that and that wasjust kind of step one that felt
(04:14):
very marketing ops focused.
But from there we starteddeveloping out buyer personas on
who would be within that ICPand going into the details of
you know what makes them tick,what are they looking for in a
solution, how does the companyservice their needs, figuring
out those pain points.
And I was heavily involved inthat process and kind of
(04:38):
realized that I had now fallenmore into product marketing and
it kind of gave me a nice littleavenue to to continue focusing
on building out ICP.
Um, uh, exercises with othercompanies, and you know, that's
kind of where I immediately fellinto and had success within my
(04:59):
consulting business.
Um was able to, you know, talkwith a few companies that needed
to know their customers betterand jumped in and, you know,
taking that data-driven approachas well as, you know,
interviewing customers,understanding industries all of
that kind of good stuff is whereI just fell into and I think
(05:20):
it's hugely important, uh, as amarketing ops professional, to
start understanding that stuffso that you can do more than
just the system side of things,because then you can start
merging that with specificstrengths within a company and
being able to be more beneficialthan just being the guy who
(05:40):
knows how to clean lists,configure HubSpot.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
Yeah.
So just real quick, I want tofollow up.
So, um, this is something wedidn't talk about because it was
when I was prepping for thissession, but you, um, you were,
you were like a co-leader forall of marketing at at what?
So I'm curious because I thinkthat's, uh, highly unusual.
First off, having a co-leaderis unusual, but, like what, how
(06:04):
did that happen and what didthat look like for in terms of,
like, your scope ofresponsibility versus the other
person?
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Sure, yeah.
So at the time we had a CMO forabout a year and a half and
then she had departed thecompany and, instead of us
looking to backfill that role,leadership made the decision
that her directors would thenco-lead the marketing team.
Because we'd all been workingvery closely together for say,
(06:35):
two years and with that we wereable to, you know, get along
really, really well and a lot ofour thinking was well aligned
along, really really well, and alot of our thinking was well
aligned Um, so we were able tojust continue on kind of making
those leadership style decisions, um, as a team, and that
consisted of myself, someone whois in channel and field
(06:57):
marketing, and then someone whowas dedicated to product
marketing, um, and the three ofus, yeah, drove strategy for for
about a year before.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
Oh, there's three of you, not just two.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
Yeah, three of us, so we all kind of owned our own
piece of the business, uh,within marketing.
And then, yeah, we would all bea part of the those like
leadership conversations andable to to move things forward,
and we had three different andunique perspectives and
approached things in threedifferent ways and I think we
(07:33):
did some pretty cool stuff overthat time.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Do you think?
Speaker 2 (07:38):
I'm curious because I think a challenge that a lot of
us in marketing ops have is,especially when you're starting
out or growing, your team isgetting that, you know,
visibility within theorganization and you know not
just being a cost center, right,but actually like a revenue
driver.
And do you feel like thathaving that understanding of you
(07:59):
know product marketing andbuilding those relationships
with those teams helps to bethat stepping stone that, hey,
you know this team, like youmentioned, is more.
We're not just like makingdonuts, right, we're also like
thinking about strategy and wehave a lot of insights and we
see all of the data and wherethings are going, trends.
And I'm just curious, like ifthere are people out there who
(08:21):
want to move away from like justbeing an individual contributor
and they're wanting to havemore of like an elevator role
within the organization, Do youfeel like this is that stepping
stone towards getting there?
Speaker 3 (08:35):
It can be.
I think what was the steppingstone for me in particular in
this situation was I was thesecond marketing hire at the
company when I was onboarding.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
To kind of define where it's going.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
Exactly so I had that benefit.
But then I've also always beenfirmly in the belief that
marketing operations can impactmore than just marketing.
So injecting myself intoconversations with finance, with
sales ops, with other parts ofthe business and just being a
partner and helping them even onthe HR side for recruiting,
(09:11):
follow up and being able to sendout marketing automated emails
that way and making theirprocess more seamless Just
there's so many different waysto use the tools that marketing
operations has to make otherimpacts across the business and
I think that's what led to a lotof my success and a lot of my
success over the entirety of mycareer.
(09:31):
It's really just been aboutcollaboration and thinking of
ways that the marketingoperations kind of base can
impact other parts of thebusiness.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
It's just curious so.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
I am curious.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
Go ahead, go ahead, naomi.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
No, I was just saying that, like, I think it's always
interesting for people to hearabout how someone can get from
you know, a pure ops roletowards expanding their, their
job scope.
Right, I think there'sdifferent ways to get there and
it's always interesting to hearsome of the ways that people are
doing it.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Yeah, so I wanted to go maybe a step further in that,
just like you said, youinserted yourself into these
other things.
I can imagine there's lots ofdifferent ways you could do that
, some which could be actuallycounterproductive, right, if you
do it the right way.
How did you approach those?
How did you identify wherethose opportunities might be?
(10:30):
And then how did you approachthe people who you would
interject with?
Speaker 3 (10:36):
Yeah, I think I opened myself up to a lot of
conversations and try to makemyself available to other team
members and you know justunderstanding from other
people's perspectives.
You know what are their needs,you know where are they having
issues within their day to day.
Is there anything I can do tohelp there and just being
(10:56):
essentially an asset for anyonein the team to tap into?
One thing that I like to sayabout how I approach doing my
work is that it's my job to helpother people be better at their
jobs and if I'm doing that theright way, I feel like I'm
successful at that point.
Um, and that goes beyondmarketing.
(11:17):
You know marketing ops reallyis the marketing.
Ops to marketing is the obviousone that pretty much everybody
in this community is doing, butyou can expand so far beyond
that.
So if finance wants to startunderstanding you know what
marketing channels are drivingthe best ROI and things like
that, you can figure out ways tocollaborate with them to help
(11:40):
work in their frame of referencework in their frame of
reference.
So one thing we did there was,you know, we took POs from
marketing events and marketingplatforms and things like that
and then injected those intoSalesforce campaigns so that we
were able to see okay, this cost$10,000.
We got a hundred leads.
Cost per lead was X and youknow this is how many
(12:04):
opportunities.
Here's the ROI, here's how manyclosed one.
And that was all seamlessbecause we took that kind of
marketing ops approach Financegot what they needed, marketing
got what they needed and thensales also had insight into what
touch points also helps lead tothe end results of a one deal.
So it was a collaborativeeffort and if you're doing it in
(12:26):
that way, I think it providesbetter outcomes.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Were you, were you the one you know, sort of
initiating conversations more,or was it more like you?
Just you were just alwayslistening for those
opportunities and other, youknow, when you're in meetings or
conversations with people.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
I would say a little bit of both.
So definitely on the listeningside of like hearing where
people are having issues orwanting to accomplish certain
things you know, like for thefinance one in particular that
had come about from our CMO whowas like let's track the ROI of
all of our marketing programs,how are we going to do that?
(13:07):
We started looking intosolutions.
I wanted to know what financewas using to see if they had a
way to easily kind of automatesome of this, and they didn't.
But then it became acollaborative project where I
was working with them to havethat data flow in from our
accounting systems intoSalesforce and then marketing
programs coming from HubSpotinto Salesforce and having that
(13:29):
be kind of the place whereeverything was interconnected
and we're able to get the datathat we wanted.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Interesting Love.
That Won't be a shock to me.
I'm a big fan of collaboratingwith finance, so we don't need
to beat that drum again.
But so do you think of yourselfprimarily as a marketing ops
professional that has learnedproduct marketing, or do you
feel like you like you've nowachieved sort of a level of
(13:58):
expertise in both, where youfeel like pretty competent in
both?
Speaker 3 (14:03):
I would still consider myself a marketing
operations professional first.
If somebody asked me what mysub-industry within marketing is
, that's what I would say.
But I'm also usually leaningtowards more startup type
companies where you're wearingmultiple hats, so feeling more
comfortable and stepping inthose sorts of roles and being
(14:24):
able to provide value in morethan just like the system side
of things.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
Right, okay, good.
So when you talk to yourconsulting work, you're bringing
in, getting brought in bycompanies, other organizations,
to help with defining ICPs.
You mentioned that earlier and,if I remember right, you're
like aligning messaging andtechnology with Just like.
What was it that led you tofocus on that sort of niche area
(14:50):
as opposed to like?
I think what a lot of people,when they move into like call
freelancing with marketing ops,right, they tend to be more
systems focused as opposed tobusiness or process focused.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
Yeah, I mean realistically, it was from
market.
Need you see everybody out thereon LinkedIn posting about like
how you have to know yourcustomers and you need to be
able to drill down into your ICPand you need to be able to do
all of those things in the rightway.
And my pitch is kind of cominginto that sort of exercise, with
(15:25):
a marketing operations mindset,of being able to take a look at
data and analyze what's goingon in the systems, looking at
past wins, past successes, pastlosses, and merging that with
understanding an industry.
One thing that I think I do apretty good job at is, when I'm
approaching new ICP work, Ibecome entrenched into that
(15:48):
industry and would say that Iwould become, you know, a low
level expert in in the goings onof what's in, what's happening
within those spaces and thenalso injecting myself into the
buyer side of the shoes.
So taking a look at okay, thiscompany does this really well.
Here's what we need to focus on.
(16:09):
Here's an industry or avertical that you need to go
after.
What makes that industry tick,what are their pain points, and
taking a look at it from both ofthose angles and then merging
that with data you can come outwith really great outcomes.
And then you pair that with allof the new AI technology out
there and it becomes a prettypowerful exercise.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
Gotcha, I'm smiling because I'm like it wouldn't be
a proper podcast episode withoutthe words AI coming into it.
Somehow these days it feelslike it's got to be in there.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
So you mentioned this data-driven approach, and when
you go in and you get engagedwith one of these companies,
organizations, and you're goingto help them, it's some degree.
It sounds like you're not onlyjust identifying and building
icp profiles, you're actuallyvalidating against what they
think they know right.
Um.
So there's a little bit of that, too, going on.
(17:07):
But what, like?
How do you approach?
Like, what are the major stepsyou go through to help get that
defined?
Speaker 3 (17:15):
yeah, there's definitely like an art and a
science to it.
So taking a look at the data isjust one step of it and it kind
of gives you an understandingof what things look like in the
historical data.
And then you're also looking atthings like the future
predictive data of what anindustry where it's moving, who
(17:35):
cares about X topic, and thenalso looking at what's in
pipeline, who's on the website,those sorts of things.
And then the art side comesfrom interviews both with
stakeholders at the company.
So understanding what doessales see their ideal customer
profile as, who do they seehaving the most success with,
(17:57):
why is the pitch unique for thisspecific group?
And kind of synthesizing thatdata all together as well and
seeing if it aligns with whatyou're seeing from just the
numbers side and kind of pullingthat together.
Also, then, taking a look atindustry reports of this
(18:17):
industry is focused on Xinitiative over the next five
years.
Does that align with what yourvalue prop is?
Is it solving a specific painpoint?
Do we need to shift slightly?
Do you have to go up market,down market, based on the
budgets that they typically havein this space?
Where does that right fit?
All of those things start tocome together and then being
(18:40):
able to bridge that into thespecific pain points within each
role is kind of the next stepafter that.
So that goes into the buyerpersona side and getting a
really good understanding thereof who you're targeting, why
you're targeting, why you'retargeting them, what keeps them
up at night, those sorts ofthings come into the fold and I
think that's where you create areally strong program and then
(19:01):
you're able to build out yourmessaging, your content and
everything else that followsthere.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
So how often are you going into an organization where
they think they know theirideal customer profile whether
customers really well, and yougo like, actually what your data
is telling you is somethingdifferent, right?
How often does that happen?
Speaker 3 (19:25):
It's usually not far off of the assumptions, I would
say.
In many cases it's more of afine tuning of what's going on.
I think a lot of the time it'salso pushing people to either be
up or down market or to reducewhat that span is.
(19:46):
So you know, there's, say,there's a company that typically
sells to.
So say, there's a company thattypically sells to midsize
enterprise, b2b companies thathave between 500 million and a
billion ARR.
You can take a look at that andask them what their ideal
customer profile is.
(20:07):
And often you see them sayingoh yeah, we'll sell from 500
million up to 5 billion.
And you take a look at the databetween 1 billion and 5 billion
in annual revenue and the winrates are terrible.
They're not seeing websitetraffic there.
(20:27):
They win, you know, at a muchlower rate.
The longer deal size, longer toclose out.
You start to find those sortsof things and then you don't see
a strong trend of them beingable to support something like
that to encourage them to juststay with within where they're
winning and where those thingsare.
So it allows them to.
(20:48):
You know, refocus budget, makesure they're targeting those
buyers in the correct way.
They're not spending out inplaces where you're trying to
reach those larger buyers.
You're not wasting BDR time inthem doing outreach.
You're making sure that you'rerefocusing to where you're most
(21:08):
likely going to win.
I've also had it the other way,where, if you're really good at
selling into the Fortune 500 andyou want to go down market, why
aren't those deals comingthrough?
Is it that you're priced toohigh so it becomes a barrier to
entry for those types of people?
(21:28):
And then it's like well, yourICP is actually in this fortune
500.
You have X percent of thefortune 500 as customers.
Instead of saying let'sredefine your persona, let's say
your new ICP is actually yourcustomer base, so that you can
land and expand in there and sayyou have 40 percent of the
fortune 500, which is a goodscenario for a lot of companies.
(21:50):
Um, are they using all of yourofferings?
And do we switch to a retentionplay and an expansion play
versus a net new play?
And I think that's where thebiggest surprises are when you
tell somebody like you've got agreat customer base, let's stay
focused there, um, versus themtrying to figure out their way
down market or up market andthings like that.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
And once you've done that, like in your opinion, how
important is it to understandthe product?
Any of the pain points likewhat's the value proposition?
How important do you think thatis?
Speaker 3 (22:28):
I think it's hugely important.
You have to understand, youknow why your product or service
in a specific area meets theirdirect needs and you know
there's initiatives that teamshave and there's things that
they want to be doing, there'sthings they're aspiring to be.
Making sure that your productcan fit those needs, your
(22:54):
product can fit those needs, Ithink is one of the most
important parts, because you doneed to have that strong message
or people aren't going to lookat you and they're not going to
care, because if you're notmaking their lives easier, then
why are they buying your productor service?
Speaker 1 (23:16):
totally.
Um, you mentioned that part ofwhat you do is you, you, you
become like an industry expert.
Um, how do you do that?
Right, I think it's.
I'm a big believer that there'smore commonality across
industries than maybe people arereally deeply entrenched in
them are believe, but stillthere are nuances.
How do you approach that?
Speaker 3 (23:33):
Yeah, I guess it's changed in the past year.
Essentially it used to be doinga ton of analyst research and
attending industry webinars andjust going down rabbit holes of
e-books, of industry trends andtop news sites and things like
that and being like a domainexpert there.
But now there's tools likePerplexity out there where you
(23:56):
can say give me an overview ofthis industry at this level
based on this specific topic,and you get a pretty good base
there.
From that point, there is stillother research that you should
be doing, but you can reallytake it from what used to take a
(24:18):
a full week of research into aday, two days of research to to
get a good understanding ofwhat's going on because of those
AI tools out there.
I think that's one of theirmore powerful use cases.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Yeah, you're the second person recently who's
told me about perplexity, so nowI know I have to go check it
out.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
Yeah, I'm a fan because they cite their sources.
So it makes it a little biteasier to verify where data and
information is coming from, andyou can either include or
exclude further research intothose.
So if you ask them, like, giveme an overview of what marketing
operations is, it'll pull in abunch of information.
(25:03):
You'll get sources from HubSpotand Salesforce and whoever else
is in that realm of probablyselling to marketing operations
professionals and then you cantake a look at okay, this is a
valid data source, this is asales pitch.
You can exclude that and justget a good idea of where they're
(25:23):
pulling that information from.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
Gotcha.
We'll go back a little bit soyou kind of walk through how you
understand the business,understand the industry, uh,
build out the icps.
What?
Once you get that?
You get agreement or alignmentwith the client or your if you
were in business right, you'rewhichever product marketing team
.
It may be like what's the nextstep after that?
(25:49):
That?
Right, how do you?
How do you, um, how do you takeadvantage of that understanding
and knowledge?
Speaker 3 (25:55):
Yeah, it's really building a roadmap from there.
At least, that's my approach.
Um, so you get an understandingof, you know what that ICP is
and then do an index of what dowe have today that can be used
for that ICP.
Do we need to create morecontent?
Are there gaps?
Is there sales training that weneed?
Icp?
Do we need to create morecontent?
Are there gaps?
Is there sales training that weneed to do?
Do we need to adjust pitchdecks to align better to what
(26:17):
that specific type of buyer islooking at and then creating?
I like to create a huge gridwhere it aligns like decision
makers, influencers, gatekeepers, anyone else in the process and
match that to the verticalsthat you identify within the icp
you want to go after andfiguring out.
(26:38):
You know what boxes do you havechecked, which boxes you need
to have work, uh to, to put morework into, and then also
aligning that to each stage ofthe buying process.
So how does a decision makerlook at awareness stage?
How are they doing research?
How does an influencer do it?
And as you move down the cycle,like, being able to check all
(27:00):
of those boxes is a huge task.
I rarely ever see anybody whocan do all of those things
unless you're some massivecompany.
But focusing on those pointswhere you're some massive
company, but focusing on thosepoints where you're having those
sticking points in the salesprocess, so verifying what that
ICP is seeing within sales.
(27:20):
Do you have a five-stage salesprocess and prospects are
falling off at stage three?
Let's look at why.
What information are theymissing?
Why aren't we meeting theirneeds at this stage?
Building the content out forthose specific personas and
those specific ICPs?
At that stage it really justbecomes like a mapping session.
And then looking at timelinesof when can you accomplish X?
(27:43):
When can you build out the newpitch deck?
When can you build out thispiece of content?
How important is it?
Prioritizing all of it, that'skind of the next steps in it.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
You mentioned that one of the keys to your success
has been collaboration.
So I'm curious like what is theimportance of collaboration
across teams?
I know you, you won an award ata company by demonstrating a
high level of collaboration.
Do you want to talk a littlebit about that?
Speaker 3 (28:11):
Yeah, and that goes back to what I was saying about
just wanting to help everyoneget better at what they're doing
.
So I approach collaboration ofyou know, finding out the people
that I'm well aligned with youknow whether that's in a manager
role, director role, um andtalking to other individuals
across the organization andsimilar leadership levels, and
(28:33):
then figuring out like, hey,what are you trying to get
accomplished?
Is there anything I can do tohelp you do that?
Do you need data for this?
Do you need email templates forthat?
Is there anything I can dowithin the CRM to make your life
easier?
In customer success, Just anyway that I can help is kind of
how I approach everyconversation and just a personal
(28:57):
trait of mine is I never reallyexpect anything in return.
I get everything I need out ofan interaction like that by
making that person moresuccessful, and I don't know if
everybody has that type ofmindset, but that's how I've
always approached my work and,you know, if everybody else in
the collaboration feels likethey're getting value out of it,
(29:19):
I feel like I'm doing my jobwell.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
It's awesome.
I love it when you know and thisis something that I've always
said like I love it when peoplein marketing, especially
marketing ops, win awards andget recognition.
I love it when people inmarketing, especially marketing
ops, win awards and getrecognition, because there are
things every year that the salesteams, they go on these elite
trips and president's club andall that stuff.
Where's the marketing versionof it?
We're the ones that are kind ofsupporting them.
We have all these mandates togenerate leads, close one
(29:44):
business, help them with all ofthis, but where is that
recognition for marketing?
And for those of you who arelistening, who who potentially
have like a say in this, I thinkthere should always be a
marketing person that gets to bea part of these as well,
because it is this cohesivecollaboration that you know we
are trying to help accomplish,and I think any situation where
(30:08):
people in marketing andoperations get recognized for
that is always going to besomething to support.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
Yeah, it was uh.
I obviously had no expectationof winning an award like that,
especially being in a marketingoperation seat, uh, but they,
the people who won the companylevel awards were also included
in that president's uh trip, soit was uh.
So it was a pretty good awardto win and got to enjoy what the
(30:36):
sales teams often get to dowhen they hit their numbers.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
Right, jamie, I'm curious Do you think, if that
was the case, it might inspiremore marketers to really truly
try to collaborate more withsales or other parts of the
business, because I don't knowabout you more marketers to
really truly try to collaboratemore with sales or, say, other
parts of the business, because Idon't know about you, but my,
my, my.
My perception is there's a lotof people who might be listening
.
It will go like I try to workwith those stupid salespeople,
(31:01):
but they don't really.
They're just, you know, they'repain in the ass to deal with,
as opposed to maybe AJ'sapproach, which is I don't know,
I'm just curious what you thinkabout that.
Yeah, are you saying that?
Speaker 2 (31:13):
if sorry?
Sorry, Michael, is that aquestion for me or AJ?
Speaker 1 (31:19):
It was for you, Dan, because you brought it up, but
I'm happy to hear AJ'sperspective after too.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
Sorry, aj.
Yeah, I just I guess just tokind of close that thought off,
I thought I think I mean I thinkthere should always be
collaboration between sales andmarketing, regardless of if
there is an acknowledgementabout that or an award or some
kind of benefit from thatafterwards.
(31:44):
But I just think it helps tofacilitate elevating marketing
operations right as a functionand getting that credit and
recognizing that, hey, there area lot of support teams behind
the scenes that are helpingsales to achieve their targets
and marketing is a huge part ofthat.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
How about you, AJ?
I'm curious that particularnotion.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
Yeah, I was going to chime in and say you know the
part about a sales team being apain, which I think the general
theory out there is.
That is typically true.
I look at it a different wayand I think the relationships
are typically like that becausethey're not seeing the value
within marketing.
Relationships are typicallylike that because they're not
(32:35):
seeing the value withinmarketing.
So those are the types ofconversations that I go into and
ask them how can I help you themost?
And it might be somethingcompletely outside of the realm
of what you're considering doingfor the sales team.
They might just need HubSpotautomation to alert them when
(32:55):
one of their top contacts is.
It's the website and by yousetting up that one workflow
that is very easy to do.
You've now built that trust,you've built that recognition
and people like working with youbecause you're the person who
helps solve their problem.
So instead of them having to gointo the CRM every day to see
if their prospect visited thewebsite, now they just know
(33:17):
through email and doing littlethings like that I think goes a
long way and in making thoserelationships better.
And then you hear less aboutthe friction between sales and
marketing, because, even thoughit's not, you know, the ultimate
thing you want to accomplish asa marketing team.
You're you're building thatrelationship with the sales team
.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
Okay, I want to come back to this in a second, but I
thought when you were firstdescribing your approach to
collaboration, especially thepart about you're not expecting
anything in return, I canimagine a number of people
listening would be going likehe's going to get taken
advantage of, right.
So I guess kind of anopen-ended question here is like
A do you feel like you've beentaken advantage of?
And B do you give a shit?
Speaker 3 (34:07):
Yeah, that's a great question.
I would say for me, I don'tfeel like I'm being taken
advantage of because it's my jobto help people, so it's just it
comes with the territory.
Sure, there's tasks that Idon't think would necessarily
need to do, but I do them anyway.
(34:28):
If that's taking advantage ofme, that's okay.
But one place where I do draw aline on that is if I'm leading
a team, I have pretty strictprocesses of how things need to
be requested and things likethat to help protect a team that
is full of yes, people who willnever turn down something and,
(34:49):
you know, putting SLAs in placeand things like that to help
mitigate that potential of beingtaken advantage of.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
Got it.
Okay, that makes sense, and I'dbe with you.
Protecting your team makessense to some degree.
Okay, so long-time listeners,you're not going to be surprised
.
One of the things I reallybelieve more marketing and
marketing ops folks should do isto try to better understand
(35:21):
what it's like.
You're asking questions likehow not just how can it help you
, but as a part of that, itfeels like you're trying to
understand what matters to themand what could have an impact,
(35:44):
as opposed to making someassumptions.
Is that kind of what you'redoing, whether it's intentional
or, you know, coincidental?
Speaker 3 (35:55):
I think at first it was coincidental, but now I've
definitely put that intoconsideration when I'm doing
things and collaborating withpeople.
You can be narrowly focused andperform one function and get
really good at that one function, which a lot of people do, and
(36:16):
there's nothing wrong with that.
But I enjoy being kind of ageneralist and being able to
make an impact across multiplepoints of a business.
So being narrowly focuseddoesn't really achieve the goals
that I have personally.
So understanding all of thoseother aspects of business and
(36:36):
how other people function andhow other things work is just
something that I naturally takean interest in and often pursue
and try to get better at for myown personal reasons.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
Do you feel like that gives you an opportunity to
help them understand what youlike when you're, especially
when you're in your marketingops specific role in time, what
you like when you're especiallywhen you're in your marketing
ops specific role in time?
And second, does it help?
Did you give you an opportunityto help people understand what
do you do in marketing ops?
Speaker 3 (37:04):
I think so, uh, you always get the oh I didn't know
you you could do that.
I don't, I didn't know you didthat in, in those sorts of
things.
Um, I think it also, you know,gives you the opportunity to
like, build up a presence in, inwhere you are, within the
company, and you become known asthe person who can kind of fix
(37:24):
things, regardless of where itis.
And if you can't fix thoseproblems that people have
because of all of thecollaboration you're doing
across the company, you haveways to to point that person in
the right direction.
So, um, you know, there's apoint in time where, if
something new was on the horizonand somebody had a problem they
(37:46):
want to solve, I was often justincluded in that conversation
to see if there was anyopportunity for me to help,
which was a position I enjoyedbeing in.
Speaker 1 (37:55):
Yeah, so you're sort of a hub of helping to solve
problems through theorganization at that point.
Speaker 3 (38:02):
Yeah, and that's kind of how I viewed it.
And you know, maybe that is apart of, like the RevOps portion
, or go-to-market engineertitles that are now more common.
But yeah, I've always takenthat approach.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
Gotcha.
Okay, Well, we have.
We've covered a lot of groundhere, AJ, Is it so?
Is there anything that youwanted to make sure we covered
that we haven't already covered?
Speaker 3 (38:31):
No, I don't think so.
We covered a lot of reallygreat stuff.
I think you know this was agood conversation and to hear
you know your perspectives onthese types of things.
Speaker 1 (38:43):
All right, I'm going to ask you a question that we
started asking everybody and wekind of stopped doing it for no
good reason.
Just be curious.
Like if there was some sort ofcertification for marketing ops
which I think there's worktowards that with the community
and everything else but like ifthere was one like what would
you say are like here's one ortwo or three things that
(39:06):
absolutely need to be a part ofthe certification.
Speaker 3 (39:12):
One that definitely needs to be in focus is business
intelligence reporting, ofbeing able to use something like
Tableau or Power BI and thatset of things.
I feel like that's where a lotof people startdriven decisions
(39:39):
and understand data in aslightly different way than just
like an executive readout on aHubSpot dashboard or Salesforce
dashboard.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
Got it.
It's a good one.
I believe there's a big gap inthe need for that skill and the
demand for it and the actualsupply of people who understand
it.
So I'm on board with that one.
Yeah, AJ, it's been a lot offun.
Thank you for for sharing.
(40:08):
It's always been great.
If folks want to connect withyou, learn more, maybe follow up
with you, what's the best wayfor them to do that?
Speaker 3 (40:18):
Yeah, just find me on LinkedIn.
Always happy to haveconversations and see if there's
ways that I can help people out.
Yeah, always open to havingthose types of chats.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
Terrific, all right, well, thank you.
Thanks, naomi.
As always, it's always apleasure to have you here.
We will look forward to havingour next session here soon.
Until next time, if you havesuggestions for guests or topics
or want to be guests, pleasereach out to Mike, naomi or me
and we would be happy to talk toyou about that.
(40:52):
Till next time, bye, everybody.
Speaker 3 (40:56):
Thanks for having me.
Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of
OpsCast brought to you byMarketingOpscom, powered by the
Mopros out there.
I'm your host.
Michael Hartman joined today,as you can see, with my co-host,
naomi Liu.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hi, it's been a little while.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
It has been.
It's been a minute.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Yeah, Schedule's aligning finally.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
I know.
Well, spring has sprung whereyou are and where I am, so we're
ready to go.
Maybe that's a sign that we'llget to do this more often.
Well, good, joining us today isAJ Driscoll.
Aj is a marketing consultantwith AJ Driscoll Consulting LLC,
the agency that he shocker,surprise, surprise founded.
(00:39):
Prior to starting hisconsulting business, aj was a
marketing operations leader atDeepWatch, where he co-led the
marketing team.
He has done previous work inmarketing, marketing strategy,
marketing automation at agenciesas well as in-house, and he
likes to take a data-drivenapproach to effectively build,
scale and measure marketingstrategies.
Aj, thanks for joining us today.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Yeah, I'm trying to remember.
You're up in the northeastsomewhere, right?
Speaker 3 (01:09):
Yeah, up in Vermont we got some snow yesterday, so
I'm jealous of hearing that youguys have spring.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Snow.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Snow, that's crazy.
Snow in April in Vermont.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Well, hopefully you're a skier, you get to enjoy
it not enough to enjoy uhskiing, just enough to uh, you
know, make them salt the roadsonce again yeah, make driving
treacherous, so at least you'reprepared.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Down here in dallas, like if it snows, like I just
try to avoid driving because theidiots out there don't know
what to do.
We don't have the equipment toreally clear the roads.
It is what it is, okay.
So our main focus today isgoing to be talking about why
it's important for marketingoperations professionals to
(02:00):
understand product marketing.
But before we get into that, Idid a quick overview of your
career and your journey, but I'dlove for you to share maybe a
little more about that and howyou became passionate about this
topic of the understanding ofthe overlap and understanding
needed for marketing ops folkswith product marketing.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
Yeah, I think one commonality into my career path
has always been just fallinginto some realm of marketing.
It started off by my internshipwhere the director of marketing
, who had hired me to be anintern, left the company two
weeks after I started and hadjust purchased HubSpot and the
(02:47):
rest of the company leadershipwas like, hey, intern, go figure
this out.
And that really kickstarted mylife into marketing operations
and learning, marketingautomation, all of that kind of
good stuff, and just keptdeveloping it from there until I
reached the point at DeepWatchwhere I was now a marketing ops
leader and, collaborating withso many different people,
(03:10):
realized it'd be hugelybeneficial for me to better
understand everything elsethat's going on in marketing so
that I could be more effectiveat marketing operations, which
led me to mostly productmarketing.
I'd been involved with demandgen strategies and things like
that in the past, runningcampaigns and nurture programs,
(03:32):
all that good stuff.
But where where productmarketing came into the fold was
developing a new ICP exerciseand I pushed people to have a
more data-driven approachbecause there was kind of the
notion that we knew who ourcustomers were at the company
(03:53):
and we kind of dove into if thatwas true or not.
And from there started taking adata-driven look into you know,
what does our current customerbase look like?
What deals close the fastest,all of that good stuff and built
a readout on that and that wasjust kind of step one that felt
(04:14):
very marketing ops focused.
But from there we starteddeveloping out buyer personas on
who would be within that ICPand going into the details of
you know what makes them tick,what are they looking for in a
solution, how does the companyservice their needs, figuring
out those pain points.
And I was heavily involved inthat process and kind of
(04:38):
realized that I had now fallenmore into product marketing and
it kind of gave me a nice littleavenue to to continue focusing
on building out ICP.
Um, uh, exercises with othercompanies, and you know, that's
kind of where I immediately fellinto and had success within my
(04:59):
consulting business.
Um was able to, you know, talkwith a few companies that needed
to know their customers betterand jumped in and, you know,
taking that data-driven approachas well as, you know,
interviewing customers,understanding industries all of
that kind of good stuff is whereI just fell into and I think
(05:20):
it's hugely important, uh, as amarketing ops professional, to
start understanding that stuffso that you can do more than
just the system side of things,because then you can start
merging that with specificstrengths within a company and
being able to be more beneficialthan just being the guy who
(05:40):
knows how to clean lists,configure HubSpot.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
Yeah.
So just real quick, I want tofollow up.
So, um, this is something wedidn't talk about because it was
when I was prepping for thissession, but you, um, you were,
you were like a co-leader forall of marketing at at what?
So I'm curious because I thinkthat's, uh, highly unusual.
First off, having a co-leaderis unusual, but, like what, how
(06:04):
did that happen and what didthat look like for in terms of,
like, your scope ofresponsibility versus the other
person?
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Sure, yeah.
So at the time we had a CMO forabout a year and a half and
then she had departed thecompany and, instead of us
looking to backfill that role,leadership made the decision
that her directors would thenco-lead the marketing team.
Because we'd all been workingvery closely together for say,
(06:35):
two years and with that we wereable to, you know, get along
really, really well and a lot ofour thinking was well aligned
along, really really well, and alot of our thinking was well
aligned Um, so we were able tojust continue on kind of making
those leadership style decisions, um, as a team, and that
consisted of myself, someone whois in channel and field
(06:57):
marketing, and then someone whowas dedicated to product
marketing, um, and the three ofus, yeah, drove strategy for for
about a year before.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
Oh, there's three of you, not just two.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
Yeah, three of us, so we all kind of owned our own
piece of the business, uh,within marketing.
And then, yeah, we would all bea part of the those like
leadership conversations andable to to move things forward,
and we had three different andunique perspectives and
approached things in threedifferent ways and I think we
(07:33):
did some pretty cool stuff overthat time.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Do you think?
Speaker 2 (07:38):
I'm curious because I think a challenge that a lot of
us in marketing ops have is,especially when you're starting
out or growing, your team isgetting that, you know,
visibility within theorganization and you know not
just being a cost center, right,but actually like a revenue
driver.
And do you feel like thathaving that understanding of you
(07:59):
know product marketing andbuilding those relationships
with those teams helps to bethat stepping stone that, hey,
you know this team, like youmentioned, is more.
We're not just like makingdonuts, right, we're also like
thinking about strategy and wehave a lot of insights and we
see all of the data and wherethings are going, trends.
And I'm just curious, like ifthere are people out there who
(08:21):
want to move away from like justbeing an individual contributor
and they're wanting to havemore of like an elevator role
within the organization, Do youfeel like this is that stepping
stone towards getting there?
Speaker 3 (08:35):
It can be.
I think what was the steppingstone for me in particular in
this situation was I was thesecond marketing hire at the
company when I was onboarding.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
To kind of define where it's going.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
Exactly so I had that benefit.
But then I've also always beenfirmly in the belief that
marketing operations can impactmore than just marketing.
So injecting myself intoconversations with finance, with
sales ops, with other parts ofthe business and just being a
partner and helping them even onthe HR side for recruiting,
(09:11):
follow up and being able to sendout marketing automated emails
that way and making theirprocess more seamless Just
there's so many different waysto use the tools that marketing
operations has to make otherimpacts across the business and
I think that's what led to a lotof my success and a lot of my
success over the entirety of mycareer.
(09:31):
It's really just been aboutcollaboration and thinking of
ways that the marketingoperations kind of base can
impact other parts of thebusiness.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
It's just curious so.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
I am curious.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
Go ahead, go ahead, naomi.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
No, I was just saying that, like, I think it's always
interesting for people to hearabout how someone can get from
you know, a pure ops roletowards expanding their, their
job scope.
Right, I think there'sdifferent ways to get there and
it's always interesting to hearsome of the ways that people are
doing it.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Yeah, so I wanted to go maybe a step further in that,
just like you said, youinserted yourself into these
other things.
I can imagine there's lots ofdifferent ways you could do that
, some which could be actuallycounterproductive, right, if you
do it the right way.
How did you approach those?
How did you identify wherethose opportunities might be?
(10:30):
And then how did you approachthe people who you would
interject with?
Speaker 3 (10:36):
Yeah, I think I opened myself up to a lot of
conversations and try to makemyself available to other team
members and you know justunderstanding from other
people's perspectives.
You know what are their needs,you know where are they having
issues within their day to day.
Is there anything I can do tohelp there and just being
(10:56):
essentially an asset for anyonein the team to tap into?
One thing that I like to sayabout how I approach doing my
work is that it's my job to helpother people be better at their
jobs and if I'm doing that theright way, I feel like I'm
successful at that point.
Um, and that goes beyondmarketing.
(11:17):
You know marketing ops reallyis the marketing.
Ops to marketing is the obviousone that pretty much everybody
in this community is doing, butyou can expand so far beyond
that.
So if finance wants to startunderstanding you know what
marketing channels are drivingthe best ROI and things like
that, you can figure out ways tocollaborate with them to help
(11:40):
work in their frame of referencework in their frame of
reference.
So one thing we did there was,you know, we took POs from
marketing events and marketingplatforms and things like that
and then injected those intoSalesforce campaigns so that we
were able to see okay, this cost$10,000.
We got a hundred leads.
Cost per lead was X and youknow this is how many
(12:04):
opportunities.
Here's the ROI, here's how manyclosed one.
And that was all seamlessbecause we took that kind of
marketing ops approach Financegot what they needed, marketing
got what they needed and thensales also had insight into what
touch points also helps lead tothe end results of a one deal.
So it was a collaborativeeffort and if you're doing it in
(12:26):
that way, I think it providesbetter outcomes.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Were you, were you the one you know, sort of
initiating conversations more,or was it more like you?
Just you were just alwayslistening for those
opportunities and other, youknow, when you're in meetings or
conversations with people.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
I would say a little bit of both.
So definitely on the listeningside of like hearing where
people are having issues orwanting to accomplish certain
things you know, like for thefinance one in particular that
had come about from our CMO whowas like let's track the ROI of
all of our marketing programs,how are we going to do that?
(13:07):
We started looking intosolutions.
I wanted to know what financewas using to see if they had a
way to easily kind of automatesome of this, and they didn't.
But then it became acollaborative project where I
was working with them to havethat data flow in from our
accounting systems intoSalesforce and then marketing
programs coming from HubSpotinto Salesforce and having that
(13:29):
be kind of the place whereeverything was interconnected
and we're able to get the datathat we wanted.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Interesting Love.
That Won't be a shock to me.
I'm a big fan of collaboratingwith finance, so we don't need
to beat that drum again.
But so do you think of yourselfprimarily as a marketing ops
professional that has learnedproduct marketing, or do you
feel like you like you've nowachieved sort of a level of
(13:58):
expertise in both, where youfeel like pretty competent in
both?
Speaker 3 (14:03):
I would still consider myself a marketing
operations professional first.
If somebody asked me what mysub-industry within marketing is
, that's what I would say.
But I'm also usually leaningtowards more startup type
companies where you're wearingmultiple hats, so feeling more
comfortable and stepping inthose sorts of roles and being
(14:24):
able to provide value in morethan just like the system side
of things.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
Right, okay, good.
So when you talk to yourconsulting work, you're bringing
in, getting brought in bycompanies, other organizations,
to help with defining ICPs.
You mentioned that earlier and,if I remember right, you're
like aligning messaging andtechnology with Just like.
What was it that led you tofocus on that sort of niche area
(14:50):
as opposed to like?
I think what a lot of people,when they move into like call
freelancing with marketing ops,right, they tend to be more
systems focused as opposed tobusiness or process focused.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
Yeah, I mean realistically, it was from
market.
Need you see everybody out thereon LinkedIn posting about like
how you have to know yourcustomers and you need to be
able to drill down into your ICPand you need to be able to do
all of those things in the rightway.
And my pitch is kind of cominginto that sort of exercise, with
(15:25):
a marketing operations mindset,of being able to take a look at
data and analyze what's goingon in the systems, looking at
past wins, past successes, pastlosses, and merging that with
understanding an industry.
One thing that I think I do apretty good job at is, when I'm
approaching new ICP work, Ibecome entrenched into that
(15:48):
industry and would say that Iwould become, you know, a low
level expert in in the goings onof what's in, what's happening
within those spaces and thenalso injecting myself into the
buyer side of the shoes.
So taking a look at okay, thiscompany does this really well.
Here's what we need to focus on.
(16:09):
Here's an industry or avertical that you need to go
after.
What makes that industry tick,what are their pain points, and
taking a look at it from both ofthose angles and then merging
that with data you can come outwith really great outcomes.
And then you pair that with allof the new AI technology out
there and it becomes a prettypowerful exercise.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
Gotcha, I'm smiling because I'm like it wouldn't be
a proper podcast episode withoutthe words AI coming into it.
Somehow these days it feelslike it's got to be in there.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
So you mentioned this data-driven approach, and when
you go in and you get engagedwith one of these companies,
organizations, and you're goingto help them, it's some degree.
It sounds like you're not onlyjust identifying and building
icp profiles, you're actuallyvalidating against what they
think they know right.
Um.
So there's a little bit of that, too, going on.
(17:07):
But what, like?
How do you approach?
Like, what are the major stepsyou go through to help get that
defined?
Speaker 3 (17:15):
yeah, there's definitely like an art and a
science to it.
So taking a look at the data isjust one step of it and it kind
of gives you an understandingof what things look like in the
historical data.
And then you're also looking atthings like the future
predictive data of what anindustry where it's moving, who
(17:35):
cares about X topic, and thenalso looking at what's in
pipeline, who's on the website,those sorts of things.
And then the art side comesfrom interviews both with
stakeholders at the company.
So understanding what doessales see their ideal customer
profile as, who do they seehaving the most success with,
(17:57):
why is the pitch unique for thisspecific group?
And kind of synthesizing thatdata all together as well and
seeing if it aligns with whatyou're seeing from just the
numbers side and kind of pullingthat together.
Also, then, taking a look atindustry reports of this
(18:17):
industry is focused on Xinitiative over the next five
years.
Does that align with what yourvalue prop is?
Is it solving a specific painpoint?
Do we need to shift slightly?
Do you have to go up market,down market, based on the
budgets that they typically havein this space?
Where does that right fit?
All of those things start tocome together and then being
(18:40):
able to bridge that into thespecific pain points within each
role is kind of the next stepafter that.
So that goes into the buyerpersona side and getting a
really good understanding thereof who you're targeting, why
you're targeting, why you'retargeting them, what keeps them
up at night, those sorts ofthings come into the fold and I
think that's where you create areally strong program and then
(19:01):
you're able to build out yourmessaging, your content and
everything else that followsthere.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
So how often are you going into an organization where
they think they know theirideal customer profile whether
customers really well, and yougo like, actually what your data
is telling you is somethingdifferent, right?
How often does that happen?
Speaker 3 (19:25):
It's usually not far off of the assumptions, I would
say.
In many cases it's more of afine tuning of what's going on.
I think a lot of the time it'salso pushing people to either be
up or down market or to reducewhat that span is.
(19:46):
So you know, there's, say,there's a company that typically
sells to.
So say, there's a company thattypically sells to midsize
enterprise, b2b companies thathave between 500 million and a
billion ARR.
You can take a look at that andask them what their ideal
customer profile is.
(20:07):
And often you see them sayingoh yeah, we'll sell from 500
million up to 5 billion.
And you take a look at the databetween 1 billion and 5 billion
in annual revenue and the winrates are terrible.
They're not seeing websitetraffic there.
(20:27):
They win, you know, at a muchlower rate.
The longer deal size, longer toclose out.
You start to find those sortsof things and then you don't see
a strong trend of them beingable to support something like
that to encourage them to juststay with within where they're
winning and where those thingsare.
So it allows them to.
(20:48):
You know, refocus budget, makesure they're targeting those
buyers in the correct way.
They're not spending out inplaces where you're trying to
reach those larger buyers.
You're not wasting BDR time inthem doing outreach.
You're making sure that you'rerefocusing to where you're most
(21:08):
likely going to win.
I've also had it the other way,where, if you're really good at
selling into the Fortune 500 andyou want to go down market, why
aren't those deals comingthrough?
Is it that you're priced toohigh so it becomes a barrier to
entry for those types of people?
(21:28):
And then it's like well, yourICP is actually in this fortune
500.
You have X percent of thefortune 500 as customers.
Instead of saying let'sredefine your persona, let's say
your new ICP is actually yourcustomer base, so that you can
land and expand in there and sayyou have 40 percent of the
fortune 500, which is a goodscenario for a lot of companies.
(21:50):
Um, are they using all of yourofferings?
And do we switch to a retentionplay and an expansion play
versus a net new play?
And I think that's where thebiggest surprises are when you
tell somebody like you've got agreat customer base, let's stay
focused there, um, versus themtrying to figure out their way
down market or up market andthings like that.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
And once you've done that, like in your opinion, how
important is it to understandthe product?
Any of the pain points likewhat's the value proposition?
How important do you think thatis?
Speaker 3 (22:28):
I think it's hugely important.
You have to understand, youknow why your product or service
in a specific area meets theirdirect needs and you know
there's initiatives that teamshave and there's things that
they want to be doing, there'sthings they're aspiring to be.
Making sure that your productcan fit those needs, your
(22:54):
product can fit those needs, Ithink is one of the most
important parts, because you doneed to have that strong message
or people aren't going to lookat you and they're not going to
care, because if you're notmaking their lives easier, then
why are they buying your productor service?
Speaker 1 (23:16):
totally.
Um, you mentioned that part ofwhat you do is you, you, you
become like an industry expert.
Um, how do you do that?
Right, I think it's.
I'm a big believer that there'smore commonality across
industries than maybe people arereally deeply entrenched in
them are believe, but stillthere are nuances.
How do you approach that?
Speaker 3 (23:33):
Yeah, I guess it's changed in the past year.
Essentially it used to be doinga ton of analyst research and
attending industry webinars andjust going down rabbit holes of
e-books, of industry trends andtop news sites and things like
that and being like a domainexpert there.
But now there's tools likePerplexity out there where you
(23:56):
can say give me an overview ofthis industry at this level
based on this specific topic,and you get a pretty good base
there.
From that point, there is stillother research that you should
be doing, but you can reallytake it from what used to take a
(24:18):
a full week of research into aday, two days of research to to
get a good understanding ofwhat's going on because of those
AI tools out there.
I think that's one of theirmore powerful use cases.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Yeah, you're the second person recently who's
told me about perplexity, so nowI know I have to go check it
out.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
Yeah, I'm a fan because they cite their sources.
So it makes it a little biteasier to verify where data and
information is coming from, andyou can either include or
exclude further research intothose.
So if you ask them, like, giveme an overview of what marketing
operations is, it'll pull in abunch of information.
(25:03):
You'll get sources from HubSpotand Salesforce and whoever else
is in that realm of probablyselling to marketing operations
professionals and then you cantake a look at okay, this is a
valid data source, this is asales pitch.
You can exclude that and justget a good idea of where they're
(25:23):
pulling that information from.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
Gotcha.
We'll go back a little bit soyou kind of walk through how you
understand the business,understand the industry, uh,
build out the icps.
What?
Once you get that?
You get agreement or alignmentwith the client or your if you
were in business right, you'rewhichever product marketing team
.
It may be like what's the nextstep after that?
(25:49):
That?
Right, how do you?
How do you, um, how do you takeadvantage of that understanding
and knowledge?
Speaker 3 (25:55):
Yeah, it's really building a roadmap from there.
At least, that's my approach.
Um, so you get an understandingof, you know what that ICP is
and then do an index of what dowe have today that can be used
for that ICP.
Do we need to create morecontent?
Are there gaps?
Is there sales training that weneed?
Icp?
Do we need to create morecontent?
Are there gaps?
Is there sales training that weneed to do?
Do we need to adjust pitchdecks to align better to what
(26:17):
that specific type of buyer islooking at and then creating?
I like to create a huge gridwhere it aligns like decision
makers, influencers, gatekeepers, anyone else in the process and
match that to the verticalsthat you identify within the icp
you want to go after andfiguring out.
(26:38):
You know what boxes do you havechecked, which boxes you need
to have work, uh to, to put morework into, and then also
aligning that to each stage ofthe buying process.
So how does a decision makerlook at awareness stage?
How are they doing research?
How does an influencer do it?
And as you move down the cycle,like, being able to check all
(27:00):
of those boxes is a huge task.
I rarely ever see anybody whocan do all of those things
unless you're some massivecompany.
But focusing on those pointswhere you're some massive
company, but focusing on thosepoints where you're having those
sticking points in the salesprocess, so verifying what that
ICP is seeing within sales.
(27:20):
Do you have a five-stage salesprocess and prospects are
falling off at stage three?
Let's look at why.
What information are theymissing?
Why aren't we meeting theirneeds at this stage?
Building the content out forthose specific personas and
those specific ICPs?
At that stage it really justbecomes like a mapping session.
And then looking at timelinesof when can you accomplish X?
(27:43):
When can you build out the newpitch deck?
When can you build out thispiece of content?
How important is it?
Prioritizing all of it, that'skind of the next steps in it.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
You mentioned that one of the keys to your success
has been collaboration.
So I'm curious like what is theimportance of collaboration
across teams?
I know you, you won an award ata company by demonstrating a
high level of collaboration.
Do you want to talk a littlebit about that?
Speaker 3 (28:11):
Yeah, and that goes back to what I was saying about
just wanting to help everyoneget better at what they're doing
.
So I approach collaboration ofyou know, finding out the people
that I'm well aligned with youknow whether that's in a manager
role, director role, um andtalking to other individuals
across the organization andsimilar leadership levels, and
(28:33):
then figuring out like, hey,what are you trying to get
accomplished?
Is there anything I can do tohelp you do that?
Do you need data for this?
Do you need email templates forthat?
Is there anything I can dowithin the CRM to make your life
easier?
In customer success, Just anyway that I can help is kind of
how I approach everyconversation and just a personal
(28:57):
trait of mine is I never reallyexpect anything in return.
I get everything I need out ofan interaction like that by
making that person moresuccessful, and I don't know if
everybody has that type ofmindset, but that's how I've
always approached my work and,you know, if everybody else in
the collaboration feels likethey're getting value out of it,
(29:19):
I feel like I'm doing my jobwell.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
It's awesome.
I love it when you know and thisis something that I've always
said like I love it when peoplein marketing, especially
marketing ops, win awards andget recognition.
I love it when people inmarketing, especially marketing
ops, win awards and getrecognition, because there are
things every year that the salesteams, they go on these elite
trips and president's club andall that stuff.
Where's the marketing versionof it?
We're the ones that are kind ofsupporting them.
We have all these mandates togenerate leads, close one
(29:44):
business, help them with all ofthis, but where is that
recognition for marketing?
And for those of you who arelistening, who who potentially
have like a say in this, I thinkthere should always be a
marketing person that gets to bea part of these as well,
because it is this cohesivecollaboration that you know we
are trying to help accomplish,and I think any situation where
(30:08):
people in marketing andoperations get recognized for
that is always going to besomething to support.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
Yeah, it was uh.
I obviously had no expectationof winning an award like that,
especially being in a marketingoperation seat, uh, but they,
the people who won the companylevel awards were also included
in that president's uh trip, soit was uh.
So it was a pretty good awardto win and got to enjoy what the
(30:36):
sales teams often get to dowhen they hit their numbers.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
Right, jamie, I'm curious Do you think, if that
was the case, it might inspiremore marketers to really truly
try to collaborate more withsales or other parts of the
business, because I don't knowabout you more marketers to
really truly try to collaboratemore with sales or, say, other
parts of the business, because Idon't know about you, but my,
my, my.
My perception is there's a lotof people who might be listening
.
It will go like I try to workwith those stupid salespeople,
(31:01):
but they don't really.
They're just, you know, they'repain in the ass to deal with,
as opposed to maybe AJ'sapproach, which is I don't know,
I'm just curious what you thinkabout that.
Yeah, are you saying that?
Speaker 2 (31:13):
if sorry?
Sorry, Michael, is that aquestion for me or AJ?
Speaker 1 (31:19):
It was for you, Dan, because you brought it up, but
I'm happy to hear AJ'sperspective after too.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
Sorry, aj.
Yeah, I just I guess just tokind of close that thought off,
I thought I think I mean I thinkthere should always be
collaboration between sales andmarketing, regardless of if
there is an acknowledgementabout that or an award or some
kind of benefit from thatafterwards.
(31:44):
But I just think it helps tofacilitate elevating marketing
operations right as a functionand getting that credit and
recognizing that, hey, there area lot of support teams behind
the scenes that are helpingsales to achieve their targets
and marketing is a huge part ofthat.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
How about you, AJ?
I'm curious that particularnotion.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
Yeah, I was going to chime in and say you know the
part about a sales team being apain, which I think the general
theory out there is.
That is typically true.
I look at it a different wayand I think the relationships
are typically like that becausethey're not seeing the value
within marketing.
Relationships are typicallylike that because they're not
(32:35):
seeing the value withinmarketing.
So those are the types ofconversations that I go into and
ask them how can I help you themost?
And it might be somethingcompletely outside of the realm
of what you're considering doingfor the sales team.
They might just need HubSpotautomation to alert them when
(32:55):
one of their top contacts is.
It's the website and by yousetting up that one workflow
that is very easy to do.
You've now built that trust,you've built that recognition
and people like working with youbecause you're the person who
helps solve their problem.
So instead of them having to gointo the CRM every day to see
if their prospect visited thewebsite, now they just know
(33:17):
through email and doing littlethings like that I think goes a
long way and in making thoserelationships better.
And then you hear less aboutthe friction between sales and
marketing, because, even thoughit's not, you know, the ultimate
thing you want to accomplish asa marketing team.
You're you're building thatrelationship with the sales team
.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
Okay, I want to come back to this in a second, but I
thought when you were firstdescribing your approach to
collaboration, especially thepart about you're not expecting
anything in return, I canimagine a number of people
listening would be going likehe's going to get taken
advantage of, right.
So I guess kind of anopen-ended question here is like
A do you feel like you've beentaken advantage of?
And B do you give a shit?
Speaker 3 (34:07):
Yeah, that's a great question.
I would say for me, I don'tfeel like I'm being taken
advantage of because it's my jobto help people, so it's just it
comes with the territory.
Sure, there's tasks that Idon't think would necessarily
need to do, but I do them anyway.
(34:28):
If that's taking advantage ofme, that's okay.
But one place where I do draw aline on that is if I'm leading
a team, I have pretty strictprocesses of how things need to
be requested and things likethat to help protect a team that
is full of yes, people who willnever turn down something and,
(34:49):
you know, putting SLAs in placeand things like that to help
mitigate that potential of beingtaken advantage of.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
Got it.
Okay, that makes sense, and I'dbe with you.
Protecting your team makessense to some degree.
Okay, so long-time listeners,you're not going to be surprised
.
One of the things I reallybelieve more marketing and
marketing ops folks should do isto try to better understand
(35:21):
what it's like.
You're asking questions likehow not just how can it help you
, but as a part of that, itfeels like you're trying to
understand what matters to themand what could have an impact,
(35:44):
as opposed to making someassumptions.
Is that kind of what you'redoing, whether it's intentional
or, you know, coincidental?
Speaker 3 (35:55):
I think at first it was coincidental, but now I've
definitely put that intoconsideration when I'm doing
things and collaborating withpeople.
You can be narrowly focused andperform one function and get
really good at that one function, which a lot of people do, and
(36:16):
there's nothing wrong with that.
But I enjoy being kind of ageneralist and being able to
make an impact across multiplepoints of a business.
So being narrowly focuseddoesn't really achieve the goals
that I have personally.
So understanding all of thoseother aspects of business and
(36:36):
how other people function andhow other things work is just
something that I naturally takean interest in and often pursue
and try to get better at for myown personal reasons.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
Do you feel like that gives you an opportunity to
help them understand what youlike when you're, especially
when you're in your marketingops specific role in time, what
you like when you're especiallywhen you're in your marketing
ops specific role in time?
And second, does it help?
Did you give you an opportunityto help people understand what
do you do in marketing ops?
Speaker 3 (37:04):
I think so, uh, you always get the oh I didn't know
you you could do that.
I don't, I didn't know you didthat in, in those sorts of
things.
Um, I think it also, you know,gives you the opportunity to
like, build up a presence in, inwhere you are, within the
company, and you become known asthe person who can kind of fix
(37:24):
things, regardless of where itis.
And if you can't fix thoseproblems that people have
because of all of thecollaboration you're doing
across the company, you haveways to to point that person in
the right direction.
So, um, you know, there's apoint in time where, if
something new was on the horizonand somebody had a problem they
(37:46):
want to solve, I was often justincluded in that conversation
to see if there was anyopportunity for me to help,
which was a position I enjoyedbeing in.
Speaker 1 (37:55):
Yeah, so you're sort of a hub of helping to solve
problems through theorganization at that point.
Speaker 3 (38:02):
Yeah, and that's kind of how I viewed it.
And you know, maybe that is apart of, like the RevOps portion
, or go-to-market engineertitles that are now more common.
But yeah, I've always takenthat approach.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
Gotcha.
Okay, Well, we have.
We've covered a lot of groundhere, AJ, Is it so?
Is there anything that youwanted to make sure we covered
that we haven't already covered?
Speaker 3 (38:31):
No, I don't think so.
We covered a lot of reallygreat stuff.
I think you know this was agood conversation and to hear
you know your perspectives onthese types of things.
Speaker 1 (38:43):
All right, I'm going to ask you a question that we
started asking everybody and wekind of stopped doing it for no
good reason.
Just be curious.
Like if there was some sort ofcertification for marketing ops
which I think there's worktowards that with the community
and everything else but like ifthere was one like what would
you say are like here's one ortwo or three things that
(39:06):
absolutely need to be a part ofthe certification.
Speaker 3 (39:12):
One that definitely needs to be in focus is business
intelligence reporting, ofbeing able to use something like
Tableau or Power BI and thatset of things.
I feel like that's where a lotof people startdriven decisions
(39:39):
and understand data in aslightly different way than just
like an executive readout on aHubSpot dashboard or Salesforce
dashboard.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
Got it.
It's a good one.
I believe there's a big gap inthe need for that skill and the
demand for it and the actualsupply of people who understand
it.
So I'm on board with that one.
Yeah, AJ, it's been a lot offun.
Thank you for for sharing.
(40:08):
It's always been great.
If folks want to connect withyou, learn more, maybe follow up
with you, what's the best wayfor them to do that?
Speaker 3 (40:18):
Yeah, just find me on LinkedIn.
Always happy to haveconversations and see if there's
ways that I can help people out.
Yeah, always open to havingthose types of chats.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
Terrific, all right, well, thank you.
Thanks, naomi.
As always, it's always apleasure to have you here.
We will look forward to havingour next session here soon.
Until next time, if you havesuggestions for guests or topics
or want to be guests, pleasereach out to Mike, naomi or me
and we would be happy to talk toyou about that.
(40:52):
Till next time, bye, everybody.
Speaker 3 (40:56):
Thanks for having me.
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